The Press. MONDAY, MAY 15, 1893. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8483, 15 May 1893, Page 4

The Press. MONDAY, MAY 15, 1893. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.

Some little time ago the Reverend F. W. Isitt sent a letter to the Wellington. Trades Council urging upon them the necessity of legislation in the direction of enabling wives to procure judicial separation from their husbands ou the ground of drunkenness. The Council agreed with the proposal, and we ho_je Mr. Ism will push the agitation and enlist the sympathies of other public bodies in the same direction. We cordially agree with him that this is a much needed

reform.

Towards the end of the session of 1891 the Hon, E. C. J. Stevens, in the Legislative Council, moved a resolution in the same direction as Mr. Ism's proposal. In spite of the strenuous opposition of the Hon. Mr. Buckle r, as representing the Government in the Council, the motion was passed by a large majority ; but resolutions of the Legislative Council, unhappily, act on the present Administration like a red rag on a bull, and are uot the surest means to secure their support.

The resolution passed by the Legislative Council was this—" That, in the opinion of this Council, the provisions of the English law under which when a man has been convicted of an aggravated assault upon his wife a judicial separation may be granted in a summary way, should be adopted in New Zealand." Mr. Stevens, in speaking to his motion, pointed oat that the resolution was in no wise of a revolutionary character. The provision in the English law referred to is contained in the "Matrimonial Causes Act, 1878," and was composed by no less a legal authority than Lord Penzance, for many years the presidiug Judge of the Court of Probate and Divorce in England. Mr. Stevens added that he had consulted Mr. Bic-QCOHo Bebthah on the question, who had expressed himself strongly as to the necessity of such a provision. Mr. Stevens had drafted a Bill which contained the further provision of making "habitual drunkenness," as well as "aggravated assault,", a ground for separation ; hut at so late a stage of the session he contented himself with moving in the direction of tho minor reform. The testimony of so experienced a police magistrate as Mr. Bjbxthah should be in itself sufficient proof of the urgent necessity of such a measure. But even if we had not that evidence it must be plain to every reader of the daily papers that illtreatment of wives by drunken husbands is of deplorably frequent occurrence. It is not necessary to cite sensational cases of brutality that come into the courts; there are innumerable cases of hardship that are never brought under the notice of the police at all.

For at present the only remedy for the ill-used wife is to prosecute her husband for the assault; if she secures a conviction he gets his week or month in gaol, and. at the expire-

tion of his sentence probably returns homo to sponge ou her earnings, interfere with her means of livelihood, and give play to his feelings in the shape of brickbats and broomsticks. Under such a provision as that sought to be introduced judicial separation can be procured in a simple, summary, and, above all, cheap and accessible way. During the discussion in the Council of course the usual sentimental arguments were employed against the proposal. "Tho sacred tie of matrimony" was dilated upon with much common place eloquence; the fallibility of the judgment of our police aud Magistrates was drawn in to prove the measure " liable to abuses." Others again scouted the necessity for so " drastio a measure" on the ground that we possess "a great and glorious system of educatiou," as though a I kuowledge of the three R's or the [latitude of Kamschatka would be sufficient to restrain the brutal inatiuots of drunken men. That education tends to diminish crime there are plenty of statistics to prove; but we have yeb to learn that there are not eduoated as well as ignorant blackguards in the world. Though we would be the last to see the doors opeued to bogus divorce aud the undermiuing of the institution of monogamous society, we distinctly affirm that ie is the duty of the law to protect a wife against inhuman brutality. For drunkenness aud cruelty are a species of moral disease, and as much a fit subject for legal restraint as lunacy. Hedged round with due legislative safeguards, we can see no reason why the habitual drunkard and the wife-beater should not be restrained by law from making women's lives an abject misery.

But we would go further, aud include a drunken wife also. The husband is usually physically stronger, and, therefore, able to protect himself from assault by his wife—though this is by no means invariably the case—but the sufferings of a man tied to an habitually drunken woman are quite as bad as those of an ill-used wife. As the Hon. Mr. Scotland said in the Council, "In the oourse of his experience of life he had been told, and had seen in newspapers, so much of this kind of domestic unhappiness that he had come to the conclusion that there was just as much of the devil and as little of the angel iv woman as a man,"land we quite agree with him in the opiuion that the measure should be made to apply to wives as well as to husbands. To talk of the " sacred tie of matrimony" being endangered by such a provision is mere idle sentiment; a judicial separation, like a protection order, is a remedial measure; and there would be no temptation, as in the case of free divorce, to seek to obtain it except in cases of urgent neoessity. We hope both Mr. Stevens from his place in the House, and Mr. Isitt from his place in the pulpit will continue their advocacy of this much-needed social reform, aud will strenuously agitate and educate publio opinion till it becomes law. We have in our midst, too, a vigorous aud flourishing organisation, in the shape of a Women's Institute. We would suggest this to them as a fitting subject for discussion and agitation. It is a matter that peculiarly affects the happiness of our women; and there is no subject of social or political reform that has such urgent claims on the Institute as this.