The Sun.
London, England, 1858-05-03 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, MAY 3, 1858.

The remaining resolutions respecting the
Government of India will be brought forward
this evening. We trust that the House of Com-
mons will act fairly and impartially under the
circumstances, and, casting party considerations
aside, will strive to render the contemplated
legislation the best, both for Groat Britain
and India, that can be hoped for. It is
not a subject that should be dealt with in
a factious manner. If ever there was a topic
requiring the most complete fair play, the tail
absence of every party feeling, it is the one now
before Parliament. The welfare, happiness, and
prosperity of one hundred and fifty millions of
our fellow subjects hang in the balance. The
almost miraculous resources of that gigantic
empire only require proper development to
astonish even the most sanguine calculators.
It is scarcely too much to anticipate that even
before the present generation has passed away the
revenue of India may equal, or possibly exceed,
that of Great Britain, and that it may be derived
from perfectly unobjectionable sources. Surely,
then, on a question of such magnitude, no petty
considerations should be permitted to intervene.
It ought not to be made the battle field on which
to decide whether Lord DERBY, Lord PALMER-
STON, or Lord JOHN RUSSELL, is to be placed
at the head of her MAJESTY'S Government. The
latter nobleman deserves great credit for the course
he pursued in divesting it of a party character ;
and although the Palmerstonian journals have
howled forth their disappointment in a variety of
keys at the responsibility being transferred from
the Ministry to the House of Commons, we scarcely
think that the veteran Viscount will irretrievably
damage his character by adopting the advice of
his reckless organs.

The first question to be decided is the title by
which the Minister responsible for the administra-
tion of affairs in India is to be designated. Is
he to be Secretary of State, or merely President of
the Council ? It is said that " the rose by any
other name will smell as sweet ;" and it would
seem that when the functions to be discharged,
and the responsibility to be sustained, are
identical, the mere title is of comparatively
trivial importance. The real point at issue
is whether on any change of office bet veen au
actual Secretary of State, and the head of the
Indian department, the seat in Parliament should
be vacated, and a new election rendered impera-
tive. Now, it is quite right that a person accept-
ing Office for the first time as a Cabinet Minister,
should appeal to his constituents for their ap
proval of his conduct. But when he has already
received that approval, when his position as
an influential Member of the Cabinet has
a mere work
been recognised and sanctioned, • • Ifl
of supererogation to require additional evidence
when he is merely transferred from one situation
to another of equal rank. The only effect can be
to delay and embarrass the Government, and give
an excuse for procrastination, when it might be
of the greatest importance to proceed with
the greatest despatch. On every ground,
therefore, the appointment of a Secretary

not carry with it the same weight or dignity.
Notice has been given of many amendments
respecting the number, mode of appointment,
tenure of office, and functions of the contemplated
Council. The chief questions are, whether there
are not to be more than twelve, or any number
varying between twelve and eighteen ; whe-
ther they are to be entirely nominated by the
Crown, or partly by election ; whether they
are to hold office dum, se bene gesserunt.
like the Judges, or merely " during pleasure, or
to go out at certain interval•, with the chance of
reappointment, cr re-eleotion ? And whether
they are to exercise the preliminary patronage,
or that it is to be disposed of by competitive
examinations. _ _

These are the main points to be decided. We
only wish that those which are best calculated to
promote the interests both of England and India
may be adopted ; and we say of the rival leader;
as they did in the olden time, "May the best
man win."

