Canterbury, would still
be retained. If the parties were unknown to the registrar, some person
known to him would be required to declare that they were the parties
they professed themselves to be. After the names had remained twenty-one
days on the notice, the registrar would have to give them a notice to
that effect, and the marriage might be celebrated within three months
from that date. If the parties were members of the church of England,
the clergyman, on the production of the certificate within the period,
would be empowered to perform the ceremony without the publication of
bans; or, if the parties were dissenters, they would be at liberty to
go to a dissenting chapel with the certificate of notice, and, on its
production, the ceremony would there be solemnized. The chapel, however,
must first be duly licensed, on the application of at least twenty
householders, who must declare that it was a dissenting chapel, used as
a place of worship, and that they desired it to be licensed for the
celebration of marriages. It was further proposed that as a dissenting
minister was not known so well as a clergyman of the church of England,
and that as he might take upon himself the office and lay it down again,
the registrar should be present at such marriages, and should afterwards
enter the names of the parties on the registry. To those who considered
marriage to be altogether a civil contract, he would give something
like what had been proposed last year by Sir Robert Peel, with this
exception, that the parties, instead of going before a magistrate, would
go before the registrar of marriages for the district in which they
resided, who would enter the marriage contracted before him in a form
of words set out in the bill. In respect to the registration of other
marriages, the only difference between members of the establishment and
dissenters would be this--that the established clergyman might enter the
certificate of marriage in his own register, and send a duplicate copy
thereof to the superior registrar of the district, to be forwarded by
him to London; while, in the case of dissenters, it would be required
that the ceremony should be performed in the presence of the registrar,
who would certify that the marriage had taken place after a compliance
with all the forms.

The bills were brought in, and were read a second time on the 15th
of April without any opposition. The registration bill passed through
committee without an