quarrel by unknown measures and secret rules of interpretation.'

But we are told by Sir Robert Inglis, as a proof that society really will not tolerate such a practice as ladies living with their sisters' husbands without the protection of the law, that two ladies have actually already left their brothers-in-law's house at the bare prospect of its repeal. We cannot help thinking that the two ladies were in a very unnecessary hurry to run away. It would, at any rate, have been time enough when the act was passed; and even then they might very safely have waited till they found that the expectations of society really required them to depart. We do not the least believe that any such expectation will arise. There may be at first a little outcry raised by the nice people of nasty ideas' (according to Swift's great apophthegm), and echoed by some who, without the least deserving that character themselves, are intimidated by those who do. But it will abate. The result of past experience will be remembered, and new experience will be added to it by those who are bold enough and pureminded enough to go on living as they have done with no thought of matrimony; and in a short time the suspicion and the scandal will be left, by the pure to whom all things are pure,' to the exclusive use of those to whom 'nothing is pure, for even their mind and conscience is defiled.'

These remarks will apply equally to another very serious objection that has been raised to the repeal of the law; viz. that it will not only prevent the intercourse which can now subsist between widowers and their sisters-in-law, but that it will destroy that which subsists during the life of the wife between the husband and her sisters. But those who make this objection forget that the whole cause of the present difficulty is, that men do fall in love with their wives' sisters, and marry them, sometimes very soon after the death of their wives. And therefore we cannot see how any woman can at this moment feel at all more secure that her husband is not already contemplating marriage with her sister, than she would if there were no prohibition. And looking at the

history of the law, and the prospects of any settlement of it but one, the ladies may be assured that their husbands do not, speaking generally, look upon the repeal of the law as a more remote event than their own death. But there is something more to be said of this objection. Have those who make it ever considered what they mean by it? What it really means, when reduced to plain English and divested of sentimental decorations is this: that a mere legislative and artificial and ineffectual prohibition of marriage is sufficient to secure purity of intercourse between men and their wives' sisters, but that the existence of a living wife is not. Perhaps those who set up as the representatives or the advocates of the women of England,' had better reflect upon the true import of this compliment which they have paid to their clients before they repeat it.

Happily, however, for both parties, this jealousy which is so gratuitously imputed to wives who have unmarried sisters is not universal. For we have seen that many, on the contrary, have at the prospect of their own death requested their husbands to marry their sisters. They may, no doubt, have been mistaken in thinking it better to secure to their children a stepmother who is already attached to them as an aunt, than to leave them to the chance of a strange one. But on this point we believe they are likely to be better judges than Mr. Gladstone, who thinks that the aunt ought rather to be preserved as a sort of outstanding protection against a stepmother. Such are the arguments which the ablest men have condescended to use: not content with discovering that the words of the divine law do not go so far as they were intended to do, they have now found out that men and women cannot judge for themselves so well as they can for them, who are the fittest persons to be put in the place of the mothers of their children.

We have only one other objection on behalf of the ladies to notice: that if the law is altered, many who have no other home will be obliged either to leave their brothers-inlaw's houses or to marry them. We have indeed incidentally noticed this

already. But we have further to suggest, that the ladies had better be quite sure that it is the law that secures to them this home now. We have shewn already that the law has really nothing to do with the matter; but besides that, the law does not prevent their brothers-in-law from marrying any other woman, or compel that other woman to allow them to stay in the house, or to make their stay there comfortable. And since widowers do sometimes prefer a wife to an unmarried sisterin-law, it is not improbable that many a man may say,--'I would gladly marry my sister-in-law, and I know she would consent, if the law allowed it; but as it does not, I must marry somebody else:' and so the law is the cause of her being turned out of the house instead of keeping her in it. There can be no doubt that if the law had been generally obeyed, instead of being systematically disregarded and defied, a large proportion of the large number of women who have married their brothers-in-law would have had to depart and make way for other wives.

