The Express.
London, England, 1857-08-01 00:00:00

importait matter is whether We can so retrieve ear
errors, redeem the subject races from their dieaftee-
don, and regenerate the spirit and method at ear
Indian rule, as to prove ourselves worthy at our
high function of leading the civilisation of the wee*
and making oar empire the nursing mother of the
helpless end foundling tribes of humanity. This is
our professed aim. To fulfil it under present cir-
cumstances we must all discipline ourselves and
work. There must be no selfish strife of party—no
peevish cavil—no canityof opinien—no despmdency.
We need not add that there must h• no niggard
temper in our offerings of sea sad money. We wish
there was more knowledge among us t but at say
rate let there be cheerful energy. " Alacrity of
spirit" is within everybody's reach—to cherish in
himself and infuse into others.

All we a Parsonocracy ? Is the social life, is the
domestic happiness or unhappiness of Englishmen
and Englishwomen to be subjected to the fantastic
scruples, the suddenly awakened conscience of the
sacerdotal party in the English Church or the
weaker brethren among the English clergy ? Are
we to renounce that liberty which the Gospel sanc-
tionq which the Reformation ratified, which the
vein of reason and the instincts of the human heart
impentively claim, merely because a certain por-
tion of the Anglican clergy choose to claim a license
of dissent, a disorderly defiance of law, which if cub
milted to would at once ereate an imperistm in imperio,
convert the English Constitution into a Theocracy,
and set the protest of the Priest above the power of
the Parliament? On all grounds we should be the very
ant to deprecate, the last to sanction, any attempt
to violate a really conscientious scruple. Show us
even a prejudice that deserves respect, and unless the
interest of the public clearly demanded its being dis-
regarded, we should be inclined to treat it with
lenity and indulgence. But how stands the ease
with this clerical objection to the Divorce
Bill ? For the last two centuries, the clergy
of the Established Church, as represented
in Parliament by the Bench of Bishops, have
quietly acquiesced in the enactment of a long suc-
cession of special laws, which have not only dis-
solved the marriage bond, but, by en express clause,
enabled the divorced parties to re-marry. During the
whole of that lengthened period has any one ever
beard an objection on the part of the clergy to per-
form the ceremony of re-marriage according to the
solemn rites of the Church? It is only when a
general law is to be substituted for an exceptional
law, when a privilege is be converted into •
right, when the middle and lower classes are to
be made participators in what has heretofore
been confined to the wealthy and the noble—that
the cry of profaned rites and violated consciences
makes itself heard on the part of the Church. So
long as the privilege of re-marriage after divorce was
confined to those adulterers and adulterases who
had coronets on their brows, long rent-rolls at their
lawyers', or extensive balances at their bankers',
the voice of the Church was mute. The dignified
clergy blandly abstained from the ill-bred act of
striking the clause of re-marriage out of the Divorce
Bills sent up from the Commons ; their unm tred
brethren celebrated without inquiry and without
a murmur that ceremony which was to give
the wronged millionaire, or the too facile
Peeress, a chance of merging in a new union
the memory of the past, and laying a founda-
tion for new hopes and an amended life in the future.
It is only when a proposal is made to admit the vulgar
to the privileges of the exclusive—to put Bloomsbury
on a level with Belgravia—that the protest of the
Anglican clergy rises into energy. Then they can
discover that indissolubility—the canon of Rome—
is the doctrine of the Gospel ; that the re-marriage of

divorced parties is a since;
and that to require such
re-marriage at the hands of the English clergy is an

The reply to all this nonsense and bigotry is really
very short. In legal phrase the clergy are estopped
from taking the objection they now urge. If the
re-marriage to which they object is sinful, on the
ground of being opposed to the text of the Gospel, it
was no km sinful when authorised by a succession
of spsist ads at the Legislature than when once for
slassillmbsi bye gourd act. There is no magic in
arils& Bill, there is no virtue in exceptional legisla-
tion. The Church which has ropeatedly solemnised
the re-marriage of divorced parties, when provided
for by special Acts, cannot now be allowed to object
to their solemnisation when sanctioned by a
general Act. On the same ground, the advocates
of the Government measure may well hold
themselves exempted from any necessity of
descending into the arena of theological argu-
ment. The Bishops and the clergy have for-
feited their right to insist on the alleged prohibitions
of Scripture, by the simple fact of their having over
and over again set at nought the prohibitions by re-
peated solemnisation of these marriages, which,
according to their present view, Scripture expressly
forbids. Wo have a full right, therefore, to
decline the unedifying controversy that has been
raised on the discrepancy between the texts of
ST. MATTHEW and his two co-Evangelists. To
the plain sense, indeed, of every candid man,
however moderately versed in the principles of criti-
cism, it must appear clear that the exception twice
introduced into the text of ST. Msrrarw, "unless
foe fornication," is infinitely more likely to have been
omitted in the other two Gospels, than interpolated
into his. But these are points which we do not feel
called upon to discuss. The English Church, by an
acquiescence of two centuries, has deprived herself of
all right to take this higher ground of absolute
scriptural prohibition ; and the opponents of the
clergy betray a great want of perception as to the
true bearings of the question at issue when they
descend to the arena of exegetical polemics, and
resume the abandoned weapons of theological strife.
It is not by arguments like these that a question
hire this is to be settled. The House, on the sewed
reading of this Bill, has been asked to assent to no
innovation—to no change of substantive law, only
to a change of legal procedure. Whatever difference
of opinion may be entertained on points of detail,
the principle of this measure, which can alone be
legitimately discussed on the second reading,
is simple and clear. It makes no change in the
grounds of divorce. The sole ground is adultery—
the very ground which the Quarterly Review, after
half-a-dozen pages of cloudy subtleties, admits to be
most probably indicated by the litigated word
wopete—as employed in the excepting clause in ST.
MArrnrw. The only other principle of the Bill is
that dissolution of marriage on this sole ground shall
bit granted, as a matter of law, after a single trial in
sus court, instead of being granted as a matter of
*Asp after three trials in three courts. That is
fir principle of the Bill, and it is in favour of this
painelple that the Home of Commons last night re-
seeded its suffrages by a majority of 111. It now
remain. for Government to press this Bill through
committee with an earnestness proportioned to its
careful preparation and its preponderating im-
parttime.