Three causes were alleged for the abolition of the Congress--its obscenity, its inutility, and its inconveniences. Its obscenity; for what could be more infamous, more contrary to public decency and to the reverence due to an oath than the impurity of the proof, both in its preparation and execution? Its inutility; for what could be less certain and more defective? Can it be, for one moment, imagined that a conjunction ordered by judges between two persons embittered by a law-suit, agitated with hate and fury against each other, can operate in them? Experience has shown that, of ten men the most vigorous and powerful, hardly one was found that came out of this shameful combat with success; it is equally certain that he who had unjustly suffered dissolution of his marriage, for not having given a proof of his capacity in the infamous Congress, had given real and authentic evidences of it in a subsequent marriage. This degrading mode of proof, in short, far from discovering the truth, was but the cause and foundation for impotence and falsehood. Its inconveniences; these are--the declared nullity of a legitimate marriage--the dishonour cast upon the husband, and the unjust damages, oftentimes exorbitant, which he is condemned to pay--two marriages contracted upon the dissolution of the first--both of which, according to purity and strictness, are equally unlawful--the error or the malice discovered, _ex post facto_, and, nevertheless, by the authority of the law, became irreparable. It was in the power of the magistrate, upon a complaint of impotency being alleged by a wife against her husband, to order examiners to make an inspection of the husband's parts of generation, and upon their report to decide whether there was just cause for a divorce; and this without proceeding to order the congress. The following are a few cases of this description, and are extracted from the reports and judgments of the Officialty at Paris in cases of impotency.