at least if the person, who furnishes them, is
sufficiently apprized of her elopement[t]. If the wife be indebted
before marriage, the husband is bound afterwards to pay the debt; for
he has adopted her and her circumstances together[u]. If the wife be
injured in her person or her property, she can bring no action for
redress without her husband's concurrence, and in his name, as well as
her own[w]: neither can she be sued, without making the husband a
defendant[x]. There is indeed one case where the wife shall sue and be
sued as a feme sole, viz. where the husband has abjured the realm, or
is banished[y]: for then he is dead in law; and, the husband being
thus disabled to sue for or defend the wife, it would be most
unreasonable if she had no remedy, or could make no defence at all. In
criminal prosecutions, it is true, the wife may be indicted and
punished separately[z]; for the union is only a civil union. But, in
trials of any sort, they are not allowed to be evidence for, or
against, each other[a]: partly because it is impossible their
testimony should be indifferent; but principally because of the union
of person: and therefore, if they were admitted to be witnesses _for_
each other, they would contradict one maxim of law, "_nemo in propria
causa testis esse debet_;" and if _against_ each other, they would
contradict another maxim, "_nemo tenetur seipsum accusare_." But where
the offence is directly against the person of the wife, this rule has
been usually dispensed with[b]: and therefore, by statute 3 Hen. VII.
c. 2. in case a woman be forcibly taken away, and married, she may be
a witness against such her husband, in order to convict him of felony.
For in this case she can with no propriety be reckoned his wife;
because a main ingredient, her consent, was wanting to the contract:
and also there is another maxim of law, that no man shall take
advantage of his own wrong; which the ravisher here would do, if by
forcibly marrying a woman, he could prevent her from being a witness,
who is perhaps the only witness, to that very fact.

[Footnote l: Co. Litt. 112.]

[Footnote m: _Ibid._]

[Footnote n: Cro. Car. 551.]

[Footnote o: F.N.B. 27.]

[Footnote p: Co. Litt. 112.]

[Footnote q: Salk. 118.]

[Footnote r: 1 Sid. 120.]

[Footnote s: Stra. 647.]

[Footnote t: 1 Lev. 5.]

[Footnote u: 3 Mod. 186.]

[Footnote w: Salk. 119. 1 Roll. Abr. 347.]

[Footnote x: 1 Leon. 312. This was also the practice in th