Note 1022 — Chapter XV · DIVORCE IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES

This is the view of Swift, Digest, I, 21, 22, referring to Blackstone, Commentaries, III, 94. Thus a decision of the Connecticut superior court of errors seems to limit "fraud" as a cause of divorce to "corporal imbecility": 1 Day, Reports, 111. But in 1848, at the August term of the superior court for Litchfield county, "it was held ... upon a consultation with judges of the Supreme Court, that where a woman at the time of her marriage was pregnant with a bastard child, and fraudulently concealed the fact from her husband, this was a sufficient cause for a divorce."—Dutton and Cowdrey's Revision of Swift's Digest (New Haven, 1851), I, 22; citing 9 Conn. Rep., 321; and for New York, where a similar practice prevailed, 4 Johnson, Chancery Rep., 343. In the earlier period doubtless a still broader meaning was given to the term "fradulent contract": see the examples for illustration in Swift, Digest, I, 22.