choice and the father of her children. She had a pastor, learned and eminent, gifted beyond his fellows, one who stood at the very head of his honored and sacred profession, one whose words were listened to with deference and with accept ance. Ah! sir, he had those qualities of mind and heart, he had that persuasive power of elo quence, that insidious and silvered tongue, which would lure an angel from its paradise. He was her accepted and chosen teacher and guide. She looked up to him with a veneration second only to that with which she regarded her God. Nay, if the incarnate Christ had come down with the glory of Calvary upon his brow, and the love of sacrifice in his eye, she could not have bowed to him with more obedience and idolatrous defer ence than this woman rendered to her pastor and her earthly god. From her childhood, sir, she was under his teaching and dominion. He was almost an inmate of her home. In the confidence of a husband and a friend, a pupil of this aged and venerable and gifted man, he was welcomed with trust and affection. He exerted upon this wife, sir, all his arts, his specious wisdom, his prayerful devotion. All the efforts of his gifted nature were banded to the seduction of this happy and beloved wife and mother, and she fell. And do you wonder, sir? Is she to be blamed for the act? Is this a prosecution of her f Is the action brought by her wronged husband an action against her for her condem nation? Oh, no, sir! Consider how strong he was, and how weak she was. Consider how sub missive she was to his teachings; and imagine with what a specious and insidious tongue he propounded to her the theory that fornication was but a natural expression of love! He taught her to believe in pious adultery. By slow but by steady steps, he led her along upon frail paths to the precipice from which she fell. The seducer is brought into a court of justice to an swer for his crime. Husband wronged, seducer guilty, stand before the immaculate justice of the law to answer for the deeds done in respect to this woman. And we are told, sir, — should be told, sir, in such a case, according to the logic of my learned friend, — that this aged and ven erable and gifted seducer may take the stand, and polish and apologize for his guilt, and pre sent all the defences of his practised and learned ingenuity, and that the husband must be still and
silent, and that this is the law, — the law, which is not a respecter of persons, which holds out steady and even justice to litigants before it; and with all the sophistry of his great powers, my learned friend subsidizes them to establish that doctrine of injustice and wrong. I say again, sir, that before your honor will adopt any such conclusion, before you will approve any such doctrine, you must be driven to it by the force of irresistible legal logic. Thank God there is, in my belief, no such rule in the law of this State! There is no such injustice in the policy of our legislation. "I am at a loss, sir, to perceive upon what theory, upon what principle, either of policy or of law, that exclusion can be maintained. I know that evidence may be drawn from this witness, if sworn, which will reflect upon the chastity and the honor of his wife. I know that this fact has given and will give to my learned friend an opportunity to descant upon the horrid and barbarous appearance of such disagreement and controversy between parties so holily and dearly connected; and he has drawn a painful and pitiful picture of the deserted and wronged wife, dishonored and crushed by the testimony of a husband in eager chase after the gold of his adversary. He has presented this wife, in an argumentative allegory, as listening to the accu sations of her husband, hearing the revelation of her confessed dishonor published to all the world, and yet compelled to sit silent, without a possible answer from her lips to the supposed calumny. But the answer of the law is that which I have already given, sir, — that she is not interested in the event of this suit; that her rights are unimpaired and untouched, and she may claim all the privileges of the relation ex isting between her and the plaintiff. But that picture, sir, has another side. Will that be the first revelation of her asserted guilt? Will the testimony from the lips of the husband be the first dark shadow which gathers upon her womanly and wifely character? In this or in any other conceivable case of seduction, is it the action like this, or the testimony in the action like this, which crushes and ruins womanhood? No, sir! no, sir! The shame, the disgrace, the destruction, which this wife suffers and must suffer, starts earlier in the history of this unfor
