these courts. The noble earl talks of this jurisdiction as a perfect nuisance in the country: The ecclesiastical courts, in the noble earl's conceptions, are an Augæan stable, which want a Hercules to cleanse them. My Lords, I must tell the noble earl, what I need not tell your Lordships, that the proceedings in the ecclesiastical courts are as regular, and go with as much certainty to serve the purposes of substantial justice, as those in the temporal courts. It is true, my Lords, they have, in those matters that are subject to their cognizance, a system of law and jurisprudence of their own, and their own forms of ceeding: But their system is a wise, welldigested system, founded on the general principles of justice; and their forms are regular, known, and certain: And, in the hands in which the administration of that part of the law of the country is at present

pro

placed, and has been placed for a long time backward, no one will presume to say that justice is not distributed with as much ability and as much integrity in those courts as in any other court of law or equity in Great Britain.

"My Lords, I derive farther encouragement to offer my opinion upon the present occasion, from the example of my noble friend the original mover of this bill: For, my Lords, the incapacity imputed to me and the recluses of the law is not confined to us; it extends over various descriptions of persons in this assembly, and my noble friend is included under the same disability. My Lords, it seems his grave and weighty occupations as a public minister at foreign courts have kept him retired like us from scenes of gayety and dissipation; and he is destitute of all that ability for the present discussion which is

not to be acquired without much experience in the arts of practical gallantry! My Lords, these men of public business-these foreign ministers, are all of them, like myself, like my brethren on this bench, like the noble and learned lord upon the woolsack, like his brethren in Westminster Hall,-they are all very drivellers in these subjects; monks, recluses, mere old women, my Lords: It is a shame you should mind any thing they say!

However, my Lords, I shall take courage to offer my opinion, such as it may be, perhaps at some length, upon the present subject. My Lords, the objections to the bill have been taken upon so many different grounds,-what they want singly in weight, they so abundantly make up in number, that although I am not at a loss what to reply to any one, I am indeed much at loss with which to begin. There

is so little coherence in the different objections among themselves, that they lead to no particular order; and to give perspicuity, and what I can of brevity, to my argument, I must endeavour to reduce them to some general heads.

"One ground of objection has been, that the bill is an alteration of the laws of the land.

"Another, that it gives a double punishment for one crime; not taking away the action of damages when it makes the adulterer liable to indictment.

"The divine law has been much brought It is contended on our side,

in question. that the marriage of a divorced adulteress with the adulterer is itself adultery, by the law of God: The opposers of the bill not only deny this, but they allege the law of God in justification of such marriages.

"Another objection is,—and a great one it would be, if it could be made out, that

the effect of the clause prohibiting such marriages will be the very reverse of that which the promoters of the bill expect; that it will promote adultery, instead of restraining it.

"Now, my Lords, with respect to the first objection-that the bill will change the law of the land, your Lordships may remember, that in a former debate I ventured to meet this objection, so far as it regards that part of the bill which makes adultery a misdemeanour punishable by the temporal courts, with a flat denial. I said that this did not amount to a change of the law; and I was doubtful whether in this I should have the concurrence of the noble and learned lord upon the woolsack: But, my Lords, I have the satisfaction to find, from what I have heard this night, that