A PROTESTANT WIFE AND HER ROMAN CATHOLIC HUSBAND.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4333, 8 February 1875, Page 3

A PROTESTANT WIFE AND HER ROMAN CATHOLIC HUSBAND.

(From the Glasgow Herald.) Sheriff Clark issued an interlocutor in a case which contains some points of interest to the general reader. The parties to the action, which is one for aliment, are a wife and husband, the former being a member of the Free Church and a dressmaker, the latter being a Roman Catholic and a tailor. In his statement the defender says that before marriage it was mutually agreed that their conflicting creeds should not be permitted to interfere with their domestic peace. That agreement, however, unfortunately fell through, the climax of discord being reached when the wife threw the cartes de visits of Archbishop Manning and Monsignor Capel out of .the window, and the husband, in retaliation, treated a picture of the Prince of Orange with indignity, and also struck his -wife. After that she left him, and sought payment of £1 per week as aliment. The Sheriff now finds that on the 11th December last the defender struck the pursuer with his hand on the head, to the effusion of blood, and that she has since and is now living separate from him. “Therefore decerns against him for the sum of 12a, a week as ailment, commencing as on the 11th December, and weekly thereafter in advance ; and until a permanent arrangement of the rights and interests of the parties shall be made by a competent court. Finds the defendant liable to pursuer in expenses,” &c. In a note, the learned Speriff adds :— ■“ The record of evidence in the present case discloses a story of domestic unhappiness between husband and wife such as does not often come before courts of law. The conduct of the pursuer almost ever since her mamage'with the defender has been characterised by nearly every feature unbecoming in a wife. Vexatious and irritable temper, petty annoyance, grave dereliction of duty, studied insult, personal violence even, formed prominent incidents in her behaviour. With one exception only the husband seems to have shown great command of temper and forbearance, carried perhaps to an extent that was hardly consistent with his duty of ruling his own household. Most men of more firmness of character would have, at an early period of the marriage, taken legal but efficient means | to teach and compel the pursuer to obedience and duty. That she has at hist relieved him of her society, is a result which he ought to be the last to regret. Still, whatever the provocation received, it has been wisely laid down by the law, that a man shall not, in any circumstances except the imperative necessity of self-defence, lift hia hand to his wife. This, by his own letter, the defender is proved to have done, though after a long course of misconduct on the part of the pursuer, which, while it cannot justify, may go far to palliate his rash act. Had it not been for the admissions in his letter, the Sheriff-Substitute would have been inclined to place very little reliance on the pursuer’s own statement ; but would have been inclined to hold that when the defender struck her, he was acting in selfdefence.