hesitation he gave judgment stating, " he was clear that water was not meat, neither was it drink, in the popular acceptance of the word;" so he decided that the juryman might have it. The most memorable and oftenest quoted of his utterances is, of course, the one deliv ered at the Warwick Assizes on the trial of a prisoner for bigamy. The first wife had taken to drinking, pawned all his property, and finally had gone off with her paramour. After the lapse of many years the prisoner married, and now was indicted, it was said, at the instigation of her seducer. This hard case moved the judge to express himself in the matchless piece of irony which has ex cited such admiration. There have been many versions of this address, some halting enough; but the one we shall furnish was given in the " Times " over thirty years ago, at the moment when Mrs. Norton's grievances were engrossing attention, and seems to be the most authentic in form. "Prisoner, you have been convicted upon clear evidence; you have intermarried with another woman, your wife being still alive. You have committed the crime of bigamy. You told me, and indeed the evidence has shown, that your first wife left her home and her young children to live in adultery with another man. You say this prosecution is an instrument of extortion on the part of the adulterer. Be it so. I am bound to tell you that these are circumstances which the law does not, in your case, take notice of. You had no right to take the law into your hands. Every Englishman is bound to know that when a wrong is done, the law, or perhaps I should say, the Constitution, affords a remedy. Now listen to me, and I will tell you what you ought to have done. Immediately you heard of your wife's adultery you should have gone to an attorney and directed him to bring an action against the seducer of your wife. You should have prepared your evidence, instructed counsel, and proved the case in court; and recollect it was im perative that you should recover, I do not
say actually obtain, substantial damages. Having proceeded thus far, you should have employed a proctor and instituted a suit in the ecclesiastical courts for a divorce a meitsa et thoro. Your case is a very clear one, and I doubt not you would have obtained a divorce. After this step your course was quite plain; you had only to obtain a private act of Parliament to dissolve your marriage. This you would get, as a matter of course, upon payment of the proper fees and proof of the facts. "You might then have lawfully married again. I perceive, prisoner, that you scarcely appear to understand what I am saying to you; but let me assure you that these steps are constantly taken by persons who are desirous to dissolve an unhappy marriage; it is true, for the wise man has said it, ' A hated woman when she is married is a thing the earth can not bear,' and that ' a bad wife is to her hus band as rottenness to his bones.' You, how ever, must bear this great evil, or must adopt the remedy prescribed by the Constitution of your country. I see you would tell me that these proceedings would cost you £1,000, and that all your small stock in trade is not worth £100. Perhaps it may be so; the law has nothing to say to that. If you had taken these proceedings you would have been free from your present wife, and the woman whom you have secondly married would have been a respectable matron. As you have not done so, you stand there a convicted culprit, and it is my duty to pass sentence upon you; You will be imprisoned for one day." It is astonishing to recall that Douglas Jerrold wrote of him : " Thank God the world is not made of Justice Maules, nor are there many natures like his! " His associates knew that what they uttered was being measured by that too critical intellect. Carry ing out his high standard of propriety, he re tired from the benchin 1856, as soon as he found he could not do full justice to the duties of his high office. Two years later he died, at his home in Hyde Park Gardens, aged only sixty-nine.
