Divorces on Condition. Lives, pp. 510, 511.) Lord Campbell, writ ing in 1845, apprehends that the Sovereign, if so pleased, might be examined as a wit ness in any case, civil or criminal, but must be sworn, although there would be no temporal sanction to the oath. He likewise states that in the Berkeley Peerage case, be fore the House of Lords in 1811, there was an intention of calling George IV., then Prince Regent, and as such exercising some
royal prerogatives, as a witness; the general opinion being that he might have been ex amined, but not without having been sworn. It seems strange to think that eighty years afterwards another stage of this Berkeley Peerage case deprived one of the parties in a case in which the Prince of Wales of the day was actually examined of the advocacy of the Attorney-General. — Laiv Times.
DIVORCES ON CONDITION. By David Werner Amram. 'T'HERE is perhaps no more striking
- . and anomalous feature in any legal
code than the provision of the ancient Hebrew law embraced under the above title. It evinces great subtlety on the part of its framers, and at the same time is a mark of the genuine humanitarian spirit in which the Pharisaical Doctors laid down the la v and execated it. Th< Mosaic law (Deut. xxv. 5-10) pro vided that when a man died leaving a widow without issue, it became the duty of his brother to marry her; or if he refused to Jo so, to express publicly his intention and submit to the ceremony of Halisa, or draw ing off the shoe, which was performed be fore the elders of the city. The widow drew off the shoe of her unloving brother-in-law, and spitting before him, said, " Thus shall be done to the man who will not build up his brother's house " The purpose of this law was to preserve the memory and name of the deceased in the names of the children of his wife begotten by his brother; it had the further effect of preventing the too minute subdivision of the property of the deceased, for the brother marrying the widow became the sole heir. Thus under the Mosaic law the woman on the death of her husband be came ipso facto the betrothed of her brother-
in-law, and no stranger could marry her until the brother-in-law had renounced his right. Naturally this law often worked a hard ship, the woman being compelled to marry a man who might be personally odious to her, and perhaps to pay heavily for the privilege of being released from the enforced be trothal. To meet this case the Rabbis in vented the Divorce on Condition, whereby the law of Moses, which could not be abro gated, was neatly evaded. The husband on his sick-bed, believing the end to be near, gave to his wife a Bill of Divorcement, coupled with the condition that it should not go into effect until his death, and be null and void should he recover from his sickness. The effect of this was that she remained a wife until the moment of his death, when by force of the condition an nexed to the Bill of Divorcement, she be came not his widow but a divorced woman, and thus was saved from the brother-in-law. To meet the objection that there could be no divorce after death, the Rabbis argued that the Bill of Divorcement worked retro actively, and that it dated as of the day of its delivery to the wife; that the death of the husband was like any other event, merely a condition, which being fulfilled made the divorce absolute and indefeasible.
