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anything is cruelty if committed by a husband. It is cruelty to come home late from his club; it is cruelty to spend an evening with friends without her company. It is cruelty to hold her hands if she tries to strike or to bite him.
However, these refinements are no longer necessary to the pro-feminist tribunals of England. The last charter of feminine privilege (the Act of 1895) has set the balance of express law the other way. Now a wife can commit adultery with impunity—if induced by the "neglect" of her husband. No such excuse for the husband.
(g) Impunity for Desertion.
A woman can have her husband arrested and sent to gaol if he leaves her, even though her own violence and cruelty led to his flight. The husband gets no assistance from the law if his wife deserts him.
The method in which this privilege has been worked out was simple enough. It consisted in abolishing all the husband's control over the wife's actions and property, and, on the other hand, retaining all the wife's power of legal compulsion on the husband, with added powers.
These changes have practically come in during the period since 1857, when a secular court for divorce was established. Under the earlier law, prior to, and long after the Reformation, ecclesiastical censure restrained the deserting wife. But the secular common law also lent its aid to the husband. He could prevent her by force from leaving his house, and could bring her back if she had escaped. More, he had an action for "harbouring" against any of her relations or strangers who assisted her in straying away—as late as George III. a husband's action for damages on this ground was successful.
