The following propositions will be found to be beyond dispute.
I. That the Law of England, both Ecclesiastical and Civil, has from the first constitution of our monarchy treated marriage with a wife's sister as an incestuous marriage, and has never, down to the present day, made any distinction whatever between such a marriage, and a marriage with a man's own sister or even mother.
II. That by the same Law, and from the same time, all incestuous marriages have been wholly void, and not merely voidable, but the Ecclesiastical Courts (which alone had jurisdiction in all matters of marriage) were not allowed to declare a marriage void after the decease of either husband or wife, being prevented by prohibition from the Civil Courts from so doing, though they were allowed to punish the surviving parent for incest. Consequently a child born of a man's own sister after a ceremony of marriage between the parents, could not, after the death of either parent, be pronounced to be illegitimate; and the rule as to the offspring of the marriage with a man's own sister was exactly the same.
III. That Lord Lyndhurst's Act of 1835 did not make any difference of degree between incestuous marriages, and the whole of that Act applies exactly in the same manner to a marriage with a man's own sister as to a marriage with a wife's sister.
