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"be; and for guarding against the many artful contrivances "set on foot to seduce young gentlemen and ladies of fortune, and to draw them into improper, perhaps infamous, "marriages."-Hansard's Parliamentary Hist. vol. 15, p.11. Now it is sufficiently apparent that the marriage ceremony, according to the rubric of the church of England, was a ceremony, or solemnity, required by the bill, which was not "absolutely necessary for ascertaining the marriage, and rendering it public" but it is equally apparent that the inconvenience of this ceremony to any classes of his majesty's subjects, (except Jews and Quakers, who, as we have seen, are exempted from its operation) was never anticipated. It is not at all improbable that the circumstances under which this bill was carried through parliament, might have contributed to the defect in question; for it is extremely to be regretted that so important an enactment should have been made a party measure, and that it should have been hurried through parliament, and passed into a law, more, indeed, out of respect, asit should seem, to the minister, than to the measure; for it appears pretty apparent that many of the ministerial members were averse to the bill, and staid away from the house that they might not be called upon tó vote. This bill, though it had been drawn by the judges, was sent down to the Commons so full of imperfections, as to compel them, in consequence, to make so many alterations therein, . that when it was urged that the house should pass it out of respect to those who had framed it, Mr. H. Fox, Secretary of War, (afterwards Lord Holland) ridiculed the idea by stating that it was, in fact, "quite a new bill. There is not

so much as one clause-hardly, indeed, a sentence-that "stands the same as it was in the bill sent down to us from "the other house; and besides there have been no less than "six or seven new clauses added; but this I need not tell you, Sir, I shall shew it; for it may most properly be said "that it appears prima facie."— Hansard, vol. 15, p. 67.

* It is gratifying to find ourselves supported in this view of the question by an authority from which support might least have been expected. "The New Times" Journal, edited by a Doctor of the Civil Law, made the following observation, on remarking last year upon Mr. Smith's motion for relief. "Among the means adopted by the Marriage Act to prevent Clandestine Marriages, the principal is to compel all persons in England, except Jews and Quakers, to be married according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England. Now this was a provision in no degree necessary to prevent minors from being married clandestinely. It might tend to produce that effect; but so might five thousand other measures which it is easy to devise."

Here Mr. Fox is represented to have held up the bill with all the additions, alterations, and erasures it had sustained; and, to the infinite amusement of the house, to have pro nounced a parody on Anthony's oration over the mangled body of Cæsar.-Debrett, vol. 3, p. 180.

The bill, notwithstanding the opposition thus made to it in parliament, finally passed; but, although its objects were, as we incline to believe, beneficial, it was so unpopular at first with the public, that, like a more recent marriage bill; the people deserted the churches when it was first read to them; and, as appears from a public journal, the shop of Parson Keith was crowded with customers down to the last hour that he was allowed by law to keep it open. "Sunday;

24, being the last day before the commencement of the Marriage Act, before eleven o'clock forty-five couple were "married at Mr. Keith's chapel; and when they ceased neat "one hundred pair had been joined together, two men being constantly and closely employed in filling up licences for "that purpose."-Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 24, p. 141.

By a letter from the Honourable Horace Walpole to the Honourable Henry Seymour Conway, which will be found. in the Walpole Papers, and which we have inserted below, the reader will derive a lively impression of the progress of this bill through the lower house of parliament."

*Strawberry Hill, May 24, 1753.-It is well you are married. How would my Lady A- have liked to be asked in a parish church, for three Sundays running? I really believe she would have worn her weeds for ever, rather than have passed through so impudent a ceremony! What do you think? But you will want to know the interpretation of this preamble: Why there is a new bill, which, under the notion of clandestine marriages, has made such a general rummage and reform in the office of matrimony that every Strephon and Chloe-every Dowager and her -will have

