other hands than would have possessed it, if the Act of 1754 had not been passed; if the parties had not been married during their minority; if the marriage had been celebrated by banns; if some forms, which intentionally or unintentionally were neglected, had been observed. The current of inheritance is again turned into its natural channel, from which an artificial statute had forcibly diverted it. Mr. Poynter further complains, that a most uncalled-for innovation has taken place in respect "of the regulations hitherto in force for the prevention of clandestinity." The ground of the complaint is not very obvious, nor does it appear that any of the precautions hitherto in force in respect of license or of banns has been superseded or repealed by the present Act, of which the eighth and sixteenth section, together with the former laws, may be thought to comprize almost every means for the prevention of clandestinity. The only fear is, that the machinery will be obstructed by its own complication. Whether the means of obtaining proof of the majority of persons alleged to be of age, may not be facilitated by taking the evidence of third parties upon bond, or by a more direct requisition of the certificate of baptism; whether the method of ascertaining the consent of parents, may not be modified so as to be rendered in all cases practicable, and to throw not even an imaginary difficulty in the way of an unobjectionable marriage; whether the retention of all the oaths is necessary; whether the personal appearance of the woman before the surrogate, in consideration of the delicacy of her situation, might not be dispensed with, especially if her parent or guardian should be present and cousenting; and whether the security of the property to the issue in cases of fraud, as in the case of clandestine marriages of wards of chancery, might not be preferable to a for feiture to the crown; these are points on which surrogates can advise, and on which legislators may deliberate. The general reader will regret "the very great difficulties thrown in the way of marriage by the irksome regulations contained in the eighth, ninth, and sixteenth sections." In regulating the publication of banns, the law appears to have contemplated the wants of large and populous towns, rather than of villages, and moral districts, in the circumstances of which its provi sions are generally useless and unnecessary. In respect of banns, the Act is also defective and imperfect, both in its retrospective operations, and in its regulations for the time to come, It takes no notice of marriages by banns before July 22, 1822, which therefore remain "open to lawful objection in the same manner, and on the same grounds, and by the same persons as before." It neither confirms the marriages solemnized by banns published in unauthorized churches or chapels, nor lays down any rule concerning such publication for the future. The defect was pointed out by the Bishop of Chester, and must be deeply felt in that populous diocese: the obvious remedy is to give authority to the Bishops to license chapels for the publication of banns, and the solemnization of marriage, of persons resident within a district to be defined. The Act specifies no time for the residence of the parties in the parish, before the publication of bauns: they are required indeed to certify their residence, but the resi dence may have been for an hour, a day, or a year. In cases of license, the previous residence of the parties for the space of four weeks is necessary: and in this respect, the laws of license and of banns should be assimilated. The mischiefs and inconveniences arising from this publication of banns in parishes in which the parties do not reside, and the tendency of this 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 banus 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 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 altogether 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 verential feeling for the sacred obligation Act, is little calculated to revive that reof an oath, which its hacknied repetition, in compliance with the incessant demands of the statute book, has nearly extinguished." Supplement, p. 19. 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 There are various minor objecwill not overcome. The requisition tions to the Bill; its clerical error, of the oath is a matter of far more requiring that a house shall be doubtful expedience, and will give affixed to a church-door; its redunrise to many questions; whether dancies and surplusage, especially the oath should not be adminstered in the fourth section, which is comalways by the clergyman, and as prehended in the third and the fifth; was certainly the intention of the the omission of all schedules, wheLegislature, without a stamp; whe- ther for licence or banns, for town ther it might not be sufficient to or country; and its circuitous diadminister it after the publication rections concerning the preservation of banns, and before the solemniza- of affidavits, which might at once tion of marriage; whether the oath be deposited in the iron chest with might not, in many instances, be the registers. The Act might also dispensed with altogether; and have restored the true time of the whether in parishes of a limited publication of banns, after the Nipopulation, and in the case of par- cene Creed, when the publication ties both belonging to the same pa- would not interrupt the public serrish, the administration might not vice, 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 accomplish ed 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, consolidat ing 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 investiga. tions, 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 56 Geo. 3, since re-enacted in the Clergy Consoli 6 dation Act, empowers the Bishop of the Diocese to license any Curate actually employed, without express nomination, and to revoke summarily and without process the licence of any Curate, and remove him from the curacy, for any cause which shall appear to the Bishop good and reasonable.' The obvious intent of these enactments was, on the one hand, to give protection to the Curate, with ample security against any injustice on the part of the Incumbent and on the other hand, to provide for the Incumbent an immediate and effectual remedy against the vexatious obstinacy of a perverse or unworthy Curate. In the exercise of the discretionary powers which are vested in the Bishop by this law, it will always be my endeavour to keep the objects in view, which I believe to have been in the contemplation of the Legislature. On no account can I shrink from the duty