Accordingly, it was held by the court that the sole causes for "divorce in Georgia are those of the common law." For total divorce, or, more properly speaking, annulment of a voidable marriage, these causes are "pre-contract, consanguinity, affinity, and corporal infirmity;" while for a partial divorce adultery and cruelty are the only grounds recognized.
One cannot help admiring the stern moral courage which enabled the court to render this decision. At one stroke and without warning the social standing of hundreds was put in jeopardy. Those who thought themselves single found themselves married. Many who may have taken new partners became liable to actions for bigamy; and their children were bastards. The justice was aware of his grave responsibility. "The judgment we have given in this case is in repeal of the practice of the courts in a majority of the circuits, and in disaffirmance of the opinion of eminent jurists upon the bench and at the bar, and in conflict with that public sentiment which, springing out of, and strengthened by, the heretofore judicial facility which has characterized the action of the courts, tolerates and expects divorces for slight causes." At the same time, however wise, and in the event beneficent, may have been this judgment, one must also confess that in its wider bearings it reveals the dangers for society which may lurk in the unyielding logic of individual judicial opinion, should healthy public sentiment not be allowed, at least in some measure, to direct and mold the decrees of our courts of justice.[178] The hardships arising from the decision in question were redressed in 1849 by an act validating all second marriages formed in consequence of divorces granted for illegal causes by the courts or by the legislature; and the same year this extraordinary episode in social history was brought to a close by a constitutional amendment declaring that "divorces shall be final and conclusive when the parties shall have obtained the concurrent verdicts of two special juries authorized to divorce upon such legal principles as the general assembly may by law prescribe."[179]
[178] Case of Head _v._ Head, 2 _Georgia Reports_, 191-211.
[179] Const. of 1798, Art. III, sec. 9, amendment of 1849: COBB, _Digest_ (1851), 1123; POORE, _Charters_, I, 401.