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    1212 1 THE LEADER. fNo. 404, December 19...

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    WIDOWERS AND SECOND WIVES. "" Gbjea.t is...

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    CHRISTMAS AND ITS TRIALS. Let all who ca...

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    Public Opinion And Parliamenta&Y Reform....

    Ssrliament means legislation for classes , blxumdering and often corrupt administration , official jobbery , financial extravagance , secret diplomacy , and a foreign policy with which tlie nation has nothing to do , except to subuait to its consequences . ^ Reformers of all classes will shortly be invited to say whether they will concur in , agitating for a poor-rate suffrage , with , we trust , a supplementary

    provision for the enfranchisement of lodgers , and a better arrangement of electoral districts ; the extension of the county franchise in England and Wales to all ten-pound occupiers at least ; the assimilation , as far as possible , of the Englisli , Scottish , "Welsh , and Irish electoral systems ; the Ballot , upon the successful Australian plan ; the abolition of the ' -property- qualification , and triennial Parliaments . To demand less would be to imitate the

    "Whigs ; to insist upon more might be to split ^ ip the party and shipwreck , the cause , The public , we think , entertains this view ; it ? IoIIqws that [ Reform is on the road .

    1212 1 The Leader. Fno. 404, December 19...

    1212 1 THE LEADER . fNo . 404 , December 19 . IBB * .

    Widowers And Second Wives. "" Gbjea.T Is...

    WIDOWERS AND SECOND WIVES . "" Gbjea . t is truth and it will prevail" must have "been originally an English saying ; for unless truth is great in the sense of ' material magnitude it can hardly expect to prevail in England . All our admiration and sympathies seem to lean towards large objects . Our ships , our concert-rooms , our congregations , our newspapers , have been getting larger every year ; and , if they hope to attract attention , our accidents must be big enough to startle the accustomed reader .

    The most wicked negligence in factory , colliery , or railway , should it only kill one man is ignored by those worshippers of magnitude , the penny-a-liners , and our next shipwreck must sacrifice five hundred lives , or it will be put into back columns . We sympathize also with oppressed millions , but oppressed units are beneath us . Were there in England a section of people not Christians , but numbering a million , arrangements would soon be made to admit them into Parliament ; but a few thousand Jews are too few to draw out

    our indignation at injustice . Or were there an epidemic mania amongst widowers for marrying the siaters of their deceased wives , the restriction on so many hundred thousands would excite wide-spreading sympathy , when it is now pooh-poohed , because possibly there are not more than a couple of thousand persons who eagerly desire a change in the law . But even though there were only one person wronged , the spirit of equity forbids it ; and to anyone of real feeling , a sense of injustice

    and insult , impressing gloom and pain on even one household , is a matter not to be regarded with levity . The decision of Judge Cresswell declared that children , the fruit of marriage between a widower and the sister of his deceased wife , were illegitimate , although the marriage was Performed according to the law of the country in which the parties were domiciled . The hardship of thiB decision is , that it is practically a change in the law- Lord Lyndhuhst ' s Act ( passed , it is said , really to relieve an individual ) legalized those marriages if

    contracted before a certain , date ; and it has been held , in more than one case , that English law had simply to inquire whether the ceremonies of the marriage had a local legality . Acting on this view of the law , several marriages httve been made ; and now this new decision breaks up many happy English homes , by declaring the wife a concubine and the children illegitimate . It is a delicate and difficult question , viowod as a matter of morality and socinl custom . Amongst women in Bociety one hears three opinions against such marriages for one in

    favour of them . But we do not lay much stress on vague sentiments about a question which those who speak scarcely regard as possible to their own experience . No unmarried woman contemplates whether she shall ever have to accept or refuse an offer of marriage from her sister ' s husband , and her opinion on either side of the general question is not worth much . But there are many pure-minded women , in England who , without a scruple of conscience , have accepted the

    position of wife to the"' -husband of their deceased sister ; intensely loving wives have on then * death-bed asked their husbands to take as a second wife the sister of the first ; and dying mothers have asked sisters to be second mothers to their orphan children . These facts teach us that the heart of womanhood finds nothing intrinsically repugnant _ to its delicate instinct of right in the marriage of a woman with the husband of her dead sister .

