ing the names of things, " putting evil for good and good for evil, bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter," can mislead his judg

ment.

The bill was thrown out, by a majority of seven.

UPON THE ADULTERY BILL;

MAY 23, 1800.

On the 2d of April 1800, Lord AUCK, LAND, after expatiating very forcibly and eloquently upon the enormous increase of the vice of adultery, and the perversion as well as abuse of many divorce-bills which had passed the Legislature of this country, moved to bring in a bill to prevent any person divorced for adultery from intermarrying with the guilty person. The bill was accordingly brought in; and upon the third reading, on the 23d of May, a very animated debate arose; in which the Bishop of ROCHESTER thus delivered his sentiments.

MY LORDS,

"It may seem that I ought to rise with great diffidence before your Lordships, after the admonition I have received, from a noble earl* who spoke early in this night's debate, of my utter incapacity to form any judgment in a matter of the sort now before the House. But, my Lords, I am encouraged, by the example of the noble and learned lord upon the woolsack, and by the example of a right reverend prelate near me; who, notwithstanding they were equally with myself included in the incapacity imputed in common to recluses of the law and to recluses of the church-to legal and ecclesiastical monks, have nevertheless adventured to give their opinion upon the present occasion. But, my Lords, much more than by the ex

The Earl of CARLISLE.

ample of the noble and learned lord upon the woolsack, much more than by the example of the right reverend prelate near me, I feel myself emboldened by the public judgment of my country-by repeated and express declarations in the statutebook. My Lords, at a time when there was little partiality for the authority of the church, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, it is repeatedly asserted in the statutes— asserted as the ground of many particular enactments, that the proper judges in causes matrimonial are divines and canonists; that divines and canonists are the persons best qualified to judge of the crime of adultery-what is to be deemed adultery-what punishments should be applied to it. And the temporal judges in those times gave the same opinion: When prohibition was prayed to stop proceedings in the ecclesiastical courts in causes of adul

tery, it was constantly refused; and re fused upon this avowed principle, by the Justices in the Court of King's Bench, -that the ecclesiastical courts were the proper courts to have cognizance of adultery, because it is a matter in which divines and canonists are the most competent judges. That branch therefore of the law with which the present question is most immediately connected, the wisdom of our ancestors has placed in the hands of those whom the noble earl pronounces incapable of forming any sound judgment in such matters.

σε

My Lords, I was perfectly astonished at the reflections which the noble earl thought proper to cast upon the ecclesiastical courts. One of his lordship's great objections to the present bill is, that, introducing a new punishment of adultery, it nevertheless reserves the jurisdiction of