the worth of connivance by respectable people at law-breaking, as evidence of a propriety of altering the laws. Neither marriage effected by perjury, nor illicit concubinage with the deceased wife's sister, seem to shock such respectability. This, indeed, proves my fourth proposition and my second at once.
My third proposition depends on the simple operation of the law of association. There has hitherto been no distinction between the marriage in question and other prohibited marriages. The same law forbids a marriage with a man's own sister, or his aunt, or niece, and with his wife's sister. Lord Lyndhurst's (the most recent Act) draws no line of distinction whatever. If this case is to be an open question, why not necessarily all the others? In truth this circumstance, to some extent, has been pointed out, as I shall have occasion to show, by Lord John Russell in debate.
Fourthly, on the tendency of mankind in an age of relaxed morality to demand relaxations in mar- riage restrictions, I have, more than once, quoted the well-known case of the Emperor Claudius seeking for a bill to enable him to marry his own niece. Any one may read what Tacitus says of such a proof of degenerate morality. But the speech of the Emperor's satellite to the senate is worthy of again being cited: "Nova nobis in fratrum filias conjugia, sed aliis gentibus solemnia, nec ullâ lege prohibita, et sobrinarum, diu ignorata, tempore
