hence in Spain no Protestants can be legally married.
Marriages solemnised abroad according to the law of that land
wheresoever the parties may at the time be inhabitants are
valid--but the law of Spain excludes their priests from
performing these ceremonies where both parties are
Protestants--and where one is a Papist, except a dispensation
be obtained from the Pope. So you must either go to
Gibraltar--or wait till you arrive in England. I have
represented the hardship of such a case more than once or twice
to Government. In my report upon the Consular Act, 6 Geo. IV.
cap. 87--eleven years ago--I suggested that provision should be
made to legalise marriages solemnised by the Consul within the
Consulate, and that such marriages should be registered in the
Consular Office--and that duly certified copies thereof should
be equivalent to certificates of marriages registered in any
church in England. These suggestions not having been acted
upon, I brought the matter under the consideration of Lord John
Russell (I being then in England at the time of his altering
the Marriage Act), and proposed that Consuls abroad should have
the power of magistrates and civil authorities at home for
receiving the declarations of British subjects who might wish
to enter into the marriage state--but they feared lest the
introduction of such a clause, simple and efficacious as it
would have been, might have endangered the fate of the Bill;
and so we are as Protestants deprived of all power of being
legally married in Spain.

What sort of a horse is your hack?--What colour? What age?
Would he carry me?--What his action? What his price? Because if
in all these points he would suit me, perhaps you would give me
the refusal of him. You will of course enquire whether your
Arab may be legally exported.

All my family beg to be kindly remembered to you.--I am, my
dear sir, most faithfully yours,

J. M. BRACKENBURY.

There is a young gentleman here, who is in Spain partly on
account of his health--partly for literary purposes. I will
give him, with your leave, a line of introduction to you
whenever he may go to Seville. He is the Honourable R. Dundas
Murray, brother of Lord Elibank, a Scottish nobleman.

FOOTNOTES:

[111] _Norfolk Chronicle_, 1