A WORD FOR AMELIA ROPER.
OUR contemporaries are most of them greatly pleased to record that amidst a thousand actions of tort or breach of contract now set down for trial in the Court of Queen's Bench, only one is to obtain damages for breach of promise of marriage. They think the unprecedented fact indicates a change in the national manners, under which this kind of action is gradually dying away; and as they have ridiculed it for the past fifty years—" Barden v. Pickwick" was pub- lished in 1838 –they are naturally pleased with the result of their endeavours. We confess that, admitting for a moment the accuracy of their explanation of what may be a mere accident, we are not altogether so perfectly content. The present right of action no doubt works very badly, and a snit for damages for breach of promise is the only one, except perhaps the suit for restitution of conjugal rights, which usually degrades a litigant who is entirely in the right. Owing partly to its form as a snit for money, partly to the character of the evidence which is usually produced—the love-letters of the young and foolish, reports of expressions of en- dearment, and the rejected lady's half-furious, half-shame- faced account of her fiancé's conduct—and partly to the skill of London humourists, an impression has been created that a "suit for breach" is a kind of legal farce, that the defendant is always a fool, and the plaintiff either a vindictive person, or more commonly a vulgar harpy, whose claim to money, if he or she has one, ought to have been settled out of Court. The plaintiff, therefore, is always
lowered in character by the suit, and often, if defendant's counsel is skilful, made to appear more or less ridiculous. The consequence is, that the better the injured party, the more refined, the more likely to suffer from being jilted, the less likely is he or she to bring the action, which is thus left almost exclusively to the brassy, the designing, and the avaricious. So deep is the disrepute into which the action has fallen, that except in very rare cases of heavy pecuniary loss, or of excessive spitefulness, men cannot be persuaded to bring it at all, and half the world may be said to derive no benefit from the law. Moreover, it has become "bad form," not only for refined women to bring such an action, but for any woman who makes any pretence to refinement ; while the immense majority of working women, if jilted by working men, think of a suit at law as an expense far too heavy for their purses. They cannot pay the preliminary costs, and unless the faithless lover has money, their lawyers will not under- take such cases on speculation. The right of action is, there- fore, useless to the great majority of the population, it is worse than useless, offensive to the better classes, and it is a cause of derogation, to use a phrase they would not understand, to that section of the middle class which alone makes use of the privilege which the law secures. A right which has draw- backs like these seems to be self-condemned, and that, no doubt, is the general conclusion of the cultivated ; but as we said before, we are not sure that their impression is sound. The vulgar have just as much right to protection as the refined, and it is, we believe, the conviction of the most experienced judges that for the vulgar—for all, that is, who can bear to use it—the law is a considerable protection. Not only does it diminish the number of cases of "seduction," by which we mean betrayal under definite promise of marriage, the vulgar Lothario knowing well that in such cases a verdict is a certainty, and damages pretty sure to be "vindictive ;" but it prevents whole classes of very decent young women from being victimised by men who make an amusement of love- making, and who would, but for the law, delight in a succession of "engagements," after each of which the girl would be deserted, often with circumstances of insult, and always with a distinct injury to her social position and her chance of a pleasant settlement in life. The women in the class we speak of are enormously in the majority, quite a third of the men emigrating, or, in their eagerness to get on, postponing marriage till late in life. The men can practically pick and choose, and they prefer, like everybody else, girls younger than themselves, and from whom the bloom has not been rubbed away. Amelia Roper, Mr. Trollope's wonderful type- figure of the vulgar but essentially honest girl of his period, is supposed to be quite able to take care of herself; and so in one way she is. But Amelia Roper desires to "settle herself," she is as much attracted by professions of affection from an equal as Lady Clara, and owing to the narrow- ness of her experience, she is extraordinarily liable to be taken in. We ask any lawyer or experienced doctor in any provincial town whether this is not true, whether cases of the most cruel jilting for mere sport do not come before them every day, and whether they at least are not convinced that but for the law such cases would be multi- plied a hundredfold, and receive, moreover, an added touch of cruelty. For one case of heartless jilting brought into Court, a hundred are prevented, and a hundred more kept from entering into the designs of men into whose minds. if the offence were uncondemned by law, this form of social treachery might find admission. It is not only Amelia Roper who is shielded, but girls in her position and without her vixenish tendencies ; but grant that only the Amelia Ropers benefit by the law, and the argument is just as perfect. What sort of democracy is that which, professing to right all wrongs, makes an exception against those which are usually suffered, or at least usually avenged, only by the vulgar. Why not refuse to Amelia Roper her action on her bill because the lodgings she lets are tawdrily pretentious, and the suppers she supplies are redolent of strong cheese ?
But then, it is asked—and here we come to the graver side of the usual plea—does the law protect even Amelia Roper ? Is it not, in fact, better that if the man has wearied of his engagement, he should be allowed to go, than that he should keep his contract under compulsion, and so be married un- willingly to a bride whom he has ceased to love ? We are not quite sure. Stated blankly, we know of no answer to the question ; but then, ought it to be stated blankly P Is it not true that, especially with the unrefined, affection is made up of many ingredients,—one of them being, in the case of betrothal as in the case of marriage, enforced habitude and custom. Most men and women, once seriously attracted by each other, can love one another if they please, and break off engagements not so much from distaste as in hope of still greater satisfaction from a new venture. The author of "A Window in Thrums" has keen eyes, though it suits him always to record his experience in that half-melancholy, half-humorous whisper which his audience is rather to catch than to hear, and we suspect he is right when he finishes his account of a quarrel between two rustic lovers, one of whom had begged off his engagement while the other had refused a release, with : "So I left them to their coortin'." We have a suspicion that the sentimental argument is often pleaded against betrothal just as it is pleaded for lax divorce, rather to extend the area of human liberty than for any loftier motive whatsoever. Those who plead it are impatient of bonds, be their kind what it may, and would if they could give children a right, when of mature years, to change their fathers and mothers. Of course, there may be hard eases, and we certainly are not for making betrothals indissoluble— though, be it observed, the better the people, and even the class, the nearer they approach to that ideal—but legislators have to think of the majority, and for the majority we are sure it is good that betrothal should be made as serious an affair as possible, one not to be entered on without thought and conviction, not to be broken off without the gravest consideration, or usually without some sort of consent from both. The law as it exists increases the sense of the responsibility involved in an engagement, and it is the decay of that sense in all the relations of life, except the single one of responsi- bility to public opinion, which threatens to melt the cement that holds society together. Careless betrothals ceaselessly broken, rash marriages terminated by easy divorces, parental authority treated with contempt, or rather—for that is un- fair—regarded as non-existent, filial respect dying out, and kinship declared to be no bond unless friendship is super- added,—these ideas of the hour may all have their attraction, but we certainly shall not bind together with them a strong or a durable society. We are leaving out or softening the mortar in the wall. We wish, like our contemporaries, we could get rid of actions for breach of promise; but before abolishing the law, we should like to be rid of the necessity out of which the law arose. Recurrence to a" state of Nature" in not always the safest of all plans for society. It was tried for twenty years in the Punjab, where the British, true to their theory, refused to permit punishment for adultery. That matter was left to "Nature," with this result, that wife-murder among the Sikhs became so frightfully frequent that the British, for very shame and in natural horror, made the offence once more penal by " arbitrary " statute. We may yet find, if -we abolish legal redress for jilting, we have revived in a very large class the practice of self-vindication by means which, on the Continent, popular juries can hardly be persuaded to condemn.
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