On Wednesday Lord BURY'S Bill to legalise
marriage with the sister of a deceased wife, will
be again before the House of Commons, on the
motion for its second reading. The first reading
of a bill with so few clauses, and of so simple a
character, especially after a fair discussion, is
nearly equivalent, as an expression of opinion, to
the second reading ; but on this occasion, what
has occurred since the introduction of the bill has
made it doubly necessary that the bill should be
so supported as to insure its being carried through
the House of Lords this session.
The case of BROOK V. BROOK, on which Vice-
Chancellor Sir JOHN STUART had not given Ms
judgment when we last wrote, is now decided, for
the present at least. The Vice-Chancellor has
given his judgment, which concurs with that of
Mr. Justice CRESSWELL. We need not re-state
the details of this particular case ; the effect of
the judgment is what our readers are chiefly con-
cerned to know. It is this :—A marriage of Eng-
lish subjects, if contracted between a widower and
the sister of his deceased wife, although solem-
nised, as at Altona in Danmark, in a country
where such marriage is lawful, is nevertheless
null and void, and the offspring, if any, are ille-
gitimate. The disability of an Englishman to
marry his deceased wife's sister in his own coun-
try is construed to be a personal one ; hence it
follows him whitbersoever he goes ; and, what
is worse, the same incapacity attaches to his
children through succeeding generations I Unless he
become naturalised in some other country where
such marriages are lawful, and that is in most
countries, he cannot get rid of his disability. He
may live anynumber of years in a foreign land, he
may emigrate with his wife's family to any of
our colonies, and her sister may be almost the
only person he could reasonably think of as a wife
after her death, but it would make no difference. Two
judges, whose decision, unless reversed by appeal
or by legislation, is law, have stripped him of the
liberty permitted him on this point, both by the
law of GOD, as revealed to the Jews, and by the
law of nature.
We do not complain of the judges. They have
doubtless decided in accordance with their con-
scientious views of the law as it stands, nor shall
we now enter on the grounds of our difference in
opinion from such very high authorities ; our
present object is legislation. We have, indeed,
the strongest hope that the House of Lords will,
on appeal, reverse that decision. But, first, there
are the known " glorious uncertainties of the
law ;" next, the cruel consequences which have
been inflicted by the decision itself on thousands
of innocent persons. It may not be known that the
Marriage Law Amendment Society has a register,
the names of the parties being, of course, given
in strict confidence, of not less than three thousand
cases of the marriages in question. They comprise
all classes, from day labourers to persons high in
station. Indeed, a noble Duke, in a dignified
office in her MAJESTY'S present Government, is
the offspring of one of these marriages, and its
legitimation was the well-understood object of the
Act of Lord LYNDHURST, in 1835, by which all

Englishmen were, as is now decided, wholly de-

prived of the right we now seek for them. Nume-
rous as the ascertained cases are, they must, how-
ever, be exceeded by those which are unknown.
The facility of evasion through the difference be-
tween the names of the brother and sister-in-law;
the temptation to evade a law which is resented
as a flagrant invasion of a natural and scriptural
right ; and the readiness with which persons may
interpret, in a non-natural, or rather non-legal
sense, the declaration required before mar-
riage, all combine to induce many, in the
hwnbler walks of life especially, to marry with
little concern about unrighteous human laws,
being quite satisfied with the approval of their
GOD and their own consciences,.

What then is the tega/position of the thousands

who have married thus, and of their altogether
innocent children ?"—That the fathers and mo-
thers are living in concubinage, and that the chil-
dren are illegitimate ! The fathers might to-mor-
row send their wives (for such they are) out of
their houses, and be under no more legal respon-
sibility for them and their children, than if the
former were women without character, and the
latter their offspring! Thousands of perfectly
virtuous women, affectionate wives, and the chil-
dren of happy and honoured homes, have been in
one hour legally branded with the disgrace appro-
priate to the most degrading of the vices ! We
can have no fear that many, or perhaps even any
instances of such conduct will occur. It is the
fact that the marriages in question are generally
contracted from the highest motives and with the
soundest judgment ; but is it to be toleratel that
such should be the position of a noble-minded
woman, and her helpless children, and that such
should be the powers given by law to the man
who has married her ? Is the latter to be able to
tell her, should he prove unworthy to bear the
name of man,—" you are but my mistress !" and
is the former to have no reply but "I am at your
mercy?"

