sular rank, alludes here, and with just indignation, to the vices of the higher ranks, and to their affectation of justifying habitual outrages to decency as being the fashion and ton of the day," corrumpere et corrumpi sæculum vocatur." He felt with his cotemporary Juvenal who had exclaimed:

Velocius ac citius nos Corrumpunt vitiorum exempla domestica magnis

Cum subeunt animos auctoribus." But these investigations serve only to show the mildness of the system which we are pursuing; it is not even proposed by this bill, as at present constituted, that the female offender should be subject to any punishment. All doubtful provisions have been avoided; and therefore also the question has been left for future consideration, whether the means either of prosecution or of divorce should be given to the injured wife?

I have omitted to state a dilemma to those who object to the clauses in question. Will they go so far as to argue, that in all cases of adultery it is right and expedient to facilitate, or even (as some have said by way of sarcasm and epigram) to compel the intermarriage of the offending parties? The easy interchange of wives prevailed during two or three years, in that distracted country, whose terrible example we have had before our eyes; and it became no exaggeration to assert, that the ceremony of marriage resembled the intercourse of "brute beasts which have no understanding." There is not an individual in this House, whose mind will not revolt against any propositions of such a tendency. Is it, then, the wish to take the other branch of the dilemma, to confine divorce bills within the present bounds, and to give permission of intermarriage between offending parties to the opulent only? My lords, this is a position which will not bear the light; it becomes a code of adultery for a privileged cast; it holds out, in many cases, to the adultress, the means of acquiring a great advance in rank and property by her crimes. In the place of contrition we see triumphant and bare-faced. vice. The compassion of all moral men changes to indignation when such things happen.

Having disposed of the adultress, let us now turn to her seducer. "With respect to him," say the noble lords, "the clauses in question cannot fail to operate as a premium and encouragement

to adultery. You release him from his bond, when you refuse to release the adultress from hers. You release him from an honourable obligation, the foreknowledge of which now deters and restrains him." What, then, is the nature of that supposed obligation, by virtue of which, in the event of detection, or in cases of bargain or collusion, the adulterer is to come to this bar by counsel for the adultress, to act the part of a defendant smarting under penal damages, in order to forward the divorce bill, which is to enable him to marry the adultress, and honourably to share her dishonour? The mere statement of the question shows the corrupt nature of the transaction, which is weakly defended by unsound reasonings resulting from unsound reasonings. As to the adandoned seducers, and those who seek only to multiply the victims of their profligacy, I will rather trust to the chastisement of law than to the influence of fashion. But, admitting that there may exist in the breast of others that anomalous sort of honour which is here adduced, that non-descript plant in the pleasure garden of modern morality, I should infer, that a man possessing sentiments which have a relish of honour, would rather be deterred than encouraged by the reflection that he can no longer make any reparation. Is it not this hopelessness of marriage, the honourable necessity of which is not extended by the fashion or practice of "this good-natured age" to the seducers of unmarried women; is it not this very hopelessness of all reparation which continues to make seductions so rare in that class of life, in which the seductions of married women are so frequent?

But I cannot comprehend the sort of honour which would be influenced by the obligation contended for, and yet would proceed coolly and deliberately to debauch a married woman: to entail a sense of shame on her innocent children, to deprive them of their natural protection; to give offence and disgust to society; to rob a friend of his happiness; and to destroy the fair pride and domestic peace of a whole family. I cannot comprehend this strange casuistry, this sophistry of sin, as applied either to the woman, to whom the noble lords wish to secure the means of deriving benefit from her crime; or to her seducer, who is to be discouraged by the implied obligation which I have thus analyzed. In favour of

encouragement of a crime which they abhor. I have repeatedly explained that the subject of this bill (which I support, because I think it right, though it did not originate with me) was first brought into discussion by those whose arguments I have endeavoured to answer. Such is the wisdom of parliament, such are the right feelings of the public at large, that whatever may be proper to be done will be done at last, though temporary misconceptions may prevail. And here I submit the whole to that venerable bench, whose duty it is to maintain the purity of religion: to the great and learned characters, whose duty it is to maintain the purity of law; and to your lordships in general, who are interested and disposed to maintain the purity of married life, and of domestic happiness.

such doctrines I cannot, with my incompetent knowledge of the world, frame any argument which would not tend to bewilder my own understanding and the understanding of others, in a vain endeavour to palliate vice, and to countenance the vicious. It is a sort of threatening letter in behalf of crime, when we are informed, that, unless the seduced and seducer shall be permitted to have their vices of the precise colour and tint which they prefer, we must expect them to commit vices of a deeper dye and enormity. We cannot compromise with wickedness; all morality would be thrown off its hinges, if such arguments could be used with effect; they are of a nature to undermine the whole fabric of justice with respect every crime that can be committed. But the new clauses which I have this day introduced, will furnish the best answer to those who are apprehensive that the bill may operate as an encouragement to adultery. When your honourable men of gallantry shall have perused these clauses with attention; when they shall have well considered the impending prosecution and its consequences; when they shall see, fairly balanced, the different parts of the bill; I do not believe that they will feel themselves encouraged.

