A Spectator's Notebook
HAVE SELDOM SEEN a more nauseating exhibition of egotism . . . A self- satisfied prig if ever I saw one, completely satisfied about his rights.' This is not, as one might suppose, a housemaster castigating a pupil from the lower Fourth, but the latest example of the President of the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division letting himself go at the expense of an un- fortunate litigant. These outbursts are all too common in the Divorce Courts and a gift to the evening papers where, since publication of the evidence itself is for- bidden, they receive maximum and un- qualified publicity. Judges in other Divisions appear to exercise a good deal more caution; for example, there is a traditional reluctance in civil cases to find a person fraudulent, although the standard of public honesty has not exactly risen. It is all the more de- plorable that the divorce judges should indulge in privileged denigrations of the private characters of people whom they see under difficult circumstances for a few hours in a witness box, and who later find themselves permanently branded as a result. These people are not on a criminal charge; nor, very often, are the defects to which the judges call such pompous attention strictly relevant to the issue; neither egotism nor priggishness are yet grounds for divorce in this country.
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