<widower depends, even now, with all the advantages of a prohibitory law, much more on character and age than on legislation. Whether the young widower of six or eight and twenty should have his sister-in-law of twenty-two or twenty-four living with him, will, with prudent parents, be determined on very different grounds than the mere existence of Lord Lyndhurst's Act.

But it may be further said, that the argument refutes itself; it is utterly self-destructive. The law as it was, actually prohibiting these marriages without attaining its end, did, in fact, make the position of every woman assuming these duties much more irksome than if there had been no law at all, and yet it did not prevent them from encountering those duties, where other considerations than the law did not prevent them. Every woman who undertook the charge of her sister's children knew very well, from the facts of the previous hundred or two years, that the possibility-in many cases the probability—of mutual attachment might be the consequence of that relation; that if she felt and inspired an honourable passion, and resisted the law, she was inviting acute and prolonged suffering for both parties; that if she yielded to her affections as so many didand as she, if she had a grain of sense, must see she might possibly do, she subjected herself to the inconveniences and penalties of the law, such as they were. And yet this did not prevent wives' sisters from undertaking the discharge of duties so necessary and so sacred. Are we to suppose that if they did not refrain from this performance of a plain duty, out of the fear of the possibility of contracting a disadvantageous marriage, and of encountering far more odious gossip and more odious scandal than if there had been no law on the subject, they will be deterred by the contingency that this relation might possibly lead to an honourable marriage, or to gossip of a very silly and harmless kind compared with that which now often assails her? So strong are the claims upon woman's love in many such cases, that she must abjure her nature if she refuse to listen to them, out of any such fear of the world's idle gossip.

While such considerations as these neutralise the plea from expediency in favour of prohibition, other considerations from that same expediency are strongly against it. 1. Supposing no higher law to step in (which for the present we assume, but have endeavoured to prove), then, as Archbishop Whately has justly observed, it is in itself inexpedient to restrict by arbitrary enactment the liberty of marriage. 2. That it is doubly inex

* An Argument, &c. By T. Binney.

pedient to do this, in relation to marriages which, still supposing no higher law against them, are often the most advantageous of all, inasmuch as they best secure the happiness of motherless children; and, 3. The prohibition is especially oppressive to those classes whose children, as already said, must have their mothers' sisters for their protectors, or have none at all; in which cases, unless the law-which it plainly cannot-inspire the community with the idea that such marriages are forbidden by Scripture, the prohibition continually tempts men to break or evade the laws of their country, or, worse still, to live in open concubinage.

It may be added to this argument from expediency, that so far as experience can certify any thing, these marriages are not productive of any of the evil results which it has been prognosticated they must produce. The Marriage-Law Reform Association have addressed letters to a number of judges, magistrates, and clergymen of all denominations in the States of America, and their testimony is unanimous - that they know of no prejudicial consequences which arise from such marriages; that they are regarded with no public disapprobation whatever; and that there is no public law against them throughout the entire states of the Union except one. Amongst those who give their decided opinion in favour of these marriages, are the late lamented Judge Story, Chancellor Kent, and the Protestant Bishop M'Ilvaine. Similar testimonies as to fact, have been given by eminent authorities in nearly every state of continental Europe. It is strange, as Lord Denman, shrewdly observes, that the ill consequences of a practice should be unknown 'where it exists, and assumed as certain only where it is not practised or is prohibited by law.' We heartily wish our objectors would ponder a little more attentively, the evils which arise from such marriages being prohibited, but prohibited in vain. The absence from social evils where they are permitted is pretty plain from testimony; the evils, where they are contracted without being permitted, are pretty plain from experience. These evils are instructively set forth in the Blue Book, in the testimony of many excellent clergy of all parties and of no party in the Church, and of the most various denominations out of it, as well as by many solicitors.

On the pamphlet of Mr. Denison, entitled The Validity of Marriages with a Wife's Sister, celebrated abroad,' we have no space to make any remark. It is characterised, however, by acute and ingenious reasoning, and we must say, with Lord Denman, the case really presents a very perplexing question for our Courts to decide. But we are not solicitous to show

how the law, which has been a piece of bungling, may be evaded; our object has been to explain the grounds on which the law itself should be revised. That day, we cannot think, will be long deferred. All our countrymen, who are really anxious for the authority of the law of God which they profess to respect; for the welfare of the many who are injuriously affected by the law as it stands; for the interest of public morality, which must suffer from the continued operation of a law, which being at variance with deep convictions of large classes of the community, must be ineffectual,--ought to make up their minds either one way or the other; and almost any of the publications at the head of this Article will put them in a condition to do so. That of Lord Denman, the Notes to the charge of Archdeacon Hare, the publications of Mr. Binney, Mr. Denison, Mr. Reynolds, and Mr. Beaumont, and the pamphlet entitled Zvyyéveia, are all distinguished in no ordinary degree by cogency of argument and force of expression. To these may be added two remarkably able pamphlets, one by the Rev. Dr. Eadie, of the United Presbyterian Church, and the other by an Elder of the Free 'Church,' who, even without Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Eadie, to whose authority he appeals, seems quite able to champion his own cause. But a score or two of very able publications might be added to the above list.

