criminal conversation is sustained; that the divorce a mensa et thoro upon proof of adultery is granted upon condition that the parties shall not marry again during the life of each other, and that the vinculum matrimonii can only be dissolved by a special act of the legislature. In opposition to all these provisions of law, one only statute bas introduced a fatal fa miliarity with cases of nullity of marriage. The same statute disturbs the Englishman's birthright, the security of property, and repeals the law of inheritance. A man must be assured that the minutest forms have been observed in the several marriages of his predecessors since the passing of this statute, of which the least infringement will vitiate the title of himself and his remotest posterity to their honours and their estates, without any redress or without any limitation. In other cases a title to property may be acquired by possession, but the inheritance which has been dis, turbed by the fatal operation of the Marriage Act, can never be re-established to its natural proprietor.

"It is on the innocent issue of these illfated marriages that the severest punishment is inflicted; the children, the grandchildren, the remotest posterity, the very nati natorum may at any time be amerced of their estates and possessions, on proof made of the want of lawful consent to any one of the marriages of the description to which I have been alluding; so indelible is the stain, that it can never be effaced. I am bold to maintain, that under the actual operation of this law no person who hears me is secure in the possession of entailed property: no member in the other House is safe in the enjoyment of any high dignity, which has descended to him since the 25th of March, 1754; for who can say that any one of the male or female ances tors from whom he deduces his descent, may not have married in violation of the strict letter of the Marriage Act. Centuries may roll on; generation may suc. ceed generation; but the lapse of time affords no protection against the operation of this law, the very foundations of property are shaken by it to their centre ;sure I any that the nullity clause is at va

riance with the whole spirit and analogy of our English law. I speak not of the matrimonial law alone, but I maintain that it is in direct violation of those great and fundamental principles on which the law of England proceeds; it undermines prescription, the basis on which we rest for the permanence and security of our pos sessions. It subverts the law of inheritance; for by the law of inheritance no man can be stript of an estate after he has possessed it sixty years without molestation: a possession of sixty years quiets all difficulties of title: to the law of marriage

alone there is no limitation of actions." Phillimore. p. 19

"In very many cases which have fallen under my own cognizance, both parties have at the time, and for many subsequent years, been completely ignorant of the invalidity of the marriage they have contracted. I could cite many instances of crying hardship on this head. One occurs to me at this moment. Upwards of twenty years since, a marriage was solemnized between two minors, with the full consent and

approbation, and in the presence of the parents of both parties: four years ago, the eldest danghter of that marriage was married to the great satisfaction and delight, and consequently with the consent of her father. Children have been born from this marriage; but subsequently to the solemnization of it, the father of the woman has discovered that he was a natural sou, born before his parents were united in wedlock, au event which, up to this period of his life, had been studiously concealed from him. But mark the consequence; not only all his children, but all his daughter's children, become as it were, ipso facto, bastards: no guardian appointed by the court of chancery gave consent to either the one or the other of these marriages, A nullity has been ingrafted on a nullity, and so it might have gone to an infinitum: for, if the grand-daughter had married with her father's consent, before the flaw had been discovered, her issue would have been equally illegitimate. It is in vain, in this instance, to which I have alluded, it is in vain, that all the family, in all its branches, concur in an anxious wish, to give stability to two marriages, solemnly and bona fide contracted; deficient in no religious ceremonies, and consolidated by reciprocal affection and the birth of numerous issue; it is in vain that the parties themselves to each of these marriages, endeared to each other by the strongest ties of mutual affection, and deeply impressed by the sacred nature of the bond by which they are united, anx

