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their aunt, a certain degree of influence over them and who can, therefore, exercise the necessary control of a step-mother, without incurring the odium, or exciting the jealousy, which her authority, however leniently exercised by a stranger, usually creates.
5thly. That among the poorer classes a prohibition so much at variance with natural impulses has a direct immoral tendency, by inducing some parties to cohabit together without marriage, and leaving it in the power of others, who go through the ceremony of marriage, to deny its validity when it suits their purpose.
- Your petitioners, therefore, humbly pray that your Lordships will take the subject of the existing law relating to marriage into your early consideration, with a view to such an alteration thereof as to your Lordships shall seem meet.
- And your petitioners, &c.
Seeley, Printer.
