of the People of Victoria. 121 



part of the husband or wife, suggest the existence of greater 

 facilities, or greater inducements for so doing; and if the 

 latter, there is the more necessity for taking precautions that 

 the most valuable of human institutions cannot be assaulted 

 with impunity — that the most sacred of contracts cannot be 

 violated at the instigation of caprice, passion, or interest. 



The necessity of including repressive conditions in any 

 measure which may be enacted for this colony is most appo- 

 sitely illustrated by the consequences which attended too 

 great a laxity of the divorce law in California, a country 

 which resembles Victoria in the disproportionately small 

 number of marriageable females, as in many other respects, 

 llepressive measures, Avhich have been dispensed with in 

 other portions of the Union, have had to be resorted to in 

 that State, " to put an end," to use the Avords of an able 

 article in a San Francisco paper, " to a disgraceful evil, which 

 sat like an ' old man of the mountain,^ upon the vitals of its 

 prosperity." 



The causes of divorce, as just intimated, are not the same 

 throughout the Union. Each of the States has its special 

 legislation on the matter ; and the laws of some are much 

 more restrictive than others — so much so, that the legislature 

 lias to be resorted to very frequently in many of the States, 

 in cases not provided for by the statutes. The laws of some 

 of the States prohibit the guilty party from marrying again ; 

 but it would seem that in California a discretionary power of 

 prohibition is given to the courts. It appears, however, that 

 this power was but little exercised until a recent period, and 

 the ease with which divorce could be obtained, and the per- 

 mission to the divorced to re-enter the marriage state, had 

 been found to offer temptation to numbers of profligate 

 unmarried men to sow discord Ijctween man and wife, so as 

 to bring about a state of things that might lead to separa- 

 tion. After describing the abominable means resorted to, 

 as revealed on the divorce trials, to effect tliis end, and 

 denouncing the '' vile and degrading system of espionage 

 established over the husband," the San Francisco Herald 

 thus proceeds : — " After enough of this kind of CAidcnce has 

 been collected to make out a case, the deluded wife is in- 

 formed that there is no trouble in procuring a divorce. She 

 is further told that our society is very facile on these points 

 — that divorce suits are conducted sub rosa — that no 

 unpleasant publicity ever accompanies them — that the 

 divorced parties are left entirely free to satisfy their separate 



