HUSBAND AND WIFE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2234, 30 July 1891, Page 4

HUSBAND AND WIFE.

There was a very interesting debate in the Legislative Council last Tuesday afternoon on the motion by the Hon. Mr Stevens requesting Government to legislate this.session so as to give Magistrates the right to grant 'a wife a judicial separation upon her husband having - been convicted of an aggravated assault upon her. This, it appears, is the present law of England, but the opponents of the proposal urged that aggravated assaults upon wives are by no means common in New Zealand. It was further urged that what was good for the wife was good for the husband, and that the husbands should ,be similarly protected from violent assaults: being made upon them by violent wives. Several speakers thought that habitual drunkenness on the part of either should also be a good ground for the granting of a judicial separation, but the mover of the resolution thought it was wise to go slowly and secure one reform at a time. Cases innumerable were related in which husbands had assaulted ther wives. On the other hand it was asserted that were occasionally sufferers in this rei spect, as witness a case of which Mr Fulton had heard as having occurred in a northern district. A woman whose husband was in the habit of coming home intoxicated* sewed him up in a sheet, administered a good dose of broomstick, and kept him under punishment .until he, promised amendment. Those who opposed the proposal urged that the experience of English judges went to show that there was such, a thing as interfering too much, with marriage relations, as tending to induce people to wash their dirty linen in public instead of settling their quarrels at home. Two hours’ discussion concluded in the motion being carried, on a division, by 19 to 9.