[324] 36 and 37 Vict., c. 66, secs. 16, 31.
[325] See Geary, Marriage and Family Relations, 238 ff., for the jurisdiction and procedure of these courts. Cf. also Harrison, The Laws of Probate and Divorce, 191 ff.
[326] 20 and 21 Vict., c. 85, sec. 27: Statutes at Large, XCVII, 537. But various "absolute" or "discretionary" bars may be pleaded against a decree. On these see Geary, op. cit., 267-304; Harrison, op. cit., 130 ff.; Woolsey, Divorce, 175.
[327] Hansard, Parl. Debates, 3d series, CXLII, 394 ff. See the suggestive paper of Hirschfeld, "The Law of Divorce in England and in Germany," Law Quart. Review, XIII, 400-403, giving illustrative passages from the debates relating to the unfair treatment of the wife.
[328] Hansard, op. cit., 3d series, CXLVII, 1545.
[329] Thus adultery, if long persisted in, ripens into "desertion." For a detailed discussion of "cruelty" and "desertion" according to definition and judicial precedent, and particularly on "constructive" and "moral" cruelty, see Geary, op. cit., 323 ff., 330 ff. Cf. Bishop, Marriage, Divorce, and Separation, I, §§ 1524 ff., especially 1532; Harrison, op. cit., 138 ff.
[330] "From the meaning of pain inflicted on the body it [cruelty] has in recent years attained the extended meaning that includes pain inflicted on the mind. Coldness and neglect may now almost of themselves constitute such cruelty as, coupled with misconduct, will give the right of divorce. The time may very reasonably be looked forward to when almost every act of misconduct will in itself be considered to convey such mental agony to the innocent party as to constitute the cruelty requisite under the Act of 1857. The difference already is very marked when we compare the 'cruelty' of today with the thrashing by the husband that constituted cruelty thirty years ago. Probably in those days the doctrine of a husband's right to administer physical correction to his wife was not entirely discredited. Today it is possible for a woman, with celerity and at little cost, to separate herself from her husband if she be able to prove that he is either a brute or a monster. Forty years ago the vast majority of women were indissolubly tied to their husbands though the whole world knew them to be both brutes and monsters. It is a great change in a short period."—Montmorency, "The Changing Status of a Married Woman," Law Quart. Review, XIII, 191, 192.
[331] Lecky, op. cit., II, 202, 203.
[332] Read, for instance, the complaint of Right Rev. G. F. Browne, bishop of Stepney, in his Marriage of Divorced Persons in Church: Two Sermons Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral on Feb. 16 and 23, 1896. The author seems to pine for the good old days before the act of 1857 when "things were different;" when, thanks to the singular merits of the old system, the "difficulty and cost of a special Act" of Parliament made separations a vinculo very few; when that evil statute had not yet caused a "horrible familiarity with the idea of divorce" (42). Compare Luckock, Hist. of Marriage, 197-209, who likewise laments the desecration of the church through the celebration of the marriage of divorced persons; while he also condemns the alleged "connivance on the part of the Church of England" in the violation of the doctrine of indissolubility through the "issue of licences to divorced persons to remarry from Diocesan Registrars, ostensibly with the sanction of our own Bishops." He gives extracts from the Report of the lower house of the York Convocation (1894), which denounces the two practices mentioned, as also the "admission of persons who have entered into such unions to Holy Communion." Technically such a license is a "dispensation" which the bishop may refuse. It is often refused, as in the "Instructions issued to Surrogates in the Diocese of Lichfield": Hammick's Marriage Law, 362, and n. a. On these questions see Geary, Marriage and Family Relations, 577-93, giving extracts from the proceedings of the Lambeth Conference, (1888), and the Convocation of Canterbury at various times, as also from the opinions of individual bishops and ministers.
[333] 20 and 21 Vict., c. 82, secs. 29-31: Statutes at Large, XCVII, 538.