APPENDIX TO LETTER I.
Fenton v. Livingstone. Livingstone v. Livingstone.
Extracts from the Speeches of the Law Lords in delivering Judgment.
Lord Brougham.
"Was the marriage, then, of the respondent's parents such that the law of Scotland could recognize its validity in dealing with the rights of the issue of it to take real estates by inheritance? First of all, let us consider if it was legal in the country where contracted, and where the parties had their domicile. It was clearly illegal by the law of England. That law treated it as incestuous by the rules of the Ecclesiastical Court, which alone has cognizance of this objection to a marriage. It could not be questioned, except dining the lives of both husband and wife; but it was illegal, and if questioned while both parties were alive, it must have been declared void ab initio. And why? Because it was contrary to law. The circumstance of one party to it having died before this dispute arose, and before it was questioned, did not make the marriage legal, though it precluded the possibility of setting it aside; and the son was issue, not of a lawful marriage, but of a marriage which could not be questioned
