The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-10 00:00:00

administered by the Head of the Royal House. The
Queen no doubt is empowered by the act to give her
sanction to such a marriage as is proposed ; but that
sanction is plainly intended to be the exception and
not the rule, and so the act has been interpreted
ever since it was passed. And as another method is
at the same time provided for taking the sense of the
nation on the subject, there is some reason in the
Queen's refusal to exercise by herself a dispensing
power which has never been exercised before. So
the question, in one shape or other, still comes back
to the public, and if the match of the Princess and
the Peer is finally broken off, it will be because the
public voice insists, or is supposed to insist, on that
result. The public ought therefore to look at the
matter thoroughly, and decided deliberately on what
it thinks fit to be done. The Royal Marriages Act,
the 12 Geo. 111., c. 11, upon which this question
turns, is very broad and very simple. It enacts that
no descendant of George 11., male or female (other
than the issue of princesses marrying into foreign
families), shall be capable of contracting marriage
without the previous consent of the Sovereign, sig-
nified under the Great Seal and declared in council,
and that every marriage without such consent shall
be null and void to all intents and purposes what-
soever. But there follows a proviso that in case any
such descendant of George 11., being above the age
of 25 years, shall persist in his or her resolution to
contract a marriage dissented from or disapproved
of by the Sovereign, then he or she may, on giving
notice of such intention to the Privy Council, con-
tract such marriage on the expiry of 12 months after
notice given, and the marriage in that case shall
stand good, unless before theexpiry of the 12 months
both Houses of Parliament shall expressly declare
their disapprobatiou of such intended marriage. It
may be observed in passing that these rules may
have some curious effects on the status in English
law of not a few foreign princes. The exception
in favour of the legality of marriages without
consent under the first clause applies only to
the issue of princesseslmarried to foreigners, and
it does not extend to princes who may reside
abroad, even though theybecome sovereigns in their
own right. It was decided in the Duke of Sussex's
case, in 1844, that the fact of the marriage being
abroad does not render it valid, if without consent.
So all the descendants of male members of the House
of Hanover will be, to the last generation, bastards
in the eyes of the English law-makers ; they are the
issue of marriages to which the assent of the Crown
of England has not been duly given under the Great
Seal. So also Prince Alfred, when he comes to the
ducal throne of Saxe-Coburg, must still take care
that he has his marriage duly approved of in Eng-
land, or his sons and daughters will certainly in-
herit nothing over which English courts have con-
trol. These instances are, however, not merely
curious, they are_ instructive. They show the re-
markable results to which family pride will lead
when it blindly pursues its object. George 111. did
not contemplate the severance of Hanover from the
British Crown, nor the establishment of principali-
ties in the person of his great grandchildren. But
if these are instances that would have been ex-
cepted, if foreseen, because of their importance, may
it not be very fairly pleaded by the Princess ary
that her case is one that would have been excepted
because of its unimportance ? For it was not for his
cousins that George HI. so urgently desired to legis-
late. The occasion of the act was the marriage of
two of his brothers to private ladies—the Duke of
Cumberland to Mrs. Horton and the Duke of Glou-•
cester to the Dowager Lady Waldegrave. Mere
family pride was the avowed reason thatmoved the
King. , There is a letter to Lord North, in which he
says, " I expect every nerve to be strained to carry
this bill. It is not a question relating to adminis-
tration, but personally to myself ; therefore I have
a right to expect a hearty support from every one in
my service, and I shall remember defaulters."
When the bill was in committee, he desired the
Minister to furnish, him with a list of those who
voted for its amendment, or stayed away, " which
will be a rule for my conduct in the drawing-room
to-morrow." But undoubtedly it was not the
gratification of this personal feeling that was the
reason assigned by the supporters of the measure
in Parliament. Their argument was that it con-
cerned the nation that no hasty or improper match
should sully the stock whence its rulers might spring.
And therefore, whether we take the Royal object of
preventing the introduction to Court in the position
of near relatives of persons of too humble birth for
that honour, or the public object, of preventing the
degradation of the throne by the misalliance of one
who might come to it, the Princess might reasonably
urge that her case is beyond the intention of the act
and the purpose of its promoters. She stands but in
the relationship of cousin to the Crown, and she has
no human chance of being the mother of sovereigns.
This she might plead even if her lover were of family
less distinguished that that of the gallant admiral
who won his peerage in the service of his country.
