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REGULAR MARRIAGES.

from Scotland. But on this point the law has gone into total confusion. It is now customary for every species of preacher in dissenting congregations, Roman Catholic clergymen included, to officiate when the lines are produced. A result of this nature is not injurious to the validity of the marriage, and it would possibly be better for England that the law was as accommodating. By taking the business out of the hands of the established church, it has however partly produced an evil worthy of immediate correction. Every minister, when he has finished the ceremony, docquets the lines by a certificate that such have been implemented. The certificate being then given back to the parties, ought to be registered in the parish books as a finished transaction; but from carelessness, this is very often neglected, and as clergymen keep no chapelrecords of marriages, (Episcopalians excepted,) there is no evidence but that of a circumstantial nature to

prove the deed. It is generally understood that an amendment of the law is here contemplated, by obliging all ministers to keep registers. Some clergymen already take in hand to have the ceremony certified in the parish books; and the present parish clerk of Su Cuthbert's in Edinburgh, is a model of exactness in urging post-matrimonial registration. Marriages in Scotland only take place in churches or chapels when the parties are of the Romish or Episcopal churches, and wish it to be done. The standards of the kirk prescribe that marriages shall be celebrated in church, and lay down a form or liturgy to be used; however, like many of the standards" of the establishment, these have long since gone into disuse.

If marriage be easily accomplished in Scotland, it is fortunate that it can be more easily dissolved than in most other countries. The law permits three pleas for divorce, either of which, when substantiated, produce the desired end: adultery, impotency, and wilful desertion for four years at least.

In respect of the first of these causes, it seems still an undecided point, whether it be essential that the complainer be not liable to a retort. Recent law

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writers, founding on certain decisions, have remarked that it is essential, or, in other words, that the pursuer must enter court with clean hands; but this, we think, will depend chiefly on circumstances. It is at least certain, that should the pursuer have cohabited with the defender after the date of the alleged indiscretion, no plea will be sustained. Bad usage leads to separate maintenances, but will not serve for a divorce.*

To found a plea for divorce on the score of desertion, the absentee must be excommunicated in church at the end of the first year at soonest, which forms the groundwork of an action in the commissary court, when other three years have expired. The deserter must be warned of these transactions, if in the country, and summoned edictally, when abroad, or when his place of residence is unknown. Judicial banishment and imprisonment, are not reckoned wilful abandonment. There must be no collusion in any of the pleas, and this is ascertained by a solemn oath.

Processes of divorce are rare in Scotland, considering the comparative ease and cheapness of carrying them through, a circumstance complimentary to the habits of the people; and we never heard of a case which was frustrated by the discovery of collusion. In practice, therefore, the law of divorce in this country is equitable, and consistent with common sense and expediency. Its mildness is seldom or never abused by natives. Parties from England occasionally attempt to procure divorces after gaining a settlement of sixty days, but it is rarely they succeed; the court supposing, mostly with justice, that collusion exists; and it may now be considered almost a settled point, that English marriages cannot be dissolved in Scotland. A long residence in the country might, however, affect the case.

Separate maintenances are not easily procured by wives in Scotland, unless the husbands flatly refuse to support them. There prevails a curious traditionary opinion on this subject, to the effect, that if a husband, whose wife has left him on any pretence whatever, order a plate, knife, fork, and chair, to be placed every day for her at dinner, she can neither complain of misusage, nor sue for a separate maintenance.

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DIVORCES IN SCOTLAND.

It is, not the divorce but the marriage, law of Scotland which is defective. As it now operates, actions for declaring the validity of contested marriages are frequently in court. They are, in almost every instance, instituted by women in the lower ranks of life, and especially house servants, against men in better circumstances,such as their masters, or sons of their masters, either on the plea of verbal or written promises, or what they suppose may be construed into promises of marriage; and we consider the ease with which they generally establish their point as very injurious, by inducing an abandonment of virtuous habits on the part of females, in the prospect of trepanning men into the condition of husbands. In palliation of the loose principles of the law on this matter, it has been said by eminent counsel, that idle words spoken in jest, or frivolous actions, such as the owning of a woman for a wife in a jocular way before a company, cannot be subsequently used to the disadvantage of the man who did so. But to arguments like this, it is only necessary to point to the result of most of those actions brought into court by women of easy virtue for the last half century. It is a notorious fact, that the law here is far too favourable to the woman, who, if she do not accomplish her purpose through the aid of lawyers who are willing to take up her case, is at least sure of putting the man to much inconvenience and expense. Some may plead, that since such is the ticklishness of the Scottish law on the subject of marriage, a corresponding caution will be exercised by men in making advances to females; but though this be partly true, we are satisfied that it does not counterbalance the mischief we describe.

Husbands in Scotland may protect themselves from the future debts of their wives, by expeding a simple process in the Court of Session, called an Inhibition, which is recorded, and published in the newspapers. A husband can do so on the day after his marriage, if he chooses, and he is not obliged to state the reasons for such a harsh and discreditable procedure.

PROMINENT AND PECULIAR LAWS AND USAGES
CONTINUED.

MANAGEMENT OF THE POOR IN SCOTLAND.

My men are of the poorest,

But poverty could never drive them from me.

SHAKESPEARE.

THE present condition and prospects of the poor in Scotland, may partly be compared to what they were in England in the seventeenth century, before the application of funds derived from compulsory assessments had wrought that demoralizing influence, in society now so observable wheresoever they have been used on a great scale. To prevent a period arriving when expediency compels a contribution on the part of the rich to support the poor, seems either impossible, or bas hitherto not interested the intelligent part of the community sufficiently to retard its advance. Almost all nations, confined in limits, and progressing in civilization after the European fashion of manners, appear destined to arrive at a crisis, when society sheds off into the most opposite extremities of overgrown wealth and the direst poverty. The chief cause of this seemingly natural consequence is now no secret. It is the accumulation of money, or the representation of wealth, in masses, which, when once begun to be concentrated, generates at such a rate of progression, that in the course of events the resources of a great proportion of

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the community are drained to supply matter for its increase. A great, a very general, and a continual industry, acting so as to create a corresponding quantity of the material desiderated and fill up the loss, has been declared as competent to preserve the balance of society; but the present situation of Great Britain shews, that even when industry has been pushed to its utmost verge, when the most severe labour is practised by all, no result of this description can be traced. In despite of all improvements in science and art, whereby machinery has been brought to do the work of a hundred millions of human beings, and the land tortured into the utmost stretch of its productive powers, the melancholy fact still strikes our observation, that the poor are not only still the poor, but that their number is prodigiously increased, and their poverty dreadfully enhanced. Whatsoever may be the specious doctrines of certain writers, this palpable truth bursts through all impediments, and stands confessed as the basis on which compulsory assessments for the support of the degraded portion of the community must be put in operation. Until some novel and judicious plan-which has hitherto baffled the ingenuity of mankind-can be devised to check and cure the evil, it must go on in its aggressions. Nothing as yet projected in modern times, has been at all able to arrest the mischief. As society is now constructed, its approach may be as surely calculated on as the recurrence of the seasons. The Indian who is cajoled into the relinquishment of his independent barbarism, and the adoption of the usages of civilized life, makes his first unconscious step to the poor-house.

It is not our duty to digress on a subject affording so much scope for comment to the political economist. A short and comprehensive view of the rise, progress, and present state of pauperism, and its usual remedies in Scotland, for the information of the stranger, is our more simple task.

The institution of poor laws was almost coeval in England and Scotland, though the necessity for their

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