ing the good old principle, that marriage is indissoluble, and of giving its just and proper validity to all marriages solemnized according to the rites of the Church of England. These are merits which should have entitled its provisions to more candid and favourable consideration than they have received, which should have abated the tone of popular clamour and private obloquy to which it has been exposed, and should have repelled the unjust and unworthy imputations which have been advanced against it, without adequate consideration of the necessity, the delicacy, and the difficulty, of amending the law. The Bill has been ignorantly called au innovation, when in fact, it is a revival of the ancient law, which has been suspended for a period of less than seventy years. Its progress has been compared with that of the former law, and a charge of precipitancy derived from the comparison; because the former law was, forsooth, committed to the twelve Judges, from whom, however, the Bill devolved upon Lord Hardwick; his Bill was altered in every part by the Commons, and in its amended state accepted by the Lords only upon consideration of the hard necessity of the case. The principle of the present law, since the year 1812, when Mr. Wilson carried his Act of Amendment through the House of Commons, has been debated from session to session in both Houses of Parliament, and the Bill was originally, and as it was sent to the House of Lords, prepared by a gentleman of no common experience in the subject to which it relates. The aid of ridicule has been employed against the Bill, which in its tendency has been said to promote fornication, an imputation which no man, upon the reflection of a moment, would not treat with the contempt which it deserves. If better principles, if a higher sense of honour and virtue did not prevail, the security of property would influence

the wealthier classes, and the vigilance of the overseer would restrain the pauper, from avoiding the difficulties of the law, by a voluntary contract and covenant of concubinage. These are popular and general exceptions, from which it is necessary to proceed to the more formidable, because more elaborate and authoritative objections to the Bill; to the clause repealing the nullity, and to the retrospective operations of that clause; and to take a cursory examination of the principal provisions and details of the Bill. Ample materials for this investigation are afforded by the works of which the titles are prefixed to the present article. Dr. Phillimore in his Speech exhibits a luminous view of the necessity of amending the old law, illustrated in the margin by a copious collection of appropriate cases, and argues on the principal clauses of the Bill which he proposed to introduce. In the "Concise View of the Doctrine and Practice of the Ecclesiastical Courts," Mr. Poynter considers the principal points involved in the contract of marriage; in the manner of carrying that contract into effect, whether by banns or by licence; in the impediments to matrimony, whether canonical or legal; in divorces, how obtained and how prevented ; and in the kindred questions of restitution of conjugal rights, alimony, and jactitation of marriage. In conclusion, he explains the law of marriage in France and in Scotland, and establishes the necessity of determining the validity of marriage by the lex loci. The information contained in this volume is highly valuable and important, both to the student and to the general reader. The Supplement, which bears more immediately upon the present discussion, contains Dr. Phillimore's Bill, with the various alterations it underwent in the House of Com. mons, and the Act which passed the Lords, with the Protests of Dissentient Peers, and an amendment

which was proposed without effect. Thus the whole progress of the Bill is laid before the reader.

Dr. Phillimore's intentions concerning the clause of nullity, were far less absolute and perfect than the provisions of the present law.

"I now proceed to the details of the measure. The first clause in the proposed Act, will go to the entire repeal of the nullity clause in the Marriage Act. Instead of a marriage, in which the consent required by the statute has not been given, being null and void to all intents and purposes in law whatsoever, I propose to give to the father of the minor, if living; if dead, to the guardian of the person; if there be no guardian, to the mother, if living and unmarried, and if there be no mother living and unmarried, then to a gnardian appointed by the Court of Chancery, the power of annulling it by a suit to be instituted in the ecclesiastical court of competent jurisdiction for that purpose. In my former Bill, a similar power was given also to the parties contracting the marriage, for six months after they should have attained their majority--if the House wish that persons should be invested with this authority to impugn their

own acts, I must bow to their decision. But after the most mature consideration, that I have been able to apply to the subject, I really have not been able to bring myself even to appear to sanction a course of proceeding, which, in principle, seems to me so utterly unjustifiable. I strongly feel, that minors, who by their own voluntary act may have united them selves in marriage, and who have ratified that act, by continuing to cohabit one day after they have attained their majority, onght not to be authorized to recede from engagements they have solemnly contracted, long after the age when they were capable of consent, and long after the period, when, if they had been married by banns, the marriage must have been indis, soluble." Phillimore, p. 45.

The concession of this power to minors to undo their own acts, was not attempted. The clause, however, in the third section, which was afterwards withdrawn, enabling all persons to institute a suit of nullity within six months after the passing of the Act, and the proposed reservation to parents and guardians of a right to nullify during the minority of the parties, marriages con

tracted without legal consent, would have left the old law, rather altered than improved. The Act of Amendment is far preferable in rescinding the clause of nullity altogether and without any limitation or exception, but in respect of marriages, of which the invalidity had been already called in question or determined in a court of competent jurisdiction. It is no common consolation to know, that these questions shall not be agitated afresh. There can be no new case of nullity for want of consent: marriages solemnized and not litigated before July 22, 1822, are all confirmed, and the clause of nullity 66 as far as the same relates to any marriage to be hereafter solemnized, shall be and is repealed."

