We who have combined to oppose this legislation maintain that this Act is unconstitutional, because it submits a case, in which the result is to the party concerned of the most enormous consequence, to trial without jury. We are well aware, while making this statement, that there is a class of cases in England which at this present time are tried without a jury. But these cases are what are called “minor cases.” Now we maintain that a woman’s honour is a point of very grave importance to her, and that no State can thrive in which it is not regarded as a very sacred question. And we maintain that a case which is to decide as to the question of a woman’s honour is by no means, nor by any stretch of language or imagination, capable of being called a “minor case.” We therefore maintain that this law, which places the determination of the fact as to a woman’s honour solely in the hands of a single justice of the peace, is as great an infringement of constitutional right, as if the determination of the fact as to whether a man were guilty of murder or not were placed in the hands of a single justice of the peace. We maintain absolutely that to deprive of jury trial a woman whose honour is the subject in question, is a breach of the English Constitution, as fundamentally expressed in that clause of Magna Charta of which we have already pointed out the importance, “We will condemn no one except by the judgment of his peers.” The decision of the question as to her honour would itself, even if followed by no legal consequences, be a sufficiently grave one to warrant what I say. But let it be observed that when the case is decided against the woman, the deprivation of her honour is followed immediately, under these Acts, by those consequences which are especially indicated in Magna Charta as the consequences which shall ensue to no one except after trial by jury. She is not only subjected to that ordeal which we assert comes distinctly within the application of the words “or anyways destroyed;” but in order to the carrying out of that ordeal, she is, by the Act, both outlawed and imprisoned in the strict meaning of these terms as used in Magna Charta. She is in fact deprived of her liberties for the space of a year. She is outlawed practically during that period, inasmuch as she is handed over to the irresponsible action of surgeons, at whose simple fiat she may be detained and imprisoned without even any order before a justice, or any oath or affidavit taken.[24] Her whole liberty is curtailed, inasmuch as she is liable to be summoned for a repetition of this ordeal at whatever times and as frequently as the surgeon thinks fit; and the entire curtailment which this is of her liberty must be evident from the fact that she is bound to appear, subject to the penalty of imprisonment, with or without hard labour. I have already said that these Acts virtually introduce a species of villeinage or slavery. I use the word