untrue that there is any special prevalence of such, illegal marriages, or any special wish for such, among the poor.
In the first place, the poor are usually the last persons to change old habits and ideas, and, therefore, little likely to think of marriages contrary to the accustomed course. In the next place, the poor marry so early that it rarely occurs that the widower finds a sister of his wife disengaged, unless she be herself a widow. Those who do not marry early are in service, and not likely to leave it for a poor brother-in-law's house, in order to take on them the care of a sister's family.
But I do not rest on conjecture as to this; I go to the evidence produced by those wealthy promoters of all the agitation on this subject, who retained the respectable firm of Crowder and Maynard to bring their case before the Royal Commission of 1847. That evidence alleged that there were 1648 cases of marriages either had, or prevented (as they stated) by Lord Lyndhurst's Act, within the prohibited degrees. These instances have been tabulated, and show 1608 to be in the upper and middle classes, and 40 only among labourers and mechanics. The ratio is literally infinitesimal, if we reflect on the comparative number of individuals constituting the classes themselves.
I myself institiited an inquiry amongst the poor of the parishes of St. Margaret and St. John, Westminster, which contain more than 60,000 inhabitants, 40,000 (at least) of the poorer class. I