of protecting and sustaining the Curate in the full enjoyment of his rights, while he attends with fidelity to the duties of his cure, and to the relation in which he stands to the Incumbent. But I trust it will not be imagined, that the Diocesan's licence will uphold the Curate, who gives just cause of dissatisfaction, by insufficiency, negligence, or indecorous behaviour in his official functions, or by personal disrespect or hostility to the Incumbent, whether shewn by direct opposition, or by secret endeavours to diminish his influence in the parish. The best interests of the parishioners will suffer, when discord prevails between the ministers who have joint cure of their souls; and since regard to personal feelings must yield to considerations of public utility, it may be sometimes expedient to dissolve the connection, and thus put an end to a scandalous contest, though it may be difficult to apportion the blame between the contending parties." P. 8. From these matters of discipline his Lordship proceeds to consider the present state of society, in its immediate bearings upon religionand having observed that this nation owed its escape from the horrors of the French Revolution, in great measure, to the influence of the Clergy, he recommends them to consider and practise the means by which that influence may be preserved. Their weight in society, it is remarked, will of course depend upon the estimation in which their character is held, and on the man duties. "The Laity have a right to expect that advance with the progress of the times; and every individual should act as if the whole interests of religion depended on his personal character, and the faithful exertion of his powers within his allotted sphere. In all ranks of society are numbers of persons who are qualified to judge of our learning, of the soundness of our doctrine, and the efficiency of our instructions, and who regard with disgust even the slightest inattention to duty, or impropriety of moral conduct. And far be it from us to consider this as an evil. If such conscientious censors had the direction of public opinion, their honest inspection would be of the greatest advantage to all classes of men, and, without offence be it said, to the Clergy. But where knowledge is extensively spread, the power it gives will be often exerted detrimentally. Even the spirit of piety will sometimes act on erroneous views, will be found in combination with attachment to party, which gives an obliquity to its motions, or defeat its own intentions by an alliance with enthusiasm or folly. "It is not easy to calculate the multiplied difficulties which, from these and similar causes, increase on the Clergyman, as the world advances in knowledge, and create a corresponding necessity of discretion in his conduct, and energy in the discharge of his duties. There have perhaps been times in the Church, when reverence to official station might protect the infirmity, or throw a veil over the failings of the Minister: but now, when he is subjected at every step to the scrutiny of inquisitive malice; when opposition is created to his honest endeavours to be useful, from so many various causes; when the establishment of a School, or the enlargement of a Church, is resisted by one man from some wretched political prejudice, by another through caprice or perverseness, and by a third in resentment for some fancied neglect, which disposes him to mortify the pastor in the tenderest point by defeating his schemes for the benefit of his flock, we see how great the necessity of the utmost assistance, which personal qualifications can lend to his sacred function. But if the Minister has on the one side to contend with the opposition of adversaries, he is assailed on the other by the judicious zeal of real or apparent friends; who, pursuing beneficial objects without due regard to the means which they employ, or sacrificing general principles to the prospect of some immediate good, are disposed to accuse him of indifference, or bigoted attachment to forms, if, through regard to good order or apprehension of distant consequences, be refuses to co-operate in their favourite schemes. In the midst of these difficulties our only real security will be found in a fixed resolution to act in every instance on deliberate views of duty, and a sincere and sober love of truth, under a controlling sense of that Supreme authority, from which we derive our commission, as the guides and teachers of our brethren, The natural tendency of these principles to enlighten and tranquillize the mind, affords the strongest of safeguards as well against error and indiscretion (more frequently the effects of some undue bias on the affections, than of natural weakness of judgment) as against the transports of passion, which irritate, offend, and disgust, and produce lasting resentments and divisions. A Clergyman who acts on these motives will have the advantage of moving with authority, dignity, and freedom; he will retain his influence over his friends, though he may refuse compliance with their prejudices; he will treat the gainsayer with kindness, whilst he exposes the unsoundness of his principles; and will shew courtesy and friendliness to the dissenter, without being supposed to approve his errors. The general rule of his proceedings will be, to 66 overcome evil with good," by conciliation to all men, as far as it is consistent with the interests of truth, and that enlightened attachment which he feels to the Church, from a thorough persuasion that the best interests of religion are concerned in its stability, and that no particular advantage which can be expected from popular favour, or the exertions of irregular piety, would counterbalance the evils arising from the neglect of its discipline and ordinances, or the diminution of its salutary influence. This, I conceive, is the genuine liberality, which is the grace and ornament of the true Christian; a virtue as far removed from indifference, as from the contentious spirit which assumes the disguise of zeal. The sentiment misnamed liberality, which looks with equal approbation on every seet that profess Christianity, is, in its most innocent form, a low and contemptible vanity; it is more frequently, perhaps, a profligate indifference to religion, or insidious hostility intending its ruin, by depressing the established Church. But true liberality is firm in its own principles, while it looks with indulgence on the mistaken views of others; and never approaches so near to perfection, as in union with zeal, under the direction of charity and prudence. It would ill deserve the character of a Christian virtue, if it could lend its countenance |