make the least concession as to the strictness of the law of marriage, even in a single case, is like "the letting out of waters.' When the breach, however small, is once effected, the rushing tide of lawless passions soon widens it, till it sweeps awayall obstacles. And this is specially the case because in every Protestant country, those teachers whose instinctive feeling impels them to maintain the ancient strictness of practice, after having abjured the only Divine authority, are really defending a position which, however commendable, is in them inconsistent and illogical.

The first marriage dissolved by Act of Parliament (after that of the Marquis of Northampton under Edward VI.) was that of Lord Roos (afterwards first Duke of Rutland), in 1670. A great political object was to be attained. The first attempt of the Protestant party, which afterwards strove in vain to pass an Act to exclude the Duke of York from the succession, was to enable Charles II. to divorce his queen and marry another wife, by whom he might leave legitimate heirs. For this there was no precedent. But they determined to create one. With this view they successfully pressed forward a Bill, to enable Lord Roos (whose wife had already been divorced) to marry again. The object was perfectly understood, and this private Bill was taken up on both sides as a public matter. The Duke of York employed all his interest against it, and the king (who supported it), in order to make the most of his own, introduced a custom (without precedent for nearly two centuries) of taking his place on the throne in the House of Lords to watch the debates-a custom which he continued during his life, and which he used to declare was "as good as a play." The Bill was passed by a majority of two votes. Of the Protestant bishops, two voted for it, and thirteen signed the protest of the Duke of York against it. But the precedent was set. It was followed in the case of the Duke of Norfolk (a Protestant), who moved unsuccessfully for an Act of the kind in 1695, and obtained it in 1700. From that time there was, on an average, rather more than one a year for many years. Of late years, with the increase of population and wealth, they had naturally become more frequent. We are not aware that on any occasion after 1700 any opposition was made to the principle of these Divorce Acts by any Protestant bishop; and the course adopted, which practically became part of our "glorious Constitution in Church and State," was this. The husband (as a condition of obtaining from the ecclesiastical court of the Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury a divorce a mensa et thoro) was required to sign a bond, by which he bound himself, under very heavy pecuniary penalties, not to

marry during the life of his divorced wife. He then obtained an Act of Parliament authorizing him to marry and cancelling the bond. Armed with this he returned to the ecclesiastical court of the Archbishop, and, as a matter of course, obtained from it a marriage licence, the regular form of which was in these words:To our dearly beloved in Christ, A. B., a single and unmarried person, his former marriage with C. D. having been annulled by Act of Parliament." The licence then went on in the usual form to testify that the archbishop was informed of the desire of A. B. to contract lawful matrimony, and, highly approving that laudable desire, was pleased to dispense with the celebration of banns, &c.; and in virtue of this licence, the new marriage received such sanction and blessing as the Reformed Protestant Church of England has to give. There are many persons still living, and among them Anglican clergymen, who have been married in virtue of such licences. The principles to which the Anglican Church committed itself by this practice were, first, that by the law of God marriage is in all cases indissoluble; and, next, that a valid dispensation from the obligation of that Divine law may be granted, when occasion arises, by Act of Parliament. Thus a power which no pope ever thought of assuming was recognized by the Church of England as belonging to the king, Lords, and Commons. This has always seemed to us the wildest extreme to which the Anglican doctrine of the royal supremacy could conceivably have been carried. It is amazing to remember that at the very period when Tractarian influence was at its height, it was still the established and recognized practice, both of the English State and the Anglican Church; and that it only ceased to be a regular practice when the law was passed by which the Divorce Court was established. In exceptional cases it is still continued; and, in particular, it is still the recognized principle of the not yet disestablished Protestant Church of Ireland.

It is only just to acknowledge, that the "Peers Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons," who passed these Divorce Acts, dispensed with a law which, although it really was of Divine authority, they did not believe to be so. They no doubt felt that the doctrine that marriage is indissoluble, was a remnant of Popery," which had been left, accidentally and unintentionally, among the laws of a Protestant Church. But the precedent led of necessity to the law by which the present Divorce Court is authorized. It was impossible to deny, that it had been the rule for more than a hundred and fifty years, that any man who could pay for a private Act of Parliament might lawfully marry during the life of his

divorced wife; and when equality before the law had once become an established principle, it followed of necessity that the same liberty could not justly be refused, under the same circumstances, to those who could not afford that costly luxury. The old system could not possibly have stood its ground, in times when the people at large had become an important, if not a predominant political power. The Bishop of Oxford, greatly to his honour, pledged himself publicly in the House of Lords, that if the measure constituting the Divorce Court were rejected, he would never, as long as he lived, allow a Divorce Act to pass unopposed at least by him. More could not well have been done to clear himself as an individual, of any complicity with a system which had been established by the sufferance of his predecessors more than a century before he was born. Perhaps it would be unjust to blame the other Protestant bishops of our own day for taking as a matter of routine, before their attention was specially called to it, what they found so handed down to them. Unhappily the Act passed the House by a majority of one, so that he never had the opportunity of doing more against it.

