The Sun.
London, England, 1856-04-26 00:00:00

domestic life, for there were certain circles of relationship,
the restraining marriage within which was a blessed regula-
Wien, calculated to surround men with other relationships,
and with an atmosphere of undoubted purity. He had come
to the conclusion that the law of the New Testament agreed
with the law of the Old Testament, and made those marriages
unlawful. His noble friend had with much industry brought
forward one or two authorities. He;(the Bishop of Oxford)
s bound to say, after all the deep research which his noble
friend had shown, that he must set against the authorities
which he had cited the undoubted judgment of the Church
of Christ in its best and purest ages, His noble friend said
that first cousins were forbidden to marry in the same way.
He (the Bishop of Oxford) denied that proposition, :or
during the first three or four centuries of the Church no
such prohibition existed. The Western Church had never
allowed dispensations to be granted for such marriages as
the noble earl proposed to make lawful until the time of
that worst of men, Alexander VI. (Borgia), the priest,
prelate, and Pope, a man stained with every vice, guilty
himself of incest ; but there never had been an instance
in the Western Church of such dispensations until Borgia
granted oae to Emmanuel, King of Portugal,for certain state
reasons. Well, then, if he found that to be the case in the
first centuries of the Christian Church—if he found a stream
of unbroken tradition upon such a subject as this down to the
15th century, he thought that the question could not admit
of any doubt. He cared very little for what the Church of
Rome had done in the way of dispensations, because he knew
enough of ecclesiastical history to be aware of this fact, that
when driven into a corner there was very little which that
wily and astute court could not justify. There was a certain
great authority in the Church of Rome—the great casuist Li-
guori—whose teaching in the matter of dispensation was so-
lemnly declared by that Church to be the true and apostolic
doctrine. Liguori laid down this particular rule as to the
dispensing power : Papa non poJest dispensant, in lege Die.
His noble friend no doubt thought this doctrine went all his
wn way, but it proceeds sine justa causa. (Laughter.) To
make this rale more complete it added, nec episcopus lege ec-
*sig. So that the dispensing power of the Pope, according
to this authority, was the same with regard to the law of
Godas that of the bishop with regard to the law of the Church.
They had the unbroken tradition of the Western. Church up
to the 15th century, interpreting the law of God. But that
was not all. Tidy hud also the traditionlof theßussian Church
and the Eastern Greek Church. Those traditions were all the
same as to the prohibition of those unions. What was the
tradition of the Anglican Church from the time of the Refor-
mation until now ? That Church, in returning to the primi-
tive faith—which, he thanked God, she still holds—had al-
ways declared that those marriages were contrary to the law
of God. He now wished to sae a few words as to the social
consequences of suffering such marriages. His noble friend
was not, he thought, very happy towards the close of
his speech in alluding to what he (the Bishop of Ox-
furl) believed was the universal Christian instinct of
all instructed women. He believed there were many
things more safely settled by the instinct of a Christian
mind than by the subtle arguments of a reasoning casuist.
The effect of making lawful such marriages as those in ques-
tion—while it would be an act of gratification to those who
had already contracted such attachments—would, he be-
lieved, be a great injury to society at large. In the first place,
such a measure as this would give one of the most signal en-
couragements that could be given to bleak the law, in the
hope of getting the lawaltered so as not to incur the penalties
to which parties were now liable. He believed that the
freedom of intercourse in this country depended upon the
high moral state which, take it as a whole with- God's bles-
sing, we enjoyed in regard to the institution of marriage.
