The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1858-04-06 00:00:00

PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS.

MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED Wines SISTER.—A
Bill brought in by Viscount Bury, M.P. Mr. Schneider,
and Mr. M. Manes,. proposes to legalize marriage with
• deceased wife's ouster. It repeals the statutory pro-
hibition of such marriages, and declares that no marriage
which bee been or hereafter shall be celebrated at any
time or place whatever, within or without this realm,
between a men and the sister of his late wife shall be
void or voidable by reason only of the affinity of the
parties, or by reason of any canonical or other objection
or impediment founded only on such affinity. No
clergyman in holy orders of the United Church of
England and Ireland will be compelled to solemnize
such marriages, or be liable to any suit, penalty or con-
sure for solemnizing or refusing to solemnize them.
The Act will not extend to marriages hereafter con-
tracted in Scotland, There is • provision for saving

-

PATRIOTIC FUND.—The first and second Seports of the
Royal Commissioners of the Patriotic Fund have been
published in the form of a blue-book. The second re.
port is dated Februsry 9, 1858. The Patriotic Fund
now amounts to £1,453,045, and since the restoration of
peace a more liberal provision has been made for widows
and orphans by an increased scale of allowances. It has
been decided to endow an institution for the education
of 300 daughters of soldiers, sailors, and marines, and •
sum of money has been set apart for the establishment
of a similar institution for the !SODS of the same. The
Commissioners have bought the right of a limited num-
ber of presentations to Wellington College, the Cam-
bridge Asylum, the Naval and Military Schools of
Portsmouth and P:ymouth, and the Royal Naval Female
School. The total number of the widows of the primary
class who had &dully applied for relief up to the latest
return is 3,156, and in connection with them wore 3,840
children, exclusive of 166 orphans who had lost both
parents. Of the above, 44 widows, 192 children, and
three orphans have died since placed on the list. The
total number of second class—that of officers' widows
and children—in the receipt of allowances from the fund
is 351 (122 widows, 217 children, and 127 orphans
bereaved of both parents.) The Commissioners next
advert to certain charges adduced against them by the
Duke of Norfolk and Archbishop Cullen. The
correspondence on the subject is given in the appendix
to the report. The Commissioners say that they have
entered with reluctance into the refutation of these
painful accusations, but they think it due to the Queen,
the public, and themselves to repudiate and unequivocally
contradict charges so erroneous, so derogatory, and so
calculated to check the future flow of national bene-
volence in the direction of similar charities, by under-
mining confidence in the integrity of the public bodies
to whom their management may be intrusted. An ac-
count in the appendix allows that of the Patriotic Fund
£884,990 was derived from England and Wales, £60,046
from Ireland, £149,746 from Scotland, £12,099 from the
army, navy, dockyards, hospitals, civil service, and
police; £315,389 from British possessions abroad; and
£30,771 from British reaidenta and others abroad. The
receipts of the fund up to the 31st of December, 1857,
were £1,645,921, and the expenditure £219,219, leaving
a balance of £1,426,702, of which sum £1,409,999 has
been invested in terminable annuities, colonial stocks,
railway debentures, and Turkish Four per Cent. Deben-
tures. The sum of £16,687 is deposited as cash in the
Bank of England. The total assets are estimated at
£1,384,628, and the liabilities at £1,342,115, leaving a
balance of £42,512. Such is a synopsis of the report.