With these considerations in our minds, we return to the Bill which last session passed the second reading in the Commons by so large a majority. We repeat our conviction that much more really depends upon the success or failure of the present proposal than might appear at first sight to have any connection with it. In itself it may seem a small concession, applying only to a few individual cases. But so to consider it would be most miserably to underrate its importance. A great question is at stake on a single case. That question is whether England shall any longer retain her traditionary estimate of marriage, or whether she shall follow other Protestant nations. This is our reason for considering it in connection with the subject of divorce, with which it may seem at first sight to have no connection. We are convinced that the connection is really very close :

Wedded life with loyal Christians,

Lady, is a mystery rare;

Body, heart, and soul in union

Make one being of a pair.

This expresses no more than those words of the Eternal Word, "They two shall be one flesh "; and hence it results both that never in this world can they be divided, and also that those "near of kin" to the one are near of kin" to the other. The sanctity of the mystic tie cannot be lessened in one

aspect and not lessened at the same time in the other. If the tie is such that man can loosen it, no wonder that those whom it binds are not so joined that the kindred of the one become the kindred of the other. Natural instinct says this, and what it says is confirmed by experience. Where marriage with those near of kin to a deceased wife has been allowed, there marriage itself has always been treated as a tie which human law could unbind. Where divorces have been allowed, there the persons nearest of kin to the wife have been declared strangers in blood to the husband; and so, beyond all question, it will be in England if any relaxation is admitted. The question now at stake is, whether England shall maintain her traditionary estimate of marriage, or whether she shall follow too many Protestant nations, and go on step by step till she comes to treat it as a contract of no special holiness, which any two may make if they will, and which is binding no longer than agrees with the fancy of those who make it.

Towards that miserable result, we are firmly convinced, this Bill will be a most important and an irrevocable stride. It can be defended only on the ground that no near relationship with the wife's sister is really contracted by her husband. But if not, then neither is such relationship contracted with her mother nor her daughter. And then, again, there is no real relationship between a man and his brother's wife. One fatal step our country has already taken in admitting the dissolution of marriage. This Bill, if carried, will most assuredly be a second; and every new breach in the barrier which old customs and rules still oppose to the swelling tide of men's passions, will but invite a wilder and more overwhelming tide.

We are not merely reasoning, on grounds ever so certain, as to what will be. The experience of other Protestant countries shows us what has already been, and there is no reason to doubt that what has been the result of such relaxations, both in Germany and America, will also be the result in England. Upon this subject we would especially refer to the book published some years ago by Sir J. Page Wood, the present Lord Chancellor.

In this article we have preferred to treat the subject on general principles, instead of considering the proposed change by itself, and estimating its probable consequences, or answering the arguments by which it has been supported. Else we should have protested against the strange statement so confidently made, that it is only of late years that marriages with a deceased wife's sister have been unlawful; the fact being

that they have always been forbidden in England, although the mode in which the courts take cognizance of them has been changed. Never has there been one day since S. Augustine landed in Kent on which such a marriage could have been contracted by baptized persons without a previous dispensation from the law.

We must confess ourselves puzzled how those "respectable" persons who have already made such marriages explain to themselves their own position. By what authority do they imagine that such questions are settled? They are Protestants, and therefore cannot say by the authority of the Church. Yet, without waiting for a change of the law, they have contracted a union which the law solemnly declares to be no marriage. Do they or do they not think themselves man and wife? If they do, it can be only on this ground,-that they, as individuals, think that such marriages ought to be recognized by law, and that therefore they have a right to act as if they were so recognized. It is hardly possible to imagine a principle which would admit licence more wild.

The ground on which it is now maintained that the law ought to be altered is, that in the private opinion of those who are agitating for the change, such unions are allowed by the Levitical law, and that any law or canon is absolutely null and void by which any church or nation attempts to impose any restraint on marriage, which is not imposed by the Levitical law. If every man has a right thus to act for himself, on his own interpretation of a confessedly difficult text, how much more clear is his right to practise polygamy, which the Levitical law, beyond all question or dispute, did allow?

There is great force in the argument that the proposed change will make the sweet relationship of sisters-in-law as it now exists no longer possible to millions who are contentedly reverencing the law which they believe to be from God, in order to relieve from a certain degree of stigma and inconvenience some score of persons who, because they think the law unquestionably existing a mistake, have already taken the liberty of setting it at defiance.

We

If our space would allow, we would gladly enlarge upon these social and moral consequences of the change considered by itself. But to us its real importance is that, as we have already said, it is but one more step in a fatal career. are Catholics living in a Protestant nation. Even if that were all, and if we were still, like those who went before us, only captives and exiles in the land of our fathers, still the command given to the captive sons of Israel would apply to us. "Seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be