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17 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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OF these two Bills the first seeks only to legalize marriages with the deceased wife's sister, while the second proposes to legalize in the United Kingdom any Christian marriage which is legal in any British Colony. The first Bill, though apparently the smaller, will provoke far more opposition than the second. It will be regarded as an indirect attempt to assert the principle of the validity of marriages with the deceased wife's sister, and as such will encounter, without affording the relief which is desired, all the obstruction which has hitherto hindered that project. This obstruction cannot, of course, Frevent His Majesty's Government from carrying any measure on which they are resolved. But having regard to the state of business at the end of a Session, and to the fate which so often over- takes small Bills which are treated as highly controversial, the prospects of such legislation are not good.

In fact, it may be said that the one chance of a smooth and prosperous passage for the Colonial Marriages Bill consists, not in raising, but in studiously avoiding, this vexed, vexatious, and infinitely wearisome controversy. Further, if it be right to legalize the marriage with the deceased wife's sister in the United Kingdom, a measure to that end should be introduced, and would, no doubt, easily pass the present House of Commons. But what have the Colonies to do with such a controversy? Their complaint is not against the state of the marriage law in the United Kingdom. That is as much our business as our insular fiscal system. It is that marriages which have the sanction of the Crown in Australia and

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