Atter some hesitation on the part of Lord Dalhousie, who
was probably influenced by weighty advisers outside the House of Lords, the Marriage with a Deceased Wife's Sister Bill was so altered as to render such marriages legal in any Dissenting or Roman Catholic church, where a Registrar is bound to attend in Great Britain, and, in any Roman Catholic chapel in Ireland,—where a Registrar is not bound to attend,— but was never to be legal in any Anglican Church. In other words, the Canon law would prevail in the Anglican Church, and no Anglican clergyman, whether approving or disapproving of such marriages himself, would be permitted by the proposed change in the laws of the realm to marry a man to his wife's sister. The effect of this would have been to turn Anglicans who determined on such marriages into either temporary Secularists, or temporary Dissenters, or temporary Roman Catholics; and we hope that the House of Commons would never permit so need- less an outrage on Anglican feelings.
