with great difficulty. It was
a somewhat incoherent and make-shift measure, and was avowedly put forward
only as a step towards further reform; but it still substantially governs
English procedure, and in the eyes of many has set a permanent standard of
morality. The spirit of blind conservatism,--_Nolumus leges Angliae
mutare_,--which in this sphere had reasserted itself after the vital
movement of Reform and Puritanism, still persists. In questions of
marriage and divorce English legislation and English public feeling are
behind alike both the Latin land of France and the Puritanically moulded
land of the United States.

The author of an able and temperate essay on _The Question of
English Divorce_, summing up the characteristics of the English
divorce law, concludes that it is: (1) unequal, (2) immoral, (3)
contradictory, (4) illogical, (5) uncertain, and (6) unsuited to
present requirements. It was only grudgingly introduced in a
bill, presented to Parliament in 1857, which was stubbornly
resisted during a whole session, not only on religious grounds by
the opponents of divorce, but also by the friends of divorce, who
desired a more liberal measure. It dealt with the sexes
unequally, granting the husband but not the wife divorce for
adultery alone. In introducing the bill the Attorney-General
apologized for this defect, stating that the measure was not
intended to be final, but merely as a step towards further
legislation. That was more than half a century ago, but the
further step has not yet been taken. Incomplete and
unsatisfactory as the measure was, it seems to have been regarded
by many as revolutionary and dangerous in the highest degree. The
author of an article on "Modern Divorce" in the _Universal
Review_ for July, 1859, while approving in principle of the
establishment of a special Divorce Court, yet declared that the
new court was "tending to destroy marriage as a social
institution and to sap female chastity," and that "everyone now
is a husband and wife at will." "No one," he adds, "can now
justly quibble at a deficiency of matrimonial vomitories."

Yet, according to this law, it is not even possible for a wife to
obtain a divorce for her husband's adultery, unless he is also
cruel or deserts her. At first "cruelty" meant physical cruelty
and of a serious kind. But in course of time the mea