The Express.
London, England, 1862-02-19 00:00:00

To C9/40FONDIORTS.

dvertleentents ter fie 71 " London Evening
Pate r, mutt het Y dr silk% 18y fteillrb4treet, by Two
tk:lt oo the de: el ribilmliss.

MAYMAILKIT.

Turq ErEVINA, OUIL 421./rAIN. Mown. Sothsra.
Y. Yitlkata Awl K wry ; 1111ra C. Young. MIAs Oliver.
And LITILIC MIAS BUFFET AND urruc BOY BLUE; og,
Partritun and Old Daddy Latztoxi. (Atka Leclerc% dc.

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Tata Ervin g*, THE !idEL-6V lIIDNICIETT. Messrs.
Ity•kr, Jor.isa. Poltor, Meellaimes Il.Mling, Awe,.
sad Korrlutt.—And WIIITTUKITON AND HIS
C %T. Okra. J. Taut IlikTyank mad hob j C.A..lagns.

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ENntron. A woiokinn. ;OMAN. VW T. A•lamt
AND ANDROMEDA. r Matthews and that
Herbert —An.l TIIE 11 .ARDINO NCHOOL Mist lb:omM
Ni.. Italafixth. wd %Ira V. Mattlaaww—C.Jattnentx at 7i.

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TIP Promo, TUC ANVILS AOCI OP MAN.—The Fifth Act
.♦ Itoll LAP AND Jt WET.—Aad TUC KIM; or Mk ...CAM.
A. Lum.MWeera &A*. two Newham, theamntrelie
11.1 De. C. liewleaa Nra. t.tattionL—Commence et el.

SIN WATS, AT WNW, 111410 GR.
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—Kongo& AL Aamboaa, btA. Wa

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, FEB. 19.

Tee Bill fur Legalizing Marriage with a
Deceased Wife's Sister stands again for its annual
discussion in the Notices of the House of Com-
mons. Thu year, however, it presents itself under
somewhat novel circumstances. The organized
opposition which, under the title of the Marriage
Law Defence Association, distributed tracts to
the Members of the House, and concocted petitions
from rustic parishes, has died of desperation. Its
petitions bad fallen sway, but its fundshad still more
rapidly /vanished ; and with a view to avoid the
inquiries of the Bankrupt Court, it has performed
an act of " Happy Despatch" upon itself. We
shall, therefore, this year approach the discussion
of the measure free from the fictitious sentimenta-
lity with which the defuuct Association
wrought so hard to envelope it. The
" wives and mothers of England," who here
been so often invoked as the leading authority
upon • question which by no possibility could ever
affect them, well this year be less prominent fea-
tures in the debates, and the rural clodhoppers
who were eager to adorn "the parson's paper "
with their marks, attesting their deep conviction
that delicacy and sensibility forbad the legalisation
of the unions in question, will amount this year to
even • less notable total lu other respects also
the Bill comes forward now under more favoura-
ble, because less delusive, auspices. There was
long • persistent belief that those marriages, which
the common sense of the country can never be
taught to regard as really unscriptural or immoral,
however they may be opposed to mere muni-
cipal law, might be validly contracted if
celebrated iii • country in which they
are legal. With this idea hundreds of
persons have resorted to Denmark and other
countries for tbo solemnization of nuptials which
there were unobjectionable, and which they believed
would therefore be recognised without inquiry by
the Lew of this realm. That hope has now been
swept away by solemn decision of our Courts,
which have declared that in such a matter uu
English subjects can evade the reach of English
laws. But it may perhaps prove, and it will at
least not be the first time in which it has happened,
that such authoritative declaration of the law is
the iietuediate precursor to its reform. While
there was a safet)-valve, the machinery worked
with tolerable smoothness ; but now that it has
been screwed down, the chances of the whole
apparatus tieing blown to atoms are considerably
increased.

