vailed on Captain T., whose debts appear to have been large, and his organ of veneration' small, to promise that he would place the child at Lady S.'s disposal. The poor mother promised to educate her as they desired, to receive a priest into her house, to do any and every thing they required of her, so that she might keep her child, but it was insisted that this was not security enough for her salvation in the true Church; it was indispensable that she should be placed in a convent, and all intercourse with her mother prohibited. I do not know if this intention was carried into effect, or if the little creature, whose transparent gloom reminded one of the delicate beauty of the winter rose, and told one that she needed all a mother's careful tenderness, has been already subjected to the privations of a convent life; but if it is not yet too late, surely it would be a deed not unworthy of the pastoral zeal of such a bishop as the Bishop of Exeter to save that excellent and lovely parent from the pangs of separation, and defend the young lamb from being thus forcibly torn from the fold of the Protestant flock.

"Has Lord Wynford really forgotten that it is related of one of our noblest families that a man without honour or principle, keeping his place in society on the profits of a private gamingtable, made use of the extraordinary beauty of his daughter, before she was yet thirteen, to decoy the dupes he lived on to the house? Does he not know that in another the father caused deliberately, and with long premeditation, the ruin of his child, having removed her from the mother for that purpose? Does he not know of another, where the daughters were brought up in the midst of profaneness and rioting, exposed to scenes and language one shudders to think of, and suffered to die, as they had lived, without God in the world? Does he not know it has happened that a child of ten years old has not been safe in her father's house? Or, does a good man know these things and yet uphold the laws that make them possible?

"Nor can it be said that the mother's care is necessary for daughters only. The case of General de B.'s sons is sufficiently notorious to make a reference justifiable. He removed them from England when they were eight or nine years old, neglected their education entirely, and treated them so harshly, that some years after they fled from him and took refuge with their mother's relations.

"If Lord Wynford has never heard of these things, I beseech your lordship to assure him that it would be most easy to lengthen the list indefinitely, although the worst causes must be withheld, because they are too black for repetition."

We ourselves could instance several; but it will be more conclusive to indicate a source from which a multitude must spring. By the common law of England, husbands enjoy another privilege, that of wasting the property of their wives. Manners have mitigated the harshness of the old custom, by which the whole of the wife's available property was vested in the husband; amongst the wealthier classes it has now become common for the wife to have a separate income reserved to her, and (fully admitting the principle developed in Mrs, Gore's clever novel of Pin-money) we think no wise parent will neglect this method of protecting a young couple against themselves; for instead of its being true that this slight and (if all goes well) merely nominal distinction of interests tends to alienate them, we are convinced that, in the great majority of instances where the husband has been guilty of extravagance, its immediate effect is to reclaim him and attach him to his home, But in cases of confirmed profligacy, it undoubtedly leads to the abuse of the father's right, and it would be better to pass a law at once forbidding all separations of interest, than to leave the right in question uncontrolled.

We more particularly address these considerations to Lord Brougham, whose grand objection was, the danger of spoiling the roundness and symmetry of the system by which a woman's interests and inclinations are made completely dependent on her lord's. He may see on reflection, that, since the soft collar of social esteem has already begun to replace the iron one of despotism, and married women, besides being allowed to swear the peace against their husbands and get divorces for cruelty, are actually regarded as capable of managing property, it is no longer necessary to struggle for uniformity; and that there is really no alternative but following up these concessions to their consequences, or legislating in strict accordance with the principles of the jury, who, in the well-known instance of the man tried for the murder of his wife, returned their verdict in the emphatic sentence-Sarved her right. Can there be a more glaring inconsistency, than that a man, who has been judicially separated from his innocent wife on the ground of vice or brutality, shall be allowed to bid her take her fill of her children, for she shall never set eyes on them again? We know a case in which these very words were used.

Lord Brougham loves a reference to his black clients in the West Indies. What sort of a boon would it have been to give them the right of property, whilst the master retained the right of the whip, or the right of selling off the children of his slave?

