be it remembered, differs very widely from ordinary law: a nice adjustment of conflicting interests, or a strict attention to a variety of social relations, is required; so that a laconic decision either way, either plain yes or plain no, would be wrong. We wait with impatience for the reported decisions of Lord Brougham, the best of all conceivable tests. We do hear, however, but cannot vouch for the fact, that, with the exception of two or three cases, on which he seriously turned the gigantic powers of his intellect because the public attention was fixed upon them, he has produced nothing worth reporting.

It is with deep regret that we speak in this manner of one, whom we formerly described as having checked more bad government, diffused more liberal principles, and set a greater number of useful inquiries on foot, than any other Lord or Commoner that could be named.1 But when we find him trampling down both forms and principles to arrive at a given result, to be proclaimed in parliament and trumpetted forth by the press, and unfairly appealing on a purely professional question to the people, it becomes a duty to expose the imposition.

In the first edition of his Discourse on the advantages of Science, Lord Brougham had stated (p. 27) that birds which build in the rocks drop or fly from height to height in cycloids; that being the most rapid mode of moving from one point to another. On being told of the incorrectness of the statement, he replied, "Let it stand, notwithstanding; though not true, it is pretty." What a key to character is a little incident like this! Action, action, action, said Demosthenes.—Effect, effect, effect, says Lord Brougham.

H.

1 Vol. IV. p. 511. and we still think so.

ART. XIII.-ROYAL MARRIAGE-ACT-CLAIM OF SIR AUGUSTUS D'ESTE.

A Letter to a Noble Lord, explanatory of a Bill in the Court of Chancery, filed on behalf of Sir Augustus D'Este, from Sir J. J. Dillon. London, 1831.

THIS pamphlet, which is not printed for general circulation, was not placed in our hands until the present number was made up; but we cannot consent to pass over, or even to postpone, the momentous question propounded in it; a question in which not merely the high interests of an individual, but the future peace and welfare of these realms are involved. Let not the reader suppose that this is merely an old story revived. It has most assuredly never yet been viewed in the light which Sir John Dillon's letter and the accompanying documents have thrown upon it. We proceed to give a compressed statement of the law, the facts, and the argument.

The statute 12 Geo. 3. c. 11, commonly called the Royal Marriage Act, enacts:

..That no descendant of the body of His late Majesty, king George the Second, male or female, (other than the issue of princesses who have married, or may hereafter marry into foreign families) shall be capable of contracting matrimony without the previous consent of His Majesty, his heirs, or successors, signified under the great seal, and declared in council, (which consent, to preserve the memory thereof, is hereby directed to be set out in the licence and register of marriage, and to be entered in the books of the privy council), and that every marriage, or matrimonial contract, of any such descendant, without such consent first had and obtained, shall be null and void, to all intents and purposes whatsoever."

This is the law to be interpreted and applied. Now for the facts.

At the close of the year 1792, His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex became acquainted at Rome with Lady, Augusta

Murray, daughter of the Earl of Dunmore, previously wholly unknown to him. An attachment sprung up between them, and after a few months, they intermarried. Sir Augustus D'Este (born about nine months after the ceremony) and Miss D'Este, are the offspring of that marriage. The marriage was solemnized by a minister of the church of England, according to the liturgy of that church; and it was also preceded by a written contract of which a copy is subjoined:

"On my knees before God our Creator, I, Augustus Frederick, promise thee Augusta Murray, and swear upon the Bible, as I hope for salvation in the world to come, that I will take thee Augusta Murray for my wife, for better, for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death us do part, to love but thee only and none other, and may God forget me if I ever forget thee. The Lord's name be praised, so bless me, so bless us O God, and with my handwriting do I Augustus Frederick this sign, March 21st, 1793, at Rome, and put my seal to it, and my

name.

"(L. S.) Signed, Augustus Frederick."

A similar engagement in the handwriting of Lady Augusta, and signed by her, appears at the foot of the paper, which has also the following heading in the handwriting of the duke:

"As this paper is to contain the mutual promise of marriage between Augustus Frederick and Augusta Murray: our mutual names must be put here to, and both kept in my possession. It is a promise neither of us can break, and is made before God our Creator, and All-merciful Father."