    Custom involves itself with the argument , and the manners of our homes embarrass the question . Husbands of easy , affectionate disposition almost marry the whole family . To say nothing of the mother-m-law , we see how the husband of Miss Jones is on the easiest and pleasantest terms with the younger sisters . They are with him Lizzie , Mah y , and Bessie—not the young Miss Joneses ; he kisses them all round , and quizzes them about their lovers , as if they were his own sisters ; and they visit at the house more readily than even at the house of a-married brother . In then * sister ' s illness one

    of them is deputy-keeper of the keys and vice-president of the tea-table , and husbands temporarily deprived of a wife ' s p resence find comfort in a . lady companion almost as familiar as the absent -wife . Why disturb all these cordial customs to gratify the love of some exceptional sister-in-law ? These customs certainly suggest that , in nine cases out of ten , there is no difficulty , yet , in the tenth case , there may be terrible cruelty . A good girl , loving an elder sister with intense love , respecting and loving that sister ' s husband and cherishing their children , finds at her sister ' s death that her

    brotherin-law cannot marry her . She must either give up her fair fame and her prospects of an honourable home by staying to protect the children of her sister , or she must tear herself from them , leaving them without a woman ' s cherishing , or to a stranger's care . And yet to the marriage there is no impediment but that of law , not even the physiological objections alleged by many against the marriage of cousins . This latter relationship reminds us of a consideration akin to the

    argument . W ere marriages of cousins now forbidden by a law , any proposal of its repeal would be met by the cry that such a change would destroy the loving confidence between cousins . Such a change was made when England became Protestant ; and yet at the coming Christmas-gatherings we hope to have it from many lips that mutual love between cousins is not all gone , and that Cousin Tohn and Cousin ,, Maby love the mistletoe as well as though that terrible permission to marry were not hanging over their heads .

    There is another point . Your marriage imposes on you no responsibility or relationship towards your wife ' s sister . You are not "bound to love her nor to teach her the Catechism , nor to support her . It gives her no claim on you , and you no claim on her . You are not her relative in law or religion ; you inherit none of her property , you are not her ' next of kin . ' If , thon , the marriage with her sister confers on her or you no qualification , not even a qualified consanguinity , how can it be held to impoise any disability—any disqualification of consanguinity ? You Bee

    Miss Maby Smith ; she is a stranger to you , and you are free to marry her , she consenting . Is it to be said that if you marry her sister the only effect as to Miss Smith is that you can never marry her ? It suggests a ludicrous way of escape for a young man persecuted by an unloved lady—marry her sister . Laws do not change customs , nor alter the quiet strength of true delicacy in the hearts of Englishwomen . But laws may inflict pain

    on sensitive women who cannot ( and God forbid they should t ) disregard the worldly future and good name of their children . We respect and reverence the scrupulous feelings of the woman who could not * bring herself to marry ' poor Luc y ' s husband ; ' but we cannot but think with pain of the homes where , in good faith and good feeling , such marriages have taken place , and which are darkened today by Judge Cbess well ' s decision .

    Christmas And Its Trials. Let All Who Ca...

    CHRISTMAS AND ITS TRIALS . Let all who can , keep their Christmas merrily . While it is cowardly not to face evils which ought , in justice or for prudence' sake , to be met , it is not unworthv of the truest courage to brace its nerves and cheer its spirit for encounter , be it with prayer , reflection , conference , or even wine and wassail . A time of trial is coming for vast numbers of the people of England ; against which let-all-who can make provision—none better than a cheerful spirit .

    A paragraph of the Royal Speech foreshadowed the coming gloom ; It said : — " I have observed with great regret that the disturbed state of commercial transactions in general has occasioned a diminution of employment in the manufacturing districts , which , I fear ^ cannot fail to be attended with much local distress ; I trust , however , that this evil may not be of long duration , and that the abundant harvest with which it has graciously pleased Divine Providence to blesa this land , will , I hope , in some degree , mitigate the sufferings which this state of things must unavoidably produce . "

    Unavoidably ; for the assistance given by Government to commerce in the hour of panic fear has only saved it from running to headlong destruction . It has not saved it from the losses in money and time which tlie failures of the commerce of other countries have entailed upon all who have had dealings with the aliens . It has not , and could not

    have , averted the consequent derangement of our manufactures , with the inevitably-following misery of the working classes . ' Thus bad begins , and worse remains behind ; ' for at no period of the crisis which we have lately passed have the prospects of our trade appeared so dark and unpromising as at present .

    The effects of the crisis upon the trade of America have been too severe to be rapidly worked off ; and until something like a state of recovery bo attained it will be impossible for our commerce to look to America for the means of retrieving our own disasters . On the Continent , the effects have been pretty much the same , and the news which daily

    reaches us from Hamburg , the monetary capital of the North , gives no warrant for hope of speedy restoration . The number of bankruptcies and suspensions which have taken place within the last few weeks , more or less consequent upon the embarrassments in America and on the Continent , ia sufficient evidence of the severity of the disorder and of tho unlikelihood of easy cure .

    Throughout tho manufacturing districts there is a dead level of gloom . Even the moat hopeful see no chance of better times till after the turn of tho year . In Mancheater , the export trade is almost at a dead

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 19, 1857, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_19121857/page/12/