It may, probably, be regarded as fortunate for the peace of the kingdom
that the Prince, who eventually became King George IV., left behind him
no issue from his marriage with the Princess, the failure of heirs of
his body thus removing any temptation to raise the question whether he
had not himself forfeited all right to succeed to the throne by his
previous marriage to a Roman Catholic. A clause of the Bill of Rights
provides that any member of the royal family who should marry a Roman
Catholic (with the exception of the issue of princesses who may be the
wives of foreign princes) shall by that marriage be rendered incapable
of inheriting the crown of England. And though the Royal Marriage Act
(which, as we have seen, had been recently passed) had enacted that no
marriage of any member of the royal family contracted without the
consent of the reigning sovereign should be valid, it by no means
follows that an invalidity so created would exempt the contractor of a
marriage with a Roman Catholic, which as an honorable man he must be
supposed to have intended to make valid, from the penalties enacted by
the Bill of Rights. It is a point on which the most eminent lawyers of
the present day are by no means agreed. The spirit of the clause in that
bill undoubtedly was, that no apparent or presumptive heirs to the crown
should form a matrimonial connection with any one who should own
allegiance to a foreign power, and that spirit was manifestly
disregarded if a prince married a Roman Catholic lady, even though a
subsequent law had enacted a conditional invalidity of such a marriage.
We may find an analogy to such a case in instances where a man has
abducted a minor, and induced her to contract a marriage with himself.
The lady may not have been reluctant; but the marriage has been
annulled, and the husband has been criminally prosecuted, the nullity of
the marriage not availing to save him from conviction and punishment. A
bigamous marriage is invalid, but the bigamist is punished. And, apart
from any purely legal consideration, it may be thought that public
policy forbids such a construction of law as would make the illegality
or invalidity of an act (and all illegal acts must be more or less
invalid) such a protection to the wrong-doer as would screen him from
punishment.

Whatever may be the judgment formed on the legal aspect and merits of
the case, the conduct of the Prince could not fail to give the great
body of the