shall be thereupon bound to present. Here it is obvious that the person to whom the right of nomination is given is substantially the patron, and the person who presents is merely the instrument of his will. So, where an advowson is under mortgage, the mortgage-creditor is bound to present any person who shall be nominated by the mortgagor.

If, upon the vacancy of a living, no successor, or an insufficient one, shall be presented, it is put under sequestration by the bishop, whose care it then becomes to provide for the spiritual wants of the parish by a temporary appointment, and to secure the profits of the benefice, after deducting expenses, until another incumbent shall be duly inducted. After a vacancy of six months, occasioned by the default of the patron, the right to present lapses to the bishop himself. On a similar default by him, it devolves to the archbishop, and from him again to the king as paramount patron; the period. of six calendar months is allowed to pass in each case before the right is forfeited to the superior. A donative advowson, however, is excepted from the general rule; for there the right never lapses by reason of a continued vacancy, but the patron is compellable to fill it up by the censures of the Ecclesiastical Court.

When the incumbent of a living is promoted to a bishopric, it is thereby vacated, and the king, in virtue of his prerogative, has a right to present to it in lieu of the proprietor of the advowson. This singular claim on the part of the crown appears to have grown up since the Reformation, and was the subject of complaint and discussion down to as late a period as the reign of William and Mary. It is difficult to reconcile it to any rational principle, although it has been urged by way of apology, that the patron has no ground to complain, because the king might, if he pleased, enable the bishop to retain the benefice, notwithstanding his promotion, by the grant of a commendam: so that the patron sustains no other injury than what may result from the substitution of one life for another. It is, however, certain that, by successive promotions, the crown may, in fact, deprive the patron of his

right for an indefinite time, and an instance is known to have actually occurred wherein the patron of the parish of St. Andrew in London was prevented, by several such exertions of the royal prerogative, from presenting to his own living more than once in 100 years. (See the arguments in the case of the Vicarage of St. Martin's, reported by Sir B. Shower, vol. i. p. 468.) It was truly observed by the counsel in that case, that the safest course to be adopted by an unconscientious patron, with a view to retain in his own hands the future enjoyment of his right, would be to present a clergyman whose qualities are not likely to recommend him to higher preferment.

The following cases may be selected as best illustrating the peculiar nature of this sort of property.

If a man marries a female patron, and a vacancy happens, he may present in the name of himself and wife.

Joint tenants and tenants in common of an advowson must agree in presenting the same person; and the bishop is not bound to admit on the separate presentation of any one. Co-heiresses may also join in presenting a clergyman; and if they cannot agree in their choice, then they shall present in turn, and the eldest shall have the first turn.

When the patron dies during a vacancy, the right to present devolves to his executors, and not to his heir: but where the patron happens also to be the incumbent, his heir, and not his executor, is entitled to present.

Where the patron is a lunatic, the lord chancellor presents in his stead; and he usually exercises his right in favour of some member of the lunatic's family, where it can with propriety be done.

An infant of the tenderest age may present to a living in his patronage, and his hand may be guided in signing the requisite instrument. In such a case the guardian or other person who dictates the choice or directs the pen is the real patron; but the Court of Chancery would doubtless interfere to prevent any undue practice. (Burn's Eccles. Law, tit. Advowson, Benefice, Donative; Selden's History of Tithes; Gibson's Coder, vol. ii.; and BENEFICE, under which head

no ancient geographer has given anything like a definite boundary to Ætolia, and as we are still only imperfectly acquainted with the mountains of northern Greece, any further description is impossible. The western boundary was the Achelous. The history of the Etolians, as a nation, is closely connected with that of the Acarnanians, but, like the Acarnanians, they were a people of little importance during the most flourishing periods of the commonwealths of European Greece. After the death of Alexander the Great, B.C. 323, they came into notice by their contests with the Macedonian princes, who allied themselves with the Acarnanians. In the reign of Philip V. of Macedon (which commenced B.C. 220), the Etolians, after seeing their chief town, Thermum, plundered by this king, and feeling themselves aggrieved by the loss of all they had seized from the Acarnanians, applied to the consul Valerius Lævinus (B.c. 210). Though this produced no beneficial effects, they formed a second treaty with the Romans (about B.C. 198) after the end of the second Punic war. The immediate object of the Romans was the conquest of Macedonia, but it proved eventually that this fatal alliance of the Etolians was the first step that led to the complete subjugation of all Greece by the Romans. A series of sufferings and degradations led the way to the occupation of Etolia, which was made part of the Roman province of Acha. Under Roman dominion, the few towns of Etolia almost disappeared: many of the inhabitants were transplanted to people the city of Nicopolis, which Augustus built at the entrance of the Ambracian gulf, opposite Actium, where he had defeated Antony (B.c. 30). Since the time of the Romans it is probable that the face of this country has undergone as few alterations, or received as few improvements from the hand of man, as the most remote parts of the globe. The Romans themselves under the emperors had not even a road through Acarnania and Ætolia, but followed the coast from Nicopolis to the mouth of the Achelous.