To this unlimited repeal, it was objected in the Protest of Lord Stowell," that the withdrawing the effect of nullity from the marriages of minors had without the consent of parents, is likely to produce more and greater mischiefs, than such as can fairly be considered as resulting from the general operation of the subsisting Marriage Act." The evils of the former Act are upon record, and it is hard to conceive a system of more accumulated wrong: when the mischiefs of the new measure shall be developed in practice, it will be the office of a wise and watchful legislature to Prevent and correct them, not in the meanwhile delaying the restraint of positive evil, in the apprehension of that which is problematical and unknown. The nullity clause was, as it was described by Doctor Stebbing, a measure of mere force, or terror, as it is called by Dr. Phillimore by arming the parent with an uncontrolled power of nullifying the marriage of his child; it superseded better considerations in his mind; it relaxed his vigilance in preventing a connection which he could not approve; and it rendered him averse from all overtures of compromise and reconciliation. The present

Bill, by taking away the hope of remedy, addresses itself to the jealousy of the parent, and challenges his most anxious endeavours to frustrate the designs of an unsuitable marriage, to which, when it has been contracted, and cannot be avoided, the very necessity of the case may reconcile his mind. The mild influence of a parent's authority, and circumspection, will seldom be exerted without effect: and where the parent's duties have been neglected, and the child has not experienced the protecting care which his years required, is it just that the parent shall possess a power of dissolving a marriage, in which he took no concern, to which, if he did not give, he hardly refused his consent, and which, if it should be celebrated by banns, he would have no power to disturb ?

Mr. Poynter, in concurrence with Dr. Phillimore, was desirous of preventing all persons "from turning round at an indefinite period of time to disavow acts which they had solemnly engaged in, and which cohabitation had rendered morally and equitably binding," would also with him, have modified" the retrospective effect of giving instant validity to marriages declared to be null and void by the existing law," and thus have afforded to the parties," for a short period, a locus penitentiæ." We fear, that the longitude and latitude of this locus pe nitentiæ would have been found in Doctors' Commons; and that the penance would have consisted in many doubts and disputes, inflamed by the limited interval of dissolution: and that some loving couples, who had no previous thoughts of separation, might have been tempted to think of change, and to make provision for any variation which their affections might undergo. Suits of nullity would have been multiplied beyond all former precedent; and in the six months from July to January, which followed the passing of the Act, the college of the doc

tors of law must have sighed in vain for their customary rest and vacation.

Mr. Poynter, also in concurrence with Dr. Phillimore's Bill, wished that parents and guardians should retain the power of instituting, during the minority, suits of nullity: ......" because, while the general and perpetnal application of the penalty of pullity cannot be too much deprecated, it is, at the same time, quite impossible to deny, that this very enactment, which, with reference to one class of cases is admitted to be highly objectionable and painfully oppressive, has, under other circumstances, afforded a most salutary and desirable protection. For it ought not to be forgotten how many are the unhappy connections which have been dissolved by a sen tence of nullity; how many the parents

whom the right of instituting such suits, has relieved from a load of sorrow; sorrow proceeding from one of the deepest calamities of civil society, that of seeing an inexperienced child, whose station warranted a brighter hope, linked indissolubly in the bonds of a degrading marriage."

Supplement, p. 3.

It might be difficult, except by a reference to the statute, to justify or confirm this supposed right of instituting suits of nullity of marriage for the mere neglect of legal forms. Such a right is conveyed by no sentence of Scripture, nor is there any sacred record of its praetice: neither can it be derived from any social compact: the children of the marriage, who are principally interested in its repeal, cannot be supposed to assent to its avoidance, But in cases, in which there is least reason to question the right, what advantage does this sentence of nullity afford? It dissolves an unhappy connection: no more. If an inexperienced girl has been seduced into a meretricious union, as it is called, will the sentence of nullity restore her to her maiden state? will it put her in a condition to enter upon a more auspicious marriage? if she has not been a wife, will her parent venture to designate what she has been? Or, if an inexperienced boy has been inveigled