trayed into these illegal marriages by the delusive advertisements I have referred to. In fact, Lord Lyndhurst's Act of 1835, in mercy to those who might be entrapped into marriages that might at any time (during the life only of either party, as the law then stood) be declared void at the caprice of the husband, or from the malice of an enemy, or on the real conscientious interference of friends, made them impossible.
The title of this Act of Lord Lyndhurst is no doubt misleading. It runs thus: "An Act to render certain Marriages valid, and to alter the law with respect to certain voidable Marriages." Now, the Act does not render (as it has often, through inadvertence, been asserted to do) any marriage within the prohibited degrees valid, but only says that the marriages which at the date of this Act had been solemnized within those degrees should not be questioned, although the husband and wife were both living. Sir Herbert Jenner refers to this in his judgment in Ray v. Sherwood Curtis, 193. He says, "The enacting part of the Act does not make these marriages to be good and valid to all intents and purposes, as might be supposed from the title of the Act;" and he proceeds to state his opinion that the parties to such a marriage would still be punishable for incest in the Ecclesiastical Courts, though married before the Act. This, in fact, is the important distinction throughout. Before Lord Lyndhurst's Act, the
