RULES FOR THE NEW GAME OF DIVORCE.

Colonist, Issue 86, 17 August 1858, Page 4

RULES FOR THE NEW GAME OF DIVORCE.

[From Punch.) ~ , ... Mr. Punch, observing in the window of the law stationer not a hundred miles from the Rainbow, in Fleet-street, a blue pamphlet, of folio form, entitled Rules and Orders of Her Majesty's Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, instantly invested sixpence for the purchase of the same, and rushing into the taberna above indicated, addressed himself with great eagerness to the perusal of the document, with the aid of a few tumblers of hot mixture bearing his own name, and worthy to bear it. The work contains fifty-seven rules for getting rid of one's husband or wife, divers forms of citation, petition, answer and other machinery for effecting that object, and a table of fees which have to be paid to Sir Cresswell Cresswell's officials, and are a very small part of what divorce.will cost —the whole of the luxuries enumerated in the carte, from citation to an examiner's daily pay, not amounting ,to £20.' The proctor or attorney's bill will tell another story. Some of the rules are merely technical, 'others are to the purpose. For instance :— Rule IX. That no wife shall be entitled to relief under this act, if the husband can show that her milliner's bill for any single year of their marriage exceeded the sum of £50. Rule XIII. That the word ' cruelty' (in the 20 and 21 Viet. cap. 85) shall not be held to mean smoking in the parlour or library, but shall mean smoking in any other apartment in the conjugal mansion. Rule XVI. That no Mother-in-law's evidence shall be credited if given in favor of her own offspring, but that the same may be received on the other side, with the caution usually observed in listening to the allegations of the old parties. Rule XIX. That in any petition presented to this Court, the words • he behaved like a brute' shall be taken as words of course, and as superfluous, unless specific explanations are given. Rule XXI. That any husband shall be debarred from relief by this Court if he can be proved to have ever hinted that he threw himself away in marriage, to have refused his wife a month at the sea-side, or to have received perfumed correspondence at the club. Rule XXVII. That any wife shall be debarred from relief by this Court, unless she can undergo an examination in Miss Acton, Meg Dods, M. Soyer, or some other author on Cookery, to be selected by herself. Erroi's in entrees and entremets to be condonable, but the second blunder in plain ■ cookery is to dismiss the woman's petition. . Rule XXX. That no husband shall be favored by the Court who has been proved to assign ' business' as a reason for his being out until half-past three, and then returning in a state of mops and brooms. Rule XXXIII. That shirt buttons, being an invention of the dark ages, and long superseded by enlightenment and studs, shall not be assigned in evidence by any husband. Rule XL. That in cases where the evidence is equally poised, credit and favor shall be accorded to the party who is proved to have been the most diligent reader, of Punch. It is necessary to provide for the case of equality here also; because it is morally and physically impossible that any couple in the constant habit of reading their Punch attentively can ever quarrel, far less desire separation, or, in short, have any difference which cannot be instantly settled with a laugh and kiss.