atic performance,
and he played it out consistently to the end. He had long believed
himself a formidable enemy to Christianity--at least to revealed
religion. He made arrangements by his will for the publication, among
other writings, of certain essays which were designed to give
Christianity its death-blow, and, having satisfactorily settled that
business and disposed in advance of the faith of coming ages, he turned
his face to the wall and died.

The reign of George the Second was not a great era of reform; but there
was accomplished about this time a measure of reform which we cannot
omit to mention. This was the Marriage Act, brought in and passed by
Lord Hardwicke, the Lord Chancellor, in 1753. The Marriage Act
provided that no marriage should be legal in England unless the banns
had been put up in the parish church for three successive Sundays
previously, or a special license had been obtained from the archbishop,
and unless the marriage were celebrated in the parish church. The Bill
provided that any clergyman celebrating a marriage without these
formalities should be liable to penal servitude for seven years. This
piece of legislation put a stop to some of the most shocking and
disgraceful abuses in certain classes of English social life. With
other abuses went the infamous Fleet marriages--marriages performed by
broken-down and disreputable clergymen whose headquarters were very
commonly the Fleet prison--"couple-beggars" who would perform the
marriage ceremony between any man and woman without asking questions,
sometimes not even asking their names, provided {280} they got a fee
for the performance. Men of this class, a scandal to their order, and
still more to the system of law which allowed them to flourish, were to
be found at almost every pothouse in the populous neighborhoods, ready
to ply their trade at any moment. Perhaps a drunken young lad was
brought up to be married in a half unconscious state to some elderly
prostitute, perhaps some rich young woman was carried off against her
will to be married forcibly to some man who wanted her money. The
Fleet parson asked no questions, did his work, and pocketed his
fee--and the marriage was legal. Lord Hardwicke's Act stopped the
business and relegated the Fleet parson to the pages of romance.

[Sidenote: 1759--England's control in North America]

Years went on--years of quiet at home, save for little ministerial
wrangles--years of almost unin