“That this power of imprisonment was not a mere _brutum fulmen_, but a terrible reality in former days, may be learned from a Suffolk case, early in the present century. A wife in contempt of court, a lady of good family in Suffolk, was imprisoned in Ipswich goal for disobeying a decree requiring her to render conjugal rights to her husband. At the end of a year and ten months she became in want of the common necessaries of life, and was reduced to the gaol allowance of bread and water; she suffered from rheumatism and other maladies, which were aggravated by the miseries of her imprisonment; and after many years of such suffering died in prison—for she never went back to her husband.”—(“The Decision in the Clitheroe Case and its Consequences,” p. 9.) But while the law has thus been needfully amended in England, a further evil effect has meantime supervened in our dependency of India; for this faculty of imprisonment by the Courts for non-compliance with their order in the event specified, which has been abolished in England, seems to be still existent and appealed to in our Indian Courts. (See Note XXII., 2.) The strange thing is that the suit for the restitution of conjugal rights is not a matter of native law, but an inadvertent and apparently entirely unintentional introduction from our English system; the very judges who administer the Indian Law being at a loss to account for its appearance in their practice. One authority, in seeking the solution of the problem, declares that—“Mr. —— ‘could not find any enactment directly establishing suits for the restitution of conjugal rights, and believed there were none; but that they had been recognised in a Stamp Act, and again in the Limitation of Suits Act passed in 1871.’ The material point is that Indian lawgivers have not consciously given this remedy to those who did not possess it before; but that it has slipped into our law without design. Mr. —— thinks ‘That this class of suits was known in the old Supreme Courts, in the Presidency towns, and as between Europeans; and it was not an improper subject of legislation as regards Stamp Duty or Limitation by Time: but being spoken of without qualification was held by the High Courts to be available for all classes of the Indian communities.’ If this theory be true, it accounts in an easy way for a change effected without any intention of the Rulers at all. It is worth enquiry into under this aspect.” Yes, enquiry and rectification hand in hand! _Id._—“... _and part divine_.”