LEGAL TYRANNY;
IT has a very ugly look when the ordinary operation of the law supplies a power for malignant vice and visits innocence with injustice. Such was the result of a trial in the--Ceritral Criminal Court on Monday ; though the Common Sergeant did his best to mitigate the injustice by circumventing the law. William Parker was tried for bigamy. It appears that in 1833, when he was a mere boy, he was the victim of a woman twice his age, who affiliated to him her third illegitimate child; and he Was put in prison. The sequel is told by the Parish Clerk of Horsham, who appeared as a witness for the prosecution— "This was a parish marriage. The prisoner's first wife is nearly twenty years older than he. I do not know that she was a prostitute at the time of her mar- riage. She was not quite common. She had had three illegitimate children, the last of which she swore to the prisoner. It was -fot that child that he was sent to prison. He was told he would not be let out nnlesti he married her, and MS kept in prison until he did. I was present at the marriage • and with some Of the Overseers went to the gaol, when we took him out, and then kept him with us until he was married to her. This prosecution has been got up by the parish; for since the prisoner's desertion of his wife, which took place some years age, she has become troublesome to the parish."
Of course, Mr. Buller will see that every vestige of this atro- cious practice, of forcing- people to marry paupers, be abolished. Such marriages must either be unions for continuing the breed of paupers, or, if one of the parties be not quite lost, it is the way to ruin him for ever.
Parker lost sight of his parish-imposed wife, married again in 1842, and lived an exemplary life with a woman who receives an excellent character. Suddenly "the parish" disturbs his repose, and he is threatened with transportation. However, Mr. Com- mon Sergeant Mirehouse, the Judge, luckily noticed that Parker had not heard of his first wife for seven years • and on that hint the Jury acquitted him. But still the injustice of the law will not be prevented : it pronounces one of the two marriages void, and it selects for avoidance the marriage with the good wife, uphold- ing the one with the bad wife From that incubus, forced upon him by the parish of Horsham in his nonage, Parker must never be freed, except by death. Such is the way in which the law trains and guards the morals of the poor.
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