Marriages in the Church of the Immaculate Conceptions are considered, and it will be safest to consider them duly licensed by the church authorities. The date of its erection was noted, but the Notification in the Gazette was not published.
Assuming it not to have been leased, no marriage celebrated there can be questioned unless both parties to the marriage could be shown and proved to have married there with knowledge of the fact that it was an unlicensed place. No such knowledge existed; no one ever suspected even that it was not licensed, not even the Registrar of Marriages, whose special business it was to publish the Notification in the Gazette.
To attempt legislation on the subject would only be to excite suspicion that doubt now exists. In conclusion, permit me to say that I cannot accept Lord Knutsford's reply as final or conclusive. It shows convincingly that the true bearings of the question are not yet understood.
I must beg of you to forward this letter and request a reconsideration, encouraged by what has recently been done in Malta and Mauritius to meet the reasonable claims of the Catholic Church, for a repeal of the present ill-considered law and for the promulgation here of the laws in force in such important possessions as the Straits Settlements and India, which, while making proper provision for civil marriages, have left the marriages of Christians to the discipline and control of the Church.