The Sun.
London, England, 1850-02-28 00:00:00

Inviting 21iltrcb

LONDON, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY M 1850.

The second reading of the Marriages Bill was yes-
terday brought forward in the House of Commons by
Mr. STUART WORTLEY, and although the entire day
was consumed in the discussion, the debate was ad-
journed on the understanding that it should be re-
sumed on Wednesday next. The opponents of the
measure have manifestly determined to adopt the
Fabian policy. They will accept no compromise,
be conciliated by no concession. They still desire to
bind the consciences of their fellow-men, and to compel
the community in general to be guided by the
limited and narrow views by which they themselves
are actuated. It is eminently a question of civil and
religious liberty, affecting the most sacred relation of
life—the right of selecting a partner for life, a com-
panion in sickness and in health, in poverty or
affluence, through good report and through bad report.
3iro merely political disability can be tor a moment
considered as of equal importance. In one
case your honourable ambition may be
thwarted, a grievous slight may be inflicted
which can be easily submitted to "for conscience
sake ;" but, on the other, the happiness of life may be
blighted, the best feelings of mankind seared and
slighted, and the supreme law of_nature controlled
and set at nought. We should rather have said
attempted to be controlled and, set at nought, for
experience has shown, that no human legislation can
have any practical effect in restraining them, and that
the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the
state acrd operation of the law of marriage
as relating to the prohibited degrees of affinity, and
to marriag€ s solemnized abroad, or in the British
colonies, were fully justified in stating their belief
" that the statute 5 and 6 William IV. had failed to
attain its object," and in expressing a grave doubt
" whether any measure of a prohibitory character
would be effectual." No person can deny the
Accuracy of the conclusion at v.-rich they arrived,
after the must string,nt and seraching investigation
into the entire subject, that " these marriages will
take plare where a concu.aence of circumstances give
rise to mutual attachment ; they are not dependent on
lesidotion."

The parties who still desire to retain these absurd,
and inoperative laws are those who would
_gladly repeal the "'Emancipation," and reimpose the
Test and Corporation Acts, who would bring back the
" good old times " when Dissenters were regarded as
:rebels to the authority of the SOVEREIGN, as persons
iplaced beyond the pale and protection of the law of
.the land, who might be tortured with impunity, or
-,put to death at their own thresholds,
in the presence of their weeping and
terror-stricken families, for the high crime and
misdemeanour of worshipping their CREATOR in the
=sumer which, in their souls and consciences, they
dimmed most proper. Are the sentiments and opi-
Irkons of such persons so universally recognised that
they will now be acted on, or that they can be per-
initted to impede and obstruct the progress of a mea-
sure in which the welfare and happiness, the future
position and standing in society of thousands and
tens of thousands of their fellow-subjects
are so deeply involved ? Most decidedly not. The
-voice of public opinion has loudly proclaimed that this
unjust and impolitic law must be repealed, and no
Tarliamentary strategies of a minority can be suffered
to defeat_ the clearly expressed determination of a
large and overwhelmning majority of the people.
But even the ministers and members of the Church
by law established are by no means unanimous on
the point. Some of the most learned, pious, and un-
Rxceptionable clergymen have expressed their views in
the most decisive manner in favour of the removal of the
prohibi*.r. When such men as the Hon. and Rev.
MortTe GUE VILLIERS, the Rev. THOMAS DALE, the
Rev. W. W. CILAMPNEY3, the Rev. J. IL GURNEY,
and a host of others of ahnost equal standing, have
boldly come for..vard—when many of the most
tmieble prelates have signified their decided opinion
that there is nothing immoral or contrary to the law
of GOD in such a connexion—when even the peti-
tioners from the University of Cambridge have
abandoned the untenable ground, the ridi-
culous pretext that marriage with a de-
ceased wife's sister is prohibited by Scripture,
and rested their objections to the measure solely on
thv gr,,5404 of social inexpediency—,-it cannot be as-
"WA with even a aetoblonoa of truth, that the law

