The Hillsborough Recorder

From the London Morning Chronicle we have transcribed the trial of Nicholas Baker for the murder of his wife, mainly because, in the course of that trial, Mr. Justice Park declared that, from the books he had been able to collect, and upon his own knowledge of the principles of the law of England, he should say that not only the husband did not possess a right to correct his wife, like his children or his apprentice, but he possessed no right to chastise her at all.

We believe that this is the first positive decision to this effect that has taken place in the British courts; and, as such, is worthy of all possible publicity. Indeed, it is somewhat surprising that in a country possessing the civilization that exists in Great Britain, the courts have suffered the question so long to remain in uncertainty. The right to chastise a wife is not only savage and cowardly in itself, but destroys that equality without which matrimonial affection and harmony could not subsist. Its exercise ought, therefore, in the first place, to have been severely punished by the courts, and the law should have been unequivocally established.

In the only case within our recollection in this country, the court of common pleas of Philadelphia, some years ago, explicitly laid down the law, that the husband had no right to inflict chastisement on his wife. It is, in fact, disgraceful to man that the question was ever for a moment entertained.

Philadelphia Pennsylvanian.