On the subject of the Maltese marriages, Mr. Gladstone seemed
to make it a great reproach to the Government that the Pope should have expressed his willingness to acquiesce in such arrangements as England liked to make for the Maltese marriages of Protestants. Probably he had for- gotten that when we took the island, we took the obliga- tion to govern it under the old canon law which the Knights of St. John observed in their administration of the island, and by that law no marriages are valid which are not in keeping with the decrees of the Council of Trent. What the Pope proposes to do, therefore, is to acquiesce in our wish to have this voluntary obligation undertaken by us, relaxed with regard to Protestant marriages. All this the Wesleyans did not understand; but all this Mr. Gladstone had probably at one time understood and had since forgotten.
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