“This is all true enough; nevertheless you are as closely bound to this wife who has left you for a life of public shame as if she were the truest wife and mother in this city.
“If, where you are going, you meet some girl that you would like to marry, you must not, or you will be a bigamist—a criminal. If this girl come to you unmarried, she will, of course, lose her good name. Your children, if you have any, will be born in what is called a state of shame; that they have had no voice in the matter of their birth won’t help them, as you will find. If she refuses to come to you unmarried—and you can hardly blame her—you will probably be driven, like most men in your position, to get what comfort you can from women who are like your wife. Society, of course, condemns these women, men of heart regard them with compassion, men of science with dismay. They breed canker in the nation; but as you cannot marry again, you will, I fear, be driven to their company.
“There is nothing special in your case—thousands in this country are in a similar position; you are all governed by an impartial Law.
“That Law is this: A woman can divorce a man who is faithless and treats her with cruelty or deserts her. A man can divorce a woman who is faithless. You could have divorced your wife! Why didn’t you? Let us see!
“You were first a soldier, and then a working man. They paid you as a soldier, I believe, one shilling and twopence a day; suppose you saved the pence, allowing for your wife not being on your hands, and your children living on air? Fourteenpence a week—three pounds and eightpence a year, if you were lucky. As a workman your wages were thirty shillings a week? With four children you could save perhaps your subscription to the Hearts of Oak, and, say, twopence a day besides? Three pounds and eightpence every year. A divorce in the High Court of Justice, for to that you were undoubtedly entitled by the Law, would have cost you from sixty to a hundred pounds. So, if you could have arranged to keep your witnesses alive, you might, with strict economy, have been granted your decree, if not yourself already dead, in, say, twenty years.
“In this delay there is nothing peculiar or unjust. The Law, for rich or poor, artisan or peer, is, as you know, identical. The Courts make no distinction in favour of the wealthy over a man earning his seventy-odd pounds a year, with five pounds in the Savings Bank—a decree for millionaire, or clerk, or working man, costs just about the same.
“To this rule, however, there is one exception; it is of course in favour of the poor. One who can prove that he is not worth the sum of five-and-twenty pounds is entitled to the name of pauper, and can sue for divorce in formâ pauperis. This does not indeed apply to working men or clerks in work; but you, who, knocked out of time by the conduct of your wife, had lost your work, and were sleeping in the parks at night or in a common lodging house, not knowing where to turn, could not have proved your worth at five-and-twenty pence. You could have sued in formâ pauperis. This was a great privilege! You should have found a lawyer who would undertake your case on no security, obtained your evidence without the payment of a penny, got your witnesses to come to the Court and give their time for nothing (when every idle hour meant bread out of their mouths); you should have achieved these triumphs over Nature, and you might have been divorced for anything from seven to fifteen pounds. True, you had not seven to fifteen pence, but—you had the privilege!
“It is admitted that you were a good husband to your wife, as good a husband as a man could be; it is admitted that the fault was hers entirely. It is admitted that you were entitled to relief. By the Law, which is the same for all, however, this was not enough.
“For this is what I want you to fully understand: A man of means may drive his wife to loathe him, provided he stop short of certain definite things—for the Law does not allow him to be ‘cruel’ to her; he may entertain himself with other women provided that she does not know, for the Law does not allow him to be ‘faithless’; he may be, in fact, at heart a ruffian or a rascal, but—having means—if she leave him for another, he can, unless he has bad luck, be sure of his decree. Thus, it did not really matter whether you were false to her, so long as she did not know; it was almost superfluous to be so kind; what really mattered was that, either, as a working man with thirty shillings a week, you had sixty to a hundred pounds—or, as a penniless pauper, you had seven to fifteen.
“The Law of Divorce, like all our laws, is made without fear or favour, for the protection and safety of us all; it is founded in justice and equity, that grievances may be redressed, and all who are wrong may have their remedy. It does not concern itself whether a man is rich or poor, but administers its simple principles, requiring those who are not destitute to pay for their decrees at a price that is the same for all, whatever their means may be; requiring those who are destitute to pay for their decrees at a price beyond their means.