[139] _Laws_ (1814), chap. 5; also in _Haywood's Manual of the Laws of N. C._ (1819), 174-78.
[141] This inference is justified by the words of the act as quoted, and from the clause declaring "that all applications for other causes than those specified"--in the act of 1814--"shall be subject to the rules and regulations provided in said act for the causes therein mentioned."--_Acts_ (1827-28), 19, 20. The law of 1814, as to causes, appears unaltered in _Laws of the State_ (1821), II, 1292-95.
[142] POORE, _Charters_, II, 1416 (1835), 1439 (1876).
Until constitutionally prohibited in 1852-53, legislative divorce also existed in Missouri.[143] The law of 1833 endeavors to restrict the action of the assembly to cases for whose trial "before the judiciary" the law has not provided; and it forbids entirely the hearing of any petition when the causes for it "shall have accrued since the next two months preceding the sitting of the legislature." At the same time notice to the opposite party is made essential. In the case of residents, two months' written notification is required, service to be proved by affidavit. If the libellee is a non-resident, publication in a newspaper for at least three weeks successively will suffice.[144]
[143] By the ninth amendment to the constitution of 1820, ratified at the session of 1852-53: _Rev. Stat._ (1856), I, 96; POORE, _Charters_, II, 1122. The prohibition is retained in the constitution of 1875, Art. IV, sec. 53: POORE, _Charters_, II, 1175.
[144] Act of Jan. 31, 1833: _Laws of a Public and General Nature_ (1842), II, 361.
The government report shows several divorces in South Carolina for the year 1869-70; and these were probably granted by the legislature, for no divorce statute then existed.[145]
As early as 1803 the statutes of the Mississippi Territory make provision for both kinds of divorce by judicial sentence; but resort to the legislature is not prohibited.[146] Later, by the constitution of 1817 and the laws thereunder enacted, it is declared that "divorces from the bonds of matrimony shall not be granted, but in cases provided for by law, by suit in chancery;" but it is especially provided that "no decree for such divorce shall have effect until the same shall be sanctioned by two-thirds of both branches of the general assembly."[147] This unwise condition--in substance so often appearing in the enactments of the South--seems to have lasted only until 1832, when it was omitted in the constitution framed in that year. In the meantime the legislature had found plenty of work to do. The session laws of 1833, for example, contain nine divorce decrees, passed probably just before the new constitution went into effect.[148]