to

My lords I really am ashamed to have dwelt so long upon a subject which is so clear and so plain in all its views and bearings. I have done so from respect for those from whom I differ. I have no want of a right charity in favour of the infirmities of our nature, on the other hand, I have no pretensions to enforce against those infirmities any strictness of correction beyond what is equally wished by the noble lords, who oppose me. We differ only as to the means and the necessity of employing them. I have little confidence in the accuracy of my own opinions; but certainly on this occasion I derive great confidence from the support with which I am honoured, and of which I should be unworthy, if I did not exert myself in a cause so supported. I now leave the bill to its fate, but with an opinion deeply rooted in my mind, that, if it should not ultimately be adopted, a severe and serious wound will be given to the good order and well being of society. And let me not be told by those who oppose the bill that I have placed them in a dilemma between the acceptance of a law which they disapprove, and the resulting

Lord Mulgrave said:-My lords; be fore I address your lordships in answer to the arguments urged in support of the bill, I feel it incumbent upon me to take some notice of the general style and tenour of those arguments, because they seem to imply an impression on the minds of the noble lords who adopt them, that all those who are adverse to the provisions of this bill must be protectors of vice and favourers of the crime of adultery. And although a noble baron has in terms admitted that it would ill become him to deny the same rectitude of intention to the opposers as that which distinguishes the supporters of the bill, yet even in the general tenour of his speech somewhat of the same impression manifests itself; else wherefore those trite and obvious censures of a crime, the immorality of which nobody palliates, the evil tendency of which nobody denies; wherefore that question of astonishment, "How can it happen that a body of men so constituted can exhibit a great schism and diversity of opinions respecting a question dependent on the evident and immutable principles of justice, morality, and religion;" but because the noble baron cannot separate a difference of opinion upon the wisdom of his proposed alteration of the law as it stands, and a difference upon the immutable principles of morality and religion? Indeed, the noble lord goes a little further in his implication when he speaks of a public depravity of morals, which may be imperceptible to the visual nerves of a chosen few, and no euphrasy or rue that he can administer will bring the object within their contem

plation." In support of this figure the noble lord reads to the House a long string of verses, containing, not only an exaggerated misrepresentation of the general morals of the country, but a coarse and unfounded libel on the dignity and conduct of this House. I give the noble lord credit for having been dazzled by the brilliant clothing of sonorous words, and misled by the favourite name of a distinguished poet, or he would not, I am convinced, have addressed to your lordships that which, if it should have been offered to the public in the plain shape of a prose paragraph, with no greater sanction than the name of a printer or publisher of a newspaper, would have brought the author to your lordships bar, and justly subjected him to a rigorous punishment for a gross and criminal misrepresentation of this House of Parliament. What, my lords, is it in these times, and in this parliament that we are to be told that "the senate seems convened for purposes of empire less, than to relieve the adultress from her bond?" Is it to a house of parliament, whose vigilant wisdom and dispassionate energy have been so constantly and so effectually exerted in contributing their full share to those greatest purposes of empire, the preservation of the state, the maintenance of the constitution, the support of his majesty's auspicious government, and the general security of the people, against the formidable attacks which have been made upon all those vital objects by the active principles and destructive machinations of foreign and domestic Jacobins, that such an imputation is to be applied? The other member of the poet's aspersion comes also but ill from the noble lord who brought in the bill, as addressed to the majority who have hitherto supported it; for they at least appear at all events, determined not to relieve the adultress from her bonds: and it is upon that point, and not upon the nature of the crime, that those who oppose the provisions of the bill as objectionable, are at issue with those who think them salu

tary.

My lords, I most cordially assent to the principle of the bill, and it is therefore that I object to the provisions of it; because they appear to me to counteract the professions of the preamble, and to usurp the title: the bill would be more properly described as an act for the more effectual promotion of adultery, and for

the better propagation of bastardy. I object to it, because it is the reverse of what every penal statute ought to be; it is impotent for prevention, but oppressive and impolitic in punishment. The principal ground upon which the supporters of the bill recommend the provisions against the marriage of the woman after divorce is, the assumed fact that a promise of marriage is the great means of seduction on the part of the man, and the principal inducement to the commission of the crime on the part of the woman. To justify a law pregnant with such evils, as I assert this bill to be, the ground on which it rests must be assumed not as partial and occasional, but as general at least, if not universal: such an assumption, however, in this instance, would be repugnant to reason, and contrary to all experience. It is reasonable to suppose that a seducer will commence his attacks upon the virtue of a woman of a cultivated mind, and in a respectable situation in life, with detailing to her the circumstances of disgrace and degradation which will be superadded to the shame of detection? Would it be consistent with common sense to hold forth the probability of that detection as the natural consequence of her compliance? He would be indeed a clumsy seducer who should submit to the consideration of a woman, in the first instance, the unequal balance between the measureless sacrifice he was urging her to make, and the poor, degraded, and secluded reparation which he could offer to her wounded reputation. Unfor tunately, the arts of seduction are too well understood, to be so conducted; less palpable and more ingenious modes are pursued: and I entertain too high an opinion of the delicacy of feeling, even of those unhappy victims amongst my country women who are artfully seduced from the paths of virtue, not to be convinced that such a broad and brutal proposal of speculative disgrace would be their best protection, and that they would spurn at the prospect with contempt and horror. Put the same supposition into a different line of seduction, and in a less cultivated and refined rank of female life, and the fallacy will be manifest of the only ground on which this bill can be instrumental to the prevention of the crime of adultery.

If I were to introduce to your lordships a bill for the suppression of the Magdalen Hospital, and to render all such institu