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sevefaJ persuasions of men ought to have their effects in law ,. " * This dpi- ? irion has excited the spleen of Roger North , who tells us , that "it was gross in favour of those worst of sectaries . " f So , in the year 1661 , in an action of ejectment , tried at Nisi Prius , a Quaker marriage was held to be valid ; J and , in an action for criminal conversation , Mr . Justice Denison held a
Quaker marriage to be sufficient to support the action . § Upon the same principle , in a case at the Old Bailey , before Sir John Silvester , it was held that a marriage in Ireland , ( to which country our marriage acts do not extend , ) by a Dissenting minister , in a private room , was good . || To these authorities may be added that of the present Chief Justice of the King ^ s Bench , who , in his charge to the jury in the case of Beer v . Tf ard 9 stated ,
that a marriage without religious solemnization or the presence of a priest , and merely with consent of parties admitted before sufficient witnesses , and followed by cohabitation , was , before the passing of Lord Hardwicke ' s Act , a valid marriage for all purposes whatsoever , according to the then known > law of the land , as was the case with the law of Scotland at this day . ^ f It appears , however , that Lord Eldon ( whose prejudices do not run in favour of the Dissenters ) did not altogether coincide in this opinion .
An argument in favour of the validity of Dissenters' marriages is also to be drawn from the exception in Lord Hardwicke ' s Act of the marriages of Quakers and Jews . The Legislature in passing this act could not have regarded such marriages as invalid , as the exception would then have been merely nugatory . It must have been perfectly immaterial to the Quakers whether their marriages were invalid by the common law or by the express words of the statute . Unless such marriages were good , the Quakers would
indeed be placed in a most singular situation . The act says , that all marriages not celebrated according to its provisions shall be void , except the marriages of Quakers , which are not within the operation of the acU Quakers , therefore , as long as they continue such , cannot be married ac * cording to the provisions of the act . But it is said , that by the common law the marriages of Quakers , according to their own ceremonies , are invalid .
Therefore , in consequence of this exception in the act , it is impossible that Quakers can be legally married at all . To avoid this absurdity it is abso-r krtely necessary to hold that the marriage acts have recognized the commonlaw validity of marriages celebrated by Dissenters according to their own particular ceremonies .
The validity of marriages by Dissenting ministers before the Marriage Act does not entirely rest upon the position that such marriages were valid as contracts , without the intervention of a priest ; for it may be contended upon very arguable grounds , that subsequent to the Toleration Act Dissenting ministers are recognized by the law as public teachers of religion , and that , ; therefore , marriages celebrated by them were equally good with marriages
celebrated by Roman Catholic priests , winch are admitted to have been valid . This appears to have been the opinion of Sir John Nicholl * who , in the case of Kemp v . Wickes , ** thought that Dissenting ministers , being now legalized , it could not be said that rites and ceremonies performed by them were not such as the law could recognize in any court of justice . This opinion is countenanced by the decision of the Court of King's Bench in R . v .
* Life of Hale , p . 70 . f Life of Lord Keeper North , Vol . L p . 134 . X Haggard ' s Rep ., Vol . 1 . Appendix , p . 9 . § Buller ' s Nisi Prius , p . 28 . || JRuflseira Crown Law , Vol . I . p . 205 . f See the Times of Nov . 18 , 1823 ** London , 1810 , Butterworth $ Roper ' s Baron and Feme , Vol . II . p . 478 .
Untitled Article
73 . History of tHe English Marriage Law .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1828, page 78, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2557/page/6/
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