Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 407, September, 1849

The bill declares that henceforward marriage shall be contracted in Scotland in one of the following modes, and not otherwise: – 1st, By solemnisation in presence of a clergyman; or, 2d, by registration, the parties proposing so to marry appearing "in presence of the registrar, and there and then signing, before witnesses, the entry of their marriage in the register."

It is evident, however, that without some precaution for publicity, the registrar's office would be as much a temple of Hymen as the blacksmith's forge at Gretna-green, and accordingly, previous to registration – that is, legal marriage – residence for fourteen days was required; and, besides that, a written notice to the registrar, with the names and designations of the parties, seven days previous to the fated entry. A copy of such notice was to be affixed upon the door of the parish church for one Sunday, and this was to be the whole of the publication. Notwithstanding this, if the registrar chose to take the risk of a penalty, and allow the parties to sign the register without their having proved their residence or given notice of their intention, the marriage was, nevertheless, to be valid and effectual.

Worse regulations, we are bound to say, never were invented. Why select the church door? Why post up the names amidst lists of candidates for registration, notices of roups, and advertisements of the sale of cattle? Is not the present mode of announcing the names within the church more decent than the other, and likely to attract greater notice? But the whole thing is a juggle. The bill gives ample facility for evasion, should that be contemplated; for it is easy to divine that, with the whole proof in his own hand, and no check whatever placed upon him, no registrar would be hard-hearted enough to refuse dispensing with the preliminaries in any case where the amorous couple were ready and willing to remunerate him for the risk of his complaisance.

So much for marriage by registration, which, instead of throwing any obstacle in the way of ill-advised or hasty unions, would, in effect, have a direct tendency to increase them. But the case is absolutely worse when we approach the other form of marriage, which was to supersede that solemnity which is at present in every case preceded by the formal proclamation of banns. The provisions of the bill were as follows: —

No clergymen could solemnise a marriage, unless,

1st. Both or one parties should have been resident for fourteen days within the parish in which the marriage was to take place; or ,

2d. In some other parish in Scotland: the certificate in both cases to be granted by the Registrar; or ,

3d. Unless both or one of the parties had been for a fortnight a member or members of the congregation resorting to the church or chapel in which the clergyman solemnising the marriage usually officiates; or ,

4th. Unless they had similarly attended some other place of worship ; the same to be certified by the minister of such congregation; or ,

5th. Unless they could produce the registrar's certificate of a week's notice; or

6th. Unless they had been regularly proclaimed by banns.

Such is the species of hotch-potch, which it was seriously proposed to substitute, instead of the present clear, simple, cheap, and decent mode of celebrating regular marriages; and it is not at all surprising that hardly one native of Scotland could be found to raise his voice in favour of such an enormity. So far from publicity being obtained or increased, it would have afforded the most ample facilities for the celebration of marriage without the slightest warning given to the friends of either party. In reality, this pretended mode of marriage in facie ecclesiæ , would have been far more objectionable than the simple method of registration; for, in the latter case, the registrar, if he did his duty, was bound to give some kind of notice; in the former, none whatever was required by the clergyman. What is a member of a congregation? Abounding as Scotland is in sects, we apprehend that any one who pays for a sitting in any place of worship is entitled to that denomination. For ten shillings, or five shillings, or half-a-crown, a seat may be readily purchased in some place of worship; and if any one held that seat for a fortnight, he was to be entitled, according to this bill, to ask the officiating minister to marry him, without any further process whatever. If it should, however, be held, that no one is a member of a congregation unless he is in full communion, all difficulty could have been got over, by resorting to the fourth method. The member of the Established Church had simply to ask from his minister a certificate of his membership, and, armed with that, he might be legally married anywhere, and by any kind of clergyman, without the slightest notice to the public! We confess that, when we arrived at this portion of the provisions of the bill, we could scarcely credit the testimony of our eyesight. We have heard it proclaimed, over and over again, by those who supported the measure, that its principal aim was to put an end to hasty and ill-advised marriages; and on perusing the evidence, we found Lord Brougham most clamorous against the facilities given by the present law of Scotland for tying the nuptial knot, without due warning afforded to parents, more especially when young noblemen were concerned. We look to the remedy, and we find that, without the assistance of the registrar, marriages might, under the provisions of this bill, have been contracted before a clergyman, at a minute's notice, without any banns at all, and no formality, beyond payment of seat-rent for a single fortnight in any chapel, or a certificate to the same effect! A proposal more preposterous than this – more irreconcilable with decency – more injurious to the interests of society and of religion, it is really impossible to conceive; and if the language which has been used regarding it throughout Scotland has been generally temperate, we apprehend that the temperance has been entirely owing to a somewhat inaccurate estimate of the full extent of its provisions. It is, in our judgment, emphatically a bad bill; and we trust that after this, its third defeat, it will never again be permitted to appear in either house of parliament. Our representatives have done no more than their duty in giving it their most strenuous opposition; and, though a few individuals may mourn over the frustrated hopes, occasioned by the ruthless blight of a crop of expected offices, they can look for no sympathy from the people. We can assure Lord John Russell, that he never acted more wisely than in refusing to force through the final stages such unpalatable bills as these; and we hope that, in future, he will give the Scottish people credit for understanding their own affairs, and not suffer their deliberate and expressed opinion to be treated with undeserved contempt, simply because it may be possible, by "making a house," to swamp the suffrages of their representatives.

The stage-scene has dropped. Settle yourselves, my good audience; chat each with his neighbour. Dear madam in the boxes, take up your opera-glass and look about you. Treat Tom and pretty Sal to some of those fine oranges, O thou happy-looking mother in the two-shilling gallery! Yes, brave 'prentice boys, in the tier above, the cat-call by all means! And you, "most potent, grave, and reverend seigneurs," in the front row of the pit – practised critics and steady old play-goers – who shake your heads at new actors and play-wrights, and, true to the creed of your youth, (for the which all honour to you!) firmly believe that we are shorter by the head than those giants our grandfathers – laugh or scold as you will, while the drop-scene still shuts out the stage. It is just that you should all amuse yourselves in your own way, O spectators! for the interval is long. All the actors have to change their dresses; all the scene-shifters are at work, sliding the "sides" of a new world into their grooves; and, in high disdain of all unity of time as of place, you will see in the playbills that there is a great demand on your belief. You are called upon to suppose that we are older by five years than when you last saw us "fret our hour upon the stage." Five years! the author tells us especially to humour the belief by letting the drop-scene linger longer than usual between the lamps and the stage.