HISTORY OF EUROPE. 



[157 



of the sex. These, my lords, are 

 the suppliants now kneeling before 

 you, and imploring the pi^otection 

 of your wisdom and your justice." 

 Such personifications of abstracted 

 ideas are neither unnatural nor un- 

 common among nations of ex- 

 treme sensibility and liveliness of 

 imagination ; but in this country, 

 as was proved by this rhetorical 

 peroration, they may serve only to 

 mate people stare, and to weaken 

 any impressions that may have been 

 made by a less bold, and more solid 

 kind of eloquence. 



Lord Grenville said, that with 

 regard to the legal and religious 

 •points of the question, he would 

 certainly refer to the opinions of 

 those who make law and religion 

 their study and their profession. He 

 never knew his noble friend (lord 

 Mulgrave) so much out of his place 

 as when he stood there contending, 

 in legal construction, with a noble 

 and learned judge, and in religious 

 disputes with a right reverend pre- 

 late. He reminded him of the pe- 

 dant who read lectures to Hannibal 

 on the art of war. It had been 

 urged that ladies, who were guilty 

 of infidelity, had no other means of 

 returning to the paths of virtue than 

 by marrying the very persons who 

 had dishonourably seduced them. 

 What then, lord Grenville asked, 

 would be the situation of the un- 

 happy woman, whom her seducer, 

 after gratifying himself, refused to 

 marry ? or what return was there 

 for the woman wlio had been se- 

 duced by a married man .'' The 

 only way in which such a seducer 

 could make compensation, as it was 

 called, was, to contrive a divorce 

 from his lawful wife, which would 

 lead to multiplied transgressions. 



The motion for the third reading 



of the bill, was now put and car- 

 ried ; but only by a small majority, 

 the noncontents being 69, and the 

 contents only 77- The bUl being 

 passed in the house of peers, was 

 read, on the twenty-sixth of May, 

 a first time, in the house of com- 

 mons ; a second time, on the thir- 

 tieth of May ; and, on the tenth of 

 June, the order of the day moved 

 for carrying it into a committee. 

 In all these stages it was ably 

 supported, though with much less 

 zeal than in the house of peers, 

 while it was opposed with not less 

 of either ability or spirit. Every 

 one admitted the importance of the 

 subject, and regretted the preva- 

 lence of adultery as well as of dissi- 

 pation and vice of all kinds : but 

 some considered the restriction pro- 

 posed in the bill as too severe ; 

 others that there was nothing that 

 had happened, in the manners of the 

 times, to make it necessary ; others 

 that it was inadequate to its ob- 

 ject, and would tend to increase the 

 numbers of bad women, by ren- 

 dering them irreclaimable. Some 

 of the members objected to it as 

 transferring the right of punishing 

 from the jury to thejudges, arming 

 them with new and formidable 

 powers. Some objected to certain 

 clauses in the bill, but disapproved 

 of others. Though this was by 

 no means a party question, our rea- 

 ders may probably wish to have 

 the opinion of Mr. Pitt, on the 

 biU. He thought it merited dis- 

 cussion, and might be rendered less 

 unpalatable to those who, he doubt- 

 ed not, from laudable motives, op- 

 posed it, by various modifications. 

 On the whole, he thought, the 

 benefits would preponderate in fa- 

 vour of society : and that whatever 

 degree of severity was inflicted on 



