The Express.
London, England, 1862-03-14 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, MARCH 14.

A susu. majority in • thin House will not be
long allowed to brand with fictitious shame mar-
riages which are legalized in almost every Pro-
testant country of Europe, which have been pro-
nounced lawful by repeated majorities of the
English Parliament, and which • large body of the
most active clergy and bishops, and the whole
body of English Protestant Dissenters, have de-
clared to be perfectly innocent. Nor is it desire-
ble on public grounds that the irrelevant and con-
tradictory arguments of journals that have re-
peatedly hedged on this question should be allowed
to mislead any section of the community as to its
real merits. Two days ago, for example, • lead-
ing contemporary, who has often exposed the utter
futility of such pretensions, took up the extreme
ecclesiastical and high church grounds of protest
against legalizing marriages with a deceased
wife's sister. Our contemporary openly sym-
pathised with those high-minded and despotic
sectarians who protest that were the legal impedi-
ment to such marriages removed, they would still
resist them as " unlawful and incestuous." Such
resistance would no doubt bring them into collision
with the civil power, but our contemporary
thinks, nevertheless, that they would be justified
in opposing, on ecclesiastical grounds, the majority
of the nation and the law of the land. Yesterday,
however, this lofty position was abandoned, and
another taken up, which is in itself entitled to far
higher respect. An attempt was made to defend
the rejection of Mr. M. Miurm' Bill on the breed
ground of Christian civilization and social progress.
"The Christian conception of the family," we are
justly told, "is something wholly different from
" that embraced by any nation of antiquity." The
Nisi. of this ...neseion thst of wilt./ wedded
love, the union of sympathy and interest between
husband and wife ; and the progress of Christian
civilization has accordingly been marked by the
higher respect attached to the marriage relation,
and the growing self restraint exercised in the in-
tercourse between the two sexes.

This law of progress is not only true but most
important ; and we am glad to me it broadly
recognised in the columns of • journal that
startled the public a few months since by the
suggestion that marriage was going out, and
scandalized not a few by endeavouring to secure
a kind of social rccsgnition for the arrangement
that was, according to the same authority, rapidly
taking its place. But we are altogether at a loss
to understand the relation of this law to Mr. N.
Moira' Bill, or how it can in any way affect the
proposal to legalize marriage with a deceased wife's
sister. Even supposing these marriages were in
some way opposed to the higher morality which
the most advanced and enlightened Christian con-
sciousness inculcates, would that alone be any
valid ground for the interference of the State—
would it in any degree justify their forcible prohibi-
tion ? There can be no doubt that the continuance
of the marriage relation is far more in harmony
with the dictates of higher morality than its dis-
ruption ; but is that any ground whatever for the
legal prohibition of divorce f And so in • multi-
tude of other cases a here the Christian conception
of duty may forbid what the law not only does but
must of necessity allow. The business of the
State is to secure our social rights and liberties,
not to enforce points of higher morality
by legal pains and penalties, and civil and reli-
gious freedom would soon be destroyed if it ever
set out on any such Quixotic crusade. One of the
greatest achievements of modern progress and
Christian civilization has been, indeed, to defiant
more accurately the true province of the State, and
to restrict its action more and more within its
legitimate sphere. eif late years the attempt to en-
force a higher morality by Government machinery
hail been wisely abandoned, not only as inexpedient
and self defeating, bet as practically impossible.
Moral ends can only be attained by moral means,
and a higher morality must be deluged by appeals
to the reason and conscience, not by legal dis-
abilities; by the gradual spread of higher and truer
views of life and duty, not by threats of fine and
imprisonment. This haa been abundantly exem-
plified in the history of social progress. Unfor-
tunately for our contemporary's argument, the
growth of a higher..inception of duty has been
invariably marked by the gradual abandonment of
mere legal attempts to enforce it. True,
Christian civilization has continually broken
in its progress tbu b-rol bonds—the mediweal,
canonical, and eceletiastical fetters—that not only
restricted on every side the lawful freedom of our
forefathers, but made the general diffusion of a
higher social morality almost impossible. Many
supporters of the existing law, indeed, try to show
that the proposed change would be inexpedient,
But nearly all the serious arguments against it
rest wholly on authority. It is, in fact, nothing
more nor less than a remnant of the vexatious
medieval system of restriction represented in the
Canon Law, and which was cunningly devised by
Romiah priests and lawyers to extend the power
and augment the resources of their Church.
The feeble hold which the prohibition still has ea
a section of society in this country is mainly doe.
not to moral or religious, but to ecclesiastical in-
fluences. The prohibition is traditional, is custo-
mary, is enjoiucd by the dominant Church, is printed
in the Prayer 11”..1‘, and is therefore right. That is
the sum and substance of the whole argument, the

