"Don't interrupt me, Hall," said Maule, "but attend. But even then you must not have married again. No, you should have gone to the Ecclesiastical Court and then to the House of Lords, where, having proved that all these preliminary matters had been complied with, you would then have been able to marry again! It is very true, Hall, you might say, 'Where was all the money to come from to pay for all this?' And certainly that was a serious question as the expenses might amount to five or six hundred pounds while you had not as many pence." "As I hope to be saved, I have not a penny--I am only a poor man." "Well, don't interrupt me; that may be so, but that will not exempt you from paying the penalty for the felony you have undoubtedly committed. I should have been disposed to have treated the matter more lightly if you had told Maria the real state of the case and said, 'I'll marry you if you choose to take your chance and risk it,' but this you have not done." And so the judge gave Hall three months or, as some say, four. But that was because he had not told Maria all about it. It was for not playing cricket, not for breaking the law. And where the parties commit bigamy out of sheer respectability and a desire to placate Mrs. Grundy and have some marriage lines in a teapot on the mantelpiece to show the lady who lives next door, the judges, providing there is no deception, wisely treat the offence as something far less deserving of imprisonment than non-payment of rates. Why the police prosecute in these cases the chief constable only knows. And the scorn and irony that Maule poured on the law of divorce roused the public conscience, and there was a Royal Commission in 1850 and a Divorce Act in 1857, and the result was the Divorce Court as we know it, an excellent tribunal for the matrimonial troubles of well-to-do people, but of no use to poor Hall and Maria. For Maule's words slightly paraphrased might be as truly spoken to the bigamist of to-day as they were to poor Hall. And four years ago we had another Royal Commission, and hundreds of witnesses were examined, and papers and reports handed in, and many days spent in collating and considering the same, and much stationery consumed. It was a shabby thing to the poor to institute this long-winded inquiry. There was nothing to inquire into. The mountain has finished groaning, and the expensive and ridiculous mouse has made his appearance--and all it comes to is that what good old Thomas Cranmer said ought to be done in 1550 the majority think might be experimented on in 1914; only--the archbishop of to-day is no longer on the side of reform.