101 



ADULTERY. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



102 



of the wife, were silent as to that of the husbaud. By an old law, an 

 adulteress was to be slain by her husband and his relations (adulterii 

 '/ ft coynati uti nJent accantu). At a later period, by the 

 Lex Julia (Dig., 1. 48, t. 5 ; Paulus, Seutent. Recept. ii. 26), passed in 

 the time of Augustus, about 17 B.C., adultery in the wife was punish- 

 able by banishment ; she forfeited half her dowry and a third part of 

 her property. The adulterer forfeited half his goods to the public use, 

 and was also banished. But although by the Julian law adultery was 

 not punishable with death by legal sentence, the father, natural or 

 adoptive, of the adulteress was in some cases permitted to kill both her 

 and her paramour ; and in some cases the husband had the same power. 

 A eotutitution of Constantino made adultery a capital offence in the 

 male. (Cod. in. t. 30.) Justinian (Novel. 134, c. 10) confirmed the 

 law of Constantine, and added confinement in a convent as the punish- 

 ment of the adulteress, after she had been whipped. 



By the canon law, now more or less interwoven into the municipal 

 laws of most Christian countries, adultery is defined to be the violation 

 of conjugal fidelity. Consequently, incontinency in the wife or the 

 husband stand on the same foundation. Hence arises the distinction 

 between single and double adultery, already alluded to, which are 

 punishable in various ways in most of the countries of modern Europe, 

 but in none of them, at the present day, is either of these offences 

 capital, and in few of them, in fact, is the public offence punished 

 at all. 



There are faint traces of the punishment of adultery as a crime in 

 the early period* of the history of English law. Lord Coke says that 

 ill ancient times it was within the jurisdiction of the sheriff's tuums 

 aiid court-leet, and was punished by fine and imprisonment (3 lust. 

 306) ; but at the present day adultery is not the subject of criminal 

 prosecution. Till quite recently it was only cognisable as an offence in 

 the Ecclesiastical Courts ; but instances of criminal prosecutions there 

 are extremely rare. If instituted and followed out to the conviction of 

 the parties, the infliction of a slight fine or penance " for the benefit of 

 the offender's soul " (in salutem anima), as it is termed, would be the 

 only result. In 1604 (2 James I.) a bill was brought into Parliament 

 " for better repressing the detestable crime of adultery," but it was 

 dropped. (Parl. History, vol. v. p. 88.) During the Commonwealth, 

 adultery in either sex was made a capital felony (Scobel's ' Acts,' 

 part ii. p. 121) ; at the Restoration this law was discontinued. 



Adultery however, till the erection of the Court for Divorce 

 [DivoBCEj, came under the cognisance of the temporal courts in 

 England as a private injury to the husband. A man might maintain 

 an action against the seducer of his wife, in which he might recover 

 damages as a compensation for the loss of her services and affection in 

 consequence of the adultery. This was felt to be a scandal and a 

 reproach to the law of England, and the action of mm. cu. was 

 accordingly abolished (20 & 21 Viet. c. 85), " but by an unpardonable 

 omission in legislation, this u accomplished in words only, whilst in 

 effect indeed in words equally plain a similar right of action is given 

 to the husbaud through the instrumentality of the Court, but to be 

 tried by a jury. A man may now recover damages for his wife's 

 infidelity without seeking for a divorce, but may continue to live with 

 her upon the damages recovered from the paramour, which may be 

 nettled upon her and upon the children. Even when a divorce is 

 obtained, the damages may be settled upon the children of the 

 marriage ; and the father may live with his children whilst they are 

 maintained and educated with the price of their mother's dishonour." 

 (Lord St. Leonard's, ' Handy Book,' p. 77.) 



In Scotland, the Act 1663, c. 74, punished the notorious and habitual 

 adulterer, man or woman, with death. The latest instance of sentence 

 of death in Scotland for adultery is perhaps that of Margaret Thomson, 

 May 28, 1677. All the statutes on the subject have, according to the 

 peculiar practice of Scotland, expired by long desuetude. In the 1 7th 

 an' I the commencement of the 18th century, the church courts were 

 very active in requiring the civil magistrate to adjudicate in this 

 offence ; but this means of punishment was rendered nugatory by the 

 10th Anne c. 7, 1 10 (the Toleration Act), which prohibited civil magis- 

 trates from giving effect to ecclesiastical censures. Of late years the 

 doctrine ha been admitted by Scottish lawyers, that the seduction of 

 a wife is good ground for an action of damages ; but such prosecutions 

 are wholly unknown in practice. Adultery alone is in Scotland a good 

 ground on which to obtain a divorce. (Hume, 'On Crimes,' i. 452-468 ; 

 ' Institutes,' b. i. tit. 4. s. 7 ; Erskine's ' Institutes,' b. i. tit. 6, 



' . 



The French law (Code Pe"nal) makes it excusable homicide if the 

 hniband kill the wife and the adulterer in the act of adultery in his 

 own house. The punishment of a woman convicted of adultery is 

 imprisonment for not leu than three months, and not exceeding two 

 yean ; but the prosecution can only be instituted at the suit of the 

 husband ; and the sentence may be abated on his consenting to take 

 back thu wife. The paramour of a wife convicted of adultery is liable 

 to imprisonment for not leu than three months, or for a period not 

 exceeding two yean ; and to a penalty of not less than 100 francs, or 



-.eel-ding 2000 francs. 



