The Weldon Diverce Proocedings. [FROM OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT].

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 34, 26 January 1884, Page 5

The Weldon Diverce Proocedings. [FROM OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT].

I skxp you herewith a somewhat amusing resuim' 1 of the notorious Weldon caso, whioh has at intervals for a considerable time past been occupying Sir James Hannen and the Court of Divorce. In order to make the circumstances fully understood, it may be as well to explain that Mrs Weldon is a lady of good family, a clever vocalist, an extremely able teacher of music, and if not exactly in her premki c jeunme, still handsome and distingue in appearance. .Unfortunately, the lady's eccentricities have been numerous and various for years past. About IS months ago she was committed to Holloway for criminal libel. Her quarrels with M. Gounod (who once wrote an opera for her) have long been a public scandal, and only a few weeks ago she figured at Bow -street Police Court, where she was summoned to account for disturbing the harmony of the proceedings at Co vent Garden concerts. Mrs Welcjon's suits against Mr Weldon have been interminable. This is the last. The writer says : Sir James Hannen, the President of the Court of Divorce, has recently been railed upon to ponder a very doubtful and delicate point of law as regards married couples who have not been able to preserve the "bonds of matrimony unbroken. Wo have no desire to pass judgment on the rights and wrongs of the unfortunate division which -.xistsjas a matter of fact, between Mrs Weldon, the lady in question, and her hus"iind. Enough, that most people know, by Viat transpired in the courts of law. that vlr Weldon ha* lived for a long time apart rom his wife ; that, the imputation of un•.oundness of mind having been brought against her, his energetic and restless con sort established her meutal sanity to the confusion of hostile doctors, and has since manifested unusual vigour in various egal and personal conilicts. We draw no inferences from such antecedents, which merely lead forward to the fact that the wife in the suit under remark recently brought an action against her husband for the restitution of conjugal rights, in which she obtained a decree from Sir James Hannen affirming the validity of her claim, and ordering the husband to return to cohabita tion. Armed with the edict of the Court, she communicated its tenor and terms to ei partner, who, after some delay, declared himself unprepared to resume married life with her, but proffered amicable arrangements. This did not content Mrs Weldon, who promptly repaired anew to justice, and formally demanded of the Court that it should enforce it.« decree upon her recalci trant spouse. Thedecree had assuredly been promulgated ; the defendant had palpably declined to return to "bed and board ;" the case of the petitioner seemed technically complete ; and even the Judge excused himself for having dropped some observations upon the anomaly of thus enforcing wedded bliss, after the applicant sharply declared that nobody had any business to believe that she and her husband might not "live happy ever afterwards." When, however, the lady's demand was again pressed, the counsel for Mr Weldon produced an affidavit from him embodying a proposition to supply his wife with a comfortable furnished house at at twenty pounds a month and two servants, at the same time continuing her present allowance of five hundred pounds per annum. If one locality did not suit her fancy she might choose another, and Mr Inderwick argued that in the terms of the Act of Parliament sufficient compliance with an order for restitution of conjugal rights was hereby made by the husband in so°supplying his wife with a house and with sufficient money to keep her, without being compelled to live under the same roof with her. The wife demurred. She did not want the house, she wanted her husband. She said "there never was any separation between them by deed or otherwise. He had deserted her, and in vindication of her own character she wished to be restored to the position she formerly occupied as his wife. She had got a decree which entitled her to be restored to that position, and what Mas the use of the law if such decree could not be enforced ?" In presence of the husband's offer and of the wife's rejection, Sir James Hannen took "time to consider," much against the inclinations of the feminine litigant, who demanded a summary decision. The Judge had to pronounce upon the legal point whether, over and above what the gentleman had promised in obedience to the Court, he was bound to live maritally under the same roof with his obstinate consort. It is for this decision that the ill-as-gorted pair have been waiting, and with them, no doubt, a good many other semiattached couples, as well, we may add, as the common sense and equity of the country at large. The President of the Divorce Court has now so interpreted the Act as to declare that the utmost liberality on the part of the husband towards the wifecannot excuse him from personal domicile and association in presence of a decree for restitution of conjugal rights. Sir James has decreed that the alienated "lord and master" must either resume the ties which he appears to find intolerable, or he must be attached for contempt and cast into prison. A fortnight's grace was significantly granted him by the reluctant and indulgent Sourt, and the dread fiat is not to issue if the Judge's order shall have been eventually complied with. It will be vain for the lady to urge against the cruelty of this alternative that there has been no cause for disagreement, and that she on her side is prepared to render the re-adjusted home an "earthly paradise." The fact of the husband's insuperable repugnance too sadly and palpably forbids all prospect of happiness, and the wife has really offered him in court a melancholy choice between two captivities. At the Bridge of Sighs, in Venice, Lord Byron founded a fine stanza upon the fact that he had " a palace and a prison on each hand." The unfortunate hero of this curious case might pen a mournful verse on the situation which presents him with compulsory felicity on the one side and committal to gaol on the other. Even if Sir James Hannen had held that conjugal rights had been sufficiently restored when the sorely-pres«ed husband provides a home, attendance, furniture, and an ample income, withholding only himself, it would still be painfully felt that some at least of these peace-offerings have been extracted by a decree based upon the theory that wedded love is an article, an item, a commodity, which by our British law can be called for in court and handed over to a claimant like lost property or title-deeds misappropriated. It would still seem dangerously plain to wives living apart from their husbands that, if a decree for restitution is not exactly a philtre to restore affection, it may at least be used as'an excellent means of putting the screw upon an estranged lord and master. Such considerations bring us to the real point underlying this legal contention, which is, whether it be not a manifest absurdity, a gross reversal of .common sense and conjugal ethics, and an untenable survival of mediaeval ideas and theological doctrines to ordain by law the performance of duties 1

