written with so little care and clearness as far as the legal part of the matter is concerned, that any uninformed reader would be apt to gather, especially rom the second paragraph that divorces or judicial separations, or at any rate something for which a petition is necessary, can be obtained before any police magistrate or court of petty sessions. The error involved in such a statement is a radical one, and may, if disseminated, produce much mischief. The Divorce Court sitting in Westminster Hall is the only place in England where either a divorce or a judicial separation can be obtained, and the jurisdiction of magistrates is confined to making orders for the protection of property and earnings of wives deserted by their husbands. As for the protection to person alluded to in the article, it remains precisely where it was before the passing of the act-neither more nor less. I observed that in your June number you quoted the remarks made by Lord Campbell in the new court, when his fordship observed on the rapidity and cheapness with which a divorce, formerly obtainable only by a very considerable expenditure of time and money, could now be procured. This did well enough for Westminster Hall; but I was surprised that the Editor of The English Woman's Journal omitted (like his lordship) all notice of the most remarkable feature in the proceedings of the Court; I mean that divorces have been applied for and obtained by those who, under the old law, would have never been heard at all, though they had had the patience of a Job and the wealth of a Croesus, viz. married women. I do not know whether your space would be sufficient for the purpose, but I should be inclined to suggest the publication in your Journal of the Divorce Act in full (it has only sixty-eight clauses) with some notes and comments, and the Bill of the present session when passed. I have the honor to be, Your obedient Servant, MADAM, I have ever been one of the most anxious that women should adopt professions, and live to some practical useful purpose; but in your remarks on Miss Shirreff's book on Intellectual Education you seem to me to carry the matter too far, and I beg to offer a few remarks in my turn. I trust that many of your readers will agree with me in thinking it rather a strong measure to require, that every woman shall forthwith give guarantees that she intends to enter into one profession or another, on pain of perpetual oblivion, with banishment for life to the kitchen and the storeroom. And yet we are in the midst of no such violent crisis, on the contrary, we are in a state of transition; our education as a class has but just begun. The public mind in England is not prepared for women taking any decisive step, the women themselves are not fit for it. And, as this unfitness is due principally to their want of self-respect and of generous aspiration, it is obviously the first duty of those who would be their guides and teachers to raise them out of the mire of their self-abasement, and to lead them upward, and still upward, making the way pleasant to them with words of comfort and encouragement. The levelling system of repression has been tried too long, it would be well now to change the treatment and adopt another more stimulating and more generous. Those families of the middle classes in which all the daughters have been kept to assisting in the housekeeping, where perhaps four or five persons have been employed doing the work of one, have not proved to be schools for the training of sensible, practical women, but rather (as might have been expected) of amateur dressmakers and milliners, and extensive dealers in crochet and small talk. This will do to propitiate the Saturday Review, but it was hardly worth while to start an English Woman's Journal to recommend a state of things which has existed already, with a few variations, for so many hundreds of weary years. Surely instead of so much uncalled-for baking and brewing, a girl might be well engaged in enriching her mind, so that she might afterwards set a good example to other women, accustom them to look after something striking and agreeable among their own sex, and excite their admiration and emulation, which is a state of mind apparently unknown to them at present. We are asked to number the women we know who are fit for a life of mere scholarship. It is of little importance, for those who are not fit for it need not remain in it; but I am sure we all know many women who have been sadly wasted for want of knowledge and of ideas. If the levelling system which you recommend had prevailed some years ago, we should have lost our Harriet Martineau and our Anna Blackwell, to whom your readers were but lately so deeply indebted. It may be said, in reply to all this, that I am going on too fast, and that you have no objection to women cultivating their minds. But the mere cold permission to rise and 'live' is not sufficient for these 'dry bones.' There must be no blowing hot and cold for this work. To tell a young girl that she may apply herself to study, but that she need not take much trouble about it nor fret herself in the action,' for that after all it does not signify, is to set about one's business (to say the least of it) very awkwardly,-hanging out, like the Chameleon, two colors at once, and countenancing a great waste of time in feeble attempts and fruitless beginnings. Your Journal abounds in complaints of the want of thoroughness in the generality of women; who can wonder, considering the counsels they receive? And considering how pitiful a thing the outward life of many women must necessarily be, there is but small kindness in depriving them of the strength and composure and true happiness which spring from intellectual study pursued with ardor. Indeed, madam, it is robbing the poor,-with no bad intention it is true, but the consequences to the poor are no less hurtful. This matter seems to me of unspeakable importance. To be, or not to be,'— to live, or only to counterfeit life. I remain, Madam, July 16th, 1858. Your obedient Servant, A. S. [We have given insertion to this letter because we desire, as much as possible, to bring forward all phases of opinion relative to the education and the employment of women; but we think that "A. S." has misapprehended the bearing of the literary notice to which she refers. An attentive perusal of Miss Shirreff's book,- "Intellectual Education and its Influences on the Character and Happiness of Women,"—would, we think, make any of our readers clearly understand the reasons of our strong dissent from one of its propositions. Miss Shirreff advocates the applying of a keen stimulus to the intellects of girls whose worldly