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sufficient to annul marriage, were set before the Church; but the historical result was, that Henry set himself above the Church; that the primary power remained vested in Parliament, and the secondary power in sacerdotal forms. Law and religion were both called in, but it was to help the lawless and irreligious. The shadow of justice wandered, in the courts where queens pleaded in vain—in the Parliament where nobles bowed their hearts, as they bowed their heads, before the tyrant of England—and presided over the vain consultations of yielding bishops; but its reality was wanting.
Since the days of King Henry, divorce has remained an indulgence sacred to the aristocracy of England. The poorer classes have no form of divorce amongst them. Marriage is for them,—as I have said,—practically, a sacrament.
The rich man makes a new marriage, having divorced his wife in the House of Lords: his new marriage is legal; his children are legitimate; his bride (if she be not the divorced partner of his sin, but simply his elected choice in his new condition of freedom), occupies, in all respects, the same social position, as if he had never previously been wedded. The poor man makes a new marriage, not having divorced his wife in the House of Lords; his new marriage is null; his children are bastards; and he himself is liable to be put on his trial for bigamy: the allotted punishment of which crime, at one time was hanging, and is now imprisonment. Meanwhile, nothing can exceed the ignorance of the poorer classes on this subject. They believe a magistrate can divorce them; that an absence of seven years constitutes a nullity of the marriage tie; that they can give and receive reciprocal permission to divorce, and take a more suitable partner; and among some of our rural populations, the grosser belief prevails, that a man may legally sell his wife, and so break the bond of union. They believe anything, rather than what is the fact, that they cannot do legally that which they know is done legally in the classes above them; that they cannot consecrate the new tie, or
