The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-07 00:00:00

THE ROYAL MARRIAGE ACT.

(FROM A CORRESPONDENT.)
It was well observed by a morning contemporary,
on the occasion of the late Royal Marriage, that the
late Princess Charlotte wasthe first Royal personage
who broke the old custom of marrying for reasons
of State policy, thereby exercising her own free
choice in marriage, and not being fettered by the
tyranny of political and compulsory marriages.
We all know how happily her marriage with the
present King of the Belgians turned out, and the
reasonable prospect there appeared, had her life
been spared, we should have had an illustrious race
of kings. The recent national calamity nosed
-
too much recurrence to the melancholy and un
timely death of this illustrious Princess for us to
say anything further about it here. Suffice it to
say, it was speedily followed by the marriages of
three of her Royal Highness's uncles, which were
entirely State marriages, they all having
as it was said, for the sake of an heir to the Throne.
That the aforesaid royal weddings turned out
happily, and that one of them has been the mewls,
under God's blessing, of giving us one of the best,
purest, and most virtuous Monarchs that ever sat
on the throne of these realms, is a too-well-known
fact to be further alluded to. last
and universally The Prince Consort, whose premature death
winter was so justlymarried,
deplored, has
left a numerous progeny behind him, many o Whnra
have not yet emerged from childhood, and only tyre
have as yet entered upon the lottery of wedlecl.
There are as yet four sons and three daughters, all,
rastri-
it is to be hoped, destined to enter into holy
mony. Now it is not, we entreat her Majesty to
be-
lieve, with an idea or intention of furtheringael im
proper flirtations of any of our young Princes °r
Princesses, when we ask whether they
not be one and all advantageously releeee f
from the cruel fetters and restrictions °I
the Royal Marriage Act. That Act was Passed la
1772, during the reign of an obstinate and bigote
always he
though it must remembered, well jot°
honed, well-meaning, and virtuous monarch- do
And, as we said in a former article, some men,
ago, it was passed in consequence of the ReYe%l-
Dn'oo
dignation at the respective marriages of the Te
h
of Gloucester and Cumberland, the Kings e° wd
(at that time) two surviving brothers, who ap.
not long previously contracted marriage with
en
dividuals not of blood royal. Luckily it was I—re
too late to annul these aforesaid marriages, but the
was then as now a rising young Royal family pct
whom the • fetters of the said Royal Marriage 4.0 f
fell most cruelly upon. And it is with 5 vicivat
preventing a similar state of things in the Pre.s-.4
Royal family that we advocate an unconditno
and total repeal of that most iniquitous measure' O,
every walk of life it is, and has always heen,COba
sidered one of the choicest privileges of life t.° e;
allowed to choose one's own partner in inarrie_i
Why, in the name of common sense, is the 115?
family to be the only exception to this tn:eza
Why should they be debarred from a Prifileeust
which is allowed to the humblest and 1°,3,10
of the Queen's subjects ? Her Majesty herseu "eci
ever shown every desire not to follow anticinanto
and worn-out precedents, and to act up to the "
of reason ani common sense, although those Stsef
marriages which took place in 1818 for the sake
an heir to the throne, turned out happily node yes,
and gave us three most excellent royal duchsa"
one of whom after wards became our Queen' nn
„ea.
admitted on all hands to have been the best
Consort as well as Queen Dowager Eagisfea
ever saw. Yet it must be remember
they, on the other hand, put the °lot
try to a serious expense which could at tee
time ill be spared, as we were suffering from :a
pressure of a return to a state of profound Pend
from a war of nearly a quarter of a century, ate
the transition from the former to the latter sta
of things almost reduced us to a state of natlenst
bankruptcy. And it is, moreover, well known the
our late King William IV., when Duke of Clareee
wished to have married, and could have married a„,
different times of his life three great rich heiresse7
all of whom were willing to have become Ills,
duchesses, only the Royal Marriage Act Pree
vented him. Now, surely it should be the det/
and object of the Legislature to prevent, by eared(
means in its power, any re time
nime alluded to of such a sintate
th
days of our late .1-toyal family. It has been aula tllsl
the
things as we had at the
the marriages, both of the Queen herself, as avel,
as those of her two daughters, the Princesses 801 l
and Alice, were all marriages of affection, and flea
of mere State policy, and therefore we shoo
imagine it to be her earnest desire to allow tPe
same privilege to her younger children that sea
herself and her two eldest daughters have eI).K je
before them. Bygones are bygones, and the
of Pas,tir
past never to be recalled ; but the great use
tory is as a precedent for the future, to be follow
when it has been good, and to be avoided When
has been bad.