position will, in her opinion, preclude them from entering into active life. She treats professional life as a practical impossibility for the majority, and thinks that manual labor in the household would be a waste of time for educated women. We believe that if her principle could be fairly carried out, it would result, if not in madness, at least in a total want of that sanity of judgment which is after all the first mental requisite of an adult brain. Stuffing the mind with history, philosophy, and artistic knowledge, will not educate the reason or the will, will not make better women or better men, if the outlets of active life are at the same time to be closed up. In asking how many women were fit for the vocation of the scholar' our reviewer intended no sneer upon them as a sex, How many men are fit for the vocation of the scholar, apart from all the noble ambitions of the church, the bar, and the medical profession, and from those of the senate, the professorial chair, or the author's desk? Again, we do not recommend crochet and millinery to our unemployed young ladies with no particular mental energy. We recommend work;-baking, brewing, darning, the keeping of accounts, and so much of actual physical exertion in the care of the house as they can by any means be got to undertake. It is not the slavery of domestic cares which injures the characters of Caroline Crochet and Phœbe Fine; if they had been making the beds and roasting the meat they would probably have been much more estimable characters, and much more the mental equals of the men of their families. It is that unfortunate prejudice which causes well-to-do women to resign all the active care of their houses to their servants, before they have acquired those capacities for intellectual usefulness which might render them noble and worthy in a wider sphere. Neither do we agree with "A. S." that this notion of intellectual culture as an end of existence is not yet a real evil. There is a large proportion of refined families verging on the upper class, with whom it is an acknowledged principle, and the peculiar cramped expression of face which is the result "is not far to seek.' Shrunk in body and choked up as to their mental fibres, surely an active intelligent housemaid is on a higher level of development than these young ladies, whom emigration would drive to despair, and shipwreck would infallibly drown, who are not adding to the sum of ideas possessed by our race, nor helping to diffuse those which already exist; and who have, alas, resigned that firm grasp on this dear and beautiful material world, which is God's gift to his creatures whilst yet in the flesh. To those who come forward on all occasions, as we do come forward, to urge the throwing open of professions and of commercial avocations to women, it is doubly needful that we should avoid that overstraining of any one idea which brings a cause and its supporters to nought. We particularly wish to avoid any imputation of despising the material basis of domestic life. Among men there is a certain simple hierarchy of occupation, from the hewer of wood, to the hewer of marble. What we want to see among women is the development of the same hierarchy. Hitherto the most elevated portion has been too deficient; let us not run into the opposite error of cutting away the supports. Let us try to increase the numbers of good house-wives ;-wives of peasants, artizans, and farmers; of shop-women, of thoroughly industrious and intelligent women of the middle class; let us have our female physicians, our lecturers, our artists, and our authors; here and there a student; we will find room for them if there are not too many, and provide them a retreat calm as those of Cam or Isis. But let us keep in view one steady principle, that in training the young, (be it remembered that we have been referring to a work on education,) we strictly demand of every kind of character committed to our charge, that they remember the parable of the ten talents, and consecrate every gift to use. ED., E. W.J.] LXIII.-PASSING EVENTS. It is cheering to see the liberal interpretation given to the New Divorce Act by the different magistrates throughout the country. We have already cited several cases, and find another thus recorded in The Daily Telegraph of July 15th. "SOUTHWARK.-SINGULAR APPLICATION UNDER THE NEW DIVORCE ACT.In the course of the morning a well-dressed female, who stated herself to be Maria Waugh, and a relative of the celebrated Colonel Waugh, of Eastern Bank notoriety, attended before Mr. Combe, to claim protection for her property, which she had become possessed of since the desertion of her husband, Jonathan Waugh, in 1852. Applicant stated that she resided in Bermondsey, and had been married to her husband about eight years. In 1852 he left her, as he said, to go to the gold diggings, and the last time she heard of him he was at San Francisco. Since he had left her she had obtained her own livelihood, and, through her own exertions, had accumulated a little property, which she wished protection for under the new act, as she had reason to believe he would return and claim it. Mr. Combe asked her what was the description of her property. She replied that it was furniture, stock in trade, and a little money left her by a relative. Mr. Combe asked whether her husband left her the furniture and stock. She replied in the negative. She had become possessed of them since he deserted her. Mr. Combe told her that she was entitled to the protection afforded by the recent Act of Parliament; therefore he should make the usual order, and direct it to be lodged with the registrar of the Southwark County Court. Applicant thanked his worship and withdrew." The case of Bostock versus Bostock, instituted by the wife against the husband, upon which Sir C. Cresswell delivered judgment, July 19th, is one of those miserable cases which point to the necessity of an extension of the law of divorce to persons who from incompatability of temper or character cannot live together without making themselves and all about them miserable. Surely, more valid ground for divorce cannot be found than the desire of both parties to be released, the law taking care so to frame the preliminary steps, that neither party shall act upon impulse nor be coerced by the other. What more demoralizing can be imagined, than the forced cohabitation of two persons of whom the judge in pronouncing judgment thus sums up: "The history of the married life of this couple was most melancholy. For thirty years they were continually quarrelling, and they brought up a large family of children, upon whom their example must have had a most injurious effect. But he could not on that account separate them. Lord Stowell observed in "Evans versus Evans" that one wished to separate those who wished to be separated, but the law did not allow him to indulge that feeling, for it said that a separation could not be granted in consequence of a mere disinclination to cohabit. That disinclination must be founded upon reasons which the law approved. In his opinion, such reasons did not exist at the time this suit was instituted, and he must therefore dismiss the husband from it."