We shall conclude this Article with the eloquent peroration of Lord Denman :

If the Act has notoriously failed in its operation; if these marriages, though discountenanced by the Legislature, have become more numerous, not only among the lower classes, a large proportion of whom must ever remain ignorant of the existence of this and similar interference by law with freedom, but among the cultivated, the thoughtful, the conscientious, the exemplary; if the stigma set by the law is not stamped by the public opinion; if the offenders are as well received as before, and are even respected for acting on a just view of Scriptural texts perverted by erroneous interpretation; in such case it will surely be more politic to make the law consistent with reason, then to persevere in a fruitless endeavour to bend reason to arbitrary law, to vex and persecute where we cannot prevent, to "curse whom the Lord has not cursed, and to defy whom "He has not defied."

ART. III. — 1. Life of R. Walker, Perpetual Curate of Seathwaite. By the Rev. R. PARKINSON, B. D., Principal of St. Bees College. London: 1843.

2. Reports of the Commissioners on Education in Wales. London: 1847.

3. Wales. By Sir THOMAS PHILLIPS.

London: 1849.

4. Report of the Society for providing additional Clergymen in the Diocese of Llandaff. London: 1852.

IN

N the liveliest and most graphic of all histories, there are few passages more lively or more graphic than that in which our great historian sketches the condition of the clergy between the Restoration and the Revolution. Nor is there any other portion of his work which has subjected Mr. Macaulay to more angry criticism. He has been accused of exaggeration and of caricature; of mistaking the exceptions for the rule; of making satirical lampoons the basis of historical statements; and even of intentionally misrepresenting the evidence which he cites, out of a desire to degrade the clerical order. His assailants, before they disputed the accuracy of his picture, and even denied the possibility of such a state of things as that which he portrays, would have done more wisely if they had examined, not only the records of the past, but the facts of the present. Instead of forming their conclusions from what they saw around them in the wealthier districts of southern or central England, they should have made acquaintance with the mountain solitudes of Wales, or the wild moorlands of Cumberland. There they would have found even yet existing not a few specimens of a clergy whose circumstances and position a few years ago might be accurately represented in the very words of that celebrated description to which we have referred.

6 The Anglican priesthood,' says Mr. Macaulay, 'was divided into two sections, which in acquirements, in manners, and in 'social position, differed widely from each other. One section, 'trained for cities and courts, comprised men familiar with all 'ancient and modern learning. . . men of address, politeness, and knowledge of the world; men with whom Halifax loved to discuss the interests of empires, and from whom Dryden was not ashamed to own that he had learned to write. The

' other section was dispersed over the country, and consisted chiefly of persons not at all wealthier, and not much more refined, than small farmers or upper servants. . . . The

1853. Mr. Macaulay's Account of the Anglican Clergy. 343

' clergy [in these rural districts] were regarded as a plebeian class.... A waiting woman was generally considered as the 'most suitable helpmate for a parson. Not one living in fifty enabled the incumbent to bring up a family comfortably. ... It was a white day on which he was admitted into the kitchen of a great house, and regaled by the servants with 'cold meat and ale. His children were brought up like the children of the neighbouring peasantry. His boys followed "the plough, and his girls went out to service.' We have only to change the verbs in this passage from the past tense into the present, and it will be a faithful representation, not of the Anglican priesthood in the last half of the seventeenth century, but of the Cambrian and Cumbrian clergy during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and of no inconsiderable number at the present time.

A description, then, of the habits and manners, the education and social position, of these mountain clergy is not uninteresting to the historian. Yet if that description could serve no other end than to gratify historical curiosity, we should never have undertaken it; for it is far more painful than it is curious, to witness any case of failure in one of the greatest and most beneficent of our national institutions-the Parochial System of the Church; and we cannot investigate the condition of our mountain districts without perceiving that such a failure has, at least partially, occurred. Under these circumstances, no mere curiosity would lead us to probe the wounds of the Church. If, indeed, the evils which we lament were incurable, we should veil them from the light in reverential silence. Nay, if we saw no sign of amendment, we might abstain, in hopeless discouragement, from suggesting remedies where there was no wish for cure. But the case is far otherwise. Many of the worst abuses are already rooted out; others are much abated. A description which would, fifty years ago, have suited almost the whole of Wales, and many counties in the north of England, must now be limited to the most impoverished districts of the former, and the wildest regions of the latter. The realms of elerical neglect are shrinking before the advance of civilisation and the efforts of conscientious men. Yet this improvement may be rendered more rapid, and these reformers may be aided, by co-operation from without. Such co-operation can only be expected from an enlightened public opinion; and public opinion requires a fuller knowledge of the facts for its enlightenment. It is in the hope of contributing to this knowledge that we enter upon the subject.

We have said that Mr. Macaulay's account of the Rural