APPENDIX TO CHRONICLE. 



335 



not conceive a man more hardly 

 treated than hisclient: his addresses 

 sanctioned, his marriage solemniz- 

 ed by consent of both families, 

 ar>d this without any hope of emo- 

 lument, excepting the distant one 

 of a ver}' moderate fortune, from 

 the precarious and capricious 

 bounty, or rather from the invete- 

 rate and unaccountable enmity, of 

 his father-in-law. On the 27th of 

 March Mr. Daniels, his daughter, 

 and a Mrs. Newman, her aunt, 

 came to town from Hampstead, to 

 buy clothes and trinkets for the 

 wedding. On her return, Miss 

 Daniels went on a visit to the 

 plaintiff's father, who lives at 

 Camden Town. She remained 

 there from the 1st to the 7th of 

 March, without any appearance of 

 the insanity which was now alledg- 

 ed as the cause of breaking off a 

 marriage contracted in the face of 

 the church, according to the forms 

 of law. On the 3rd of April a din- 

 ner was given at Mr. Daniels' 

 house, to which the whole of the 

 Maynard family was invited. Mr. 

 Daniels was laid up in bed with the 

 gout ; but the females of the party 

 were admitted to his apartment, 

 and he expressed himself in terms 

 of the warmest affection for his in- 

 tended son in-law ; said that no- 

 thing should now delay the match, 

 and that he might have taken a 

 horse and rode from one end of 

 London to the other before he 

 could have met a man in every 

 way so eligible. He afterwards 

 went with his daughter to Doctors' 

 Commons, to execute the neces- 

 sary papers for the marriage ; in 

 short, went every where with her 

 but to the altar. If he saw her 

 insane before that, why not forbid 

 the marriage ? if at the altar, why 

 not stop her there ? He attests the 



marriage, he signs the register, 

 and yet now comes forward to in- 

 validate the ceremony to which he 

 had given his full sanction. 1 can 

 believe nothing low or insulting of 

 the church ; there was a clergy- 

 man officiating — would he not 

 have refused to go through the rite 

 if he had seen insanity in either of 

 the parties? Theexhortationof the 

 form of marriage was among the 

 most solemn in the whole rubric. 

 Tiie clergyman read it so that h 

 was heard by the parties ; it was 

 heard by the aunt, who was now to 

 be brought forward full of testi- 

 mony to the insanity of her niece, 

 and acknowledging, with a base 

 and bold defiance of the feelings of 

 a relative, and the faith of a virtu- 

 ous woman, that she allowed her 

 niece to go a sacrifice to the altar, 

 to swear to the performance of du- 

 ties of which she could not know 

 the nature; to avow obedience to a 

 husband, while her brain was dis- 

 torted with madness ! to contract 

 a marriage which that aunt knew 

 must be a nullity ; and to load an 

 unhappy and doting husband with 

 the shame, the burden, the misery 

 of a lunatic wife, and propagate a 

 race of unfortunates, cursed with 

 the dreadful visitation of that ma- 

 lady which had made their mother 

 an object of mingled compassion 

 and horror. No ; this was not cre- 

 dible; it was not in human nature 

 to believe so weak a fiction ; it was 

 not in human artifice to believe 

 that fiction strong; the jury would 

 decide upon the simple question, 

 whether at the time of solemniz- 

 ing the marriage, the 8th of April, 

 Miss Sarah Ann Daniels was or 

 was not possessed of a sound and 

 perfect mind. 



On the part of thedefendant, the 

 Attorney-general stated, that his 



