LEGAL SEPARATION. AN EVIL SYSTEM.

Every important measure for reforming the divorce laws brought forward for very many years has contained a proposal either for abolishing judicial separation or for greatly modifying that particular form of relief in matrimonial disputes. Those who have made the closest study of the effects of separation-orders have over and over again pronounced them to be mischievous, morally and socially, and a few examples of this testimony may serve to establish a case at any rate for serious consideration.

Not very long ago Mr. Justice Hill, a Divorce Court judge of five years’ experience, granted a married woman a decree of judicial separation “with great reluctance,” having arrived at the conviction that “nothing is more mischievous than having people separated and not divorced.” Some years earlier the late Mr. Justice Bargrave Deane, who had practised and presided in the same division for a much longer period, declared separation to be “a living death” and “wrong altogether.” Still a third matrimonial court judge, the late Lord Gorell, said: “Permanent separation without divorce has a distinct tendency to encourage immorality, and is an unsatisfactory remedy to apply to the evils it is supposed to prevent.” Without difficulty this volume of condemnation could be amplified by quotations from the pronouncements of many other judges. And if an actual example of the certainty of an evil existing were asked for, none better could be mentioned than the Rutherford case, where, unless the decision of the Court of Appeal is in due time reversed by the House of Lords, an unfortunate married lady is condemned to be bound for the rest of her life, though separated from him of necessity, to a husband who is convicted of committing murder whilst of unsound mind.