DIVORCE CASE-MELBOURNE.

Evening Post, Issue 212, 12 October 1865, Page 2

DIVORCE CASE-MELBOURNE.

One of the " pastoral princes," Mr. H. W. Coxen, has come to grief in the divorce court, his wife having been so fortunate as to obtain a dissolution of her marriage. It is to be hoped that this case is not to be regarded as a specimen of the morale of our colonial aristocracy } but for all that the public knew before the proceedings took place, Mr. Coxen might have divided the pursuit of senatorial honors with pastimes more congenial, and his eloquence might have been equally irresistible with a squatting constituency as it proved with his other victims. Coxen went to England prior to 1848, for the purpose of being initiated into the mysteries of bookkeeping, to which, however, he is not likely to have limited his studies. He married in 1848, and returned with his wife, Jiving chiefly on his stations, at Moreton Bay and the Darling Downs. During a visit to Sydney in 1858, the Coxens became ac-. quainted with a young lndy, Miss Moorhead, who was induced to accompany them to the Darling Downs, as a companion to Mrs. Coxen ; but it was not long befote the sliepherd prince appropriated her services to himself. The injured wife protested in vain ; her remonstrances were at length treated with coarse violence, and she had to seek a home from the charity of strangers, while Coxen continued with his paramour, who appears to have been residing with him in the aristocratic neighbourhood of Brighton when the trial came on. One of Coxen's letters to his wife, produced at the trial, is unique, as a specimen of cool depravity. " Dear Mary Ann," he writes, " we can never be reunited after what has happened. I cannot desert Miss Moorhead. She is, I need scarcely remind you, the mother of my child, and that alone places an insuperable barrier between us. 'Tis of no u*e your annoying me. If you persist in the divorce suit I will leave the colony. lam told you will experience serious difficulty in proving your case If you drop the suit and cease annoying me, I will make you a suitable allowance. I do not blame you for the course you have taken, but if you pursue it I will give you all the trouble I can.— Yours affectionately, (Signed) — H. W. Coxen." Although it might be unjust to regard this " affeotionate" gentleman as a genuine representative of his order, it is at all events a proof that we are not always to look among the wealthiest classes in order to illustrate the "virtue and intelligence of Victoria."— Leader.