Under the Turkish empire, Ætolia was partly in the province of Livadia; and it

is now comprised within the new king. dom of Greece.

The earliest traditions of Ætolia, properly known by that name, speak of a monarchical form of government under Etolus and his successors; but this form of government ceased at a period earlier than any to which historical notices extend, and we find the Etolians existing in a kind of democracy, at least during the time of their greatest political importance. This period extended from about B.C. 224, to their complete conquest by the Romans, B.C. 168, a period of about 50 years. The Etolian league at one time comprehended the whole country of Etolia, part of Acarnania and of South Thessaly, with the Cephallenian isles; and it had besides, close alliances with other places in the Peloponnesus, especially Elis, and even with towns on the Hellespont, and in Asia Minor. This alliance with Elis would tend to confirm the tradition of the early connexion already alluded to. Following, probably, the example of the Achæan league, the different parts of Ætolia formed a federal union, and annually chose a general or president, a master of the horse, a kind of special council called Apokletoi (the select), and a secretary, in the national congress held at Thermum about the autumnal equinox. Such scattered notices as we possess about their history and constitutional forms are found principally in the Greek writer Polybius (books ii. iv. xvii., &c.). Though the Ætolian confederation, such as it was in its earlier times, was anterior to the Achæan union of Dyme, Patræ, &c., yet its more complete organization was most probably an imitation of the Achæan league. A minute account of this confederation would be little more than conjecture.

(Schlosser, Universalhistorische Uebersicht, &c., vol. ii. p. 1.; Hermann, Lehrbuch, &c.; the article Achäischer Bund, in the Staats-Lexicon of Rotteck and Welcker, contains all the necessary references.)

AFFINITY (from the Latin adfinitas) means a relationship by marriage. The husband and wife being legally considered as one person, those who are related to the one by blood are related to the other in

the same degree by affinity. This relationship being the result of a lawful marriage, the persons between whom it exists are said to be related in law; the father or brother of a man's wife being called his father or brother-in-law. Almost the only point of view in which affinity is a subject of any importance in the English law is as an impediment to matrimony; persons related by affinity being forbidden to marry within the same degrees as persons related by blood. [MARRIAGE.] It is in accordance with this rule that a man is not permitted by our law after his wife's death to marry her sister, aunt, or niece, those relations being all within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity; and therefore, according to the principle just laid down, the prohibition extends to the same relations by affinity also. This rule, which excludes from marriage those who are within certain degrees of affinity, is supposed to be founded on the Mosaic law; but the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus, on which the prohibition is founded, is interpreted by some persons as not relating to marriage; and in the case of a deceased wife's sister, the text seems to imply a permission of marriage after the wife's death. The degrees of relationship, both of consanguinity and affinity, within which marriages are prohibited, are contained in Archbishop Parker's Table, entitled "A Table of Kindred and Affinity, wherein whosoever are related are forbidden in Scripture and our laws to marry together." Parker, of his own authority, ordered this Table to be printed and set up in the churches of his province of Canterbury. The Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical, which were made in the reign of James I., confirmed Parker's Table, which thus became part of the marriage law so far as that law is administered by the ecclesiastical courts. Marriages within the prohibited degrees could formerly only be annulled by the ecclesiastical courts during the joint lives of the husband and wife; and consequently the offspring of such marriages, though the marriages were considered incestuous by the ecclesiatical courts, was legitimate unless the marriage was dissolved in the lifetime of both the

parents. The Act 5 & 6 Wm. IV. c. 54, 1835, has declared that all marriages celebrated before the passing of that Act between persons being within the prohibited degrees of affinity shall not be annulled for that cause by any sentence of the ecclesiastical court; but that all marriages which shall hereafter be celebrated between persons within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity or af finity shall be absolutely null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever. This act does not define what are the prohibited degrees, and this part of the enactment must be interpreted by a reference to Parker's Table and the Canons if the question arises before courts spiritual; and by statute or judicial decisions if it arises in the civil courts, as it may do in cases of prohibition or of succession. The principal statute is the 25 Hen. VIII. c. 32. An elaborate judgment was pronounced by Chief Justice Vaughan, in the celebrated case of Hill v. Good (Vaughan's Reports, 302), which affirmed that marriage with a wife's sister is unlawful; and this judgment, together with the doctrines prevailing in all our text-books from Lord Coke down to 1835, seems to establish that such is the law of England.

