Justice for the Husband.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVI, Issue XXII, 1 June 1901, Page 1014

Justice for the Husband.

Drunken wife or drunken husband? Which is the worse? The question has recently been raised in the British House of Commons by the Bishop of Winchester’s Bill—a measure granting a wife separation from a husband who is a habitual drunkard. Enormous interest has been taken in the proposed legislation, which had the support of ail political parties, the only difference really raised regarding it being that the measure should extend to the husband cursed with a drunken wife the same privilege which it sought for the drunkard’s wife. It will be seen by a cablegram of last week that the Government have taken up the measure aud amended it in the direction indicated. And surely they did right. One fails to distinguish any great difference in the claims to consideration of the wife whose husband is a drunkard and the husband whose wife is the same. Indeed, if it conies to be a question not merely of the personal misery inflicted by the one on the other, but of the peace and protection of the home, I imagine that the drunken wife is the greater curse. A home niay be kept respectable and the children cared for even if the man who should he its mainstay is a drunkard, provided its presiding genius, the wife, is a sober, industrious woman. If, however, the case is reversed and the wife is the offender no effort on the part of the husband is likely to save the household from misery and degradation. The stories told of"the suffering entailed on respectable and devoted women by husbands who are the slaves of drink can readily be paralleled and even eclipsed by terrible tales of the destruction wrought in honest households by the wife who falls a prey to alcohol. ’ By all means give to tire unfortunate wife of the drunkard the chance to rescue her children and herself from the inevitable misery whieh continued association with him means, but suffer the poor husband in the other ease a similar opportunity to break loose from the evil genius to whom the marriage compact has joined him.