And for what is the nation to be covered with
Wgrea
leases of legal injustice of this kind? Wlitat great
ter
social evil is to be warded off by it ? hi
wrong is to be averted by the perpetration of this
wrong, so great in itself ? There is literally no
end whatever to be attained, but that of inflicting
the heaviest social penalties on those who
are willing to obey the laws of GOD, but
who refuse to be bound by the Popish canons of
the Church of England. That is all, literally all.
With many other relics of Popery the Church of
England retains the degrees of consanguinity and
affinity established by the Church of Rome. In
1835 the cases in which marriages were voidable
by ecclesiastical law under the prohibition in
question, were so numerous, one of them, too,
being in the peerage, that Lord LYNDHURST intro-I
daced a bill to legalise the existing marriages, '
andsc ie nt eoe,l legalise in future all of a similar kind if
not
vr annulledas conceding
within i
ntgw
eonyoeuagrhs .
tThis,he
churchiin
aand co
its canons ;
buo., the Bishops of the day demanded
---an(114"1 1411104vItsT found himself obliged to

THE SUN, LONDO

of State, as suggested by the Government', 1
lyield—that the price of declaring unimpeachable
is far better than that of President, which d 05.93
all the existing marriages, should be their entire
-Irohibition in future ! By the recent interpreta-
tion
,nf this act thousands of persons ara now in a
worse p,-,sition, in one more urgently requiring
egislative
+erposition than were those in whose
tuarnusT's act was passed. The
marriages
latter were voidable by suit in an
behalf Lord
of
the L
Ecclesiastical Court during the lifetime of both
parties ; but, as few persons would wish or care to
interfere for such an odious purpose, practically
the marriages then were safe. By the late
decision, however, the numerous marriages cele-
brated in contravention of the act of 1835 are
declared to be now null and void, and not merely
voidable. If there was need of legislation in
Lord LYNDHURST'S time, much more is there now.
The pecuniary consequences of the decision are
not to be forgotten. BROOK V. BROOK was, in
fact, a case raised on a pecuniary basis. BROOK'S
son by his second wife died intestate. The deci-
sion declares him to be an illegitimate son, and as
an illegitimate child can have no heirs, all his
share under his father's will goes to the Crown.
If the father and husband in case of one
of the marriages in question dies intestate,
the wife and children inherit nothing—not
even the beds they have lain on. One is
a stranger, the others are illegitimate ! If the
property be willed to the mother and children in
the mother's maiden name, which alone they have
a right to bear, still all the property pays 10 per
cent. legacy duty, instead of nothing for the
widow, and 1 per cent. for the children. Such
are the revolting consequences of the present legal
interpretation of the unnatural Act of 1835.
But we must take higher grounds than even
these unrighteous social and pecuniary results. We
ask,—what right has any earthly authority to step
in and deliberately put asunder those whom GOD
has joined together ? The great majority of Chris-
tians hold that the marriages in question have the
divine sanction ; the unions have. been foimed in
that belief ; nature and revelation are quite at one
on the point. And who, we indignantly ask, are
the men who shall dare to pronounce thousands of
virtuous persons, whom GoD regards as man and
wife, not to be so ? It is not in their competency
to do it ! Legislators, legislating in behalf of
Popery, Mahomedanism, or even of the Church of
England, may torture by civil punishments those
who will not bow the knee to the dogmas of their
pet establishment ; they may embody their super-
stitious canons in the nation's laws, and enforce
them by the secular arm, but they cannot subvert
right and wrong, or abolish the least of the laws
of GOD. The thousands of persona now married in
defiance of Lord LYNDHURST'S Act are " joined
together by GoD," and the legislation which de-
clares their marriage null, and leaves each party
at liberty to marry whom he or she will, is nothing
more nor less than a monstrous piece of immorality
and profanity. It must be repealed.

