[172] PRINCE, _Digest_ (1837), 187, note, gives the following summary, which appears to be inconsistent: "The number of persons divorced by the legislature since the date of the present constitution up to the close of the annual session of 1835, is 291, averaging from 1800 to 1810, about 4; from 1810 to 1820, 8; from 1820 to 1830, 18, and since that time, 28 per annum." If his averages are correct, the total number for the entire period would be about 440. [173] Nov. 27, 1807: _Compilation_ (1812), 385, 386. [174] _Laws of Ga., 1810-19_ (1821), 262, 263. [175] Const. 1798, Art. III, sec. 9, amendment of 1833, in force 1835: PRINCE, _Digest_ (1837), 911; POORE, _Charters_, I, 399. Unless it be assumed that there was no serious intention to put a check upon the facility with which divorces could be obtained, it is almost incredible that a provision so loose and ambiguous should have been adopted. For the retention of the phrase "upon legal principles" still left a rich field for speculation as to the proper grounds of divorce, total or conditional; and it was equally uncertain whether the juries could determine the law as well as the facts in each case. So the courts, apparently, continued to grant as many divorces without help of the assembly as were permitted before that body lost its power to interfere. Affairs continued in this unsatisfactory condition until 1847, when suddenly what proved in the end to be a drastic remedy was administered in the case of Head _v._ Head, tried on appeal from the superior court of Monroe county. The elaborate opinion of Justice Nisbet in this suit, reviewing as it does the preceding legislation, is the best source of information for the history of divorce in Georgia. The case arose in a petition for dissolution of the marriage bond on the sole ground of abandonment of the husband by the wife, which ground, "it is too plain to admit of question," is not "recognized as a cause of divorce _a vinculo_" by the common law. On the other hand, the counsel for the appellant argued that by "a fair construction of the constitution of Georgia, and of the laws enacted to carry it into effect, the question of a divorce or not, in its totality, is submitted to the special juries; that they are the sole and final judges in all cases of what shall be a good cause of divorce, irrespective of the common law principles." To determine, therefore, the relative powers of the judge and the jury, and to discover what are the "legal principles" mentioned in the constitution, became the dual problem which the court was called upon to solve. In the outset it is held by the court that the constitution of 1798 is in restraint of divorce in three ways: (1) by transferring full jurisdiction in the first instance from the legislature to the superior courts; for before that date the assembly had exercised "unlimited power over the subject;" (2) by restraining the legislative will through requiring a fair