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duty if he remained wholly silent on this question . But if he understood his Noble and Learned Friend correctly , the
whole of his objections applied , not to the principle , but to the clauses of the Bill , and it was his duty to remind their Lordships that they were , by common consent and arrangement , now considering the principle , and not the details on which the Noble Earl had bestowed the greater part of his
observations . He hoped , therefore , that their Lordships would allow the Bill to go into the committee , and then , if in considering the Bill clause by clause , the objections should appear to be insuperable , he would subscribe to the course proposed by his Noble and Learned Friend , and agree to the postponement of the measure till next session . But
their Lordships ought not , in his opinion , to abandon the Bill in its present stage , on account of any supposed difficulty in its details , when the only question was , whether in principle it was a proper measure . If he thought that the measure would degrade the clergy , or
injure the Church Establishment , no person would be more zealous against it ; but when he saw a Right Reverend Prelate , who had been alluded to , appearing there , as on former occasions , to support this very Bill ; when he knew that another Prelate of distinguished learning and talents had even lent his assistance and
advice in the formation of the Bill ; he could not for a moment believe that such a measure was one in the slightest degree calculated either to degrade the clergy or injure the Church . In order that they might proceed to consider the question before them fairly , he would , with their Lordships' permission , advert briefly to the history of the law of
marriage . When he heard Noble Lords gravely talking of a religious ceremony as essential to marriage , he could not help reminding them , that every one knew that throughout the whole of Christendom there was no religious ceremony necessarily connected with marriage till the time of the Council of Trent ; and that stili , in the countries which did not acknowledge the authority of that
Council , no religious ceremony was essential to marriage . Every one again knew that none was essential in this country till the Marriage Act of 1754 . He stated this not on his own authority , but on the authority of a most eminent Judge—he meant C . J . Lord Holt , who had held in two cases that a marriage was valid and effectual without any religious ceremony . He might refer to another JNoble and
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Learned Lord , ( Stowell , ) who was alight and an ornament to that House , and whose profound erudition was graced by his elegant and classical taste . That Noble and Learned Lord had proceeded on the ground which he had stated in his judgment in the case of Dalrymple and Dalrymple , in which he had set out the authorities , and mentioned the case
of Lord Fitzmaurice in 1730 , where a marriage per verba de presenti was held to be valid without any religious sanction , and that the parties could not even by their own consent render it of no effect . Such then was the law here before the Marriage Act , which , as Judge Blackstone had said , was so far an innovation on the law of England . And here ,
in adverting to that Noble and Learned Lord ( Stowell ) to whom he alluded , he might observe , that if he had thought that this Bill had any tendency to degrade the clergy or injure the Church , he would have been here to oppose it , and his absence was an argument that , at least in his opinion , it had not that tendency . He would now advert to the exceptions contained in the Marriage Act . By an
especial clause , the Quakers were excepted from the operation of the Marriage Act , and their marriages were therefore left to stand upon the same footing as all other marriages of Dissenters did before the passing of that Act , receiving , however , the additional sanction and confirmation which the very exception gave them . Was it possible to conceive that if the Unitarians had then existed in
the same way as that in which they now existed , they would not also have been excepted ? The principle of the exemption was , that this was a matter of conscience , and that to force the Quakers to go through the ceremouy as appointed by the Act , would be a
constraint upon their religious liberty ; and upon the same principle the Unitarians should be exempted . There was probably another reason no less cogent for the exception given to the Quakers ; that it was not thought right or decent that the ceremonials of the Church
should , for its own sake , be applied to persons who did not conform to its doctrines . A Right Reverend Prelate had most justly , on a former occasion in this view of the subject , said , that it was a solemn mockery , to make the Unitarians perform the Marriage Ceremony according to the rites of the Church of England ; and would they not then have been exempted from the Marriage Act if they had existed in a legal form as they did now ? He contended that if this class
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Intelligence . —Unitarian Marriage Bill 621
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1827, page 621, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1799/page/69/
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