(eicher
25
Methodist minister was held to be valid there because
it was recognised by local law, or because the presence of a priest was unobtainable.
The same
question is more fully discussed in Cheshire's
Private International Law (I have only got the 1935 edition) page 244, where he deals with the validity of marriages in a place where there is no local law available and in this connection he discusses what is
The rule laid the common law relating to marriage. down by the House of Lords in R. V.Millis 1843-4 10 C.L. and F. 534 was that one essential requirement is that the parties should take each other for man and wife, and the other that an episcopally ordained priest of the Church of England should take part in the ceremony. Having cast doubts on the historical justification of this decision, but accepting, of course, that it is the law, so far as England and Ireland are concerned, he then proceeds to consider whether the rule applies to marriages abroad, and he reaches the conclusion that the weight of opinion is in favour of confining its application to England and England. In the recent case of Wolfendon and Wolfendon, 1946
Probate 61, there is a decision of Lord Merriman
arising out of a petition for a marriage in respect of the ceremony performed in a remote province of China by a Non-Conformist minister (who was, of course, neither episcopally ordained, nor a person authorised to perform a marriage under the Foreign Marriage Act, 1892). Having cited the decisions in Catterally Catterall and McLean v Crystal,
he reaches the conclusion that there is no distinction in principle between applying in a Colony such as New South Wales, which was involved in one of these cases, only so much of the English law as suited the situation, and applying so much of the English law as suited the
decase of
nullity
e
of the
to
situation and British subjects in the Chinese province
in/