WIFE ABDUCTION CASE AT CLITHEROE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XL, Issue 9090, 23 May 1891, Page 2

WIFE ABDUCTION CASE AT CLITHEROE.

OPINIONS OF ENGLISH PRESS. Miss Emily Faithful writes in the Lady* Pictorial; — The importance of the decision of the Court of Appeal in the case of Mrs - Jackson, of Clitheroe, cannot be questioned, and it is certainly in harmony with modern sentiment and manners. It is very much to be regretted tliat the marriage in question " proved a failure," that the lady changed her mind after the ceremony, and now fails to see her Avay to keep the solemn promises made at the altar ; but it puzzles the ordinary understanding altogether to fathom a desiro on the part of the husband to force distasteful companionship on this unfortunate lady, or to imagine that a violent abduction or forcible . detention could result in kindlier feelings and love on her part. The leading papers have for the most part taken a fair view of the matter ; while some have- made merry about " women's rights," most of tho writers have accepted the right standpoint, viz., that marriage to be sacred must be voluntary. I prefer to gather some of the most notable masculine remarks in preferonce to giving my otcd, as they stamp the progress of thought, and the absolute change from the sentiments portrayed in " The Taming of the Shrew," when wives were regarded as part of a , husband's "goods and chattels," to be dealt with exactly as he pleased. The Times, for instance, reminds its readers that the Act of 1884 abolished the power of the Court to imprison the husband or wife who defied the order they still can grant — one of the strange anomalies in which English law seems* to revel — and acknowledges that to compel a man and woman to live together against tho will of either is utterly inconsistent «with the temper of modern times. The Daily News goes still further, and remarks that the real point of the decision shows that tl a man does not own a wife as he owns a dog or a cigar case," and that his right to her society is governed in its exercise by all sorts of other "rights based on the usages of civilised life.

The Daily Chronicle thinks that under the circustances the husband and wifo should be legally freed from the unwelcome union, and that society should say to them, " wayward pair, part in peace, and form if you desire it another and more enduring, because more sympathetic connection." The Daily Telegraph takes a somewhat jocose view of the affair, and thinks it does not fol ow because a husband may not put restraint upon his wife that she has no right to coerce him,' " The extent of his privileges, if they exist at all, is now involved in the utmost uncertainty, and unless some wife will be obliging enough to lock up her husband, with a" view of raising the queetion, it is not easy to see how we are to find it out."

The Manchester Guardian confesses that , it can see no logical halting-place between the freedom of a wifo to quit the company of her husband when she Aria's it intolerable, and the "absolute dominion of the hnsband over the wife." If either doctrine is to be laid down it would greatly prefer " that of a free and equal partnership"— a sentiment which, I fancy, will be re-echoed by all self-respecting men. To keep a ■ wife "in durance vile" seems a strange way oi. trying to win a woman's affection. " The authorities" quoted by Mr r Henn Collins, as to laws making a wife " subject to her husband, thoughhe may not put her to death," his fine distinction between " imprisonment" and " confinement," will make many men share Mr Ben Elan's " burning indignation," and increase their desire to abolish, at once and forever, " tbe powers of slave-owner-ship" so repugnant to the feelings of any chivalrous nineteenth-century husband.

It may be added the Daily TeUgraph has, as might have been expected, opened its columns to a mass of correspondence on this subject.