TRIALS FOR BREACH OF PROMTSE.
MaCORBETT, clerk to the Worcestershire and Stafford- shire Canal Company, sued and won Miss Chandler, daughter of a farmer in another county. The lady's family did not, for some reason or other, cordially approve her choice, she herself had other suitors, and after two years' engagement the repentant damsel asked her lover to set her free. He refused point blank "I will not," he wrote, "be trodden on. I have been injured in
my temporal affairs," and as his fiances persisted he, somewhat ungallantly, reminded her that her letters were in his possession, and "would remain there." The lady, not much alarmed, it would seem, at his hint about his "temporal affairs," adhered to her reso- lution, and ultimately married another and, as the counsel for the prosecution affirmed, a wealthier suitor. Mr. Corbett could not endure the slight. He' belonged apparently to that order of men who cannot put up with a loss however slight, while there remains a resource however undignified, and he brought this week his action for breach of promise of marriage. All the ingenuity of his counsel could not discover one aggravating circumstance in the whole case. The lady was not rich, the gentleman, to judge by the two years' engagement and the action itself, not exceedingly fond, both sides had had fair warning, and the offender had done nothing underhand. It was a simple case of jilting, and the opposing counsel, though disconsolate at the absence of amusingly absurd letters, laughed at the plaintiff to his heart's content, and even the judge (Justice Crompton) half hinted that very mall damages would be sufficient to meet the claim of the outraged law. The jury, how- ever, knew their business ; they knew that the law was with Mr. Corbett, they knew also—for the judge admitted it—that he had been "outraged in his feelings," and they gave him 20/. damages and costs. Mr. Corbett went home triumphant in his victory, and in the certainty that now, at least, all the young ladies of his acquaintance must treat him with due respect, as a man if not to be loved, yet still, at least, to be feared.
Why smile ? The man, unfair as he may be deemed by half England, was legally in the right. The law of such eases is so unquestionable that the judge only ventured to hint at minute damages ; hosts of decisions have been recorded in favour of similar applications ; and an entire section of the bar has gained, is gaining, or hopes to gain, distinction by conducting cases of evantly the same description. True, the plaintiff is usually of the softer sex, most men thinking the injury one which it is manlier to bear than to avenge ; but that does not affect the justice of the question. If it be just that a change of mind of this sort should be punished when a woman is the victim, why not when a man's heartstrings have been torn ? If a fine really solaces the bleeding heart of the rejected girl, why should it not soothe the "outraged feelings" of her duped and confiding lover ? If betrothal is in the one case a contract with a penalty clause, expressible in coin of the realm, so it is in the other. No tradesman lets a woman off the legal payment for her silks or her food, her rent or her servants' wages, in consideration of her sex, and why should she be considered exempt from the consequences of a contract which the Legislature has specially declared to be appraisable in a pecuniary mulct? The argument of weakness is vain, for woman's first weakness is arithmetic, and women are every day " cast " in the County Courts without blame to the men who sue them. So also is the excuse alleged in this case of minor or inappreciable injury sustained by the man. He may be so ugly that nobody else will have him, and he is thus deprived for ever of his chance of domestic bliss—a loss hardly to be estimated at its fair price in coin. Or he may lose his peace of mind, and with it that power of strict attention to the counter which to him is his daily bread. Or his- bride may be beautiful beyond compare, and then who, among men of the world, will undertake to estimate the value of his loss? Did not Helen cause "unnumbered woes' to Troy, and a King in our own time vacate a throne, rather than sacrifice the illicit enjoyment of a piquant though somewhat irregular face? If woman be always the prize, and man always the champion in the arena lured on by hope of attaining it, surely his loss must always, in the eye of the calculating section of mankind, be the greater of the two.