We have seen what the law does not do for the persons whom it is supposed to serve; let us now see what it does. It is all comprehended in one short sentence;- it converts lawful marriage into unlawful, though tolerated, concubinage. It is admitted by those who rightly reject the estimate of 30,000 of these marriages as excessive, that they may be as many as 3000, which is not much more than twice the number that was actually ascertained. Now we know for certain that every one of these 3000 women who are now living with their brothers-in-law in merely tolerated concubinage, would, but for the law, have been living in lawful wedlock. We say nothing of the notoriously large number of cases in which the parties are wishing to live together as husband and wife if they could lawfully. agree with Sir Robert Inglis and Mr. Hope that this is a woman's question.' But we do not agree that the answer to the question is to be sought from the women who sign petitions and write letters in favour of the preservation of this 'great and increasing evil.' (We suppose

We

these gentlemen only mean that the social and not the theological question is a woman's question.) The vast number of women who are directly interested in the matter have signed no petitions, and written no pamphlets; neither have their female friends and relatives — of course a still larger number-who have already expressed their opinion by sanctioning the marriages: and we hope they will not; though it is evident that if they did, they would soon outnumber the 11,000 ladies of whose petition to the Queen we heard so much last year. And we might add, as a still larger number of persons quite as much interested, the children of these marriages, who are too young as yet to express their own opinions, but who, we may be sure, will, before many years are over, express them pretty loudly. On this point also we beg to suggest to the advocates of the ladies, that they would shew a great deal more real regard for their interests in what is usually thought the most important of all temporal considerations to them, if they would seriously apply themselves to the question, how this real misfortune and evil is to be removed and stopped, than by parading against them and their children the sentimental and fanciful objections of those who have no practical interest in the matter, and of whom nine out of ten would have yielded to the same temptation as the persons they condemn, if it had been thrown in their way.

We have not the least inclination, either on moral or personal grounds, to justify those who have wilfully entered into these connexions: morally, there can be no doubt about the impropriety of them; and personally, we have nothing more than a very slight acquaintance either with those who have made, or those who are waiting to make, these marriages. But we are not, therefore, to shut our eyes to the fact, that men are nearly every day persuading their sisters-in-law to come and live with them as their wives; and that what the law then says to them is this:'You must take your choice of two things; you must either go on living in this immoral way, or you must turn out of your house the woman you have seduced (for it is obviously

impossible that she could afterwards remain there on the footing of a sister); but as for marrying her, that you shall not do at any rate.' And we must be excused for thinking that the superior purity of English morals' does not owe much to such a law as this, and that the women of England are not particularly interested in preserving it.

6

We are far, however, from admitting, what the advocates of the prohibition on religious grounds so constantly assert, that there is no difference in the consideration due to persons who have broken this law and any other. There is this very important difference between these persons and all others who are living together in concubinage. Those who do so in the ordinary way, do it because they do not choose to marry, or rather because the man chooses to be at liberty to leave the woman whenever he is tired of her, or because he would be ashamed of her as a wife. These men, on the contrary, who have (as far as they can) married their sisters-in-law, say to the legislature,-'It is true we cannot make ourselves husband and wife, but we have done our best by promising before God and the Church to live together unto our lives' end. We ask you, not to set us free from that bond, but to make it firm, and to compel us to live together as we have promised, and to enable us to do so in that state which God has permitted to us, but which you have prohibited, for the sake of a goodfor-nothing and ridiculous reason of your own, which if it were true would be no excuse for your interference.' And to compare such a request as this with the natural wish of thieves and smugglers to relieve themselves from the penalties of the law,' is to display (as Paley says of indiscriminate praise) a set

tled contempt of all moral distinctions,' when they stand in the way of a controversial victory.

We have already written too much, and must omit several things on which we should have been glad to speak. The substantial points, however, on which the question depends are, after all, very simple. If it is true that thousands of men are living with their sisters-in-law in mere concubinage,--uncondemned by their neighbours,-setting a bad example, and the more so because they are in other respects moral and religious, and because those who sanction their marriage are so too,-teaching those around them to consider themselves as the judges whether laws ought to be obeyed or to be defied, and particularly to confound the distinctions between lawful and unlawful connexions,—begetting illegitimate children who will bear that misfortune long after their parents are dead, and casting disgrace on the national morality; we need not throw into the scale the inconveniences and evils to the offenders themselves to justify us in saying, that the law is ineffectual in doing the little good it was intended to do, and is effectual in doing as much harm as possible. Yet this is the law which we are told we must maintain, because it is in accordance with the will of God, and because of the social and domestic happiness it diffuses. We say, on the contrary, that the disgrace of all these things will henceforth rest, in no small degree, on the heads of those who persist in maintaining the law which produces such fruits, either wilfully refusing to look at the truth, or deliberately postponing the happiness and morality of thousands to the theological prejudices of one set of people, or the sentimental fancies of another.