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    House of Commons by Mr . Smith is withdrawn , but another Bill will be brought forward in the next Session . If the objections of certain clergymen can be obviated by any alteration of the projected measure , it is just and

    reasonable that this should be done . To shew the disposition of Churchmen , we extract verbatim et literatim a paper on the subject from the " Christian Remembrancer" for May .

    This work is regarded as the organ of the ruling- party in the Church , and if their views be here fully represented , they cannot be fairly accused by Unitarians of want of liberality . Ed .

    UNITARIAN MARRIAGES . A Speech that ought to be spoken upon tke first reading of Mr . W . Smith ' s Man * iage-Act Amendment Bill . When it was proposed to enact that the Clergy of the Church of England

    shall solemnize marriage after a different form from that which is prescribed iu the Prayer Book , I expected that so extraordinary a measure would be defended upou extraordinary grounds . But I was unable to anticipate any thing half so . strange as the first argument upon which this Bill proceeds , namely , that our laws

    consider marriage as a mere civil contract , and that the statutes by which it is regulated have nothing to do with religion . I thought that our ancestors had observed a proper mean between the Papist who exalted marriage to the rank of a sacrament , and the Puritan who degraded it to the level of a bond and

    indenture . I thought that all direct interference , with regard to the validity of marriages , was reserved to the ecclesiastical judge , because they partook of a sacred character . But it seems that I have been under a mistake . The words civil contract are used by writers of good authority , in the course of their remarks

    upon marriage ; and on this account we are to unlearn our old ignorance and prejudices , and believe that an engagement , which can only he contracted with the assistance of a priest , which can only be ^ t asid by a spiritual court , and which , unless declared to have been void ab vutio , cannot be set aside at allis to be

    , considered in the same light as a deed of Oar gain and sale ! ! Let the Unitarian produce an instance of any other coni < a ct , as solemn and as indissoluble as marriage , or which is looked upon as usually sucred , by those good judges of ae tendency aud spirit of our institu-

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    tions , the great body of the people ; let him shew at what period matrimony could be celebrated by a layman , except during the grand rebellion , when the constitution was subverted ,- —and then perhaps it will be time to review the history of the marriage laws , and expose the weakness of the opinion which they have been now declared to favour . For the

    present it is sufficient to observe , that the sacred character of the marriage rite is just as much an admitted fact among us , as the value of a trial by jury . No parent of respectability would endure to see his daughter coupled to her husband by a parish constable , or a lord-mayor . No woman of feeling and decency would submit to such a degradation . And the

    fathers and friends of the present bill would solemnize their marriages to-morrow in their religious assemblies , if the law threw no obstacle in their way . All this results , not merely from the natural propriety of the thing , though that is sufficiently obvious , but from the actual provisions of the statute-book—the known

    . the acknowledged , the unvaried regulations which , from the earliest periods of our history , have connected matrimony with religion . So much for the first very

    ill-selected topic , which the advocates of the present measure have thought proper to introduce ; but it is sufficiently iu character with the measure itself , to the consideration of which I will now proceed .

    1 cannot be expected to know the complete history of this bill ; but part of it , and a very material part , has been long before the public . The precise period at which the consciences of Unitarians took alarm at certain expressions in the Marriage Service , has not been communicated to the world : but the first

    symptom of that alarm was made sufficiently notorious , and the relief then sought was of a very objectionable nature A person of the name of Fearon objected to being married according to the common form , and delivered a protest against the ceremony to the officiating clergyman . Another peison , Mr . Dillon , an

    Uuitariau Teacher , followed up the blow , and contrived to insult the Church , the Prayer-Book , and the Clergyman , and to get married , according to his own statement of the case , without going through the proper ceremony . Mr . Dillon published an account of his own misconduct

    in the Monthly Repository , and strongly recommended his own behaviour to general imitation . The first step , therefore , that was taken by the tender consciences for which we are called to legislate , was an attempt to break the law . They tried their owu strength , and protested , befom

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    < % The Christian Remembrancer" on the Unitarian Marriage-Bill . 365

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1822, page 355, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2513/page/35/