“Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart—
’Tis woman’s whole existence.”
But our modern juries give us a very different reading. We prefer, however, to abide by the old.
Most undoubtedly to win the affections of a woman and then desert her is a crime—but it is of a character too ethereal to be touched by human law. If the woman’s heart be shattered by the blow, no amount of money-compensation can heal the wound, and a woman of much worth and of the least delicacy would shrink from the publicity such cases generally confer on all the parties interested in them. But if the principle be admitted, that disappointment in love can be atoned for by the possession of solid cash—if gold can heal the heart wounded by the fact that its love has been repelled—that its confidence has been betrayed—we do not see why the same remedy should not be within the reach of man. And yet this notoriously is not the case. When anything of the sort is tried the unhappy plaintiff seldom gets more than a farthing damages. Besides, what upright, honourable man would stoop for
a moment to such a thing; and yet, in spite of all modern enlightment, we maintain that the injury of a breach of promise on the part of a woman is as great as that on the part of a man. In the morning of life men have been struck down by such disappointments, and through life have been blasted as the oak by the lightning’s stroke. With his heart gone—demoralised, the man has lived to take a fearful revenge for the first offence, possibly to become a cold cynic—sceptical of man’s honour and woman’s love. Yet breach of promise cases are not resorted to by men, and we cannot congratulate our fair friends on the fact that so many of them come into courts of law as plaintiffs in such cases. Bachelors will fear that, after all, it is true that—
“Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair.”
And the result will be that while the more impetuous of us will commit ourselves at once, and come within the clutches of law, the more cool and cunning will excite hopes, which deferred will make sick the heart, and inspire an affection which may exist but to torment the heart in which it had its birth. Ay, beneath such mental grief the beauty and blessedness of life may vanish, never to return, and yet all the while he who did the deed may defy the power of human law.
Some letters which have recently appeared in the Manchester Examiner may be taken as evidence that these breach of promise cases interfere very materially
with marriages. In the immediate neighbourhood of Manchester the question, Why don’t the men propose? appears to have excited considerable interest. In that busy region men fall in love and get married, and have families, and are gathered to their fathers, just as do the rest of her Majesty’s subjects in other parts of the United Kingdom. But it seems the Lancashire witches are many of them still on their parent’s hands. Paterfamilias gets anxious. Deeply revolving the question under the signature of “A Family Man,” he sends the following letter to the Editor of the journal alluded to—
“Sir, Your cosmopolitan journal,” he writes to the Editor, “must have many readers interested in the question ‘Why don’t the men propose?’ It would be dangerous to say I have found the entire solution to this enigma, for fear of disclosing a mare’s nest; but I will warrant that one of the most powerful causes of the shyness of men in matters matrimonial, is the frequency of breach of promise prosecutions. A lady may be quite justified in prosecuting the man who has deceived her, but is she wise in doing so? Or if acting wisely for herself, does she not lower the character of her sex? Men think so, depend upon it. Your wavering, undecided, fastidious bachelor is a great newspaper reader, and devours breach of promise cases, and after reading that Miss Tepkins has obtained so many hundred pounds’ damages against Mr. Topkins, soliloquises:—‘Humph! It seems, then, that the best salve for a wounded heart is gold. Bah! women only marry for a home. It is clear
the woman is the only gainer, else why estimate her disappointment at so many hundred pounds? She gives a man nothing for his promise to marry but her heart (if that), and how much is it worth? What recompense can he get from her should she steal back the heart she professes to have given him! I’ll take jolly good care I never make a promise of marriage to a woman (which means a bond for so many hundred or thousand pounds). No; if I marry, I marry; but catch me promising.’ And thus, for fear of being trapped into committing himself, he avoids the society of women (where he might learn not only to really love, but to see the sophistry of his reasoning), and eventually settles down into old bachelorhood. What do the ladies say to this? Don’t let them think I am a crusty old bachelor. Heaven forfend! I protest my supreme admiration of the fair sex, and had better say I am, A Family Man.”