which cannot be enforced, and which, if they could be, would degrade and defame enually the one uho exacted and tho one who ooncodod them. In roality, therefore, the question reserved by the J udgo for his decision, and now so alarmingly adjudicated, goes far doepor than a point of legal interpretation. It bring*, aefore the conscience of tho law an 4 the country a relic of the Ecclesiastical Courts belonging in simple | truth to by-gone days ot excommunication by "bell, book, and candle,' 1 when marriage regarded as a changeless sacrament, was maintained in all its aots and consequences by secular and spiritual penalties, and hearts which would not beat together might be forcibly spitted into ono on the sword of Justice like those of lovers painted upon a Valentine. Is it consonant with the spirit of the age to pre serve this medieval view ? Is married love more honoured or dishonoured when the law treats it as a thing of which Judges can oi-der the "delivery as per contract," and when a wife or a husband, unhappily and permanently estranged, will, as now, be compelled to choose between an association which is detested, or a contempt of court involving loss of liberty ? Without any further reference, therefore, to the unfortunate personal question involved between the two parties in the suit I under notice, and, of course, ■« ithout the slightest wish to criticise unfavourably the conscientious decision of Sir James Hannen, we unhesitatingly affirm that, if our law really exercises so monstrous a tyranny over human affections, it will have to be altered. We say this in the interest of Justice itself, which is publicly weakened in strength and dignity by tho attempt to insist upon performances that cannot possibly be compelled. But we say it yet more emphatically in the interests of morality and of wedded peace and honour, because the essence of these true social blessings is natural attachment, and human love becomes elevated above the association of the lower animals! chiefly by the sentiments of mutual choice and voluntary constancy. The appellant in the cause so severely decided put the case of a separated wife in its strongest light, pe.haps, v, hen she urged that, having clone nothing to forfeit conjugal rights, she claimed them as a public tribute to her virtues, as well as a trophy of her legal victory. Vet even herein the instinct of her sex would assuredlj r rise against her : for m hat kind of _ virtue must that be considered which in the name of the marriage vow could bring itself to exact from a husband under menace manifestations of an impossible and departed aftection '? The position of a \\ ife similarly forced against her uill into the intimate society of her lord Mill put this matter into a still clearer and more striking light. Force, in such a case — actual brutal violence— might, as is evident, be rendered not only possible, but probable and positively permitted, against the weaker of the separated partners, which sad contingency, in the instance of the stronger, would, no doubt, be out of the question. In a word, so unnatural a right — asserted and technically affirmed, in the painful suit under discussion, and now by the mouth of an English Judge pronounced to be one which generosity cannot sot aside, nor repugnance escape from — is, if looked at broadly and apart from individual considerations, a scandal and an anachionism. It ought not to remain part of the English Code, but, since we now know that it is the law, and can be successfully invoked, our Legislature should hasten to abolish a statutory absurdity which obliges a Court of Justice to command what it cannot enforce, and permits an offended w ife or husband to extort in the sacred name of love a personal concession which, when made, must be made in hatred, and, if received, will be received in scorn, contumely, and vindictiveneps.