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Chancery had interfered with the father's power:-so does the Speech, and for the same object."-p. 374.

But the internal evidence is not enough

"There is no way at all of getting over the external evidence as to the authorship of this Pamphlet, as proved by the concurrent testimony of society-the notoriety of the fact."--376.

The conductors of this Review have boasted that their article occasioned the rejection of the bill. The effect was produced (if produced at all) by the pamphlet on which the article is based; but it is hardly worth while disputing about such influence, for it is of a kind which might have been equally well exerted by the meanest of mankind, few things being more easy than to raise a prejudice by an untruth. When, shortly after the revolution of July, Dupin was vehemently assailed by the press, some one remarked in Benjamin Constant's hearing, that Dupin should despise such attacks. “If I were in his place," said Constant, "I would answer them first and despise them afterwards." Although we can easily imagine the perfect indifference or cool contempt with which Mr. Serjeant Talfourd must have regarded such assailants, we now almost regret that he did not act on Constant's principle, or that the specific misstatements regarding the origin and object of the measure were not contradicted by authority; for the casting votes in the Lords were given by Mrs. Norton's sworn foes, and her own admirable letter did not appear till it was too late. We select from this letter the passages in which the misstatements are denied:

"In asserting in your title page that I am the authoress of A Statement of the Wrongs of Women, you have printed and published a direct falsehood. I did not write it; I have never even read it, nor knew of its existence till I saw it named in your Review.

"In asserting that I have, as a 'renowned agitatrice,' circulated a work on 'Sexual Equality,' you have printed and published another falsehood. Nothing I have ever written, nothing I have ever said, will bear out the assertion that such are my sentiments; on the contrary, in my novel of The Wife, you will find precisely the contrary argument, with your favourite Milton quoted in support of it.

"In asserting that my pamphlet was written with the assistance and advice of Serjeant Talfourd, that his measure was framed and brought forward in consequence of our being intimate friends,' &c,

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you have printed and published another falsehood. However proud I might have felt had Serjeant Talfourd considered me of sufficient ability to be his coadjutor in any literary task, your assertion that he did so is false, for this simple reason, that I was not then so fortunate as to have made his acquaintance."

As regards the history of the Bill, we have our own testimony to add. The editor of this work was present when Mr. Serjeant Talfourd was introduced to Mrs. Norton, and was the person through whom her pamphlet was conveyed to him. The introduction took place, and the pamphlet was delivered, some time after he had declared his intention to bring in the Bill, and were the consequence instead of the cause of that event. The pamphlet was finished many months before. Mr. Serjeant Talfourd permits us, at our own particular request, to add his confirmation of this statement, so far as it comes within his own knowledge; so that here we trust this unfounded prejudice will end, for well may Mr. Stevenson exclaim—

"Away with the mean hypocrisy, the childish folly, the illiberal anger of little minds, which would justify an opposition on such paltry grounds. If it be fit, just, and expedient, that this bill, or a bill of this nature, should be brought in to improve the present law, no cavilling at the motives or invention or conjecture of the motives, which originally caused the attempt to be made, should be brought to prevent its succeeding; if it be not fit, just, or expedient that such a measure should be passed, it must be easy for those who are convinced of its unfitness and inexpediency to find some argument strong enough to crush it, without seeking to crush at the same time, by unjust vituperation, a woman already in sorrow and distress."-pp. 89, 90.

At the same time this writer does not hesitate to say, that if the bill were really and logically connected with Mrs. Norton's case, he should not shrink from discussing it, and the facts he adduces fully justify his confidence. We learn from his statement that the original separation arose from a family quarrel, instead of jealousy, as everybody must have supposed; that the action against Lord Melbourne was not resolved upon till more than six weeks afterwards; that Mr. Norton had just before shown himself ready to give a written retractation of the charges, on condition that the charges brought against him by his wife's family should be withdrawn,-a condition with which the mediator, Sir James Graham, had no authority

to comply; that, since the trial, Mr. Norton has expressed in writing his full belief in Lord Melbourne's solemn assurance of his wife's innocence, and actually permitted her to have back her children, whilst a negotiation (frustrated by a member of his family) was on foot. The long suppression of these facts establish a strong presumption that Mrs. Norton was never eager for publicity, although after the trial she had nothing to lose and every thing to gain by it. said against her, that has not been said already?