The clergyman who performed the ceremony is still living, and in this country. Lady Augusta died in 1830. The fact of the marriage having been "completed at Rome, April 4th, 1793," is recorded by a memorandum, written on the contract in his Royal Highness's hand. To place the matter in the clearest possible point of view, we shall quote his own account of the transaction from a letter, dated January 1798, from Naples, addressed to the late Lord Erskine, and written after a separation had taken place.

"A detail," says His Royal Highness, "of the circumstances which relate to me and my wife, will put you in a better way of judging the affair.

"In the month of December, 1792, being on my travels, I got acquainted at Rome, with Lady Dunmore, and her two daughters, who were just come from Naples. Englishmen, when they meet in foreign countries, generally keep their own national society. Such was exactly my case. I used to live a great deal with my fellowcountrymen, but the well known accomplishments of my wife, (then Lady Augusta Murray,) caught my peculiar attention. After four months intimacy, by which I got more particularly acquainted with all her endearing qualities, I offered her my hand, unknown to her family, being certain before-hand of the objections Lady Dunmore would have made me, had she been informed of my intentions. The candour and generosity my wife shewed on this occasion, by refusing the proposal, and shewing me the personal disadvantages I should draw on myself, instead of checking my endeavours, served only to add new fuel to a passion, which already no earthly power could evermore have extinguished. At length, after having convinced Augusta of the impossibility of my living without her, I found an English clergyman, and we were privately married at Rome, in the month of April, 1793, according to the rites of the English church. Many people think that Lady Dunmore was privy to this marriage, but of this I must totally exculpate her; for she never was informed of it till three months after, when secrecy was of no longer use; and when I was forced to make it known to her, for fear she should occasion my wife to miscarry."

On the return of the royal couple to England, they were married again at St. George's, Hanover-square. The duke thus accounts for the second marriage in the letter:

"After having lived with Augusta some months, though privately, I was recalled to England, when for fear of any difficulty being made as to the legality of my child's birth, I caused myself to be married a second time."

The second marriage attracted the notice of George the Third; and at his instigation a suit was commenced in the Court of Arches, and a decree procured in 1794, declaring both marriages void. It seems clear, however, that the forms required by law were not observed on this occasion. The duke was abroad at the time the suit was instituted and.

the decree passed; he was not a party to the sentence; and in the letter of 1798, and in later documents in the possession of his son, vehemently protested against it, declaring "that he considered, and ever would consider, his son Augustus Frederick, as his true legitimate and lawful son." Besides, no sentence touching the validity of marriage is ever regarded as final, in the strict sense, by the law. In indicating the line of argument that has been or may be taken, therefore, we may lay the decree of the Court of Arches aside.

In the first place, it has been forcibly and ingeniously urged that, the kings of England being also electors of Hanover, the British parliament was never competent to affix any species of personal incapacity on the members of their family, by which the line of electoral succession might be disturbed. This argument forms the principal subject of Sir J. Dillon's Treatise on the Royal Marriage Act, published in 1811. On this account, and because its reasonableness must be obvious at a glance, we shall not enlarge upon it here. Sir John Dillon also lays much stress upon the circumstance, that the act has never been ex tended to Ireland, which was an independent kingdom in

1772.1

"Were the legislative union dissolved to-morrow, the sons of George III. would still remain princes of the blood in Ireland; as the Prince of Orange would have remained a prince of the blood in Belgium, had the Nassau family been fortunate enough to have retained the sovereignty of that country in the late separation."

But admitting the power of the British legislature to be omnipotent—and Blackstone says that it can do any thing but turn a man into a woman, or vice versâ it still remains to be shewn that such a power was intended to be exercised ; and a calm consideration of the then state of the law, may perchance conduct to an opinion that it was not. The following mode of viewing the subject appears to have escaped the attention of all former writers on the point.

Previously to the year 1754, marriage was lawfully con

But for the unexpected recovery of the king in 1789, the then Prince of Wales (George the Fourth) would have been a limited regent in England, and an unlimited regent in Ireland.