For 3,250,0001. the drainage of London can
be completely and perfectly reorganised. It has
now been distinctly intimated that for so much,
and no more, this good can really be effected. It
has been thus intimated to the House of Commons
by the Royal Commissioners appointed to inquire,
not only into the drainage of the metropolis, but
into the whole Sewage Question of the United
Kingdom. The preliminary report has at length
been laid upon the table of the House of Commons
by the Commissioners. And there, unmistakeably
upon that report, the fact already particularised
makes its appearance—the fact of this most satisfac-
tory intimation that for three millions and one quarter
(for actually 74,0001. less than the estimated defici-
ency upon tlais nex.t year's expenditure, according to
the first rough draft of Mr. DISR&ELI'S Financial
Statement), we can secure the perfect drainage of
this vast capital ! And what, let us ask, is implied
by the perfect drainage of London
The purification of the Thames. The embank-
ment of that once more beautiful and salubrious
river. The construction of advanced terraces on
either side—on the Surrey side and the Mid-
dlesex side, all the way up from the Pool to
Chelsea Reach —so that the world-famous
metropolis of the greatest maritime power this
world has ever witnessed may no longer be ap-
proached, by water, through localities the most
squalid and dilapidated ! Localities rendering the
Silent Highway the foul and unsightly back entrance
to the Imperial twin cities of London and West-
minster.

Supposing this sum of 3,250,000/. to have
been expended as proposed by the Royal Commis-
sioners. Supposing the sewage of the capital to
have been deodorised in proper covered reservoirs
—the precipitated matter pumped into the coun-
try as manure, or t) the sea as refuse, and the puri-
fied water alone allowed to run off into the river
current. Supposing the Thames to have been re-
stored to a river, at once sightly and noble by the
building up of these projected double lines of
embankments—having advanced terraces, both
for carriage ways and for the convenience of
foot-passengers. Supposing all this to have beer
actually accomplished—and the Commissione's
positively assert that for no more than three mi-
lieus and one-quarter sterling it can, whenever
we please, be accomplished—How much is thcre
not inevitably then accomplished in the way of
subordinate and subsidiary metropolitan improve-1
ments ? It would follow, then, inevitably, that
one of the very grandest of all the glorious public
buildings in England would be opened up to view
by a broad and direct approach from the river--
meaning, of course, no other edifice than Sir
CHRISTOPHER WREN'S architectural master-
piece, St. Paul's Cathedral. Again, both
the ancient and modern architectural glo-
ries of Westminster would be in every re-

spect more imposingly and appropriately situated
—the old Abbey, the old Hall, the new and no
less stately Palace of the Legislature. Simulta-
neously, too, the bridges of the metropolis woukl
be in a manner brought more distinctly witliu
the scope of general regard and appreciation.
Some of these bridges, remember, being among
the chef d'aqtvre3 among the 'pontine wonders of
Christendom—the Thames having at once the
noblest of all iron bridges, that of South-
wark, of all suspension bridges, that of
Hungerford, and of all granite bridges,
that of Waterloo, the last-mentioned being
an object among others of CANOVA'S espe-
cial admiration. As at present these and the
other superb structures crossing the river Thames
are, and must continua to be entirely so to speak
in the background. They can only be viewed in
tdnae majestic
t o
a general way from the river itself as from one
another. It has been 89 ina
great measure with
t hhaee ntreof
with its
h inauguratione structuren ev Gothic
fl. Idiro)lnitdßgweijil nold Bridge ee overin course
soin likerse
since
of construction at Westminster.
The projected
c
m
enabaukments will remove all this seclusion from
public view of the bridges over the Thames. It
will bring all their hidden beaaties to light con-
spicuously. But beyond these and similar con-
siderations, there is the paramount consideration
of all, that by the river traversing this great city,
bisecting it, winding through its dense and ever-
. meats by which it will be
by the very same arrang,e
increasing population, being effectuany purified