Year: 1862

am no lawyer, and am not therefore versed in
the teehnicalities of law-making some things also
might have to be altered. and some things added,
but In substance my proposal is this:


Let an Act be passed which may enable parents
and husbands easily to bring and carry through an
action for damages against the seducer of daughter
or wife, and let the bringing of such action operate
In every such case bar to the enforcement
against the parties of the present laws concerning
forncation and adultery


In order that the proceeding NAV be neither diff
hcult nor expensive, let the trial be before the Dis
triet Justice, and let him decide to the guilt or
innocence but let the amount of damages be as
sessed by native jury, not however to fall short
Oft certain sum-say SIS. Appeal as to the
criminality or no criminality to be allowed but the
award of the jury as to damages if guilty to be
final.


As from the existing state of things such law
might be liable to abuse, parents often conniying
at the lntrlgues of their daughters, and husbands
at those of their wives, and being likely, in such
cases, only to apply to the law to staye off some
impending criminal action for fornicaton or adul-
terry, let it be made impossible for any to inst
tute a suit for damages, if information had pre-
viousy been laid before the magistrate of the
criminality in that regard of either daughter or
wife.


Farther, if in such trial for damages il can be
satisfactorily proved that parent, either father or
mother, or that the husband, at period posteriOr
to the promu CATION Of the law, had been privy to
an intrigue of daughter or wife, let that bar any
proceedings in the suit, and let the parent in the
be liable personally for the penalty against
fornicatiOn, having aided and abetted it, and the
husband in the other, for that against adultery


If the offender be a lad under eighteen, let the
parent guardian be responsible in property, but
not in person.


In case the offender have not sufficient property,
let him be made to work out the amount by hiring
him out to some one. and let him, on complaint Of
his employer for negligence, ETC., be liable to be
sent to Government work for short periods and
returned again to servitude until his Indebtedness
shall have been discharged.


l have good hopes that if some such law were
introduced it would serve considerably to lessen
the frightful generalization We witness. Nations
do not readily change their character. Celtic
France was subdued by the Romans. After their
Empire sank, it was Overrun and conquered by
German tribes. At each subjugation new laws
were imposed and new customs seemingly estab-
lished by the victors. Yet in head and heart the
French people are still Celtic. Their whole social
life, their whole political being are marked by
traits which show them to be descended from the
Gauls of Cesar. The continuity of national exist
enee is not easily broken.


conceive, therefore, that forty years Of legis-
lation running counter to the feelings of this
people, has not destroyed thees feelings. They
only sleep, they are not dead within them. The
old idea that the sedueer does a wrong would
pretty surely be again gradually awakened among
all, and reused into action by finding that he had
to pay for it.