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children could have? It means that the wife's sister is the children's aunt, and is likely to bear them a closer affection than a stranger. Nothing can be more true under a law which does not invite her to become their stepmother. But, if jou alter that law, you will deprive the children of the unrestrained and familiar affection of every unmarried aunt who thinks it wrong, or who is not willing, to marry their father. They are not now so deprived even during the widowhood of the father. Most of us know cases in which the wife's sister now lives in the same house, and takes care of her sister's children, without suspicion or reproach. But this could not continue under the present Bill. It is impossible that a woman can occupy the position of a sister and at the same time be by law a marriageable person. Our divorce law says that in a case of adultery with a wife's sister the husband shall not be capable of marrying again. I should be sorry, whatever the marriage law prescribed, to see it otherwise. These are good, solid reasons, of a social and natural character. Some arguments have been submitted to your Lordships based on religious considerations. One noble Lord has sought to establish it as a fundamental principle that no marriage can be prohibited except the prohibition can be directly supported by some text in Scripture. But how would that noble Lord, in accordance with that principle, prohibit polygamy? Certainly not from that particular text in Leviticus upon which he relied for his argument, because that text, as he interprets it, seems to contemplate marriage during his wife's lifetime with some person other than his wife's sister. Opinions have been forcibly expressed by some in favour of polygamy, and one author, not a bishop indeed, but a popular clergyman and the brother of a bishop in the last century, has traced many of the present evils which trouble us to its prohibition in this country. We are told how well marriage with a deceased wife's sister answers where it has been tried. But the same thing has been said of polygamy; and I think the statement is of about as much value in the one case as in the other. When a measure similar to this was before the House of Commons some years ago, I read an extract from the "Times" citing the following passage from the "Chicago Tribune." Your Lordships will notice the glowing colours in which the writer paints the happy results of the introduction of polygamy into Salt Lake City:—