ono motive of the lingering resistance spinet the'
proposed cheap. It is not only essentially emir
&Mafiosi in spirit, but it appears in the worst and
lowest form. A prohibition that rests on such •
basis is not the offspring of higher morality at aIL
It doss not came under the law of Christian pro-
gress, and, as we have shown, even if it did, that
would be no ground whatever for retaining it on
the Statute-book.

Tim Earl of MALMLABORT appeared last night
in the new character of a Reformer. He has taken
in hand certain evils and abuses existing in the
New Forest. These abuses have attained so great
• height, as we learn from the noble lord's speech,
that they have led to the foundation of an associa-
tion—a sort of League or Liberation Society—for
their removal by voluntary public effort. To
permit proved evils to be so remedied is, in the
judgment of the noble Earl, derogatory to the dig-
nity of the Government, and he has called on her
Karincrem Ministers to take the matter in hand.
As it is possible that many of our readers were not
swan that things are min in the New Forest, we
hasten to state that the noble Earl's complaint,
reduced to its true dimensions, is neither more nor
hers than that the Government does not employ

people and paythemout of the taxestokeep upiuch
a head of game as would be satisfactory to • few
gentlemen who like to sport there. This is the
"evil " which his Lordship thinks it the duty of
the Government to lessen as much as possible by
making the Quses'm forest-keepers do their duty
better. Earl Ga.s..rviu.a replied briefly and to the
point, that the noble Lord laboured under • mis-
apprehension in considering the persons employed
by the Crown as gamekeepers. " They were merely
" foresters, they did their duty satisfactorily, and
" were well paid. Their duties related entirely to
" the preservation of the timber, and the Govern-
" went could not be expected to impose taxes to
" be applied in the preservation of game for the
" benefit of gentlemen of • particular district."
So Lord MALKIIIIIVIIT'S grievance is to go unre-
&Nod

" Ern, Er sun —debauched— humiliated "—is
the legend of the phylactery which Mr. Bolo=
binds on the forehead of the Liberal party. Such
open and unadvised speaking is of course very
improper ; and it will be the duty of certain
supercilious menials to lament, perhaps to pity,
the excesses of candour in which the hon. Member
far Birmingham is prone to indulge. Mr. Baionr's
letter, however, will be read by tens of thousands
who have never been instructed in the duty of
making things pleasant, and who will be apt to
ask what can be mid in refutation of its trenchant
statements. Is it true that the composition
of the House of Commons, and the constitu-
tion and condition of the electoral body from
which it proceeds, are such that it is in vain to
expect any effectual reduction of our enormous
and increasing expenditure from Parliament ? Is
it true that the party which rose to greatness and
power with the watchwords, "Pease, Retrench-
" meat, Reform," has trampled in the dust the
only principles on which it had any pretence
to become a party f Is it true that
the Liberal party is at this moment disheartened,
divided, and weakened by the unfaithfulness of
its leaders f And is it not true that the effect of
the gradual renunciation of every obligation binding
on a Liberal government as such, is killing public
spirit, so that even the last duty that remained to
Liberal members, that of checking the estimates, is
avw asendone4 t These aim Mao pacati..m. which
may more usefully employ the pens of devoted
writers than fastidious criticism of style. Let
them be fairly faced, or soon the leaders of the
Liberal party will only have too much leisure to
ponder them.

frbe Court.