by an artful woman, shall his affec. tions be estranged from that woman by a dictum of law, so that upon attaining his majority, he shall be prepared with constant affection to enter into marriage with another? In either case, where are the children? Let the children of the son be abandoned to their state of illegitimacy, but shall the mother forget her sucking child, or shall she be suffered to clasp a bastard to her breast? There is but one alternative: the child is legitimate or illegitimate, the mother is a wife or a concubine. But the marriage is miserable and degrading: in whose judgment? upon what principle? Is it that there is a difference of rank and fortune, that it bears that character. These are not the marriages, which courts are called to dissolve, or which minors are prone to contract. The rich and the

noble see no attractions in poverty and degradation. Doctor Stebbing's advice to parents is worthy to be repeated:

"Consider, gentlemen, the power that God and nature hath put into your hands: and which, if you use properly, you will find no great want of the aid of laws. Nature hath placed your children under your inspection and care; always within the reach of your advice and authority, which should be employed in giving them a sober and virtuous education, suitable to their rank and quality, which will naturally dispose them to set a just value upon themselves, and to think themselves degraded when offers of marriage are made to them by persons of inferior condition. Add to this, that you are masters of the state and fortune of your families, which will always be a great check, ordinarily sufficient, to keep them back, when they begin to find their inclinations running contrary to your judgments. Experience

shews this. For look abroad into the

world, and what will you see? Why, ordinarily, the poor marrying among the poor, the middle rank among the middle rank, and the rich and the noble among the rich and the noble. The world naturally runs this way without the help of laws. The lower classes of men have it not in their power to marry above their rank, or very rarely. The rich and the great have as rarely so little pride as to REMEMBRANCER, NO. 48.

permit them to marry below theirs. But sometimes it happens otherwise, and you would have a law to prevent it. Well: you have it, and what will you do with it? The law adds nothing but force; force is abhorrent to human nature, and may draw upon you and your children, mischiefs which you will surely repent, and for which you will find no remedy. For mischief, give me leave to say, there may be, unless you can find a nullity, which, like a magic wand, would make every thing it touches vanish and disappear, as if it had never been."

In the Protests of the Lords, objections were made to the retrospective clauses and operations of the Bill, as dangerous precedents, especially affecting the right of property. The necessity of these clauses was defended by Dr. Phillimore at considerable length.

"On general principles, I feel the argnment in favour of the retrospective operation of the Bill to be exceedingly strong. judicial to the community; if, instead of If a law by experience is found to be prepromoting order, and equity, and justice, it holds out a temptation to perjury and fraud, and tends by its operation and effect to villify and degrade in the estimation of the community, that institution, which, for obvious reasons, ought to be upheld as a primary object of respect and veneration, surely no delay should be interposed to the repeal of such a law, Surely, also, the repeal should be as complete and effectual as possible, and in the manner best calculated to heal all the wounds, which by its operation it may have inflicted on Society." P. 50.

In addition to general principles, Dr. Phillimore alleges as precedents in favour of the Bill, that the late Marquis of Hertford and Bishop Horsley had brought in Bills for the confirmation of marriages solemnized by banns published in chapels not recognized by the Act, which, in all points involving the right of the persons so married and their descendants, and the defeat of the claims of third parties as lawful heirs of the persons unmarried or not legally married, correspond with the recent enactment. The property thus transferred from the legal to the natural heir, is placed in no 5 C

evasion to defeat the great purpose of the Act, the prevention of clandestinity, were so strongly felt by Dr. Phillimore, that he proposed to make it a ground of nullity at the instance of the parents or guardians during minority, if the parties should not have been resident for fourteen days, immediately preceding the publication, and in his Speech, he insists on the corrupt fashion which prevails, especially in the north, of being married, and having the banns published in a populous town, to which the parties do not belong. It has occurred within our knowledge, that the wife of a transported convict, who could not procure the publication of banns in her proper parish, found no difficulty in a neighbouring town, where she was also married, without any evidence or suspicion that she was not a widow and very recently, a young man required that his banns should be published as belonging to the same parish with his intended bride, because he was actually in the parish on the several Sundays on which they were published.

