pts to break down the
"hedge of the law" received in turn their merited condemnation; but
always we are brought back from the consideration of kindred evils, to
the proposal to legalize marriage with a wife's sister. Thus the
imaginary leader-writer of the _Daily Telegraph_ summarizes the
controversy: "Why, I ask, is Mr. Job Bottles' liberty, his Christian
liberty, as our reverend friend would say, to be abridged in this
manner? And why is Protestant Dissent to be diverted from its great task
of abolishing State Churches for the purpose of removing obstacles to
the 'sexual insurrection' of our race? Why are its poor devoted
ministers to be driven to contract, in the interests of Christian
liberty, illegal unions of this kind themselves, _pour encourager les
autres_? Why is the earnest Liberalism and Nonconformity of Lancashire
and Yorkshire to be agitated on this question by hope deferred? Why is
it to be put incessantly to the inconvenience of going to be married in
Germany or in the United States, that greater and better Britain--

Which gives us manners, freedom, virtue, power?

Why must ideas on this topic have to be incubated for years in that
'nest of spicery,' as the divine Shakespeare says, the mind of Mr. T.
Chambers, before they can rule the world? For my own part, my resolve is
formed. This great question shall henceforth be seriously taken up in
Fleet Street. As a sop to those toothless old Cerberuses the bishops,
who impotently exhibit still the passions of another age, we will accord
the continuance of the prohibition which forbids a man to marry his
grandmother. But in other directions there shall be freedom. Mr.
Chambers' admirable Bill for enabling a woman to marry her sister's
husband will doubtless pass triumphantly through Committee to-night,
amidst the cheers of the Ladies' Gallery. The Liberal Party must
supplement that Bill by two others: one enabling people to marry their
brothers' and sisters' children, the other enabling a man to marry his
brother's wife."

There is perhaps no social mischief which Arnold attacked so
persistently as the proposal to legalize marriage with a wife's sister.
The most passionate advocates of that "enfranchising measure" will
scarcely think that his hostility was due to what John Bright so
gracefully called "ecclesiastical rubbish." Councils and Synods, Decrees
and Canons, were held by him in the lightest esteem. The formal side of
Religion--the side of dogma