[146] Act of March 10, 1803: _Stat. of Miss. Ter._ (1816), 252-54.
[147] Constitution of 1817, Art. VI, sec. 17: POORE, _Charters_, II, 1064; carried out by act of June 15, 1822: _Code of Miss._ (1848), 496.
[148] _Laws_ (1833), 235 ff.; Const. of 1832, Art. VII, sec. 15: POORE, _Charters_, II, 1077. The omission of the clause expressly requiring legislative sanction in the constitution of 1832 seems clearly to be intended to abolish legislative divorce. Yet the act of 1840 makes the decrees of the courts "final and conclusive, as fully as though the same had been confirmed by the legislature;" from which language one would naturally infer that the legislature had continued to ratify divorces after the constitution went into effect: _Laws_ (1840), 51.
Legislative divorce is prohibited by the constitution of 1868, Art. IV, sec. 22: POORE, _Charters_, II, 1084; and by Art. IV, secs. 87 and 90 of the constitution of 1890: _New York Convention Manual_, Part II, Vol. I, 1067 (1894).
Alabama, as a part of the Mississippi Territory, was, of course, affected by the act of 1803 above cited.[149] Resort to the legislature may have been practiced from the beginning. At any rate, during the existence of the Alabama Territory--from 1817 to 1819--ten divorces were thus obtained.[150] The people seem to have been so much in love with the custom that it is sanctioned, on the usual co-operative plan, by the constitution of 1819. The sixth article of that instrument requires that all decrees of the courts granting absolute dissolution of wedlock shall be confirmed by two-thirds of each house of the assembly, precisely in the same form as by the constitution of Mississippi two years earlier.[151] The act of the next year, conferring jurisdiction in such cases on the circuit courts and defining the causes of divorce, directs that the record of evidence made by the court in each suit shall be sent to the speaker of the house of representatives, who is to open and have it read before the members.[152]
[149] The act also appears in _Digest of Laws of Ala._ (1823), 252.
[151] Art. VI, sec. 3, Const. of 1819: _Digest_ (1823), 255: POORE, _Charters_, I, 42.
[152] Act. of Dec. 21, 1820: _Digest_ (1823), 256.