The Romance of the Law.
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interest, and he has taken some pride in the ill-fitted but power-driven piece of ma well-constructed sentences by which he un chinery, I lay my hand almost at random consciously pronounces the doom of four liv on some reported cases of another nature ing and innocent people. Then the next case than that to which I have before referred. is called; and that is all of it, except so far as, I open instinctively at a case from the divorce put in its appropriate place on our shelves, courts. we may from time to time take down the I find some statutes giving as cause for book and use the case as authority in some the dismemberment of the marital relations "any such misconduct as permanently de other case. Happily, perhaps, we don't know anything stroys the happiness of the petitioner, and at all about the widow, and the veil is not defeats the purposes of the marriage rela lifted to us to see that little household when tions; " and other statutes which give the power of divorce whenever the court in its the news comes to it of what occurred on opin ion day, — a veritable judgment day indeed to discretion thinks that to grant the prayer of them. Nor need we fret our righteous souls the petitioner would be " conducive to do with following the story to its last chapter; mestic harmony and consistent with the the world is full of just such stories : the peace and morality of society," and then our vain essay to work out a living with hands own more limited and rational statute pre that were not taught to toil; a not unwel scribing the cause to be " cruelty, reasonable come grave, and a scattered flock of little apprehension of bodily hurt, abandonment, or ones to climb for years the weary stairs of desertion." stinted dependence. I want to discover, if I can, exactly what This is a sad but too often an over-true the court is able to know or to find out picture, and, alas! a part of the panorama about all this from the cases presented by that it seems improper should pass before the record, and how far, with the means at the judicial eyes, or that they should admit its command of doing right, its judgment the sight of, even if the thing stares them in really reaches towards the root of the mat the face, or seeing which, that they should ter, or is capable of either curing or aveng think or care about at'all. How far judges ing the disturbing cause in any given case. should be led to think and care for such Here in a case open before me I find a things is one of the matters which has judge who seems to think (possibly from suggested this as the subject for these his own domestic experience) that austerity reflections. of temper, petulance of manner, rudeness of But I want a little further insight into the language, want of civil attention, and occa causes and consequences of decided cases, sional sallies of passion are the necessary to make somewhat more apparent, if I can, incidents of the connubial state, and are to what now and then comes to me as possibly be as naturally expected, and possibly more in some sense the larger and more compre so, than chops and coffee for breakfast. hensive motive for judicial decisions; an ele Now this judge, reading correctly from ment of their structure which has sometimes the authorities, says that such incidents as been too rigidly excluded by the orthodoxy these, and the like, " may all be the effect of of stare decisis. habit or of a bad education, and should, in Having in mind that questions of property the general, be borne with by the wife, as and of the social relations are the most ab the best means of disarming them of their sorbing things that make up a man's life, effects, and securing to herself connubial the disturbance of the normal condition of happiness." which sends him fluttering out of his pro And having fortified himself with these priety, like the eccentric gyrations of some philosophical reflections, in support of which
