CIVILIAN MORALS: THE TOWNSHEND PEERAGE.
Loan ASHLEY is needed to expose the depraved condition of large masses of the people sunk in ignorance ; but occasionally outrage- ous spectacles burst forth among the " upper" classes, to remind us that they need the besom as much as ever did the corruptest manufacturing-town—like the Townshend Peerage case. The alle- gations, made with every appearance of bone fides on all sides, are these : a Peer, who ought never to have married, wedded a girl: the virgin wife fled from her husband's to her father's house; and thence, desisting from steps which had been taken to dissolve the marriage, she eloped with another person : children are born to that second union ; but, inasmuch as the legal husband was not beyond the four seas, the wife, who proclaimed it impossible that he should be a father, teaches her children to call him father ; and the eldest-born enters Parliament as the son of a childless hus- band. No doubt, such things have been ; but it is not usual to blazon abroad the whole process at every stage. The extremity and audacity of the case seem to justify the in- tervention of the Legislature. The right to the succession of the title cannot be tried until it come in question—until the death of the Marquis ; and it is said that the perpetuating of written evi- dence by a bill in Chancery does not sufficiently sift the truth like the examination of viva voce evidence: so Lord CHARLES TOWNS- REND, the heir-presumptive to the Marquisate, claims to have the right settled at once by a special enactment. The claim is not un- just in itself; but why, as the Morning Chronicle asks, make the relief special to Lord CHARLES TowasuErin, when the defect of which he complains is a common defect in the administration of justice?
"if the thing had happened in the Tomkins family—if Mrs. Tomkins's son by an adulterous intercourse with another man were to set up as heir of Tons- kine's settled estate—if the witnesses whose evidence would annihilate the spurious claim were dying off—and if Charles, the brother of Tomkins, saw himself thus slowly but certainly being extruded from his rightful inheritance— he might get a hill for perpetuating testimony, which, like Lord Charles, he would find insufficient for the ends of justice: but he would not get an act for having the matter beard and settled at once, and bastardizing the spurious Tomkinses. Ile would not, because he is not a lord, and because the dignity of the Peerage is not involved in his cane."
If the evil is general, let the remedy be general. But in truth, a measure declaring bastards to be bastards would touch but a very small part of the evil. In contemplating some of the more palpable results, the root and deadly part of the poison-weed seem to have been forgotten. Those who assert the claims of Tonikins do not look beyond the maleappropriation of property: those who vindi- cate the purity of the Peerage are scared at certain possible lengths to which the audacity of Mr. JOHN Mumma might go ; he might even sit in the House of Lords during a division, or at the foot of the throne with the Queen upon it I Now, assuming the bar- sinister on his escutcheon it needs some nobility of blood in the listener to be so very much horrified at his approach to sit in the same place with the descendant of a LENNOX, a BEAUCLERIL, or a FITZCLARENCE ; not to mention that a history of illustrious bastards might be written which would show that the highest might often be proud to acknowledge/hum aniline. The truly revolting part of the story is antecedent to these more " audacious " proceed- ings. There is something to sicken the heart in reflecting how different might have been the fate of the girl had she wed differ- ently; had she not thus first learned matrimonial morals ; bad she not found herself, a bride, in a strait that might kill most women with horror, or force upon them experiences likely enough to lead to these latter audacities. It is the drift of our " morals" to dis- countenance divorce, to make strict the marriage-tie ; and it is assumed that to do so conduces to domestic purity. In this case, obviously, divorce would have been most laudable; it should have been most facile; it should have been encouraged, not discounte- nanced by usage, nor limited solely to such occasions that the very resort to it has something odious about Pt If we would more effectually prevent such flagrant outrages, society must condemn hateful and revolting though " legal" matches, as more odious and terrible than the image of Mr. Joux Mattoms on the steps of the throne. In this respect, too, the case is not singular; nor are the results. Many a wife cannot possibly live with her hus- band; not for the same reason always, but for cruelty, for brutal coarseness, for incompatibilities which make existence intolerable. They fly. Our law dooms them to celibacy. It may be a ques- tion, whether it is wiser, or not, very strictly to enforce natural decencies by set laws ; but when laws go directly against nature, they break down, and the very endeavour to enforce them entails their own contempt and an artificial offence. Our rigorous refusal of relief from the marriage-tie except on conditions impossible to the bulk of the people, keeps those in companionship whose very intercourse is a degradation, arrays nature against the law, and forces into existence numberless immoralities for which there is no other motive. Yet, with such instances as this TOWNSHEND case, of what is seething in the heart of society, the Legislature refuses even to consider a step towards improvement, in Mr. ELPHIN STONE'S Divorce Bill. Some casuists would have us believe that the way to keep marriage sacred in the eyes of the world is to embalm in the law every revolting and monstrous instance of its desecra- tion, unless the victims can buy off their misery
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