What a thorough failure of justice there appears to have
been in this Godrich case. Mrs. Godrich brought an action of divorce against her husband for adultery and cruelty, whereupon he charged her also with adultery with a Mr. Forder and others. There was therefore no divorce, and Mr. Godrich successfully prosecuted the main witness against him for perjury. Thereupon Mrs. Godrich also prosecuted the main witnesses against her, and they were convicted. The result of it all is that legally both Mr. and Mrs. Godrich are innocent of the offences laid to their charge, and that either the Divorce Court after a careful trial pronounced a verdict utterly wrong, or that a Criminal Court has three times given unjust sentences for perjury,—a terrible alterna- tive. The explanation is probably to be found iu some remarks of the Lord Chief Justice on the tendency of witnesses to transmute a conviction of their own minds into actual evidence, but the exphination does not greatly improve the matter. The English system of trial is based entirely upon the assumption that a wit- ness will speak truth unless it is his interest to lie, and if that assumption breaks down, so does the system.
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