It will, indeed, be a matter for just congratula-
tion to Parliament and the country if the present
session shall see the final disappearance from our
statute-book of a legislation which in its whole
course has been marked by circumstances of dis-
grace. The prohibition first made its appearance
in the Act by which Hrsav VIII. set *aide his
marriage with KATBARINI of A RKAUON, on account
of the late but unbearable injury to his conscience
arising from the circumstance of her pre-contract
to his deceased brother. The scrupulous monarcl,
desirous to preserve his subjects from the snares
which hail caused himself so much suffering, not
merely obtained a declaration that his own mar-
riage should be, " by the authority of this present
" Parliament, definitively, clearly, and shim-
" lately declared, deemed, and adjudged to
"be against the laws of ALMIGHTY 130 D;"
but by an equally clear authority be
declared marriage with a deceased wife's sister
" to be plainly prohibited and detested by the
" law of Con," and, as such, incapable of being
made good by dispensations of human authority,
as had Vier...tame been the practice. But the
statute of Hi XXV, though thus emphatically laying
down the Divine will, was intinpreted by the civil
courts as not fining within their jurisdiction, and
they accordingly continued to recognise the va-
lidity of the prohibited marriages, unless in the
lifetime of the parties they had been declared void
by a formal sentence of an Ecclesiastical Court.
So stood the rule till, in 1834, it was desired to
place beyond the risk of even such a possible chal-
lenge the marriage within the prohibited degrees of
a nobleman of high rank. The purpose could not
be plainly avowed, and therefore the expedi,•nt
was fallen upon of pacing an Act which should de-
clare such marriages fur the future absolutely void,
while a proviso followed declaring the, all that
ha. I been already contracted should he,
not merely exempt from the near peevision,
but indisputably valid. Such is, in brief, the hit.-
tory of the law, and ratifies, if viewed as applying
merely to a civil regulation, it redouuds to the
credit of the Legidattire, it at least bears conclu-
sive proof that the Legislature has never sincerely
accounted that i was dealing with higher princi-
ples. That which tinder the Papal jurisdiction, as
it is in Catholic countries to this day, was consi-
dered a legitimate subject fur human dispensation ;
that which for three centuries after Parliament had,
at the bidding of Ilesav VIII., declared to be
plainly prohibited and detested of Coo, was left
to be accounted valid or not, according as any
one had interest to object to it ; that which,
under the existing statute, while positively forbid-
den for the future, is as positively declared unex-
ceptionable for the past, cannot now be pretended
to be prohibited because of opposition to the un-
changeable ordinances of Heaven. No higher
ground can be taken in this view than that of mere
expediency, sedan expediency which has resorted
to hypocrisy and blasphemy fur its support, conies
before us with small claim to respect, however
ancient the odwr of sanctity which it breathes.

Dienineing, then, as wholly untenable in the

face of the facts, the allegation that Parliament
has ever been moved by the theological argument,
we find little left us save to inquire what possible
reason there can be for maintaining a ban which
touches but a small fraction of the community,
and works only injustice and wrong in the cases
in which it has operation at all. We cannot allow
the opinion of • limited number of persons on the
disputed interpretation of a passage in Scripture
to be set up as the rule for those who put an en-
tirely opposite meaning on the text. As little can
we admit that the nice ideas of some individuals
as to what are the relations consistent with
purity in the domestic circle should be made
• binding authority upon those who do not
find its preservation to demand any artificial
restraints. We cannot accept it as a general fact
that impure imaginations must disturb the peace
of families whenever two relatives who are not
forbidden to marry find themselves beneath the
same roof. We cannot hold the bare possibility
of inconveniences arising from marriages in certain
cases sufficient warrant for the "forbidding to
marry." If any of these suggestions were well
founded we should find ourselves in mere consis-
tency compelled to carry out the principle by
making it illegal for a man to marry his cousin,
his domestic servant, or his children's governess.
If men were really inch strangely constituted
scomidrels that nothing but a legal impediment to
matrimony could enable • woman to preserve her
virtue or her character while living in the house
of married couples or of widowers, we should be
bound to throw the mantle of 'protection,
whatever its worth, around many who
are in equal danger with the sisters of
their wives. Equally idle is the assertion that
if the marriages in question were permitted
there must cease in the wife's lifetime to be any
familiarity of affection between her husband and
her sister. Does any husband now find himself
obliged to draw a distinction between his conduct
to his aunt or his niece, whom he may not marry,
and his cousin, whom lie may marry, in the sug-
gestion of his wife's death 1 If there be such an
one, we can only my of him as of Meletrfrrin, that
" he is a good man, and knows what indecency
"is !" Truly these nice people with nasty ideas
paint us pretty pictures of English households.
Against all such prudery of pruriency we put
our trust in the plain good sense, the honest con-
jugal love, and the chivalrous reverence of woman,
which form the happy basis of our English cha-
racter, and the assured guarantee of our English
homes. Those whose reason leads them to in-
terpret Scripture as forbidding the marriages
under consideration, will need no human law to
restrain them, and will certainly not be led by the
absence of human law into the commission of what
in any case they regard as incest. Those whose
reason teaches them that Scripture permitted such
marriages to the Jews, after the first wife's death,
and neither expressly perruitsnor prohibits them to
Christian% ought not to have their consciences
tried by the interposed stumbling•blocks of human
ordinance. Both views of the question may in
certain cases have their concomitant inconve-
niences, but these form no foundation for legislat-
ing on a matter in which the conscience of each is
the only proper guide. Against such legislation
the natural instinct of the public is in perpetual re-
volt. It refuses to place the marriage of a man with
his wife's sister in the category in which would
stand his marriage with his own lister. It receives
as blameless those foreigners who have entered
into such alliances where sanctioned by their own ,
municipal laws. It recognised, till the express
counter declaration of the judges was issued, the
valiiEty of such marriages of its own citizens if
contracted beyond the presumed reach of our local
regulations. Within our very statute-book it is
accustomed to see the distinction drawn. It ac-
counts the wife's sister to be of no kin to the
husband in the succession to property or in the
gradation of legacy duties. Common sense will
not much longer endure that an ecclesiastical
fiction of gross conception and foul history, con-
temptuously disregarded in every other relation of
life, shall continue to rear its repulsive visage in
prohibition of the most sacred of human ties, and
of the performance in many cases of the most
sacred offices of posthumous affection.