THE PRICE OF JILTING.
IT is with satisfaction that we note the continued accumulation of precedents establishing bona fide compensation as the rule in cases of breach of promise of marriage, where the expectation of a set- tlement in life had been just. A new instance this week strengthens the precedent by presenting it in a new light, through the age of the persons who were parties to the suit. The defendant, Mr. Brown- in,g, was sixty or sixty-five years of age ; the lady, Mrs. Von Muller, forty-five ; and formerly there would have been a predisposition to laugh such a case out of court. But the facts disclose a real wrong, and that merited a substantial redress. Mr. Browning, a clerk in the Bank of England, still hale and hearty, originally sought the lady's acquaintance, paid his ad- dresses, and was accepted. His letters were not without some foolishness, but they displayed both ability and literary attain- ments. On the other hand, Mrs. Von Muller is evidently a woman of good sense and feeling ; rather too easily pleased, perhaps, at having still sufficient attractions to win a third husband; but how many a woman of sound sense is assailable through the affections, long after young couples, who suppose themselves to monopolize the faculties for love and happiness, presume their elders to have forgotten all emotion ? She evinced a pride in Mr. Brown- ing's attainments; and naturally looked forward to ending her days in a creditable home. Mr. Browning was advised to break off the match ; and he ad- vanced two pleas,—one by letter to the lady, and one by his coun- sel in court. To the lady he pleaded, that her life had not been respectable, and that she had married her second husband while the first was yet alive ; a baseless plea, whose cruelty Chief Justice Campbell properly characterized as aggravating the wrong. The jury, viewing the case plainly and rightly, awarded to her 8001. da- mages. In losing another year of her life at such a period, in the effect of mortification on her health, Mrs. Von Muller had lost a large share of the chance of which she was in possession when Mr. Browning approached her ; he defrauded her of that chance ; and the compensation was not excessive. The other plea, advanced in court, was, that Mrs. Von Muller had played upon the fatuity of the aged man. There was not the slightest evidence in support of such a plea • but it could not have been without effect. When the defendant's counsel, to get him off, proclaimed him " a besotted old man," called his letters "the encores of dotage," described him as "rescued from the fol- lies of his dotage by the proper influence of his son," and continued thus to ring the changes on the words " dotard " and "folly," the pleadieg of counsel must have told, not as extenuation for the man who had himself advanced the other more cruel and imposing plea, but as retribution severe as mortification and shame could make it. Bullcalf decries himself, to get off his liability ; but to play Bullcalf by proxy, and to hear the detraction rounded off with gut° by another tongue, is in itself a penal visitation for self- ish levity.
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