The Sun.
London, England, 1848-07-25 00:00:00

MARRIAGES OF AFFINITY.

In a letter, full of point and pith, upon the subject of
Marriages of Affinity, which is published in the Ap-
pendix to the Commissioners' Report, the Archbishop of
Dublin says:—" I think you will find four in five mis-
take the real question—i.e., they will consider the real
question to be, whether it be an advisable sort of marriage,
But ask the same persons whether they think it advisable
for a man to marry his servant-girl, or a woman young
enough to be his daughter, or old enough to be his mo-
ther, &c. ; and when they answer No, ask them whether
they would have a law to prohibit such marriages, and I
think they would then perceive that it is absurd to keep
men in leading-strings, and to take away all right of pri-
vate judgment whenever it is possible for men to judge
wrong." The desire to enact one's own sentiments, into
a law for other people is, indeed, the essence of all
bigotry and the germ of persecution. In the present
instance we have no doubt that the feeling of the
great majority of the English public, entirely
ir-
respective of the law, is, and will continue to be,
averse to marriage with a sister-in-law ; a similar
feeling exists in many minds against a marriage
between first cousins. But the opinion or feeling of the
majority upon subjects of this nature, cannot justify a
prohibitory statute against the smaller class, who are in-
fluenced by no such sentiment, or in whom it has been
over-ruled by the force of circumstances, or by such a
peculiar domestic position as we find illustrated in many
painful instances by the evidence before us. A recent
controversy supplies us with a close analogy, No
doubt a large majority of the people of this kingdom
will always prefer, if you give them the choice, a Chris-
tian representative to a Jewish one. We do not blame
them for this, but we do blame those who seek to perpe-
tuate a law whichl forbids all the rest of the community to
do otherwise. The commissioners, after referring to
the continued prevalence of the prohibited marriages,
notwithstanding the legal penalties, observe—" The
common foundation of such marriages is the familiar
intercourse which necessarily prevails between a man
and his sister-in-law, when, upon the death of a wife,
She assumes her sister's place in the care of the
children, and in the superintendence of the domestic
establishment. We believe that among persons who have
not passed the middle age, attachments will be very
frequent whenever the sister of the deceased wife comes to
live under the roof of the husband." " The end of such
a state of things," they add, " among the poorer classes,
in a great majority of cases, is either marriage or con-
cubinage." These conclusions of the Commissioners are
powertully borne out by the evidence, especially by that
of members of the clerical profession, both in the Church
of England and other couunuulons, whose ministerial
duties, performed in populous districts, have brought
them into close contact with the poor. We extract the
following passages from Dr. Wiseman's evidence—not
that it differs from the statements of other witnesses to
the same affect, but because it forcibly depicts a case of
ordinary occurrence, and because the organization of his
Church, and his position in the central districts of Eng-
land, give a value to his experience of the habits of the
poorer classes. Dr. Wiseman says—" In the middle classes
it generally results from the sister having lived, perhaps
for some years, in the family with the wife, the health
of the wife perhaps being delicate. The wife
dies and leaves a young family : the husband
has his business to attend to, and has no one
to take care of his children ; and the sister-
in-law has no other shelter; probably has lost her pa-
rents, or has been living for many years in her sister's
house. I had an instance where she had been living 17
years in the family, and had been a second mother to the
children. The case is very trying for both partiee. There is
an attachment naturally between them from their having
lived so long together, To bring a stranger into the
house wold probably be disturbing the peace and happi-
ness of the little family. The children are attached to
their aunt, and it appears altogether the most natural
arrangement for their happiness, as well as to prevent
the sin, probably, of cohabitation without marriage, that
a dispensation should be granted. That, I should say,
is the history of nine out of ten cases which I have
had to deal with." These Dr. Wiseman describes
as the ordinary cases, but there are others, as the
personal statements of some deeply interested par-
ties testify in the higher and more conspicuous
walks of life, where the pressure of motives urging
to these connections derives an intense force and sanction
from the most touching of all inducements, the death-
bed request of the wife anxious for the children she is
leaving behind her. We may refer to the evidence
of a witness, reported at page 24, whose name is not
disclosed. The particulars are shortly these :—The
wife of this gentleman, who is a stockbroker,
died in 1840. " She had said before her decease,
" that she should die happy if I could marry her
sister, who had lived with us during our married
life, and who, she said, would be as kind to her chil-
dren as herself." The wife died in 1840, and the mar-
riage of one daughter and the peach of another, at
the age of twenty-four, left the witness with three
young girls in the school room. After tqis, event it
became a question with the sister-in-law sami y
family
whether she should remain in the widower's houseor
not. The wish that the difficulty should be recto /ed by
their union was first suggested by her brother, repre-
senting the feelings of the family. The widower at first
hesited how to ask.
He
e consultedhe r
parish, now a bishop. The rector consulted the
"
Bishop of London, who answered, that no individual
case could alter his general views
of thesubject." He,
however, went so far as to consider the matter with
opposite
another prelate (who, we may infer, tookthe
view), and the rector reports that the two bishops both
agreed in not resting the caso upon Scriptural grounds,
which the Bishop of London said he thought "by no means
sufficiently certain to rest upon. 'Tbe fact that two bishops
thought the marriage not unlawful on Scriptural grounds,
decided the witness as to his course, and he married his
sister-in-law in Denmark, where such unions are autho-
rized by law, with the entire approbation of her family,
in 1844. The opinion of society seems to have sanctioned
the step, for all the friends and acquaintance continued
their intercourse as before. Many similar cases, but
some attended with more painful circumstances, are re-
corded in this volume. The argument, as far as it turns
upon expediency, urged by Dr. Pusey and other advo-
cates of the present law, is, that by maintaining the
restriction you "extend the domestic relation.' By
making a marriage with a wife's sister legally impos
aible, you place her, say they, in the position of a real
sister, you prevent the occurrence of any feelings
towards her but those of pure natural affection, and
you enable her to remain unblaused in the house of
her widowed brother-in-law, which otherwise she
could never do. We deny the soundness of these
positions in Coto. They proceed upon a thorough
misconception of the power and functions of human
laws. Statutes cannot control human sentiment,
nor Acts of Parliament operate- either against, or in
the place of, the laws of nature. The desires and
affections of mankind are founded in the laws of their
physical and moral being, not in those of society, and the
latter will never possess a binding force unless they are
in unison with the former. In the present instance ex-
perience has proved this to be so. For centuries these
marriages have been under the ban of the law in England,
yet, from the highest to the lowest class of society, they
have been more or less prevalent. Twelve years apt it
was found necessary to enact a new and more stringent
law: still, in the face of its tremendous social- and civil
penalties, these marriages have continued td take place,
as the statements of this report and the very existence
of this Commission abundantly testify. And when it is
suggested, as a matter of fact, that the law
at
present actually controls social opinion, and is
an
operative remedy against scandal, let
Usappeal
to
the
opinion of any man wbo knows censoriousthisblamelessly,
world,
whether it is really possible, safely and
a young and attractive female to live alone in a h for
house
with her widowed brother-in-law, under the present state
of things, and whether any prudent family would sane-
tion such an arrangement? No. The Commissioners
have stated the conclusion of truth and of common-sense
in the concluding paragraphs of their report:—"These
marriages will take place when a concurrence of circum-
stances gives rise to mutual attachment. They are-not