What can be

"It is very true, as has been scornfully argued (says Mr. Stevenson in justification of the statement), that it is a matter of no interest to the public how the quarrel between this particular couple will terminate, or what its former features may have been; nor, with reference to the attack in the British and Foreign Review, is it of any importance to the public that's son should make his editorship of a magazine an instrument for flinging mud at Sheridan's grand-daughter; but that which is of the utmost public importance, of the most vital interest, is whether the two Houses of Parliament were duped by one of the most distinguished members of the Commons into the reception and discussion of a mischievous measure, framed and brought forward in fact to gratify `a particular individual, the doubtful circumstances of whose case were such as cast a slur and discouragement on the measure itself as applying to separated wives."-pp. 75, 76.

We feel confident that's son (who is named in the pamphlet) must now see the necessity of making ample atonement to the calumniated parties by an unequivocal apology and a full and free confession of mistake; he must do so for the sake of his own character as well as for the sake of the publication entrusted to his care, which sinks to the level of the lowest portion of the press if this matter continues unexplained. It will not do to shelter himself behind “the concurrent testimony of society, the notoriety of the fact,"-for there is no society which would bear such testimony, no society in which such facts could be notorious, except perhaps that in which the Paul Pry and The Satirist pass current for authority; and nothing short of the evidence of his own eyes could justify him in inserting-The Wrongs of Women. By the Honourable Mrs. C. Norton-in his table of contents. In the society, moreover, to which --'s son belongs, the life,

character and pursuits of the friends of this measure are well known, and there he might have learnt without difficulty—we can hardly conceive him to have been ignorant—that Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, a man of undoubted talent and unimpeachable integrity, exemplary in every relation of life, an attached husband, an affectionate father, without tastes or habits to lure him from the plain path of duty, distinguished in parliament, distinguished in literature, distinguished at the bar, was the very last person in the world to embark in a crusade against morality, or submit to being crammed for a display. But when sufferer after sufferer come forward to illustrate the expediency of his measure and offer up their prayers for its success, is he to turn a deaf ear to their complaints? When a woman of genius-who, from knowledge acquired in his professional capacity, he believed to have been cruelly calumniated, and who could hardly fail to interest by the associations which cluster round her hereditary name-is introduced by an intimate friend, is he to decline the acquaintance, and deprecate the exertion of her brilliant talents in the cause?—A poet must avoid plagiarism, and an editor may incur blame by serving up the rechauffé of a pamphlet as an article-but a lawyer or legislator must collect arguments and illustrations from all quarters. If the best and most striking were already collected and arranged in the best manner, it would be mere weakness and vanity to rest satisfied with gleaning what were left with a view to a reputation for originality, and Lord Lyndhurst's masterly speech is equally open to criticism in this respect. However, exposing a speaker's or writer's borrowings, or drawing unfavourable inferences from admitted facts, is one thing: charging him with improper motives, inferred from positive misstatements, is another; and this is the offence which's son has perpetrated without the shadow of an excuse, for the article is far below the average talent of his review, and one would have thought that the bare division of the argument must have made him fully aware of the writer's incapacity.

We say that, if passed into law, it would be in the highest degree pernicious and dangerous; and for the reasons following:

I. Because it is in its tendency directly immoral.
II. Antichristian.

III. Unconstitutional towards the whole nation.
IV. Unjust to private individuals.

V. Impracticable in its operation.

VI. Ineffectual to accomplish its proposed object.

VII. Full of the grossest inconsistence and absurdity, both as to principle and practice, from beginning to end."-p. 275.

"Prove

This reminds us of a scene in one of Mr. Hook's farces, where one man says that another cannot come for thirteen reasons, the first being that he is dead. "Prove your first," says the interlocutor, "and we will not trouble you for the rest." So say we to this gentleman. Prove your first or your fifth, and the argument is at end, which it never can be if you go on arguing in a circle-that the bill is antichristian because it is immoral, and immoral because it is antichristianunjust because it is unconstitutional, and unconstitutional because it is unjust--impracticable because it is ineffectual, and ineffectual because it is impracticable. The subdivisions partake of the same character. The bill is immoral.—

"1. Because it tends directly to favour separations between husband and wife.

"2. Because, inasmuch as it favours and facilitates separations, it facilitates seductions and adulteries.

"3. Because it tends to encourage domestic dissensions between husband and wife whilst living together.

“4. Because it tends to encourage litigation after the husband and wife are separated.

“5. Because it tends to encourage perjury.

"6. Because it tends to perpetuate the separation between parties already separated."

The first and third strike us to be substantially the same proposition; the fourth clearly involves the sixth; and it will be found on inspection that the whole argument regarding separations is nothing more than Sir E. Sugden's, pompously enunciated and ludicrously swelled out. If the readers of the Foreign and British Review can stand this through fifty or sixty pages, they must be like the sailor, who said that his first wish would be for as much grog as he could drink and as much tobacco as he could chew, and, being asked to name his second wish, replied-" a little more grog and a little more baccy."

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