extra after that time, and the superintendent of the
registrar would be paid two-pence on each entry. It was calculated that
altogether there would be about 812,000 entries made in the course of
one year, and that the amount paid to the registrars thereon would be
somewhat more than L40,000. The total expense, including superintendents
and the register-office in London, would amount to about L80,000 per
annum. For the present the lords of the treasury would be empowered to
pay the expenses of the central register-office in London; the future
expenses would be borne by the parishes, according to the number of
entries supplied by each. Lord John Russell next proceeded to state
the provisions of the registration of marriages. He laid it down as a
principle that the state had no interest in the form of the marriage
ceremony, beyond that of its being binding on the consciences of the
parties. When it was ascertained that due notice of the contract had
been given, according to the form requisite to be followed by all
parties, that the contract was duly registered, and that the manner in
which that contract was entered into was binding upon the consciences of
the parties to it, then the state had learned all that it was essential
or necessary for it to know. The law of the country, however, as it at
present stood, took a very different view. By the marriage law of
1754 it was declared that a marriage, in order to be valid, must be
performed--after bans published in the church, or licence granted by
authority--in the church, within certain hours, except under a special
licence, and in all cases by a clergyman of the church of England. This
law he considered as an unnecessary violation of conscience, and he
proposed to leave the marriages of the members of the church of
England as they were under the present law, and to allow the Protestant
dissenters to be married in their own chapels, according to the
religious form most acceptable to themselves. Instead of the
publication of bans, he proposed that all persons, whether of the church
establishment or Protestant dissenters, should give notice of their
intention to marry to the registrar, and that their names should be
entered by him in a notice-book, open to inspection for twenty-one days
prior to the celebration; but that persons intending to marry by licence
would be required to give only eight days' notice; and special licences,
issued under the authority of the Archbishop of