Yesterday week there was a lively little debate in the
House of Lords on the Bill for legalising marriage with a deceased wife's sister, the principal speakers against the Bill being Lord Beauchamp and Lord Coleridge. The Scriptural argument was not pressed, but the stock assertion that if these marriages were permitted, you could no longer have your wife's sister living with you like your own sister, was freely used. Lord Cole- ridge went so far as to say that the Bill "would point out to the sister of the deceased wife that she was her dead sister's proper Parliamentary successor." He might just as well say that if Parliament objects to imposing a theistic test, it points out to the Constituencies that an atheist is:their proper Parliamentary representative. Lord Granville's reply to Lord Coleridge was humorous. "I am very fond," he said, "of my wife's relations, but I do not feel that they are my relations.
As for myself, I have not the slightest wish to marry any one of my wife's sisters, though I dote upon them all." The division showed 101 against the Bill and 90 in its favour, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh voting in the minority.
Previous page
