ding that, in all matters of divorce, the Supreme
Judicial Court shall follow "the course of proceedings in the
Ecclesiastical Courts." Various decisions of the Ecclesiastical Courts
were cited to this court by counsel, showing that, according to the law
which prevailed in those courts, the conduct of the husband amounted to
connivance, and ought to preclude him from obtaining a divorce. In order
to obviate the conclusion to which these decisions clearly tended, the
Supreme Judicial Court proceeded to minimize the authority of the
Ecclesiastical Courts, by suggesting that "the decisions of those Courts
upon questions of substantive law are _not_ of the same weight here as
are the decisions of the English Courts of Law and Chancery;" because
"the Ecclesiastical Courts proceeded according to the Canon Law as
allowed and adopted in England; but the Canon Law was never adopted by
the Colonists of Massachusetts: it was not suited to their opinions or
condition."

Now it is true that the Ecclesiastical Courts of England were Canon-Law
Courts, as distinguished from Courts of Common Law and Courts of
Chancery; but this court here has erroneously assumed that the rules and
principles which governed the Ecclesiastical Courts in determining
questions of connivance were different from and inconsistent with the
rules and principles which governed the Courts of Common Law and
Chancery in determining similar questions. Nothing could be further from
the truth. In dealing with questions of this sort, the Canon-Law Courts,
the Common-Law Courts, and the Courts of Chancery sought and found rules
and principles in every system of morals and in every system of law
which had prevailed in any past time in any part of the civilized world,
and especially in the Civil Law of Ancient Rome. They all drank at the
same fountain. In the Roman Law they found the maxim already quoted, and
also the following, viz., _Qui alios cum potest ab errore non revocat,
se ipsum errore demonstrat:_ "He who, when he can, does not divert
another from wrong-doing, shows himself a wrong-doer." _Qui non prohibit
cum prohibere posset jubet:_ "He who does not forbid when he can forbid
seems to command." _Qui potest et debet vetare, tacens jubet:_ "He who
can and ought to forbid, and does not, assents." _Qui non obstat quod
obstare potest facere videtur:_ "He who does not prevent what he can
prevent seems, to commit the thing." Many others might be cited. In
short, the ma