The Law’s Inequalities.

Evening Star, Issue 8717, 8 January 1892, Page 2

The Law’s Inequalities.

The case of Freeman v. Freeman (writes the ‘ Sydney Morning Herald ’) should serve as an object lesson for those who resist a reform of the laws of divorce. As aptly remarked by Sir William Windeyer, if those who are so opposed attended in his court and heard some of the cases tried, they might perhaps find that they sufficient grounds for changing their opinfop. In this case, according tio the eyidenoe, thg man bad pushed bis wife jnto a. well Sfiffc deep, and on 'her being drawn np hp dropped her in again, the violence of the fall causing her to be unconscious till the following day. And this was at a time when her condition or womanhood was such as appeals most piteously to a husband for tenderness if there is a spark of humanity in the man’s nature. On other occasions he had fractured her cheekbones with*a loaded whip; he had shut her up with her three children—one of them an infant in arms—in a cold, damp cellar, the livelong night in midwinter, where she bad to divest herself of clothing to wrap her baby in, and to continue breathing on the infant to prevent its dying of cold. And there are those who tell us that such is the sanctity of the bond between these two that the religion of the God of MeriV forbids its severance for such a caused a is true that, happily for the. miserable woman, she was enabled to find proof that another offence had been committed—the only one which existing law regards as justifying divorce—and she got a rule nisi for deliverance. But assuming that snch evidence was not forthcoming, can anyone honestly say that either religion or reason wonld justify the continuance of a bond that made it compulsory on her to live with snob a man, and to love, honor, and obey him ? It is said by those who are opposed to recognising such cruelty as grounds for divorce-that the severance of the parriags tie on such conditions would loosen the bonds in other oases, and that people who are living together in quietness would have their minds disturbed, and be prompted to seek dissolution of marriage. Bat oonld anything be more selfish than to insist that an unhappy woman like this mast bear her chains in silence lest other people should be troubled in the comfortable respectability of their domestic life ? And could anything be more calculated to alienate men’s hearts from religion than for men to invoke its solemn sanctions for riveting the chains of such tyranny, and to tell a poor tortured victim that Christianity forbids her to have any deliverance but through the portals of the grave ?