The truth is, a case like Mr. Corbett's is the reduetio ad absur- dum of the English law on the subject—a law utterly at variance with the whole theory-of English society. The basis of that society we take to be this : marriage among us, and among us alone, of the nations of the world, is a matter of personal liking.. The Asiatic lad is married early by his parents, on the ground that one woman is much the same as another, and that early betrothal is the best guarantee against the immorality all wise legislators endeavour to prevent. We think .Asiatics fail, and perhaps they do ; but not in their special end, the Haymarket being, after all, a European, not an Asiatic device. The Conti- nent, with a different motive, adopts a similar practice ; marriage there being a family affair, the betrothal is arranged principally by the family chiefs. That also, as we consider, fails, and it does as to certain ends, though there is more happiness in the matrimonial .life of the Continent, especially in Germany and France outside Paris, than English respectabilities, surfeited with bad novels, are at all inclined to believe. In both these cases breach of promise may fairly be considered a very deadly offence, and it is accordingly ranked the very first on the list. In Asia it is rendered impossible, by the simple expedient of locking the girl up till betrothed, and then declaring betrothal the legal equivalent of a marriage, and on the Continent by a sentence of death upon the recalcitrant lover. If the groom breaks his vows, the father or brother shoots him ; if the bride, her reputation is rather more damaged than by a similar breach of faith after the ceremony in church. But in England we make, wisely enough, though with heavy drawbacks, individual choice the basis of the relation. Men and women every day marry for money, or connection, or position, or some one of the hundred motives left out of the marriage service ; but the theory always is, that they have an individual choice. And in the great majority of cases, including the whole of the working class, and four. fifths of the middle and upper, they do so have it ; and unless the misalliance is very violent, or the bride is a widow with children, the world smiles, shrugs its shoulders, and passes on indif- ferent or approving. Choice, however, implies freedom ; and the very root of the action for breach of promise is, that there ought to be no freedom at all,—that both parties, once engaged, ought to keep engaged, whatever the change of sentiment. The man or woman presumed to choose is ordered by law to make a choice under penalty of a fine, and of proceedings ten times more annoying than any mere loss of money. The necessity of affection is admitted, yet bride and bridegroom are bound to feel it under penalty of -what is, in all but name, a criminal action. It is not that betrothal is considered in England a sacred bond which it is immoral, or even improper, to break through. "Engagements" are broken every day by consent with- out the slightest blame attaching to either side. Every girl is considered by social opinion to have the right to break one off if, at the latest hour, she is certain that she repents. And, though the compulsion on the man is a little more distinct, still, if he is only frank and fair, avoids brutality in manner, and does justice to the woman he is deserting, the family must be a harsh one which holds the suitor to the letter of his bond. As a matter of fact, he is not held, and a vast minority of men finally marry their second, or even their third loves. No pure-minded high-spirited girl dreams of retaining her fiancée by any resource beyond her own innate charms, and the law is for the best section of woman- kind a dead letter, scarcely remembered, or recollected only with scorn. Why, then, retain it, and by retaining surrender the English theory of marriage, a theory to which, we must add, the nation clings with unalterable affection? There is no conceivable change in our habits so violent as that which would be introduced by the Continental idea of alliances. Imagine flirting extinct, except where it is forbidden! There is probably no man in England who would not assent to such a course, as far as the man's right of action is concerned, and there is no special justice in retaining the woman's.
She is injured, we shall be told, by the breaking of the engage- ment. Very true, as likewise is he, but is either more injured than by a compulsory consent to a detested union ? Take ahnost the extreme case. A man has been engaged, as half the clergy and many professional men are engaged, for several years. The ori- ginal love, such as it was, has cooled into a fancy, then into a habit, then into an obligation, and then into disgust, and taking courage, he at last announces the fact, and breaks the-engagement. We do not commend him, for there are certain obligations a highminded man must perform if his hopes of happiness here—we had nearly written hereafter—perish in the per- formance. But is the lady injured half so much as she would be by such a union as a compulsory one must be ? She has, perhaps, lost her chance of an establishment in life, her youth, it may be her power of loving; but is not even old-maidism better than the relation to which the law would bind her reluctant suitor? We do not, of course, include cases where wrong has been done; cases where the man has broken his trust, or temptation has proved too strong. The strange principle of English law, which assumes that man must be always the seducer, woman always the seduced, and inflicts punishment on him alone, theoretically so unfair, is practically just, for the punishment however severe is never equal to the social penalty which, passing the man almost unscathed, crashes the woman to the dust. Seduction must remain a punishable crime, and there are apologies for the English method of punishment, apparently so gross, which we have not space to write here. But short of that great wrong, is not the misery inflicted by desertion less in the most extreme cases than that of a life-long, but heartless or repulsive union ? If it is not, what
becomes of the theory of English marriage ? There may be cases of pecuniary damage, as, for instance, where a girl, on engagement, throws up an occupation, but they can be tried like any other civil claim for injury done. But let us, at least, be spared these estimates for feelings and bills for affections, costs for useless sighs and payments for misspent kisses, of which the daily papers are so full, and which are so laughably inconsistent with the admitted right to choose.
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