as alleged
to have committed adultery, from the suit if there should not appear to
be sufficient evidence against him or her, the object being to allow
such person to give evidence; and in 1859 it was provided that, on a
petition by a wife for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty or desertion
with adultery, the husband and wife could be competent and compellable
witnesses as to the cruelty or desertion. A few years later, however, in
1869, the subject was finally dealt with by repealing all previous rules
which limited the powers to give evidence on questions of adultery with
the safeguard that no witness in any proceeding can be asked or bound to
answer any question tending to show that he or she has been guilty of
adultery, unless in the same proceeding such witness shall have given
evidence in disproof of his or her alleged adultery. It has been held
that the principles of these enactments apply to interrogatories as well
as to evidence given in court.

It is a most remarkable omission in the act of 1857, especially when we
remember the high legal authority from whom it proceeded, that the act
nowhere defines the class of persons with regard to whom the
jurisdiction of the court should be exercised. This omission has given
rise to a misapprehension of the law which, though now set at rest,
prevailed for a considerable period, and has undoubtedly led to the
granting of divorce in several cases in which it could not legally be
given. It was supposed that the court could grant a dissolution of
marriage to all persons who had anything more than a casual and fleeting
residence within the jurisdiction of the court; and this view, although
its correctness was doubted by Lord Penzance, the judge of the divorce
court, was upheld by a majority of the judges of the court of appeal in
the case of _Niboyet_ v. _Niboyet_ (4 P. D. 1). It was supposed that
such residence gave what was termed a matrimonial domicile. But this
view was undoubtedly erroneous as regards dissolution of marriage,
although probably correct as regards judicial separation, and the true
view is no doubt that indicated with great learning and ability by Lord
Watson in a judgment given by him in the privy council in the case of
_Le Mesurier_ v. _Le Mesurier_ (1895, App. Cas. 517), that the only true
test of jurisdiction for a decree of divorce altering the status of the
parties to a marriage is to be found in the domicile of the
spouses--that is to say, of the hu