of the Church is clearly opposed to such unions, and,
even were it so, how could the religious doctrines of
one church control or affect those who owed it no al-
legiance, and who were strengthened in their own
conscientious opinions by the unanimous judgment of
their pastors—of the men whom they reverence and
respect, and under whose Ministry they sit ?
We regard the exertions of Mr. STUART WORTLEY
in this cause with unfeigned respect. It is to him we are
indebted for bringing the matter prominently before
Parliament. It was on his motion that an address
was presented to the Crown, that led to the appoint.
ment of the Royal Commission that so fairly and
impartially considered the entire question. We
would not, therefore, willingly be considered as cast-
ing a censure upon the Right Hon. and Learned
Gentleman. We must, however, emphatically warn
him against the danger of procrastination and the pos-
sibility of the matter being postponed for yet another
year, if he should lose a single opportunity of pressing
torward the Bill through all its stages. Let him
consider wha% occurred during the past session—the
various frivolous pretexts which were made use of
to retard its progress, and its consequent withdrawal
at the very close of the session, after having been de-
tained from February until August on the table of
the House of Commons. He must also be well aware
of the inutility of any concessions, and yet he has
yielded in one point of no ordinary importance,
a vacillation against which we must enter our most
solemn and earnest protest.
We cannot conceive any grounds upon which the
prohibition against marriage with the niece of a de-
ceased wife can be retained or justified, when that
with a nearer connexion, a sister, is ratified. Such
marriages are, undoubtedly, of rare occurrence ; they
are few in comparison to those • which take place
with sisters-in-law; but surely that is the very
reason why our statute-book should not be
encumbered with any useless law on the sub-
ject. If the restriction should be continued
it would cast a certain degree of odium on the
unions that were sanctioned and recognised by the
Legislature; and it would prove utterly unavailing,
for, to lase again the language of the Commissioners—
" these marriages will take place where a concurrence
of circumstances give rise to mutual attachment; they
are not dependent on legislation." We trust, there•
fore, that this ridiculous distinction may be abolished
in Committee, and that marriage may be legalised
with the neices as well as with the sisters of deceased
wives.

One Porcius has recently °haunted a most eccen-
tric Jeremiad on the fortunes, or rather, we should
say, the misfortunes of agriculture. A pamphlet on
a pamphlet,* has been the vehicle of his lamentations,
and these lamentations are in tone, at least, if not in
principle, so different from any that have hitherto is-
sued from the lips of the farmers of the United King-
dom, that they deserve a somewhat more attentive
auditory. Even the title of this fantastic lucubra-
tion, its may be seen from our foot note, is an oddity,
provocative of a close and scrutinizing examina-
tion ; and quaint though the garb may be,
the form of argument concealed under it
will be found one entitled to something more
than a merely flippant or superficial criticism. For
Porcius, though decked out for the nonce in the
masquerade of comedy, has within him the sobriety
of one authorised to preach the funeral oration of
Monopoly. His voice and manner, it is true, have
each their incentives to laughter, but all his conclu-
sions are as dismal as his prophecies are dolorous.
At the outset our pamphleteer is more than usually
humorous—setting out with a sort of spasm of fasce-
tiousness on his Quixotic adventures against the
dragons of Free-trade doctrines. He begins, for
example, by likening certain agricultural
speculators with the " wonderful black fellow

