o granting dispensations for holding two
benefices at once, to issuing licences for non-residence, and in
matrimonial cases to the issuing of special licences. The dispensing
power of bishops in the Church of England survives only in the right to
grant marriage licences, i.e. dispensations from the obligation to
publish the banns. Though, however, these licences and dispensations are
given under the archiepiscopal and episcopal seals, they are actually
issued by the commissaries of faculties and vicars-general
(chancellors), independently, in virtue of the powers conferred on them
by their patents. This has led, since the passing of the Divorce Acts
and the Marriage with a Deceased Wife's Sister Act, to a curiously
anomalous position, licences for the remarriage of divorced persons
having been issued under the bishop's seal, while the bishop himself
publicly protested that such marriages were contrary to "the law of
God," but that he himself had no power to prevent his chancellor
licensing them.

See Hinschius, _Kirchenrecht_ (Berlin, 1883), iii. 250, &c.; article
"Dispensation" by Hinschius in Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopadie_
(Leipzig, 1898); article "Dispensation" in Wetzer and Welte's
_Kirchenlexikon_ (2nd ed. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1882-1901); F.
Lichtenberger, _Encyclopedie des sciences religieuses_ (Paris, 1878),
s.v. "Dispense"; Phillimore, _Eccl. Law_.

2. _Constitutional Law._--The power of dispensation from the operation
of the ordinary law in particular cases is, of course, everywhere
inherent in the supreme legislative authority, however rarely it may be
exercised. Divorce (in Ireland) by act of parliament may be taken as an
example which still actually occurs. On the other hand, the dispensing
power once vested in the crown in England is now merely of historical
interest, though of great importance in the constitutional struggles of
the past. This power possessed by the crown of dispensing with the
statute law is said to have been copied from the dispensations or non
obstante clauses granted by the popes in matters of canon law; the
parallel between them is certainly very striking, and there can be no
doubt that the principles of the canon law influenced the decisions of
the courts in the matter. It was, for instance, very generally laid down
that the king could by dispensation make it lawful to do what was _malum
prohibitum_ but not to do what was _malum in se_, a principle of the
canon law, b