AUSTRALIAN DIVORCE AND THE ROYAL VETO.
[To MY EDITOR Or 1111 "131MOTAT08.1
&a,—You consider the New South Wales Divorce Act so im- portant as to call for the grave constitutional step of a veto by her Majesty. But the leading clause in it has for the lad three hundred years, at least, been law in Scotland, which was her Majesty's Kingdom for hundreds of years before she succeeded to England. The only difference is that desertion there must be for four years, while in Australia it is proposed that it shall be for three, in order to terminate the marriage. But I write to point out what I venture to think a serious error in your reading of this leading clause. You say,—" There is no restric- tion about consent, and, consequently, separation for that period, if accompanied by removal to a distance and abstinence from correspondence, is of itself sufficient ground for a dissolution of the marriage." Non sequitur. In Scotland there is no such restriction ; the law just says wilful desertion : but it has always been ruled, and most justly, that mere separation and silence, were it for twenty years, is not desertion. You must prove that the original separation, and its continuance, were both of the nature not merely of separation, but of desertion,—i.e., were not of consent. But if there were any doubt about the daily Scotch practice (and there is none), the Australian clause is still more unambiguous. Divorce must be "on the ground that the respondent has, without just cause or excuse, wilfully deserted the petitioner, and, without such cause or excuse, left him or her continuously so deserted." No one supposes that consent woad not be a just cause and excuse.
I doubt, too, whether, looking at it in the light of Scotch experience, this can be considered an Act for the rich rather than the poor. It is the poor with us who chiefly get divorce for desertion. You say if a rich Australian under this Act deserted his wife, but made her an allowance, she could not petition. I find no such clause in the proposed Act ; and in Scotland, if a man deserted his wife and hid himself in the Colonies, having first made arrangements for her being regularly paid 22,000 a year during her life, the law would receive her petition for divorce the moment the term of four years was out,. notwithstanding the big bribe. The reason, of course, is that marriage means mutual society, and our law assumes that a man who deliberately and finally abandons such society breaks up the marriage, in the view even of the Divine Legislator, at least as truly as he who commits a single act of unfaithfulness.
At all events, permit me to hope that her Majesty's Govern- ment will not "have the nerve to veto" too many Colonial legislative acts at this particular moment. Mr. Dicey says is another page that this is not the time for Parliament to "lay the foundations of a Federal State" throughout the world. Perhaps. But it is scarcely the time for uprooting them, and for using the sceptre as lever—I am, Sir, Jac., A Lawrta.
[All very well; but laws are interpreted according to uni- versal sentiment. In Scotland feeling is against divorce. Will it be so in Australia P—En. Spectator.]
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