Archduke, the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, and the places on the coast of Tuscany; lastly, Milan for the Duke of Savoy. 'According to the second part of the alternative, the Spanish monarchy would be divided among the legitimate heirs and those who are called to the succession by the will of Philip IV. 'It is easy to foresee the principal objection which the King of England may make to this project. He will say to the first part of the alternative that the Dutch, who already complain that their barrier is too weak in the Netherlands, would be still more alarmed if the duchy of Luxemburg were united to my crown; that the interest of that republic being one of the rules which he must follow, he cannot agree to a project which he believes to be so opposed to it. * * * * * * * * * 'You may reply to this objection, that the Netherlands 'With respect to the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, the King of England will object 'According to what that prince said to you, one of the principal difficulties will be on the extension of the barrier to the Netherlands, which he demands. I cannot accede to it in any way whatsoever. * *. In fine, I repeat to you that I cannot listen to any proposal in regard to this article. 'The second demand, of which the King of England has already spoken, is that respecting the security of the commerce in the Mediterranean, and does not mention that of the Indies, for he touched so slightly upon it, as you state in your letter that it is better not to refer to it. * * * * * * * * 'It is not my intention to insist strongly on what I have placed in the second part of the alternative, respecting the cession of Milan to the Duke of Savoy. Lastly, if that prince requires that I should assure him that in no case whatever the Spanish monarchy shall ever be united to my crown, you will tell him that I have not given you any positive instructions on this subject; that, nevertheless, you are persuaded that I shall readily give this assurance, provided the Emperor gives a similar one that the states of Italy, which will be given to the Archduke, shall never be united to the Imperial crown. 'The King of England has communicated to Lord Portland everything that passed in your audience, and that ambassador has asked an audience of me, to know my intention respecting the proposals of the King his master. I shall give it him to-morrow, and shall speak conformably to what I write to you on the alternative. I approve of the reply you made regarding the uneasiness which the King of England expressed to you on the subject of King James's residence at St. Germains. Even supposing that prince to have designs, which he has not, it is much more easy for me to counteract them when he is near me, than if he were at a distance. Should the King of England again speak with you upon this subject, you will answer him as you have already done, and will inform me of what he has said to you.'—Vol. i. pp. 384-393. We now take leave of the subject with M. Grimblot's remarks in the preface, on the style and composition of the letters of Louis XIV. ་ In reading these lengthened despatches, with their flowing periods, elaborate expositions, and inexhaustible meaning, we are involuntarily reminded of Bossuet. It must not be thought that these State Papers were the composition of a secretary. Written by Torcy from notes taken in council, and carefully corrected by Louis XIV. as they were read to him, they bear the mark of his singular genius for grandeur and éclat. To be convinced that to him alone is the merit of their production to be attributed, it will be sufficient to compare them with the despatches written by Torcy in his own name, or even with his Memoirs.'-Pref. p. xi. 129 ART. VI.—First Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the State and Operation of the Law of Marriage, as relating to the Prohibited Degrees of Affinity, and to Marriages solemnized abroad, or in the British Colonies; with Minutes of Evidence, &c. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, by Command of Her Majesty. London: Clowes & Co. 1848. PERHAPS Some of our readers will remember, that so far back as in the year 1842, in our Number for May, (Christian Remembrancer, New Series, vol. iii. p. 542,) while adverting to the Proposed Changes in the Marriage Laws,' we attempted not only to place upon record our own views of this question, but we gave some indications of the reasons which seemed to have instigated the promoters of a change, and of the modus operandi by which it was sought to induce the legislature to accede to it. We are desirous on this occasion in the main to view the matter in its popular aspect, as a remarkable instance of what may be done by combined and systematic agitation; and how easily the expenditure of time and money, backed by a real earnestness in a personal cause, will tell upon the popular, or even legislatorial, mind; and what an imposing show may be made by the adroit management of slender materials, skilfully combined and artistically varied. The conductors of the movement have profited by a hint contained in one of the Waverley Novels, in which a town beau exhibits himself in an apparently daily change of attire, only by a judicious permutation of watch-ribbons and waistcoats. Ambitious mediocrity has seldom tricked itself out with greater success, or at smaller intrinsic outlay. One value the Blue Book, of which the title is recited in our heading, unquestionably possesses: it may be denominated with great safety, 'The Guide to Parliamentary Economy, or How to work a Royal Commission without a Cause.' For that the people of England, as a people, are interested in this matter that, measuring the matter at present only by that graduated and indeed self-adjusting scale, popular requirement, anything like common consent has made any sufficient appeal for the legislature to sanction a man's marriage with his deceased wife's sister, or that of a woman with her deceased wife's brother, the Blue Book decidedly fails to show. It proves the existence of a vast amount of machinery-of general and unscrupulous agitation-of paid agents, and, as we suspect, of paid pamphleteering. It reveals many distressing things: but it does not witness to a general display of feeling on the question. If it be said, neither has the Church or people of England either displayed any vivid interest in maintaining the present law, this is palpably not the question. The common maxim, Quieta ne movere, still applies. On Thursday, May 13, 1847, Mr. Stuart Wortley moved for, and carried in the House of Commons, an address to Her Majesty, praying for a commission to inquire into the state and operation of the Law of Marriage, as relating to the pro'hibited degrees of affinity, and to marriages solemnized abroad, 6 or in the British Colonies.' On June 28, the Commission was nominated, consisting of the Bishop of Lichfield, Mr. Stuart Wortley, Dr. Lushington, A. R. Blake, Esq. as representing Ireland, Sir Edw. V. Williams, Judge in the Common Pleas, A. Rutherfurd, Esq. the Lord Advocate for Scotland, with Mr. Herman Merivale, subsequently exchanged for Dr. Haggard, as Secretary to the Commission. During