Suc a measure as this was well calculated to injure the moral
sense of the whole mass of the population as to the law of
marriage and its purity. It would seriously interfere with
the happiness of a multitude of families, which depended al-
together upon the declaration of God's law, and the sanctity
which that law threw around them. They had no right, fer
the sake of gratifying comparatively a few persons, who
contract such marriages, to i reak up the happiness of whole
famines who, under the shelter of the existing law, were
living in a state of purity and contentment. Something had
been said about the poor being the class most interested in
these marriages. In his own diocese he had instituted cer-
tain inquiries ou this point, and the result showed that there
was no desire among the poor to violate the law by contract-
ing such marriages. The class among whom such a desire
existed was not the poor, but the more self-indulgent classes
of society, who had ahundaut means of existence, and were
not hard worked. All the argument, therefore, about this
being chiefly a poor man's question, was nothing more than a
clever piece of rhetoric without any basis of truth. Be
. trusted he had made out to their lordships' satisfaction a
sufficient case to justify them in refusing to read the bill
a second time. He would ask them to do more, and to
reject it by such a majority as would discourage future
attempts in the same direction. Those who agitated this
question, and who brought it before Parliament, were doing
the greatest possible unkindness towards those porsens
in whose behalf they had come forward. (Hear.) By agi-
tating the question they were doing what they could to
weaken, if not to destroy, that barrier which hedged round
the purity and sanctity of female domestic life. He begged
the noble lord who had introduced the bill to believe that it
was not lawful fer him to attempt to unsettle those safe, sta-
ble, and sacra I foundations on which marriage rested. He
could not hold either the noble lord, or any one else, blame-
less, who attempted to break down the sacred bounds of mrr
rued life. It was easy to make a beginning in such a work ;
but once begun, where was the man or where the authority
that would be able to stem theflood ? He hoped, therefore,
that the decision of their lordships would be of that unmistake-
able kind which would effectually clamp any expectations that
might be entertained that the present law would be changed.
Even if their opinion was that these marriages were probably
opposed to the Word of God, that ought to suffice-for the re-
ject ion of a measure which would legalise them. He therefore
called upon them in the name of God—in the name of the tees
of thousands of homes in Greitt Britain—homes the models of
purity and of ever 3, domestic blessing—to fence them round
from the invader, and not to make light of God's great and
holy institution of marriage. (Hear.)
The Earl of ALBEMARLE thought that in discussing this
- question they ought not to lose sight of the disadvantage of
having one law fir the rich and another for the poor. He
could not help thinking that the strength of the argument
used by the noble lord loelow him with respect to what was
called the indefinite manner in which ladies spoke of this
matter was attributable to want of care en the part of their
spiritual advise re, and to their being led to regard the table
of affinities in the Book of Common Prayer as of equal autho-
rity with the Bible. He maintained that there were two un-
truths in the table, and he desired to know by what autho-
rity it had been placed where it was generally to be found.
He believed it had no more right to be there than a chapter
of the Koran had. In tracing the history of the table in
question, he found that Archbishop Parker had introduced
it without the authority of his rev brethren—evidently
against his own inclination—and had never summoned con.
vocation to give additional validity to it. If Archbishop
Parker had believed such marriages as those in question to be
incestuous, he thought that he would, as the first Protestant
prelate in this kingdom, have annulled them, and would not,
as he had done, have pronounced a contrary opinion. With
respect to the canon of 1671, he did not think if the circum-
stances that led to it were considered, that much reliance
could be placed upon it. The right rev. prelate who spoke
last had referred to a canon—he presumed the 99th—but he
should like to ask the noble and learned lord the Chief Jus-
tice of the Queen's Bench, whom he saw in his place, what
validity the 99th canon had over the laity in England ?
Blackstone, on the authority of Hale, said that all those
canons were to be considered as having been made onlyby the
foreign authority of popes and emperors. The right rev, pre-
late had spoken a great deal of the domestic purity of the
homes of England. In his (the Earl of Albemarle's) opinion,
domestic purity was more in danger from the law as it stood
than it would be from the alteration proposed. With respect
to the operation of the law, he knew not how far the state of
one parish might be regarded as a proof of the state of others,
but he had received a letter from a person in the north of Eng-
land, which stated that in his own parish within the last year
and a-half there had been ne less than six of these marriages.
The right rev. prelate had spoken mysteriously of the Church,
without stating what he meant by the term. The right rev.
prelate referred to the apostolic canon of the fourth century,
bet the canon had never had that authority in the western
Church which it had in the eastern ; and he was surprised to
find the right rev, prelate yielding a blinder assent to it than
was given to it in the fourth and fifth centuries. (Hear.)