But we will not suppose that she will acknowledge
there would be question of any misalliance in her
case, and it is far from our intention to suggest that
there is. After all, indeed, the question is not his-
torical, but personal and present. What George
111. meant or wished, or what induced the Parlia-
ment of 1772 to pass the bill, does not in the least
absolve us from considering it as if it were fresh
and new. There is no prescription that runs in
favour either of expediency or wrong, and we must
account the Royal Marriages Act to be both right
in itself and expedient at this day before we can be
justified in either enforcing or maintaining it.
THE " EXAMINER" ON FUGITIVE FACTS.—There
was some time ago a very amusing account of a
journey, in quest of Hicks's Hall, the standard from
which miles were measured on the north-east road.
A hundred miles off every one knew all about
Hicks's Hall, what sort of a place it was, what its
style of architecture, and where it stood, but exactly
in proportion as the inquirer made his approaches
he found less and less known about Hicks's Hall,
the knowledge diminishing with the distance, and
when he got within ten or twelve miles of the place
he found the most complete ignorance of Hicks's
Hall, and on the spot itself, where it should have
stood, not a trace of its existence. The search for
Hicks's Hall illustrates the evasiveness of facts com-
monly called stubborn, but which better deserve the
name of slippery things. We know all about a
thousand things while we are all a long way from
them, and credit distant report • but as we get
nearer the certainties disappear,' and at last, as with
Macbeth and the air-drawn dagger he attempts to
grasp, we have often to come to the conclu-
sion " there's no such thing." How well we
all once knew our Roman History, when there was
no question about dates and no close and narrow
investigation of alleged facts resting on tradition.
But what is our knowledge now ?—how reduced,
and how much uncertainty about the little left.
The inquirers are exhausting everything. How
pleasant was the story of William Tell, the tyran-
nical Gesler, the apple on the boy's head, and all.
Well, Tell is dismounted from his historical pedes-
tal, where he stood so long and so honourably, and
served to point so many a moral, and he is remitted
to the realm of fable. And events the most recent,
and which would be thought the most. susceptible of
easy and positive proof, are matters of dispute.
For instance, where did the Duke of Wellington
and Blucher meet after the battle of Waterloo ?
What fact can be simpler and more strongly
marked for remembrance ? There are three or
four different accounts of the place of meet-
ing, and the Duke's own account does not
settle the question. With the wonders of
nature - a similar process of destruction is
going on. Where are Scylla and Charybdis with
their poetic dangers so agreeable to the imagina-
tion ? Where are the sterner and mightier horrors
of the Maelstrom whose roar could be heard twenty
miles off, and from whose whirlpool no ship ever
escaped which had once been drawn into the vortex?
The Maelstrom is a humbug, and not half so for-
midable as Portland or Alderney race. It is simply
a quick tide at certain hours, with a ground swell.
While long established facts of good repute are
vanishing, or changing into fiction, the world is
getting smaller and smaller, so that before long the
range of belief will be most limited and meagrely
furnished. For there are no new crops to supply
the place of the destroyed. We are making dis-
coveries of our ignorance which threaten to leave us
little or nothing else. The credulity of people is,
indeed,. in such want of food that it snatches at
spiritualism faute de mieux. We want a Columbus
to find a new world for us, but.apropos of that great
man the most extraordinary part of his discovery
was that he did not discover his own discovery. He
believed he had got to India in some strange way
without passing China, and he always mistook the
main land of America for an island, and the islands
for the main land. And from the error of Columbus
the primitive natives of America bear the name of
Indians. How difficult, indeed, it is to grasp a fact
even when it is as big as the American continent.
The much respected and lamented Sir George Lewis
was a great searcher and destroyer of received be-
liefs. He sifted and winnowed history with such
success as to reduce to a mountain of chaff what
had passed for precious grain. And he was always
after some Hicks's Hall. He went in search of
advanced ages, and found them not, or found them
dark ages. ad he lived he would have explored
young ages with the same result. Young or old,
there is no truth in ages. The Dowager Lady Cook,
who remembered Johnson, and was, as a woman of
wit, justly proud of recording his speech to her,
"Molly, dear, you are a fool,"—this lady, who died
of dissipation at nifiety-five, used to complain of the
world's injustice to her age, for " when I was
young,". said she, " they would not believe how
young I was • and now that I am old, they will not
believe how old I am." And we have not a doubt
that Six George LeWif3 would have ohakeu her bat