It is the prevailing opinion that this act renders all persons incapable of contracting a marriage who are within the prohibited degrees; and that the rule of law which makes a foreign marriage valid in England, if celebrated according to the law of the country where it was contracted, merely dispenses with the forms required in an English marriage, and has no reference to the parties between whom the marriage is made. This question is now being argued in the House of Lords, in the case of Sir Augustus d'Este, who claims the dukedom of Sussex, on the ground that the statutory prohibition of his father's marriage could apply only to England, and does not invalidate a marriage contracted (as that of the Duke of Sussex was) in strict conformity to the law of the country where it occurred. The recent statute may cause some doubt whether a marriage contracted in England by foreigners within the prohibited degrees of affinity

who could contract a valid marriage in their own country, shall be considered valid in England for every purpose; for instance, whether, in the case of the father's intestacy, the children and the wife could take his personal property in England, if the father was domiciled in England.

There are certain cases of prohibition, such as the prohibition against a man marrying his deceased wife's sister, which are considered by many persons to rest on no good reasons, and much has been urged of late years against some of the prohibitions in cases of affinity comprised in Parker's Table. The arguments in favour of maintaining the prohibitions in several of the cases included within Parker's Table seem to be insufficient, if the matter is viewed solely as a question of policy and, as already observed, the divine authority of some of the prohibited cases cannot, in the opinion of many persons, be maintained. But opinion and prejudice are strongly opposed to any change in the law on this matter. (Notes on the Prohibition of Marriage in cases of Collateral Affinity, by Thomas Coates, London, 1842.)

The general rules on this subject are the same in Scotland as in England. The 5 & 6 Wm. IV. c. 54, does not extend to that part of the country. It is the general dictum of the authorities that a marriage with the sister of a deceased wife is null, but the opinion has been doubted, and there has been no opportunity for trying the question judicially.

In several of the United States marriages within the Levitical degrees, with some exceptions, are made void by statute. In some States it is not lawful for a man to marry his deceased wife's sister: in other States it is lawful. For instance, such a marriage may be contracted in New York, and not in Massachusetts. But such a marriage would be held valid in any state in which it is forbidden, and in all other states, if contracted in a state or country where the prohibition does not exist. (Kent, Commentaries, ii.)

The distinction between affinity and consanguinity is derived from the Roman law. The kinsfolk (cognati) of the husband and wife became respectively the

Adfines of the wife and husband. We have borrowed the words affinity and consanguinity from the Roman law, but we have no term corresponding to adfines. The Romans did not reckon degrees of adfinitas as they did of consanguinity (cognato); but they had terms to express the various kinds of adfinitas, as socer, father-in-law; socrus, mother-in-law.

AFFIRMATION is the solemn asseveration made by Quakers, Moravians, and Separatists, in cases where an oath is required from others. This indulgence was first introduced by the statute 7 & 8 Wm. III. c. 34, which enacts that the solemn affirmation of Quakers in courts of justice shall have the same effect as an oath taken in the usual form. The provisions of this statute are explained and extended by 8 Geo. I. c. 6, and 22 Geo. II. c. 46, s. 36; but in all these statutes there is a clause expressly restraining Quakers from giving evidence on their affirmation in criminal cases. This exception, which Lord Mansfield called “a strong prejudice in the minds of the great men who introduced the original statute (Cowper's Reports, p. 390), has been entirely removed by a recent enactment (9 Geo. IV. c. 32); and Quakers and Moravians are now entitled to give evideuce in all cases, criminal as well as civil, upon their solemn affirmation. By 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 82, the people called Separatists are allowed to make affirmation instead of taking an oath. The Act 1 & 2 Vict. c. 77, allows the same privilege to persons who have been at any time Quakers, Moravians, or Separatists, and have ceased to be such, but still entertain conscientious objections to the taking of an oath. [OATH.] A curious question arose during the session of parliament of 1833 respecting the sufficiency of the affirmation of a Quaker, instead of the customary oaths, ou his taking his seat in the House of Commons: the subject was referred to a committee, upon whose report the House resolved that the affirmation was admissible.

AGE. The common law of England has fixed certain times in the life of a man and woman at which they become legally capable of doing certain acts and owing certain duties, of which before attaining