han question the invariable justice of such a
course. When affection has died out, we can conceive no greater curse
than a marriage; yet either that must be effected, or the jury will
possibly agree to damages that may ruin the defendant for life. This we
deem bad, nor do we think that a woman should always have before her the
certainty that the promise given in that state of mind, which poets
describe as brief insanity, an amiable jury will consider as an
equivalent to an I.O.U. to any amount they please. We do protest against
confounding a legal promise to marry with a promise to pay the bearer on
demand 1000 pounds. We rather fear that this distinction is likely to be
overlooked, not but that occasionally an action for breach of promise has
a very happy effect. It serves as a moral lesson to ardent youths of an
amorous disposition. It also furnishes the broken-hearted and forsaken
fair with a dowry, which has been known to purchase her a husband in
almost as good a state of preservation as the gentleman who was to have
borne that honoured name. All that we find fault with is the number of
such cases.

A gay deceiver is no enviable character for any respectable man to wear.
No man of mental or moral worth would voluntarily assume it. But a
spinster coming to a court of justice, and saying to the defendant, "You
have taken my heart, give me your purse," is no very desirable position
for a woman, though she may have the fortitude and strength of mind of a
Mrs. Caudle herself. At any rate, the legal view of woman is very
different to the poetical one, and for ourselves we infinitely prefer the
latter. The view of the jury is, that a woman not marrying a man who has
evidently no love for her, or he would not have married another, is to
the plaintiff an injury--we think it is a happy escape--and an injury
which deepens as the courtship lengthens. The jury reasons that the
plaintiff, Mary Brown, is as good-tempered a girl as ever lived--that
provided she could but marry she did not care who made her his wife. The
position of the sexes is reversed, and the woman sings--

"How happy could I be with either,
Were t'other dear charmer away."

According to the jury, if Jones had not married Mary Brown, Jenkins
would--consequently hers is a double loss. So that if a woman reaches
the ripe age of thirty, by this arithmetic she is more wronged than she
would have been had she been a blooming lass of twenty. I