special licence, shall be null and void." By sect. 13. it is further enacted, that "in no case whatsoever shall any suit or proceeding be had in any ecclesiastical court, to compel a celebration of any marriage in facie ecclesiæ, by reason of any contract of matrimony whatsoever, whether per verba de præsenti or per verba de futuro... any law or usage to the contrary notwithstanding."

If either of these clauses had been intended to take away the alleged right of the dissenters, to contract valid marriage in the face of their own congregations, it might have been expected that the alleged right would have been as distinctly recognized as the compulsory enforcements of contracts of marriage, and that it would not have been rescinded without some grave apology or excuse, without the imputation of some offence calling for the restriction, without something more definite than the allusion to many persons solemnizing marriage in prisons and other places; an allusion which, on comparison with the history of the time as well as with the Act of 7 and 8 William III. evidently applies to the clergy, whose offence it was designed to correct. The thirteenth section tacitly recognizes the imperfection and invalidity of the contract per verba de præsenti, or per verba de futuro, which the Chief Justice Holt pronounced to be the authority for the marriage of dissenters, and the abuse of which was the occasion of the Bill, by superseding the compulsory celebration of such contracts in facie ecclesic which was necessary to their consummation.

It is known that no Bill ever excited more angry debate than the Marriage Act: but is it credible,

that among the many objections brought against the measure, no mention should have been made of the infringement of the rights of dissenters, if there had been either an avowed or a secret design of infringing those rights? It is described by Lord Orford as a measure "breathing the very spirit of aristocracy and insolent nobility;" as an invention for extending the power of the Chancellor: but if it interfered with the liberty of the dissenters, was it not equally liable to the charge of extending the power of the Church, and would not the charge have been recorded by the memorialist, who delighted in the collection of insinuations and exceptions, and who has certainly shewn no favour to the bishops in the account of its progress through Parliament? Is it credible, that the dissenters at the time should have offered no objection to the measure, have made no effort to maintain their supposed rights, or that, in the consciousness of recent decisions in the courts against them, they should have sought no review of these decisions, no means of preventing their recurrence, no removal of any doubts or ambiguities, in which their case was involved? Or is it credible, that their successors, for nearly sixty years, should have consented to bear

Memoirs of the last Ten Years of the Reign of George II. vol. i. p. 293–304.

a "We have seen it asserted, that when the district meetings of the United Dissenters took place in England, in the year 1789, in order to obtain the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, it was also designed to move for an emendation of the Marriage Act; the object however of these meetings was speedily abandoned, and the design of moving for any alteration

the burthen which the apathy of their forefathers had laid upon them; to make little or no effort for the recovery of a lost privilege, and in the end have suffered the Unitarians alone, by themselves, and for themselves, without any sympathy or cooperation from the dissenting body, to seek relief from the imputed oppressions of the statute?

There is the report of a speech of Lord Barrington in defending the Bill against the charge of innovation: "If gentlemen will but attend to the laws we have now in being, they must see, that all these things have been by them already in a great measure taken care of. No marriage can be good unless it has been solemnized according to that religious ceremony prescribed by that sect of religion to which the contracting parties belong." The Parliamentary Reports of this period are at least of doubtful authenticity, and there is no very clear consistency in these consecutive assertions. The laws then in being did not provide for the validity of marriages celebrated according to the rites of different sects, which is claimed only under the common law, that law which provided for no dissent from the Catholic religion. It is remarkable also, that Lord Orford, in the captious account which he has left of the Bill,

in the Marriage Act, if ever entertained, was never proceeded in." Freethinking Christians' Quarterly Register, No. iii. p. 287. In the same journal complaint is made of the supineness of the Unitarians, before they were stimulated by the Freethinking Christians: and there appears now to be but little concert between the two parties in their opinions or projects of relief.

b Hansard's Parl. Hist. vol. xv. p. 25.

Ibid.

takes no notice of the speech of Lord Barrington, and, so far from insinuating that there was a tendency in the Bill to abridge the freedom of dissenters, he dwells with manifest pleasure on the clauses which it contains for the restriction of ecclesiastical power.

It is true, that the Protestant dissenters of Ireland are allowed to marry by their own forms: but as they derive that privilege under a special statute, their privilege rather invalidates than confirms the supposed right of the English dissenters to the same privilege.

It is contended, that "the Marriage Act was never intended as an abridgment of religious freedom; the only two sects who asked for the exemption had it:" and that "a burthen on conscience

was not intended by the legislature, as may be

"The new Bill enjoined indispensable publication of banns, yet took away their validity, if parents, nay, if even guardians, signified their dissent, when the parties were under age: a very novel power!" (it was not granted in this case:) "but guardians are a limb of chancery! The archbishop's licence was indeed reserved to him. A more arbitrary spirit was still behind: persons solemnizing marriage without these previous steps were sentenced to transportation, and the marriage was to be effectually null. So close did congenial law clip the wings of the prostrate priesthood. And as if such rigour did not sufficiently describe its fountain and its destination, it was expressly specified, that when a mother or a guardian should be non compos, resort might be had to the Chancellor himself for licence. Contracts and precontracts, other flowers of ecclesiastical prerogative, were to be totally invalid, and their obligations abolished; and the gentle institution was wound up with the penalty of death for all forgeries in breach of this statute of the modern Draco. Quakers, Jews, and the Royal Family had the only toleration." Memoirs, vol. i. p. 296.

fairly inferred from the exemption in the Act of the two classes of persons against whose religious feelings and discipline it seemed particularly to militate.' Whether it was or was not intended, there was in fact an abridgment of religious freedom, if dissenters, who before were free to contract marriage in their own conventicles, were amerced of that privilege: and there was at the same time a burthen thrown upon conscience, if dissenters, who before had a choice of preference, were afterwards obliged to conform with a particular ritual. These are effects which no legislature could have produced without intention and design: if they were not intended, they were not produced; if they were produced, they were intended. The speculative agreement of the dissenters of the day in the doctrinal opinions of the Church did not alleviate the burthen of a compulsory conformity with the ritual.

It does not appear that the Jews and Quakers sought the exemption which was made in their favour. The exemption was not new. It was copied from the Act 6 and 7 Will. III. c. 6. And Burn notes a peculiar distinction in the two Acts, that in the former Act Quakers and Jews are said to cohabit as man and wife, although not married according to the law of England, and that the Act shall not be construed to make good and effectual such marriage, or pretended marriage; but that the latter Act contains no similar clause, but proceeds on the supposition that such marriages are good and valid. Whether this distinction can or cannot be sustained; whether the validity of these marriages rests on this particular statute; or whether a doubt