opinions of an opposing counsel upon accusations made by one party
behind the back of the other, who urgently demanded and was
pertinaciously refused the least opportunity of denial or defence_. He
rejected the proposal for an amicable separation, but _consented when
threatened with a suit in Doctors' Commons._' {23}

Neither John Murray nor any of Byron's partisans seem to have pondered
the admission in these last words.

Here, as appears, was a woman, driven to the last despair, standing with
her child in her arms, asking from English laws protection for herself
and child against her husband.

She had appealed to the first counsel in England, and was acting under
their direction.

Two of the greatest lawyers in England have pronounced that there has
been such a cause of offence on his part that a return to him is neither
proper nor possible, and that no alternative remains to her but
separation or divorce.

He asks her to state her charges against him. She, making answer under
advice of her counsel, says, 'That if he _insists_ on the specifications,
he must receive them in open court in a suit for divorce.'

What, now, ought to have been the conduct of any brave, honest man, who
believed that his wife was taking advantage of her reputation for virtue
to turn every one against him, who saw that she had turned on her side
even the lawyer he sought to retain on his; {24} that she was an
unscrupulous woman, who acquiesced in every and any thing to gain her
ends, while he stood before the public, as he says, 'accused of every
monstrous vice, by public rumour or private rancour'? When she, under
advice of her lawyers, made the alternative legal _separation_ or open
investigation in court for divorce, what did he do?

HE SIGNED THE ACT OF SEPARATION AND LEFT ENGLAND.

Now, let any man who knows the legal mind of England,--let any lawyer who
knows the character of Sir Samuel Romilly and Dr. Lushington, ask whether
_they_ were the men to take a case into court for a woman that had no
_evidence_ but her own statements and impressions? Were _they_ men to go
to trial without proofs? Did they not know that there were artful,
hysterical women in the world, and would _they_, of all people, be the
men to take a woman's story on her own side, and advise her in the last
issue to bring it into open court, without legal proof of the strongest
kind? Now, as long as Sir Samuel Romilly lived, this statement of
B