in the Deccan," who on inserting a seed in
a pot of mould, • and muttering over it,
"some hocus-pocus of charm or conjuration" could
almost in the twinkling of an eye cause a plant to
arise from the germ, its branches to sprout forth, its
buds to expaad into leaves, its blossoms to open, and
its fruit to ripen into the most delicious mangoes.
Such men, says Porcius, as Mr. Maccut and Mr.
CAIRD are kindred in ambition at least with the con-
juror of the Deccan. " They profess," says to in
slntinuation, " to teach the farmer how he may grow
wheat and feed cattle at prices and in quantities
that have hitherto been unknown." Strange, in-
comprehensible, miraculous as these professions
may appear to those who are resolved to be
unbelievers, to us they are nevertheless perfectly
natural and conceivable. Nor can we be charged
with any very excessive incredulity when we reflect
upon the yet more astonishing marvels that have been
accomplished in our own times. To our thinking
there is nothing whatever incomprehensible in the
notion of increasing the fruitfulness of the earth by
the application of chemical agencies—after the per-
formance of those yet more astounding marvels which
have latterly come to be regarded as the every-day
performance of scientific dexterity. Now-a-days,
when we may be carried with astonishing ra-
pidity to any quarter of the land, nay, if we
will it, to the very opposite extremity of
the European continent at the tail of a fiery dragon
of a steam-engine—when we can, out of the sediment
of a transparent liquid grow a film of gold or copper
upon the surface of a metallic substance—when we
can soar into the clouds with the eagle aided by the
science of aerostation—when we can convey our
thoughts with the velocity of lightning along a wire
stretching from London to Liverpool—when we can
do all this, and more than this, is there any-
thing, we ask, so incredible or impossible in
the notion, of increasing the abundance of our
crops 'with the assistance and under the guidance of
the, agricultural chemist ? And yet the bare idea of
such a scheme in this year 1850 appears to be one of
such utter extravagance to the imagination of Por-
cius, that he classes the believers in it with the
trickstering conjurors of the Deccan. He admits, of
course he admits—for not to do so would be a fla-
grant proclamation cf his ignorance—that " through
the aid of chemistry we have gained an immense ad-
ditional and minute knowledge of the immediate
fertilizing agents that we can now analyse
manures and that we know what nitro-
gen is, and how it passes into ammo-
nia." Yet, while acknowledging that the
storehouse of scientific knowledge has had of late a
new and wonderful harvest of facts, be cannot, fur the
life of him, credit how all these things can affect our
national agriculture to the dissipation of all its dreams
of ruin and desolation. Now to us we must confess
there does not appear to be anything so very wonder-
fully rash in the assertion that " the conditions of
wheat and turnip growing, of cattle feeding, and ma-
nure making are reduced within the cog-
nizance of fixed principles." To assert other-
wise would be as frivolous as to deny
the fact that the electric current is incapable of
passing along a metallic conductor to any con-
siderable distance, or as to gainsay that steam can
be applied as a motive power. Experiments have
been made and have proved eminently successful.
To talk derisively of these " fixed principles," because
of the possible recurrence of " a wet or ungenial
Mr
season" is mere uibblin
mark that all qg ; and the derisive re-
•
amount merely to HTJXTABLB'S professions
this—" Follow my example,
put your faith in pig's dung, rear pork, trea-
sure ammonia, and I promise you a large
amount of produce"—is-nothing more nor less than
so much perverse evasion of a truth that is beyond
the reach of contradiction.

Other pamphleteers, with all the earnestness of
Poreius, but without a particle of his amusing eccen-
tricity, are just now industrious in bewailing the
catastrophe of the fortunes of British agriculture.
Among these the more noticeable are the writers of
the series of brochures* now appearing under the
authority of the National Association for the Protec-
tion of British Capital and Industry, in whose argu.
ments it is impossible not to recognize, in spite of
their abounding fallacies, the fervour of belief and the
emphasis of conviction. So stubborn, however, is
this belief, and so irretrievably blind this conviction,
that it sets at nought the force of facts, the demon-
strations_h of logic, and the persuasiveness of eloquence.
T oy have eyes, but they cannot see. Alas! it were

* " Mr. lluxtable and his Pigs." By Purcius. Bvo.,
PP. 30. Blackwood, Edinburgh and London, 1850.
t " Tracts on Protection. No. 1. Introductory Tract.
No. 2. The Occupations of the People. No. 3, An Ab-
stract of Political Opinion." Bvo pp. 46. 011ivier,
London, 1850.

vain to offer them any longer the spectacles of expe.
rience, or the telescope of reason ; like the Scandina-
vians before Freya, they behold only beauty in the
hideous idol of Protection.

We call the attention of our commercial readers to
a report of the meeting at the London Tavern of
the "Benevolent Department" of the Provident Clerks'
Association, and, in doing so, we concur in the al-
most unanimous expressions of regret at the slow
progress made by this branch of the association.
When we look back to the formation of this fund, in
1840, by the munificent donations of merchants and
bankers, amounting to nearly 10,0001., it appears
quite unaccountable that the clerks themselves should
not have followed the example of their employers, and
by this time have raised their permanent fund to
treble its present amount.
It was vary justly stated that all classes, :from the
highest to the lowest, supported a benevolent fund
for the relief of their distressed brethren—let us ask
why the clerks should not do the same ?
We have often commended the association, because
we know that it has conferred great benefits upon
clerks, their widows and families, and we now urge
the body at large to exert themselves and raise a
fund which will enable the association to dispense
with certainty all the benefits to those who may re-
quire them.
In order to avoid misapprehension, our remarks
apply to the benevolent department, the mutual in-
surance department of the association continuing to
progress most satisfactorily.