the last session of Parliament, the first Report of this Commission, which had been engaged during the winter in taking evidence, was presented to both Houses by royal command, and published in the somewhat manageable form of one hundred and sixty-eight folio pages. The constitution of this Commission, like that of many Parliamentary Committees, is exactly of that remarkable character, which, while it seems to defy misconstruction, at the same time is eminently suited to a case. England, Scotland, and Ireland, alike find their representatives. And of religious bodies, the Anglican, the Roman Catholic, and the Presbyterian communities, sit in a very general, though not quite an ecclesiastical, council. Westminster Hall and Doctors' Commons attend on behalf of the Law, Common and Civil; neither the lords, at least the spiritual lords, nor the commonalty, are absent; and it would be perhaps difficult to find six names representing so many functions and distinguished places of judgment, and which, from the official position attached to each, seemed in so many ways qualified to command, or to represent, the state of public feeling. And yet it is curious to observe how predominantly the legal mind is represented in these commissions. With the exception of the Bishop, all the members of the present Commission are lawyers. Dr. Lushington, to be sure, is a civilian: but a civilian, as is well known, of that class which is very loth to trouble the canon law when any question can be brought within the province of what is called a manageable English statute. Neither is it any disparagement to Dr. Lushington to state the very obvious fact, that he has a distaste to ecclesiastical enactment: if not a Dissenter, yet a vigorous and consistent friend of Dissent, it were impossible that Dr. Lushington should meet a question of ecclesiastical discipline, which this is, with other than a bias against it. So too of the whole class of lawyers as lawyers. There is an ancient jealousy between canon law and statute law, which only a very high view of the Church's divine office can heal or assuage. The accurate, sharp, defined province of the modern courts contrasts, in a lawyer's eyes, very favourably with what he considers the untechnical, vast, obscure, unsystematic range of the law and courts Christian: the Common lawyer loves an Act of Parliament; he views with mingled contempt and pity a reference to a Council or a Canon. It is perhaps of his professional nature that he should do so. Now, the question being in fact, whether the High Court of Parliament should supersede an ecclesiastical law by a civil enactment of its own, on grounds moral, political, social, economical, on grounds of taste, or convenience, or policy, or simply for the sake of reducing things to the standard of uniformity or common sense -directly that one or all of these motives so palpable, level and manageable can be brought into conflict with anything, to the mere lawyer, so hazy as ancient tradition, or the consent of Christendom, or mystical reasons founded at first in the Church's dogmatic teaching, and perhaps flowing from abstract doctrine alone, it is easy to see on which side the legal mind, simply as the modern legal mind, would be likely to oscillate. We are not, we suggest, judging the Commission with prejudice, while we state our belief that, however well intended, its nearly unanimous legal constitution formed its antecedent or rather inherent vice. There was not one member of it but who entered its examination room professionally biassed: the lawyers contending against the Church's law; the prelate, of course, for the Church's law. And yet, the Bishop's position on the Commission was so hampered, that we can quite understand how his Lordship felt that he had no alternative but to sign the Commissioners' report. Having once accepted his Sovereign's nomination to sit on the Commission, the Bishop of Lichfield probably thought, that, being so decidedly pledged as he is, from his sacred office as Bishop, to maintain the Church's law, and seeing that the question was not, as it is not, whether the Church shall alter the law, or whether the State or Parliament of England can alter the Church's law,-which as she never received from the Parliament, so she never can change at the will of Parliament,―he should best discharge his spiritual and episcopal obligations by forbearing to allow, not the unavoidable prejudices of his order, but, the unalterable law of the Church, from interfering with his judgment on a very different question-viz. whether under present circumstances, and under altered relations, it would be well for the State to dispense, for civil purposes, with the continuance of the Church's irreversible law from remaining, in a certain particular, as an integral and incorporated element in the national law. And this distinction between what a Bishop holds and is bound to maintain as a Bishop, and what as a peer of Parliament he can entertain the discussion of, supersedes the exact applicability of much which has been said in the way of regret that the name of Dr. Lonsdale should be appended to such a report as that which is before us. We can quite understand that on a secular question, an ecclesiastic might hesitate about introducing purely ecclesiastical scruples, or even to hint anything of his complete disqualification for entertaining at all the question, were it such, whether the Church's law should be altered or not. To suppose a Bishop of the Church of England sitting on a Commission of mixed religionists, to decide whether the Church's law should or should not be changed, since it was not the Bishop of Lichfield's position on the Commission, is a view which we are not called upon to examine. Still, making this distinction, which, as it is refined, so perhaps has not generally addressed itself to the popular apprehension, we will own to some share in the general disappointment and perplexity which has arisen, merely from the fact of a Bishop accrediting, even in this distant way, the notion, that under any circumstances, in any nation or for any people calling itself Christian, of whatever denomination, that disastrous union ought to be sanctioned, which the Church in all ages has branded by the very intelligible term of INCEST. Passing then from the constitution to the acts of the Commission, we propose to instruct our readers-perhaps they may find some little amusement in the pursuit-in an analysis of the evidence which it took. This evidence may be variously classified. The number of witnesses examined by the Commission being forty-one, they divide themselves into Class I. Persons who have violated the Law-or who earnestly II. Paid Agents and Lawyers, 'employed to get evidence.' IV. Clergy against relaxing the present prohibition. VI. Dissenting preachers, do. VII. Rt. Rev. Dr. Wiseman, R. C. Bp. of Melipotamus' 15 10 35521 I. What we have to say about the real plaintiffs in this case, the parties who have violated the law in their own persons, may well be prefaced by the grave observation of a judicial person, Dr. Nicholl, who in the debate on Mr. Stuart Wortley's motion is reported to have declared: 'It does not appear reasonable, that, |