The Lords have changed their minds once more. The second
reading of the Bill legalising Marriage with a Deceased Wife's Sister, was carried by a vote of 165 against 158. The third reading of the same Bill was rejected on Thursday night by a vote of 145 against 140, so that the friends of the Bill were fewer by twenty-five, while its foes were fewer by eighteen., The debate was not a remarkable one, unless the speech of Bishop Temple against the Bill may be called remarkable. The Duke of Marlborough insisted strongly on the argument that the Bill, if carried, would put in the strongest light the oppo- sition between the law of the Church and the Law of the land, —the Church refusing altogether to sanction marriages which the Statute Law would allow,—and insisted that this conflict mast lead soon to Disestablishment. We are not sure, however, that the refusal of the Church to permit, even among Dissenters, marriages which most Dissenters believe to be perfectly right, may not lead rather more directly to Disestablishment. Bishop Temple insisted on the grave danger of unsettling the principle of our marriage law, without having any new principle to put in its place ;—and this would be a good argument, if the principle on which it now stands commanded general, respect, which, how- ever, it is clear that it does not. It is better surely to sanction- cautiously—exceptions on which the conscience of a community is clear, than to stand by an untenable principle against which, as a general principle, the conscience of the community is clear.
