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I do not want to compare the morality of other countries with the morality of our own. We comforted ourselves with the belief that respect for the sanctity of marriage stood high in this country until the Divorce Court was established. We cannot speak quite as complacently now; but marriage is still held among us to be honourable. How is it that marriage in some other countries is less respected? Do we not know that the facilities for divorce in some of those countries depreciate the estimation in which the marriage vow is held? It would not be right to press the argument based on the Scriptures too far in an assembly such as this, because there are some outside who would decline to argue the question on that ground, discarding religion and refusing to admit the authority of the Scriptures. But, if we are to prohibit only such marriages as are prohibited by the letter of the Old Testament, we must repeal the prohibition in the case of thirteen degrees prohibited by our law and not prohibited by the letter of Leviticus; and, on the other hand, if you endeavour to arrive at the principle contained in that chapter in Leviticus, and to lay down a marriage law in accordance with that principle within the range and limits of the degrees which are prohibited there, you will arrive at our present marriage law. There is one other very important point. We have been told that this is a poor man's question, and that the poor ask for this alteration of the law. My information does not support this. In 1859 I received, through an eminent prelate, a number of letters, which I have in my hand, from clergymen who had laboured many years in some of the largest centres of population. These clergymen assert that in their experience the poor did not generally practise or approve these marriages. One of those to whom I allude is Dr. McNeile, the present Dean of Ripon, for many years a well-known clergyman of Liverpool; another is Canon Stowell, for several years a leading clergyman of Manchester; another is Canon Auriol, of St. Dunstan's; another is the Rev, Mr. Rowsell; and there was also a layman, a Scripture Reader, who laboured among the poor in London for a great number of years, some of whose words I will read to your lordships. To the same effect was the testimony of a right reverend friend of mine, the Bishop of Rochester, at that time Rector of Kidderminster. The Scripture Reader of whom I have spoken, writing in April, 1861, says—
