Vicount Palmerston, K.G.
From the drawing by Sir Geo. Richmond, R.A., in the possession of the Earl of Carnwath.
To face p. 232, Vol. III.
Earl Granville to Queen Victoria.
[Undated. ? 19th May 1857.]
Lord Granville presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and begs to submit that the Lord Chancellor made the best statement he has yet done, introducing his Divorce Bill.15... Lord Lyndhurst made a most able speech in favour of the Bill, but wished it to go further, and give permission to a woman to sue for a divorce if she was "maliciously deserted" by her husband.... The Bishop of Oxford pretended that he was not going to speak at all, in order to secure his following instead of preceding the Bishop of London; but upon a division being called he was obliged to speak, and did so with considerable force and eloquence, but betraying the greatest possible preparation. The Bishop of London, after showing that the Bishop of Oxford's speech was a repetition of Mr Keble's speech, made an excellent answer. The Debate was finished by the Duke of Argyll.
| For the Bill, 47. | Against it, 18. |
Footnote 15: Before this date a divorce could only be obtained in England by Act of Parliament, after sentence in the ecclesiastical Court, and (in the case of a husband's application) a verdict in crim. con. against the adulterer. The present English law was established by the Bill of 1857, the chief amendment made in Committee being the provision exempting the clergy from the obligation to marry divorced persons. Bishop Wilberforce opposed the Bill strenuously, while Archbishop Sumner and Bishop Tait of London supported it. Sir Richard Bethell, the Attorney-General, piloted the measure most skilfully through the Commons, in the teeth of the eloquent and persistent opposition of Mr Gladstone, who, to quote a letter from Lord Palmerston to the Queen, opposed the second reading "in a speech of two hours and a half, fluent, eloquent, brilliant, full of theological learning and scriptural research, but fallacious in argument, and with parts inconsistent with each other."