Having cited the canons in which bishops could be excom-
municated, he inquired how the right rev. bishop recon-
ciled the 25th canon with the cenge d'elire ? lie would
show another discrepancy in the canons which had been
written before the Council of Nice which took place in the
year 325. Basil, who was born four years afterwards, asked
whence they had derived the custom of baptism by three
immersions. But had he referred to these canons he would
have lound that a priest was liable to the punishment of death
if he did not immerse three times. Then the heinous crime of
fasting on a Saturday, and the venial crime of taking away a
man's life, were subject to the same punishment by one of
those canons. The 85th canon gave a list of all the books that
wore accounted venerable and sacred ; and after naming the
Testament books, declared the Book of Us to be a sacred book.
Therefore, as a layman, he could not admit the validity of the
apostolical canons, He would venture to tell the right rev.
beach that not one argument against the bill had been, or
could be, alleged that was not answered in a book ho held,
published in 1756, and written by Mr. Fry. The main con.
tents of that book were these—that the 18th of Leviticus re-
lated to the abominations between the Egyptians and the
Canaanites ; that there was not one instance in the Bible rela-
tive to marriage where any form was denounced (we under.
stood). Tho reasons he had now urged satisfied his mind, and
led him to give his cordial support to the bill of the noble
lord,

Viscount DUNGANNON objected to the bill, on the ground
that. it would affect the social interests of society; and he
trusted it would be rejected by such a majority as would de-
stroy anYhopes of success for the future.
Lord RAVENSWORTH had never voted in opposition to
this measure whenever brought before the house ; on the con-
trary, he had taken every opportunity of giving it his support.
He did not agree with the noble lord who said that the pass-
ing of this bill would interfere with the social order of the
community. He would say that his opinion could not be
changed by any argument--(laughter)—because his mind was
firmly made up upon the question. When the social in-
terests of the community had been alleged as the reason of
a noble lord's opposition, he thought that a case of social
hardship should have been alleged in support of that argu-
ment. Now he had a real case of social evil to produce in
which a gentleman was debarred from marrying his sister-
in-law, and thus finding a second mother for his children,
because it would be contrary to law. He would read the gen-
tleman's letter, which was addressed to a relative of his own
in the other house. The writer said his ease cut both ways.
The relatives of the lady thought it was improper for her
to reside with a brother-in-law, a widower; and he (the
writer) would not allow a daughter of his to live with a bro-
ther-in-law who was a widower. By this rule he was deprived
of the society of his sister-in-law, and his children of her pro-
tection ; and the hardship of the case was aggravated by the
fact of a mutual attachment existing between the parties.
He contended this constituted a social grievance, and lie
thought, therefore, it was right to make their lordships ac-
quainted with it. These parti s did live apart in o':edience to
the law, and they suffered in consequence. In how many
hundreds a"d in how many thousands of instances were the
humbler classes compe'led to resort t 3 immorality in order to
evade the existing law. He knew this •was the case, a, he
had been much fraught into contact with the humblerelass:,s.
(Question.) Some noble lord clied " question ;" if that cry
was raised because some noble lords might wish to retire from
those walls, he would remind their lordships that the eyes of
the country were upon them. It hid been asserted in that
house, and in oth,r places, that to permit a relaxation of the
law was contrary to the law of God. He would say, woe be-
tide that legislature and that legislation which attempted to
establish any law that was c ntrary to the law of God. He
bad carefallY.-consulted the Sacred Book, with the view of in-
forming his mind on the sulject, and without relying on any
doubtful interpretation or passage, he would say if he could
bring his mind to believe that the relaxation of this institu-
tion was contrary to the law of God, be would be the very
last to sanction or support a measure having such an effect.
Aware of the social demoralisation which was the result of
the strict canonical law upon the subject, he (Lord Ravens-
worth) would vote for the second rowing of the bill.
Lord CAMPBELL said that if the noble lord had heard
the eloquent and able speech of the right rev. prelate who
spoke second in the debate he would have been a convert to
the doctrines propounded in it. As regarded his (Lord