INDIANA. 



IOWA. 



405 



votes for Secretary of State was 317,550, of 

 wliirli 160,059 were for Norman Eddy, and 

 .<il for Max F. A. Hoffman, giving the 

 r a majority of 2,558. In the new Lo- 

 ^i.-luture there aro in the Senate 20 Demo- 

 crat-; and 24 Republicans; in the House of 

 .-.sentatives, 53 Democrats and 47 Repub- 

 licans. Several of the members elected to the 

 Legislature were Germans. The State has 

 eleven members in the lower branch of Con- 

 In the Forty-second Congress the 

 r. ;>ivsentatives from the first, second, third, 

 six tli, and seventh districts will be Democrats, 

 and those from the fourth, fifth, eighth, ninth, 

 tenth, and eleventh, Republicans. The Sena- 

 tors are Oliver P. Morton and Daniel D. Pratt, 

 both Republicans. 



The first colored men who were ever per- 

 mitted to act upon a jury in the State of Indi- 

 ana served in the criminal court of Indianapo- 

 lis in April, at the trial of a colored man for 

 grand larceny. Three men out of the twelve 

 were negroes on that occasion. 



A tneeting of the members of the bar from 

 the different counties of the State was held at 

 Imlhinapolis on the 80th of November, and a 

 memorial was adopted to be presented to the 

 Legislature, praying for an increase of the 

 number of judges of the Supreme Court from 

 four to five, the latter being the limit allowed 

 by the constitution. The memorial was accom- 

 panied by two bills, one increasing the num- 

 ber of judges to five, and the other redistrict- 

 ing the State accordingly. There can be little 

 doubt that the bills will be promptly passed. 

 In this memorial the lawyers made the follow- 

 ing statement regarding the judicial business 

 of the State : " The work of the Court, in the 

 nineteen years since the adoption of the pres- 

 ent constitution, has resulted in the publi- 

 cation of thirty volumes of reports, including 

 one then in press, averaging some six hundred 

 pages to the volume. In the ninety-two coun- 

 ties of the State there are two District Courts, 

 the Circuit and the Common Pleas. In addition 

 to these, there are Criminal Courts in nine of 

 the counties. From all these courts there is a 

 direct appeal to the Supreme Court. These 

 courts aro administered by nineteen Circuit, 

 twenty-four Common Pleas, and eight Crim- 

 inal Court Judges, and the great increase in 

 the number of appeals is doubtless, to some 

 extent, the natural result of the diversity of 

 so many different minds thus engaged in the 

 administration of a somewhat complicated ju- 

 dicial system. There are over five hundred 

 causes submitted within the last year and un- 

 der advisement ; enough to engage the atten- 

 tion of the present number of judges for more 

 than a year and a half in their consideration, 

 and more than enough to make three volumes 

 of reports." 



The divorce laws of the State of Indiana are 

 attracting much attention throughout the coun- 

 try, on account of their laxity, and the readi- 

 ness with which a person can obtain a legal 



dissolution of the marriage tie, sometimes with- 

 out the knowledge of the other party to the 

 contract. The causes for which divorces may 

 bo granted nnder the existing statutes are as 

 follows, viz.: 1. Adultery; 2. Impotency; 3. 

 Abandonment for one year; 4. Crnel treat- 

 ment of one party by the other ; 5. Habitual 

 drunkenness of either party ; 6. The convic- 

 tion, subsequent to the marriage, in any coun- 

 try, of either party of an infamous crime ; 7. 

 Any other cause for which the court shall deem 

 it proper that a divorce should be granted. It 

 is only necessary for any party applying for a 

 divorce to reside in the county where the ap- 

 plication is made for one year, no matter 

 where his or her permanent residence may be, 

 or where the other party may be living at the 

 time ; and publication in any obscure journal 

 of that county is sufficient notice of the pend- 

 ing proceedings to the party defendant. If 

 such party does not therefore appear at the 

 trial, a decree is granted by default. In his 

 message to the Legislature of 1871, the Gov- 

 ernor recommended amendments in the di- 

 vorce laws, embracing the following provi- 

 sions : 



1. Requiring the defendant, when a resident of the 

 State, to be sued in the county of his or her residence. 



2. Requiring the plaintiff not only to have been a 

 resident of the State for one year prior to the filing 

 of his petition, but that he should continue to reside 

 in the State during the pendency of the suit and un- 

 til the case is tried. 



3. Vesting in the Circuit Court exclusive jurisdic- 

 tion of applications for divorce. 



4. Eequiring the petition in every divorce case to 

 show where the causes of divorce relied on happened 

 or accrued, and where the applicant resided at the 

 time, and if they happened or accrued elsewhere than 

 in this State and at a time when the plaintiff was not 

 a resident of this State, then that no divorce shall be 

 granted unless it be alleged in the petition and proved 

 on the trial that the matters so relied upon would be 

 a good cause of divorce by the laws of the State, 

 place, or jurisdiction, within which the same hap- 

 pened or accrued. 



5. Requiring the allegations as to the place where 

 the cause or causes of divorce relied upon accrued, 

 and the place of residence of the plaintiff at the time 

 of their accruing, to be verified by affidavit appended 

 to the petition, and also to be proved on the trial. 



" With such amendments as these," he says, 

 "we might well hope that Indiana divorces 

 would soon cease to be advertised in any of 

 the Atlantic cities as marketable commodities, 

 and that refugees and fugitives from the jus- 

 tice of other States would no longer come to 

 Indiana in quest of divorces, to be used on 

 their return to their homes as licenses to vio- 

 late the laws of our sister States." 



IOWA. The State of Iowa formed a part 

 of the territory acquired from France, by what 

 is known as the Louisiana purchase, in 1803. 

 Prior to 1812 it belonged to the Territory of 

 Louisiana, and from that date to 1834 formed 

 a part of the Missouri Territory. In 1834 it 

 became a part of the Territory of Michigan, 

 and in 1836 was included in the newly-organ- 

 ized Territory of Wisconsin. The Territory of 

 Iowa was formed in 1838, and the State ad- 