as many impediments and formalities to undergo as a treaty of peace. Lord Bath invented this bill, but had drawn it so ill that the Chancellor (Lord Hardwick) was forced to draw a new one; and then grew so fond of his own creature that he has crammed it down the throats of both houses, though they gave many a gulp before they could swallow it. The Duke of Bedford attacked it first with great spirit and mastery, but had little support, though the Duke of Newcastle did not vote. The lawyers were all ordered to nurse it through the house; but, except the poor Attorney General, (Sir Dudley Ryder) who is nurse, indeed, to all intents and purposes, and did amply gossip over it—not one of them said a word. Nugent shone extremely in opposition to the bill, and, though every now and then on the precipice of absurdity, kept clear of it with great humour, and wit, and argument, and was unanswered. Yet we were beat. Last Monday it came into the committee, Charles Townshend acted a very good speech, with great cleverness, and drew a picture of his own story and his father's tyranny, with, at least, as much parts as modesty. Mr. Fox mumbled the chancellor and his

It appears also that the amendments and alterations that had been produced in this bill by the opposition, were designed to defeat its adoption when returned to the Lords; this object, however, failed, as the Lords, in order to out-manœuvre the tactics of the opposition in the lower house, consented to pass the bill, even though it appeared before them like Banquo's ghost, with twenty mortal murders on its head. That such was their policy we collect from the testimony of an eye witness, the Rev. Dr. Birch, who had attended the House of Lords to watch the fate of the bill; and who, in a letter to the Honourable Philip York, preserved in the Hardwick Papers, reports" My Lord Chancellor then rose, "and began a most spirited speech of near three quarters of "an hour, with declaring his concurrence to all the amendments, though some of them evidently weakened the bill, as sent down from that house, since the substance of it "was of so much moment to the nation, and these defects might be supplied by a subsequent one. He hoped their lordships would act as their predecessors had done in the "case of the act of succession, under King William, (if he might compare great things with small) when the Commons, "who were generally thought ill affected to it, clogged it with "so many unpracticable limitations, in order to prevent their lordships from passing it; who, on the other hand, wisely "consented to the whole for the sake of securing the "succession itself, resolving to wait for some future oppor"tunity to retrench the exceptionable clauses connected with it."

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Unfortunately for the dissenters of England, although these observations were delivered seventy years ago, the future opportunity for retrenching the exceptionable clauses connected with the marriage bill has never yet arrived. True it is that the inconvenience of one of the clauses of this bill to the dissenters was not foreseen, for we have examined carefully all the records of the debates upon this bill in parliament, as well as the discussions to which it gave rise out of parliament, and, with the exception of the clause granting relief

lawyers, and pinned the plan of the bill upon a pamphlet he had found of Dr. Gally's, where the doctor, recommending the French scheme of matri mony, says 'It was found that fathers were too apt to forgive.' The gospel,' I thought, said Mr. Fox, enjoined forgiveness, but pious Dr. Gally thinks 'fathers are too apt to forgive.' Mr. Pelham, extremely in his opinion against the bill, and in his inclination too, was forced to rivet it; and, without speaking one word for it, taught the house to vote for it, and it carried against the chairman's leaving the chair, by 165 to 84."

was

from the operation of the bill to Jews and Quakers, we can find no trace of this point ever having come into discussion.* But, as it appears there were many known and admitted imperfections in this bill, it may reasonably be supposed that there were others unknown, and not anticipated, when it passed into a law.

We have shown, satisfactorily, we trust, that it was never the object of the Legislature, in passing the marriage law, to expose dissenters to civil disabilities, or to impose upon them a ceremony in violation of their consciences. That, at the time of passing this act, the dissenters should not themselves have been alive to the inconvenience to which it exposed them, need excite little surprise, when it is

* Doctors Gally, Tunstall, Stebbing, and Ibbetson; Sir T. Leman, Joseph Sayer, Esq. and also various anonymous writers published their sentiments upon the marriage law, between the years 1750 and 1755.

