[162] Const. of 1850, Art. II, sec. 32: POORE, _op. cit._, I, 671. [163] See the Index to _Acts of the Gen. Assembly_ for each year, 1809-50. [164] Act of Feb. 23, 1837: _Acts_ (1836-37), 323, 324. A few years later the Kentucky assembly accomplished a feat which surely "breaks the record" in the history of social legislation. On the 4th of March, 1843, in one short act of less than two pages of type the hymeneal bonds of thirty-seven couples were severed by one fatal clip of the lawmakers' shears; while, in addition, room is found in the bill to make provision for the children and to restore the maiden names of some of the women, but not for any mention of the causes.[165] [165] _Acts of the Gen. Assembly_ (1842-43), 205, 206. It is in Georgia, however, that the divorce laws and judicial decisions reveal the strangest vicissitudes and the most singular vagaries. To understand the course of events it is essential in the outset to observe two important facts. The common law, it will be remembered,[166] was, with certain limitations, adopted by the state in 1784; and the constitution of 1798 permits "two-thirds of each branch of the legislature to pass acts of divorce," but only after the parties shall have had a fair trial before the superior court, and a "verdict shall have been obtained authorizing a divorce upon legal principles."[167] It would have been hard to select a phrase more ambiguous than the clause last quoted. Just what are the "legal principles" referred to? Are they the principles of the English ecclesiastical law, as constituting a part of the common law made binding in 1784? Are they perhaps to be sought in previous enactments of the state or province of Georgia? No such statutes have been discovered; and no divorce seems ever to have been granted, unless by the assembly after the Revolution. With this analysis of the problem before us, the course of legislation during the half-century following the adoption of the constitution of 1798 may now be traced. [166] See chap. xv, sec. ii. [167] Const. of 1798, Art. III, sec. 9: _Digest of Laws of Ga._ (1801), 40; POORE, _op. cit._, I, 394.