Every now and then, while the courts sit at Westminster, the general public derives an immense amount of entertainment from what are described as breach of promise cases. It is true there is a wonderful sameness about them. The defendant is amorous, and quotes a great deal of poetry. The court vastly enjoys the perusal of his letters, and the papers quote them entire and unabridged. The lady suffers much, and the public sympathies are decidedly with her. Of course there are some atrocious cases, for which the men who figure in them cannot be punished too severely; but as a rule, we do think the men have the worst of it. A young man is thrown into the company of an attractive young female; they both have little to do at the time, and naturally fall in love. She has as much to do with the matter as he, and yet, if he begins to think that he cannot keep a wife—that the marriage will not promote the happiness of the parties concerned—that the affair was rash, and had better be broken off—he is liable to an action for breach of promise. Such cases are constantly occurring. The jury being decidedly romantic—thinking love in a cottage to be Elysium—forgetting the vulgar saying that when poverty comes in at the door love flys out of the window—mark their sense of the enormity of the defendant’s conduct in refusing to make an imprudent marriage, by awarding to the lady substantial damages. Now, we can understand how English jurymen—generally men with marriageable daughters, can easily make up their minds to give damages in such cases, but we more than 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. 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.