of impression--it was mere impression for a long time--that great
folk had more than their share of the puddings' plums; and agitators
began to bestir themselves. What were the privileges of the higher
classes which would sit most gracefully on their inferiors? Naturally
we bethought us of their vices. It was not always so easy to adopt my
lord's urbanity, his unassuming dignity, his well-bred ease; but one
might reasonably aspire to be as wicked. Sabbath-breaking had long since
ceased to be the privilege of the better classes, and so men's minds
reverted to the question of divorce. "Let us get rid of our wives!"
cried they; "who knows but the day may come when we shall kill
woodcocks?"

Now the law, in making divorce a very costly process, had simply desired
to secure its infrequency. It was not really meant to be a rich man's
privilege. What was sought for was to oppose as many obstacles as could
be found, to throw in as many rocks as possible into the channel, so
that only he who was intently bent on navigating the stream would ever
have the energy to clear the passage. Nobody ever dreamed of making it
an open roadstead. In point of fact, the oft-boasted equality before
the law is a myth. The penalty which a labourer could endure without
hardship might break my lord's heart; and in the very case before us of
divorce, nothing can possibly be more variable than the estimate formed
of the divorced individuals, according to the class of society they move
in.

What would be a levity here, would be a serious immorality there; and
a little lower down again, a mere domestic arrangement, slightly more
decorous and a shade more legal than the old system of the halter and
the public sale. It was declared, however, that this "relief"--that is
the popular phrase in such matters--should be extended to the poor
man. It was decided that the privilege to get rid of a wife was, as
Mr Gladstone says of the electoral right, the inalienable claim of a
freeman, and the only course was to lower the franchise.

Let us own, too, we were ashamed, as we had good right to be ashamed, of
our old _crim. con._ law. Foreigners, especially Frenchmen, had rung
the changes on our coarse venality and corruption; and we had come to
perceive--it took some time, though--that moneyed damages were scarcely
the appropriate remedy for injured honour.

Last of all, free-trade notions had turned all our heads: we were
for getting rid of all restrictions on