own

The more exact description of the parties and of their residence, and the more public and permanent exhibition of the names, during the time of publication, do not appear to be liable to any valid objection, to any which experience and custom will not overcome.. The requisition of the oath is a matter of far more doubtful expedience, and will give rise to many questions; whether the oath should not be adminstered always by the clergyman, and as was certainly the intention of the Legislature, without a stamp; whether it might not be sufficient to administer it after the publication of banns, and before the solemnization of marriage; whether the oath might not, in many instances, be dispensed with altogether; and whether in parishes of a limited population, and in the case of parties both belonging to the same parish, the administration might not

be suspended at the discretion of the clergyman, on his certifying his knowledge of the parties, and his conviction that no fraud is intended. In small parishes in the country, the clergyman knows his parishioners, and their circumstances, and he needs no affidavit concerning them. It has been reported, probably with some exaggeration, that in the town of Hertford, but two sets of banns were published for a certain period; and in both cases the man was in the bridewell, and the woman in the workhouse. In this case, and in many other cases, the oath is alto gether needless and gratuitous; nor is it of any conceivable importance, that the parties shall swear, that they are under, or that they are not under age, since majority claims no exemption, and no further obligation is imposed upon the minor. On these points, it is but too truly observed by Mr. Poynter:

"It has ever been held inconsistent

with sound policy, and even with morality, to encumber the approaches to matrimony with unnecessary forms; besides which, the multiplication of affidavits required by the amendments introduced by the new Act, is little calculated to revive that re

verential feeling for the sacred obligation of an oath, which its hacknied repetition, in compliance with the incessant demands of the statute book, has nearly extinguished." Supplement, p. 19.

There are various minor objections to the Bill; its clerical error, requiring that a house shall be affixed to a church-door; its redundancies and surplusage, especially in the fourth section, which is comprehended in the third and the fifth; the omission of all schedules, whether for licence or banns, for town or country; and its circuitous directions concerning the preservation of affidavits, which might at once be deposited in the iron chest with the registers. The Act might also have restored the true time of the publication of banns, after the Nicene Creed, when the publication would not interrupt the public service, and the clergyman would fol

low at once the direction of the rubric and the requisition of the statute. The Act is also required to be read again and again in the church if this clause should be repeated in an ameuded Act, might it not be sufficient to require a single recitation, more than which is a laborious addition to the duties of the clergyman, and will be followed, on the part of the congregation, by any feelings but those which become the house of prayer.

:

These are all hints of revision, rather than objections. The great principle of the validity of marriage has been restored; the great innovation of the nullity of marriage has been rescinded. The new arrangement of the details, after the principle has been settled, and the experience of a year has thrown light on the practice, will be accomplished with little difficulty. When the subject was once mentioned in the House of Commons, Mr. Serjeant Onslow intimated the necessity of a general revision of the whole law of matrimony and a Bill, consolidating that law, would be a work worthy of the divine, the lawyer, and the legislator. The old Marriage Act, so far as it has not been repealed, the new Marriage Act, the Rubric, and the Canons of 1604, are now to be taken together, as the one rule which governs the celebration of marriage, and determines its validity. Necessity appears to require an Act of Amendment, which may not include the Bishop of Chester's proposition concerning banns in unauthorized churches and chapels : and in minds not familiar with legal investigations, it will require considerable powers of discrimination to know what part of these complicated laws is in force, and what has been repealed.

A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of London, at the Visitation in July 1822: By

Willim Lord Bishop of London. 24 pp. 4to. Rivingtons. 1822.

IF our review of this Charge were intended to give the reader a full idea of its merits, we should be forced to betake ourselves to the obvious but somewhat unusual expedient of reprinting it from beginning to end. For we can safely say, that there is no part undeserving of consideration; nor any with which our clerical readers especially, ought not to make themselves acquainted. In this state of affairs we shall content ourselves with giving a very slight outline of the work at large, and extracting the Bishop of London's sentiments upon one particular head. Such a proceeding seems best calculated, without a deviation from the ordinary laws of reviewing, to promote that general perusal of the Charge before us, which cannot fail to prove beneficial to the Church and the country.

Of the Clergy Consolidation Act, the Bishop observes, that its practical if not its theoretic perfection is on the whole as great as can be expected, and he emphatically reminds his clergy that whatever exemptions may be allowed by law, the responsibility of declining a personal discharge of their duties must rest with themselves, and that they should be assured that the grounds upon which they act, are such as will stand the scrutiny of their own conscience. This subject leads his Lordship to notice and expose the preposterous notion which is sometimes entertained that the Curate is rendered independent of the Rector by the Bishop's licence, and cannot justly be displaced except for flagrant misconduct. The error is so common, that our readers will be thankful for an opportunity of knowing the Bishop of London's precise opinion upon it.

"The enactment of the 36 Geo. 3,

since re-enacted in the Clergy Consoli