s, without
lowering its character, and weakening its obligations, and relaxing
generally the moral tone of the community.

That under such a system, also, facilities must be given for the hasty
contraction of imprudent or improper marriages, is too obvious to be
pointed out. A transient resolution, a half frolic, a moment's
submission to undue influence, may at once and for ever create the
status of matrimony by the simple act of registration, from which there
is to be no room for repentance or escape.

But we shall be told that these evils are not introduced for the first
time by the present Bill, but already exist in their full extent under
the common law. If this were the case, it would be a serious objection
to the Bill, that while it professed to amend the law, it left such
evils untouched. But on further examination, it will be found that the
mischievous consequences to which we have alluded are wholly or almost
wholly unknown under the law as now existing, and will either be called
into operation by the present Bill, if it should pass into an Act, or
will be fearfully aggravated by such a measure.

In the first instance, it must be observed that the law as it stands
gives _no countenance_ and _no facility_ to extra-ecclesiastical
marriages. It tolerates but it does not give the sanction of its
approval to them. On the contrary, it considers them to be irregular and
contrary to good order, and it provides punishment for those who
celebrate or engage in them. The present act places them on an entirely
new footing. It makes them part and parcel of the statute law. It
provides a machinery and pays an officer, according to a settled and
moderate tariff, for actually carrying through those summary connexions
hitherto deemed irregular, but which can now be deemed irregular no
longer. This change of itself involves a serious danger.

Whatever is left to depend on consuetudinary law, will derive its
character from the feelings of the people, among whom the law has been
formed and preserved. The one custom, in its growth and progress, is
checked and qualified by others of an opposite and counteracting
tendency. As matters now stand in Scotland, marriages celebrated without
the presence of a clergyman, or without the proclamation of banns,
though held to be valid, are denounced as irregular and improper. All
the feelings of the people are against them. No one, with any remains of
decent pride, or a sense of propriety, w