orce-lawyer and two or three
shabby-genteel-looking 'witnesses,' who from thenceforth shall never be
findable by mortal man again. The 'witnesses' swear to any thing and
every thing--that they have seen and recognized defendant in highly
improper houses with improper persons; that they know plaintiff to be
pure, faithful, and shamefully misused in the marriage relation, etc.,
etc. As 'defendant,' not even aware that he or she _is_ a 'defendant,'
makes no appearance, either in person or by counsel, to combat this
dreadful evidence, the referee must, of course, render decision for
plaintiff--'the law awards it, and the Court doth give it.' The judge
subsequently confirms this decision; a decree of full divorce is granted,
_in due and full legal form_, to the triumphant plaintiff; and the
'defendant' is likely to become aware of the suit for the first time on
that night."

The acts of the divorce Ring are no secrets in New York. Yet neither the
judges nor the Bar Association make any efforts to rid the courts of such
wretches. "A citizen of New York, whose misguided wife had secretly
obtained a fraudulent divorce from him through such practice as we have
described, and who, in turn, had successfully sued in the legitimate way
for the dissolution of marriage thus forced upon him, sought to induce
his legal adviser, a veteran metropolitan lawyer of the highest standing,
to expose the infamous divorce 'Ring' before the courts, and demand, in
behalf of his profession, that its practitioners should be at least
disbarred. The response was, that the courts were presumed to be
entirely ignorant of the fraudulent parts of the proceedings referred to;
that the offenders could be 'cornered' only through a specific case in
point against them, and, besides, that the referees in their cases were
nearly all connected, either consanguinely or in bonds of partnership
interest, with the judges who had appointed them, and before whom the
motion for disbarment would probably come! For this last curious reason
no lawyer could, consistently with his own best interests, inaugurate a
movement likely to involve the whole referee system in its retributive
effects. A lawyer so doing might, when arguing future cases in court,
find a certain apparent disposition of the Bench to show him less
courtesy than on former occasions--to snub him, in fact, and thereby
permanently prejudice his professional future likelihoods in that
jurisdiction!"