TOPICS OF THE TIME.

Hastings Standard, Issue 56, 1 July 1896, Page 2

TOPICS OF THE TIME.

It must be a sore point, with the -Jingoes in the Old Country at present that the Government which is composed of men who have sneered so tremendously at the " peace-at-any-price " party and rated the Liberals with their surrender of the national honor, should accept in the mildest manner imaginable the rebuffs of an insignificant State such as Venezuela and the prolongation of atrocities in Armenia and the Mediterranean. But it were well to consider that in turning the other cheek, as it were, to the Venezuelan, Lord Salisbury's Government is furthering the great policy of peace with honor so far as America is concerned, and hastening the hour when the great llepublic shall enter into an alliance with the Mother Land which shall prevent an appeal to arms on any question which may at any time call for arbitrament between the two English-speaking nations. In the case with Turkey, the considerations are sordid and soil the nation's honor. The British bondholders are to be protected, 110 matter how bloody may be the deeds of the Moslem. The millions of " golden reasons " why Britain should not bid the Turk to cease from his evil work might well cause the lover of rigtheoushcss to veil his face in shame and give the Jingo pause in his condemnation of th c ! party which in the years that are past have made the unspeakable Mahomedau hold his hand. Mr F. Abkwbight, one of the new " Lords " over whom the Premier and Lord Glasgow wrestled in spirit, and regarding whose elevation whole pints of "official ink were used, is reported to have said, in the course of the debate on the Divorce Bill, introduced by the Hon Mr Bolt, that the present law was not unjust to the woman. That any such utterance should have proceeded from a gentleman of professedly Liberal principles, or with any claim to belief in the progress of modern thought, is, to say the least, surprising. But it cannot be that the Hoa Mr Arkwright has given this very grave question a

moment's thoughtful consideration. Not unjust to the woman! Let us see hoiv much justification there is for such a statement. At the present moment a married man may become the greatest libertine, may openly flaunt in vices in the face of his wife, become a drunkard into the bargain; anything so that he does not actually , beat his wife, and she has no redress. She may sue for a separation and if her husband has money she may have bestowed upon her by the Judge a certain amount of maintenance money. Other relief there is none. Look now at the other side of the picture. The woman, if she commits herseff by one act of adultery, though she be in other respects blameless and stainless, may be divorced instanter. If this is what the Hon. P. Ark wright calls justice to the woman, then we join issue with him and we say that his judgment is warped and his pronouncement unworthy of one who sits in the high places of the land. There is good reason for objecting to the altering of the marriage law into an e'ngine on the divorce-made-easy principle. The sacrednoss of the marriage tie is not a thing to be trilled with, nor the sanctity of the home a fit subject for flippant legislation. It is only too true that where the divorce laws have been so altered as to make marriage a go-as-you-please contract, the "national life has suffered and the morals of the people have undergone a most desirable change. But there are few who will gainsay the manifest truth of the assertion that at the present time men and women are not equal in the eye of the law as they are before God. If the " grave and reverend seigneurs " who have, without much consideration, flung the proposed divorce law out of the window of the Legislative Council, do not desire to have it thought by the women of this colony that they have done in like manner with their sense of justice, they will, when the opportunity is offerred them later of equalising the means of divorce- t-hat is to say when the Bill now before the House of Representatives reaches the Upper House consider the question fairly, and thus respect the wishes of the womanhood of New Zealand.