In the state of New York, the Court of Chancery is empowered to 



nice a complete divorce in the case of adultery, and in no other 



cae, upon the complaint either of the husband or the wife. The 



procew U by bill filed by the complaining pnrty. If a divorce is pro- 



nounced, the defendant is disabled from marrying during the lifetime 

 of the other party. 



ADVENT, literally, the approach or coming, ia the space of four 

 weeks preceding Christmas, appointed in the English and other Christian 

 Churches to be kept holy in celebration of the approach of our Saviour's 

 nativity or manifestation. Anciently, the season of Advent consisted 

 of six weeks, and, commencing therefore about Martinmas, used to be 

 called the Sancti Martini Quadragesima, or the Forty Days' Lent of 

 St. Martin. It is still of this duration in the Greek Church. The first 

 Sunday in Advent, commonly called Advent Sunday, is now the 

 Sunday, whether before or after, which falls nearest to St. Andrew's 

 day (the 30th of November). 



ADVENTURE, BILL OF, a writing signed by a merchant, stating 

 that the property of goods shipped in his name belongs to another, the 

 adventure or chance of which the person so named is to stand, with a 

 covenant from the merchant to account to him for the produce. In 

 commerce an ' adventure ' is a speculation in goods sent abroad under 

 the care of a supercargo, to dispose of to the best advantage to his 

 employers. 



ADVERB, in grammar, the name given to a class of words employed 

 with verbs, adjectives, &e., for the purpose of qualifying their meaning, 

 just as the adjective itself is attached to substantives. In the English 

 language a very large majority of adverbs are distinguished by the 

 termination ly, which in the Anglo-Saxon has the fuller form lice, and 

 in German, lirh. Our own language possesses the same suffix in the 

 form like, as f/odlike, gentlemanlike. These, however, and many other 

 words in ly, are adjectives, as manly, n;,l>/ ; and it is difficult to draw 

 the line between these two classes, many words, especially in the older 

 writers, being used indifferently for both [ADJECTIVE]. The word to 

 which the adverbial suffix ly is added is generally an adjective, but 

 occasionally the adjective has become obsolete in the present form of 

 our language, and must be sought in the Anglo-Saxon. Thus early is 

 derived from the Anglo-Saxon aer, which indeed still appears in the 

 now poetical forms ere, and the superlative erst. But though the 

 termination ly is derived from the Teutonic portion of our language, it 

 has been applied most freely to adjectives of Latin origin, as putjiidy, 

 prirutely ; and with these may be classed the adverbs from adjectives 

 in Wt, as hurriUy, ai/reeaUy, in which the liquid belongs at once to the 

 adjective and the suffix. An important class of adverbs are formed by 

 prefixing the old Saxon preposition an or mi to nouns, in which a 

 careless pronunciation afterwards left nothing but. the vowel a, as on 

 fute, now a-fout. Lastly, we have an interesting though ludicrous 

 formation depending upon alliteration, helter-skelter, hurry -skarry, 

 pell-mell, higgledy-piggledy, &c. The same love of alliteration, which is 

 said to have formed an important element hi Anglo-Saxon versification, 

 has also given rise to some adjectives and substantives, as hum-drum, 

 slip-flap, tip-top, tittle-tattle, hurly-burly. 



ADVERTISEMENT, from the French arerliatement, which means 

 an announcement or notice of any kind, is the general name of those 

 announcements published ill newspapers, magazines, and other works 

 appearing periodically, whatever be their peculiar character. The 

 first English advertisement which can be found, is in the ' Impartial 

 Intelligencer,' for 1649, and relates to stolen horses. In the few 

 papers published from the time of the Restoration to the imposition of 

 the Stamp Duty, in 1712, the price of a short advertisement appears 

 seldom to have exceeded a shilling, and to have been sometimes 

 as low as sixpence. [Nichols's ' Literary Anecdotes,' vol. iv.] The 

 practice of advertising soon began to increase, till the tax was imposed 

 upon advertisements in 1712. This might check, but could not stop, 

 the increase of a practice found to be so advantageous in all commercial 

 transactions as well as in many other affairs. Advertisements continued 

 to multiply, not only in number, but in the organs through which 

 they -were diffused, and soon began to be not only a considerable 

 means of support to the medium in which they appeared, especially to 

 the newspapers, but a source of revenue to the country. The tax on 

 each advertisement, whatever its length, was formerly St. 6rf. ; and in 

 the year 1832, the total number of newspaper advertisements in the 

 United Kingdom was 921,943, viz., 787,649 in England, 108,914 in 

 Scotland, and 125,380 in Ireland the duty amounting to 172,570J. 

 But the tax was felt to be an unfair and an oppressive one, and the 

 number and the amount continued nearly stationary for several years. 

 In 1833, therefore, the act of 3 and 4 Wm. IV. cap. 23, passed 

 June 28, reduced the duty to 1. 6d. on each advertisement in England, 

 and to Is. in Ireland, the loss to the revenue being estimated by the 

 Chancellor of the Exchequer at 70,000<. Advertising again took a 

 start, and in 1841 the total number of advertisements in the United 

 Kingdom amounted to 1,778,957, and the duty to 128,318/. The 

 income thus derived to the newspapers was largely expended in 

 improving them ; their size was universally enlarged, in some cases 

 doubled ; and as the number of newspapers did not materially increase, 

 the circulation also doubled. The ' Times,' which had been for many 

 years a large advertising paper, contained 1474 superficial square 

 inches of print on each side, and in 1886 it commenced issuing supple- 



.nteresting __ 



Vol. xcvii. of the ' Quarterly Review,' that the receipts of the ' Times 

 for advertisements were 44,056?. On Aug. 4, 1853, by the IS & 



