The Express.
London, England, 1858-05-06 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY, HAY &

LORD BURT has carried by amajority of 40 the

mooed reading of his Bill tot legalising marriage
with • deceased wifs'e sister. The arguments in
favour of abolishing this vexations restriction have
so recently been eefurmd in these ooltimns that their
repetition would be wearisome and unprofitable.
Nothing new was, or indeed well could be, advanced
on either side. The theological objection, the senti-
mental objection, and the Scotch objection were duly
paraded by their advocates, and successfully
answered by their opponents. In reply to the first,
it was shown that the Levitical text, by only pro-
hibiting such marriage in the wife's lifetime, im-
pliedly sanctions it after her decease. With
regard to the argument founded on the sup-

. .
posed unpossibility o( easy and virtuousintercourse between the brother and sister in law if

the prohibitory law were repealed, it was pointed
oat, as it had repeatedly been pointed out befall,
that this apprehended inconvenience was not, in
het, found to exist in countries where law opposes
so bar to such unions; that the objection is baud
upon views of human nature as degrading se they
are false ; finally, that the imaginary grievance
supposed likely to arias from this source is infinitely
outweighed by the real end practical discomfort
which this artificial law is at the present moment
inflicting in hundreds, eye thousands, of virtuous
and respectable English homes. The question was
asked—bat it was not, fur it could not be, answered
—why, if such marriage.' were prohibited by the
text of Scripture, did the Bench of Bishops permit
the Act of 1835 to pus, legalising such marriage@ in
the past while declaring them void for the future?
It was also urged that the proposed change in the
law only went to make these marriages legal, sot,
as might be supposed from the tome taken by its
opponent", to render them compulsory. People
entertaining conscientious objections to such unions
will have the same power of giving practical effect
to their objections after the legislative restriction
has been removed as they had before. The oaly
difference will be that these who have no objection
of this kind will be then enabled to do with the
sanction of law what they now do on the prompt-
ing of affection and with the approval of conscience.
What can be urged against their right to do so ?
A text which is scarcely doubtful, and an argument
which is wholly sentimental. Grounds like these
are of course amply sufficient to justify individual
disapprobation of the marriages in question ; but
tan it be for a moment contended that they form the
adequate basis for a prohibitory law of universal
application ?

The question is really one of grave import. Here
is a cam in which law is on one side, nature on the
other. Three and twenty years ago the British
Legislature, with strange inconsistency, was pleased
to dselare that these marriages should be valid se
regarded the past, void asregarded the future. Down
to a given day in 1836, the supposed Levitical
prohibition was decreed to be nugatory ;
after that date it was decreed to be binding.
But the people did not participate in the incon-
sistency of the Legislature. They took their own
view of the Levitical text ; they paid no attention to
the legislative prohibition. They went on, and to
this day, in spits of all the hardship and injustice
created by the prohibitory law, they still go on
forming the forbidden connexion. At the present
moment there exist in England thousands of such
unions. In order to escape from the reproach of
living in a state unsanctioned by the law of the
land, many of the wealthier classes, under legal ad-
vice, repaired to foreign countries, there to cele-
brate marriages which our own law is almost
solitary in prohibiting. The recent decision ia
Baooi's case has established the point that the
courts of this country will regard such marriages as
illegal under the Act of 1835, though valid at the
time when and in the place where they were yaw
traded. This constitutes the climax of the hard-
&hip. It is not enough that an artificial law makes
oat of the supposed prohibition of a dubious text an
impassable barrier to the celebration in this country
of marriages in which vast numbers of the popula-
tion can see nothing objectionable. It goes further.
It stamps such marriages with illegality wherever
solemnized : it brands them with nullity: it bastard-
ises and disinherits the offspring, even though at the
time and place of their celebration no law was
violated, no social feeling in any way contravened.
There is another perplexity. The Legislature
of one of our Australian colonies hes just thrown
wide the restriction, and in express terms legalised
marriage with a deceased wife's sister. This
act of the South Australian Parliament requires the
sanction of her MAJWIT in Council. What is to be
done? Is the sanction to be withheld or granted?
Lord Dilator very wisely told the deputation the
other day that he left the question of the,, marriages
quite an open one. In the face of the fade jest
adverted to; of this last majorityin the Ccennons ;
of the pest and growing interest excited out of
deers; oldie notorious adhesion of a most influen-
tial portion of the clerical body—even the House of
Lords cannot surely insist on keeping up a restrio-
tin so useless, so demoralising, and so vexatious.

Tin Judges of the Queen's Bench have, it will be
observed, unanimously discharged tha rule foe a
new trial in the Royal British Beak ere. They
Lave done so on the substantial ground that the jury,
upon the evidence, were abundantly justified in lad-
ing that the conspiracy charged in the information
Lad been intend into, sad that each and all of the