grievance, except
with those who absolutely condemn the endowment of a Church.

[Pageheading: _REGISTRATION ACTS._]

An equally valuable and permanent legacy of this session is contained in
two cognate acts regulating marriages and registration in England. By
the first of these acts two new modes of celebrating marriage were
provided, without interfering with the old privileges of the established
Church in regard to marriage by licence or banns. While the essential
conditions of notice and publicity were carefully secured, the
superintendent registrar of each district was empowered either to
authorise the celebration of marriage in a duly registered place of
worship, but in presence of a district registrar, or to solemnise the
ceremony himself, without any religious service, in his own office.
Clergymen of the Church of England were constituted registrars for
marriages celebrated by themselves, and were bound to furnish the
superintendent registrars with certified entries of such marriages. The
act was complicated by a variety of safeguards, enforced by heavy
penalties, against fraud and evasion, but its leading features were
simple and have proved effectual for their purpose. It marked an advance
on the earlier marriage bill of Russell, since it not only allowed
dissenters to marry in their own chapels, but to marry without having
their banns published in the parish church. It went beyond the marriage
bill of Peel, since it not only recognised marriage as a civil contract,
but utilised the new poor law organisation, and posted in each district
a civil official before whom that contract could legally be solemnised.

The rules laid down by the first act for the registration of marriages
were an integral part of a general registration system established by
the second act, and embracing births and deaths as well as marriages.
This system, rendered possible by the division of the country into
unions, brought under effective control the old parochial registers
which had been loosely kept for three centuries. The statistical value
of the returns thus checked and digested in a central department is now
fully recognised, but can only be appreciated by students of social
history, which, indeed, is now largely founded on reports of the
registrar-general. The special provisions for the registration of deaths
are also of the utmost service in the prevention of disease and crime.
Not until after this act of 1836 was it realised b