Such, then, being the state of the law, and such the necessity for an amendment of some sort,-early in the session of 1837, Mr. Serjt. Talfourd, who, as counsel for Mr. Greenhill, had become fully cognizant of the precise nature of the abuse, introduced the bill which has been so unfairly, illogically and acrimoniously assailed. His original proposal was to invest all the judges of the superior courts with the power of making orders for the access of parents to children under twelve years of age, at such times and in such manner as they might deem right. Lord Lyndhurst, in bringing forward the bill in the House of Lords, proposed confining the power in question to the Equity Courts; and we understand that it is Mr. Serjt. Talfourd's present intention to place it exclusively in the hands of the ecclesiastical judges who decide in cases of divorce, which may lull the scruples of those who apprehended a multitude of inconsistent orders. It is not intended that it shall be exercised when the separation is occasioned or continued by the wife's misconduct, nor when there is just ground for supposing that the privilege will operate to the children's disadvantage or be otherwise abused. Women found guilty of adultery are expressly excepted, and there is little fear that women of light character will be regarded with undue indulgence by grave legal dignitaries, or that the intentions of the legislature will be wilfully contravened to favour them. The grand question consequently stands thus: is it expedient to invest any judge or tribunal with the discretionary power of mitigating the harsh exercise of the hus band's strict common-law right, by giving mothers access to their children under any (and what?) class of circumstances?

The only barely plausible argument that we can conceive against a measure of the sort is that suggested by Sir Edward Sugden,--that it will promote separations by removing the woman's chief inducement to remain under her husband's roof and keep well with him; to which others have added that

it will thereby relax the marriage tie and lead to all sorts of immorality. This argument is based on two capital mistakes: first, the supposition that the prospect of such a mode of relief in such a contingency would ever influence a woman's conduct in any way, or that there will not still remain motives enough to induce her to dread a separation; secondly, the notion that entire concord between two persons is best promoted by subjecting one to the unlimited control of the other.

I. It may well be doubted whether, prior to the discussion of the measure, women in general were aware that they were liable to be deprived of their children; and unless a law be well known, its effect on manners and modes of thinking must be small; but, admitting that the supposed check has existed hitherto, let us see to what extent it will be diminished by this Bill.

We believe it will be admitted on all hands that the virtuous mother of a family seldom or ever contemplates quitting her husband's roof till she is compelled; when she is compelled, the consequences are these:-she is deprived of her natural protector, probably reduced by circumstances below her former position in society, and exposed to constant sneers and suspicion; for, be her conduct what it may, a widowed wife is coldly regarded by the world—

"Her acquaintance among her own sex (says Mr. Stevenson), with the exception of a few of the more noble-minded, draw off from her; for as it is as much the nature of women as of deer to turn upon the wounded one of their herd. Her enemies avenge past offences, under pretence of her doubtful position: every one who has a stone, which waited only the hour of helplessness to be flung, casts it with impunity; and let her struggle as she may against temptation-let her endeavour as she will to propitiate the more indulgent of her self-constituted judges-let her do her best in a situation at once the most helpless and the most responsible a woman can fill, so far from 'scaping calumny,' she shall endure so much of it, that it would seem as if all other women proved the degree and strength of their own virtue by the bitterness with which they assailed and doubted hers. It is this which has been the great 'check' to separations-and long may even the injustice of society, the malice of some women, the real principle of others, and the timidity of all in matters of reputation, exist to so beneficial an effect.”—pp. 17, 18.

"All the difficulties of separation," said Mr. Vernon Smith in his able reply to Sir Edward Sugden, "are at present on the side of the woman, and therefore, in all the bickerings of married life, the wife feels it expedient to yield, as she is the party on whom punishment must fall. What does the husband suffer from the separation. Did any man refuse to associate with him on that account, unless it was charged upon him that he had exercised some enormous cruelty (and not always then)? But was the rule the same with regard to the wife? No. There was a scandal abroad which deprived her of the position she formerly occupied in society. She was tried with far greater severity than the man. She was tried at a tribunal where slander was her accuser, and vulgar credulity her judge."

Add the being excluded from all intercourse with her children, except at such times as the husband may permit or a judge may order,—and what class of guilty motives except one, would induce a woman to brave such fearful penalties? Whenever, therefore, a wife is found living apart from her husband, and no positive misconduct is imputed to her, the chances are a hundred to one that she is deserted rather than separated, or that the husband is grossly in the wrong. Whenever, again, a wife so situated is refused access to her children without such a reason as would satisfy a judge, the chances are equally great that the real motive is a sinister and indefensible one-the extortion of some undue advantage or the gratification of revenge; and if she were to turn round upon the husband and say, "let us kiss and be friends-I am quite ready to set up house with you again," he would reply like Mr. Greenhill, "I really cannot give up my mistress ;" or like Monsieur Leonard de Manneville, "I don't want your person, but your property." So far, at all events, as reconciliation depends upon the wife, there will always be a sufficient inducement; and it is preposterous to suppose that her motives can be so nicely balanced that mère liberty of access to her children under a judge's order will turn the scale. The privilege will be indeed a valuable one, as it will enable her to satisfy herself of their well-being, retain a place in their affections, and afford a hope of an eventual reconciliation through their means, but assuredly no mother would be content with it. The notion that she would, is thus admirably treated in the pamphlet―