-Judgment for the respondent. The Bucks Advertiser and Aylesbury News of July 3rd, while congratulating its readers in a leading article, on the amount of social misery, which has been removed by the operation of the New Divorce Act, calls attention to the necessity there is for some further modification arising out of the altered relations of husbands and wives. "One of these, the rule of law which assumes a wife to be entirely under the control of her husband, whenever he is present, is so strikingly illustrated by a case at the recent Quarter Sessions, that we venture to call especial attention to it. Two men, evidently professed London thieves, were indicted for housebreaking, and with them two female companions who had lived with them on the footing which is unhappily too common among persons of that class. The women were indicted by the respective names of their male associates, probably for the very sufficient reason that they were known by no other; but with strange inconsistency, they were described in the indictment as 'single women. The evidence left little doubt that these women had taken an active part in the robbery and in the disposal of the stolen property. Nevertheless, the law as laid down by the noble Chairman, and not disputed, was that if there were presumptive proof of their being married to the male prisoners, they must be acquitted. The jury found that they were not so married, and found all the prisoners guilty. Common sense would seem to urge that these women were justly punished for their share in the crime, and with equal justice their punishment was less severe than that of the men who planned and probably carried out the robbery. At the same time, it is a somewhat startling reflection that these women are now suffering imprisonment, not for housebreaking, but for a crime which is not recognised as such by the English law, the crime of not getting married. We may hope that as soon as the law has quite done with these worthy couples, the female partners in the firm will not fail to secure themselves from disagreeable consequences in future by application to the clergyman or the registrar. "Now what reason is there, founded in justice or expediency, for thus exempting a married woman from the consequences of her actions? To begin with the assumption on which it is founded, namely, that all wives are entirely under the control of their husbands, at least when present, we fear a great many British husbands will be ready sorrowfully to exclaim, Would that they were!' However, granting that all wives were as submissive as bishops and novelists would have us believe, why should they alone be priveleged to do wrong without paying the penalty? Half the people who become amenable to law have acted more or less under the influence of others. That may be a good ground for mitigation of punishment, and, in extreme cases, where the offender was clearly not a free agent, it may be accepted as exonerating the accused; but in strict law every person who has arrived at years of discretion and is of sound mind, ought to be held accountable for whatever he does. If a parent sends out a child of fourteen or fifteen years of age to thieve, even though the child may obey with the greatest repugnance the law does not admit the plea of compulsion. But, according to the same law, a married woman may commit any crime (short of treason or murder) in the presence of her husband with impunity. In the case of the Rev. Mr. Smyth, it will be remembered that his wife took an active part in a plot to commit a murderous assault, and was present when it was committed, yet the judges held that she was exonerated, because she acted throughout under the direction of her husband. Another case occurred recently, in which a woman was seen to pick a pocket, her husband standing by. The woman was acquitted on the ground of coercion; the man could not be punished, for nothing could be proved against him. Now, either the plea of 'coercion' ought to be permissible in all cases, and to be decided by the jury, or else this solitary impunity should be abolished. There is only one ground which could formerly have been urged, and that is now to a great extent removed. So long as a woman was irrevocably bound to her husband for life, so long as he had the sole right to all property which she possessed or might create, there was some reason for not considering her a free agent. But now that this cruel absurdity is in a great degree remedied, it is time that the corresponding legal fiction should be removed also. There is another absurdity, the converse of the former, which might well be removed at the same time. Parents and children, brothers and sisters, are by law admissible as witnesses for or against one another, and very properly so. A wife, on the other hand, is not only excused from giving evidence against her husband, but she is forbidden to bear testimony in his favor. Not long since, an undefended prisoner in one of our courts wished to call his wife to prove an alibi, and it might easily happen, as he alleged, that no one else could testify to the same facts. Now here was a manifest injustice. The jury might or might not have believed the woman, just as they might or might not have believed any other interested witness, but undoubtedly they could not pronounce a satisfactory verdict until they had had the opportunity of judging. There is really nothing to be said on behalf of the exemption on the one hand, or the prohibition on the other, that would not have equal force as applied to all witnesses who, from whatever reason, may have a strong bias on one side or the other. We trust that in the long-promised revision of our criminal code the law of evidence will not be lost sight of, and that the anomalies we have named will be amended." Our readers will perhaps remember that in the case of the notorious and wholesale murderer, Rush, the criminal would have escaped conviction had the girl, whose evidence doomed him to the gallows, been his wife instead of his mistress. We heartily endorse the writer's desire, that, married or single, women shall be held responsible for their own acts, subject only to the same extenu |