From Cranmer's day until 1857 no divorce law was passed. In the meantime, if you were a peer with a naughty wife, you got an Act of Parliament passed to divorce her. It was an expensive proceeding and, incidentally, of doubtful legality. But the eugenics of nobility and the purity of breed in the peerage made some such machinery necessary, and so you had "An Act for Lord Roos to marry again," and others similarly entitled. Only the very rich at the rate of two or three a year could avail themselves of this procedure, and, of course, the very poor had not a look in at all. It was a judge who awakened the world to the iniquity of it all, and he did it by a jest. There are some funny things said in the High Court to-day, but they do not seem to be designed to push the world along as this witty speech did. It was Mr. Justice Maule--a sly dog, the hero of many a good circuit story--that one about the threatening letters, for instance--it was Maule J. in a bigamy case, _Regina_ v. _Thomas Hall_, tried at Warwick in 1845, who woke up the country to the fact that there was a divorce problem, and that it wanted solving. Hall was a labouring man convicted of bigamy and called up for sentence. Maule, in passing sentence, said that it did appear that he had been hardly used. "I have indeed, my Lord," called out poor Hall, "it is very hard." "Hold your tongue, Hall," quoth the judge, "you must not interrupt me. What I say is the law of the land which you in common with everyone else are bound to obey. No doubt it is very hard for you to have been so used and not to be able to have another wife to live with you when Maria had gone away to live with another man, having first robbed you; but such is the law. The law in fact is the same to you as it is to the rich man; it is the same to the low and poor as it is to the mighty and rich and through it you alone can hope to obtain effectual and sufficient relief, and what the rich man would have done you should have done also, you should have followed the same course." "But I had no money, my Lord," exclaimed Hall. "Hold your tongue," rejoined the judge, "you should not interrupt me, especially when I am only speaking to inform you as to what you should have done and for your good. Yes, Hall, you should have brought an action and obtained damages, which probably the other side would not have been able to pay, in which case you would have had to pay your own costs perhaps a hundred or a hundred and fifty pounds." "Oh, Lord!" ejaculated the prisoner.