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deaths in a different order, so as to avoid the 'one hour,' and then B might marry M. Thus:—
"Two brothers AB marry MN Two sisters.
"A third brother, C, marries S, a stranger.
"Suppose that N dies first, and after she is dead A dies without children, then B may marry M, because she had not been 'prohibited to him for one hour,' i.e., she had not been a widow whilst his own wife was alive. The second case alluded to is exactly similar:—
Mishna III. 9.—'Suppose two brothers [A and B] married two sisters [M and N]. If one of the brothers [A] die, and afterwards the wife of the second [N] die, then the widow [M] is prohibited to the surviving brother [B] because she had been prohibited to him one hour.'
"But suppose that N had died first, and then A died without children, then it would have been lawful for B to marry M, as may be seen in Maimonides, Yad Hachazakah, Hilchoth Yibbum, ch. vii., § 3, 4, where there is an analogous case. The prohibition in the one case, and the permission in the other, depends, not upon the words of the law, but upon a general rule laid down by the Rabbis; that the lawfulness or unlawfulness, as well as the obligation to perform the duty of a brother-in-law, is regulated by the state of things existing at the moment when the brother died."[1]
I have extracted the above at full length, because at the same time that it shews all I want and even more than I want for my purpose, it yet also shews no contradiction to what I want, whilst it shews also that I suppress no part of Dr. M'Caul's statement or argument. I say that it shews something more than I want, though nothing contradictory to it; because I have no need to consider either the third case of a brother marrying a stranger,
- ↑ Letter to Vice-Chancellor Sir W. Page Wood, p. 29—31.
