4 MARCH 1911, Page 3

The 11`Cann case was brought up in the House of

Lords on Tuesday by Lord Donoughmore. Of late years Pro- testants had given many practical proofs of their readiness to live in harmony with their Roman Catholic neighbours ; what reciprocal action had there been on the part of the latter? He noted that the decree N e temere was not enforced in the whole of Germany. Lord Liverpool, replying for the Government, recalled a correspon- dence which appeared in the Tablet when the Ne tonere decree became effective in 1907, in which it was admitted by Arch- bishop Bourne that the Church had no power to change the civil law of the realm, although in the light of the Church and of God mixed marriages were canonically null. He was therefore inclined to think that the significance of the decree had been exaggerated, and held that the hi‘Cann case had been exploited for political purposes at the elections. Lord Llandaff, who followed, denied that the Church of Rome deliberately set itself to use the Canon Law against the Civil Law.