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Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 9494, 17 August 1891, Page 4

Ip the Moss case should be seized upon as a powerful argument, in favour of the Divorce Bill now before the House —luckily, in a low position on the Order Paper—nobody need be very much astonished. The case of the wife, whose conduct throughout the deplorable affair has excited the liveliest admiration, will be urged as’proving the necessity for granting divorce. We do not pretend to know whether the lady desires such a thing—we only know that she has played the part of a good, brave woman—and we are merely supposing that the benevolent reformers who abound are taking up her case, and making it typical. At the outset, the case must he held to have proved that the poor man was not looked after soon enough—and to have proved little else. But who can say that he ia an incurable ? And who will draw the line across the list of insanities, so that all the dangerous elements shall be on one side and all harmless elements shall he on the other? In these two questions lies the whole difficulty of the subject. There are good women iu the world who are suffering the very same sorrow that Mrs Moss is suffering. They do not call for their own release, they pray for the release of their unhappy, afflicted husbands. They do not invoke Parliament to change the law ; they hope for the day when they may once more live with their husbands. Is there anything more touching in the history of mental aberration than the story of the Lambs—the gentle Elia taking his sister to his arms every time she came out of the lunatic asylum? What the brother and sister did, wife and husband can surely do. Why cannot the reformers deny themselves the pleasure of meddling with the holiest feelings of our nature ?