THE BISHOPS AND THE DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER.
THE Lords are not high-minded and have no proud looks. They follow the Psalmist's admonition to refrain their souls, and keep them low, like a child that is weaned from its mother. To reverse their judgment on a matter of first-rate importance within a fortnight, is hardly a step to give new weight to the judgment of the House of Peers. Perhaps they were more influenced than they would like to admit by the Guardian's appeal to them to consider the tendency of the Bill to introduce a conflict between the law of the Church and the law of the State, which might end in Disestablishment. It is cer- tain that the Duke of Marlborough put that argument in the front of the battle, and it is possible that this influenced some of the Conservative Peers who formerly supported the Bill, and in- duced them to s'ay away. If so, we congratulate our ecclesi- astical contemporary on the generalship which—like an hour of inspiration from Wallace or Bruce—has so soon turned Flodden into Bannockburn. But the victory will be dearly bought, if it induces the Dissenters to see in the amiable deceased wife's sister, the lever with which they may disestablish the Church of England. They will be very apt at learning the lesson in- culcated by the Guardian. And perhaps they play now bend all their energies first to obtain the legalising of these marriages in the form most likely to excite the denunciations of the Church, and then to aggravate the conflict between the law of the Realm and the law of the Church which must ensue. They will remember that it is lawful to be taught by an enemy ; and perhaps they may strike- out a new and more effectual path towards the Disestablishment and Disendowment for which they wish.
For it is certain, we take it, that this Bill must pass into law, and must pass into law before very long. A measure which has so large a majority in the Commons, and which has (ince gained a majority in the Lords, can hardly be stayed for any considerable period. This last hasty act of aristocratic repentance will bring delay, but it will bring nothing more, unless it also causes an agitation in the provinces against giving the Bishops seats in the House of Lords. We may say, by the way, that that.agitation could hardly be based on worse ground than the recent action of the Bishops in relation to this Bill. The case against the Bishops as Peers is that they take so puny a part in general legislation, and hardly dare to call their souls their own, even on a matter so germane to their special province as the proper mode of spending Sunday. But to denounce the Bishops for taking an active part in such a controversy as this, and for giving a vote according to their con- sciences, is altogether unfair. It is true, we do not think their vote a wise one ; we do not think that it is a good thing, in the interests of religion, to forbid marriages on no good ground of expediency, to which apparently the conscience of the people is not generally opposed, and which take place, therefore, or else ought to take place, in spite of the legal prohibition. But no fair-minded man can deny that there is something to be said on the other side, and that the Bishops have said it, and said it with a good deal of earnestness. They are members
of the House of Peers expressly that they may say what they think on subjects of this kind, and it is, to our minds; a very
great set-off against the reasons which would make it desirable
to exclude them from the House of Peers, that they have ex- erted themselves actively on the subject of this Bill, and have shown a certain unanimity in their judgment on it. That judgment may be wrong,—and we believe that it is wrong,— but we do not place the Bishops in the House of Peers to increase the chance of getting right judgments, but rather to
secure a certain amount of representation in that House to the Clergy of the Church of England ; and that in this case they have really represented the view of the Clergy of the Church of England, there can, we conceive, be no doubt. We are always ready to be candid friends to the Bishops, when it is needful. But on this occasion candour compels us to say that if the Bishops bad spoken their mind more fully, we should have thaught them entirely within their right, and that by the part they have taken in resisting the Bill they have done something, though not enough, to vindicate their position as representatives of the mind of the Clergy in the House of Lords. The argument against their position as Peers is that they repre- sent so little of any mind at all in relation to nine out of every ten measures of the highest importance. That they have more or less effectually represented the mind of the Clergy on one such measure should go to their credit, and not to their debit; as Life Peers.
As to the main question, it seems to us that the Bishop of Exeter alone made a point of real importance. There is, un- doubtedly, a great deal to be said against disturbing any fixed and intelligible principle on which the law of marriage is based, without putting some other even more fixed and more intelligible principle in its place. If the present law were but well observed, and not constantly broken by really serious-minded people,—if the present law did not lead to positive mischief of a very serious kind in the families of the poor,—we should have nothing to say for the legalising of a single kind of marriage which the present law for-. bids, without attempting to lay down a new ground of legality. We should reply to Bishop Temple simply by saying that piecemeal legislation is the best kind of legislation in cases where a specific grievance is clearly seen and widely felt, without its being clearly seen that there is any great principle on which it would be safe to base the law that would remedy that grievance. Undoubtedly, as Lord Kimberley said, a marriage law which rendered consanguinity the only ground of objection,—a marriage law which permitted a man to marry his step-mother or his step-daughter, and a woman to marry her step-father or step-son,—would create an amount of instinctive horror in the public mind which would be very dangerous, if only on the ground that a marriage law which permitted what the people at large think unnatural, must sink in the respect of the people. Doubtless, the relation of parent and child implies such a multitude of those associations which must banish all thoughts of marriage from any undepraved nature, that to permit marriage. between step-parents and step-children would be positively degrading to the thoughts of the community, and might even lead to popular outbreaks against marriages which the law would allow. We are even disposed to think that, if the law sanctioned adoption as a legal step,—as we wish it did, —it ought to forbid marriages between an adopted parent and an adopted child, so entirely is that relation, even when only artificially taken up, one exclusive of the passions. Still, with this one exception, why should not all marriages of mere affinity be legalised, and those finer instincts which, as we quite . admit, revolt against marriages between people who have once held to one another the position of even quasi-brother and sister, be trusted to hinder this kind of marriage from becoming frequent ? What we really care for is to legiti- mate marriage in the poorer classes between people who are quite certain to form illicit connections if marriage is not permitted,—illicit connections which are the sources of all sorts of suffering and vice. Bishop Temple's argument almost goes as far as this, that the death of the husband or the wife ought not in' any degree to alter the nature of the feelings with which the wife or the husband regards the family into which marriage has introduced them. We quite agree that it would be a very desirable thing, if it could be so. But then, as a matter of fact, every one knows that it is not so. When a poor man no longer has his wife to love; and when her sister is always doing for him those offices which his wife formerly did for him, it is simply impossible that, if they live under the same roof, his feelings for that wife's sister can remain year after year just the same as they were when his wife was alive. It is not human nature that they should remain unchanged, and, as a matter of fact, everybody knows that they do not. If, then, there is no substantial ground for insisting that these two should part the moment when any feeling not purely brotherly or sisterly springs up between them, it is of the highest moment to morality and religion that the change of feeling, if it comes and when it comes, should be allowed
to seek the sanction of religion. That is the ground on
which we regard the question as one of first-rate moral and religious importance, and we find Bishop Temple's speech utterly inadequate to break down that ground. For our own parts, we would rather see this single exception to the illegality of marriages of affinity within given degrees, legalised, than see no change in the law at all. But we should be quite willing to see all marriages of affinity legalised, except only marriages between step-parents and step-children, against which there would be a general feeling of public aversion, grounded, we believe, on the special inconsistency between the parental relation and any kind of passion.
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