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involving the most flagrant injustice, inasmuch as flagrant inequality, viz.:—
1. Summary Court for Separation. Open to women alone, except in the case of drunkenness (cf. Licensing Act, 1902).
2. Action for Slander. Open to women alone.
3. Duty of Husband to maintain his wife—notwithstanding her adultery.—This last a triumph of feminine privileges enacted in 1895!
It is impossible in any distribution of the main outlines of sex-privilege to avoid occasionally overlapping. One arrangement of the topics will be convenient. Let us consider women's privileges under the head of Matrimonial Law, and the Civil Law generally, and, further, of the Criminal Law.
These privileges arise indirectly from the action of the legislature, but mainly from that of the Courts, and consist of: first, the deliberate introduction of new rules of law and procedure, and, secondly, the retention of some old-world privileges of women, logical enough when women were dependent, but under modern conditions engines of tyranny against men.
MATRIMONIAL PRIVILEGES OF WOMEN.
1. Breach of Promise of Marriage.
The law of George III., punishing by damages—usually vindictive damages—violation of breach of promise of marriage. The women's privilege to commit perjury plays a great part in this process. A woman swears a man promised to marry her. Judge and jury hold this statement false, and mark the result. No one suggests that she should be indicted for perjury. On the contrary, the grateful male litigant, happy to escape, settles £3,000 on her (Gore v. Lord Sudley, 10 June, 1896).
