The Express.
London, England, 1866-05-02 00:00:00

IMPERIAL

11."

ROUSE OF OOIIIKONS. --(THIS DAY.)
The firraggs took the chair at 12 o'clock.
CASE OF JANE BANILARD.
lin SHERIFF called the attentionef 0,1, • Mom Bee"'
I eery to the can el hoe Barrard. who Whets committed
to prison by the Rev. Mr. Grey a magistrate for Wore's.
on the charge _of laving Maim a penny front
another child. He wished to know what view wee taken
by the government of the oonduct of the magistrate in the
matter.
Sir G. GREY said that an =planation bad been remised
from Mr. Grey of hie coudoet, in which he stated that he
had been actuated in the course which he Weaken rimply
by oonadentioua motives, and that if he had been guilty of
an error it was merely an error of judgment. The Lord
Cbaneellor, under all the circumstanoes of the ease, bad
not deemed it to be his duty to diem= Mr. (key from the

commission of the pease.
MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER.
Mr. CHAMBERS, in moving the second reading of this
bill, said it would no doubt be to propose such
en alteration of the law as t would be to which he
asked the house to assent summarily, sad without clue
consideration, The fact however waa, that public opinion
bad been very clearly expressed on the subject. All dames
of the people had spasm out iipDn it, and there was
abundant evidence that they were in favour of having the
restriction with which the bill dealt, abcdisbecL
restriction, he contended, wee impaled neither by the laws
of Greece nor Rome, nor was it in accordance with divine
law. There was, he added, no such restriction to be found
in the early history of the church. Afterwards the church
authorities laid down the rule that marriages could not
be contracted within certain degrees al relatioeship
tending to the 7th degree : but in 1215 the restraints upon
marriage were brought within the limit of the 4th
Great grievances arose under that Mate of degree.
and the °Demagogue. was that the almost universal
voice of Christendom bad sines condemned it. That being
se, an act had been passed in 1530, under the operatics of
whisk for a period of 300 years such marriages am those
which he asked the house to legalise had
Kendal
phew, nor had it been proved that any
scandal or mischief bad been the result. Then cams the
act of Lord Lyndhurst, rendering
_such marriages illegal
from the time of its pawing, which he characterised as a
raeseereutterly inoonsistent and indefensible. That act drew
a distinction between the prohibited degrees, the affinity,
and those of conianguinity in pert of the recital, while in
another it placed them upon the same footing far
some of the pmmel for which it was introduced.
Looking at the act by the lightof the interpretation whieb
had been put upon
eiotaartittilz scour bench and the
judges of the he found that
while its fait clauses operating' retrospectively
made valid all marriages which might previously have been
contracted with a deceased wife's slater, and all the chil-
dren of such manages legitimate, it contained other clauses
declaring such roarriogee for the future to be sin, eothat that
which on the 31st of August might be valid and unob-
jectionable might., according to legislation. of that de.
meription, be on the very following day invalid, and
=airtime and contrary to the law of God. (Hear, hear.
Could anything, he would ask, be more absurd? (Hear.)
Could anything be more to the moral sense of the
community than the conic Sons which such an enact-
ment involved ? He, under those circumstances, felt justi-
fied in asking the housei to give its sanction to the alteration
in the existing law which he propowd, observing that •
great majority of the bench et bishops were of opinion
that marriages with a deceased wife's sister were not
contrary to God's law, and that the Bishop of
London and 400 of the metropolitan clergy had
petitioned in favour of a measure for render-
ing them legal. The Roman ca holic church, he
further remarked, could not be regarded as deem-
ing such marriages to be opposed to the Divine
command, as was shown by.the number of dispensations
for them which were granted in France and other Roman
catholic countries. One of the main arguments used in
support of the law as it stood was that it secured
greater domestic purity and simplicity, but the justice
of that argument he denied, pointing out that it was not
corroborated by experience or the example of Massachusetts
and other places in which marriage with a deceased wife's
sister was allowed. The hon. and learned gentleman
then proceeded briefly to explain the provisions of the bill.
[Loft sitting.]