An instance of this description will sufficiently illustrate our meaning? The Marriage Act had declared that all marriages, to be legal, must be published by banns "in the parish church, or in some public chapel, "in which public chapel banns of matrimony have been usually published." Twenty-eight years after, by a decision in the Court of King's Bench, upon a pauper case, it was ruled that all marriages, the banns of which had been published in churches, or chapels, not existing at the time of passing the act, were illegal. Upon which alarming decision Lord Beauchamp brought in a bill "To remedy certain inconveniences in the Marriage Act." Upon the debate in the lower house, Mr. Fox, (Charles) who appears to have possessed an hereditary opposition to the Marriage Act, having discovered that the clergymen who had celebrated marriage in any of the new churches, or chapels, were liable to the pains and penalties described in the act, sarcastically remarked "There was also another provision in the act that required expla'nation; and, if the noble lord had not taken notice of it in his bill, the "omission would certainly be supplied; for all persons who had solemnized "marriages in any of these new chapels were, at present, liable to transpor"tation. Under danger of that penalty stood, at present, a vast number of clergymen, and some prelates, in the upper house; but, as America would "not receive them, they must go to the Justitia hulk, which, to be sure, would "be a terrible thing; and he hoped the house would interfere to save these "reverend and right reverend-gentlemen from so horrid a fate. It was "an absolute fact that several, if not all, of the bishops had transgressed in “this way; and, by the bye, the house might have the mortification to see bishops in their lawn sleeves, instead of preaching the word, heaving ballast on "the Thames." And here, perhaps, it may not be impertinent to the argument to remark that, like the new churches and chapels that had sprung up since the passing the Marriage Act, so are the new opinions and principles of religious liberty and dissent; neither the one nor the other having been contemplated by the framers of the act. Far be it from us to pursue the comparison further, or to insinuate that the consequences of the latter, to the bishops and clergy, may be the same as Mr. Fox had apprehended in the instance of the former!

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considered how few were the numbers of dissenters who, at that time, disbelieved the doctrine of the Trinity; and that, until within a very few years, even the most enlightened Unitarians were found to conform to the marriage ceremony without scruple or objection. It is time, in fact-it is the progress of knowledge, and a better understanding of the principles of dissent-which have chiefly produced the difficulty of which we complain. The first occasion on which we are enabled to discover that the injustice of the Marriage Act to Unitarian dissenters, had caught the attention of any parliamentary speaker, is in the year 1792, when Mr. Fox, on a motion for leave to bring in a bill for relief of Unitarians, is reported to have expressed himself as follows: "And here he could not help taking notice also "of the Marriage Act--an act to which he was radically so "much an enemy, that he should, whenever he had the "least encouragement, make a third attempt to obtain its "repeal. He had made two, and had succeeded in that "house, but had always been thwarted in the House of "Lords. The day, he hoped, would arrive when he should "have better fortune with their lordships. The Marriage Act it was his wish to alter in that part which provided an exemption only for Jews and Quakers The necessity of a more ample exemption he proved from the case of "two women, confined in Nottingham jail, for non-compli

ance with the provisions of the Marriage Act. In short he "declared it to be his wish to extirpate heresy by the old "method of fire; not, however, by burning victims, but by “BURNING THE VARIOUS NOXIOUS ACTS!”—Parliamentary History, vol. 29, p. 1380.

We trust that we have sufficiently established our view of the Marriage Act-namely, that it was never designed to disturb the religious rights of any sect or party; we may briefly add, that the truth of our position is confirmed by the circumstance that Scotland was exempted from the act, all sects then, as now, being allowed to marry agreeably to their own forms; and further, that, when the inconvenience of the Marriage Act was felt in Ireland, a law was passed by the Irish parliament, enabling dissenters to marry before their own congregations. This, then, is our case-as protestant dissenters, we claim that which, even if we had never possessed, we should demand to be granted to us! but which having possessed we claim to be restored to us! Nor can we better express our views on the subject of marriage; or better, perhaps, conclude this division of our subject, than