§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
§ LORD BROUGHAM moved the second reading of this Bill, which he stated to be for the purpose of remedying a great evil to which Dissenters were now subject. Under the Dissenters' Marriage Act of 1836, when a marriage between Dissenters took place by the registrar or by a Dissenting minister, it was necessary to give notice to the clerk of the Board of Guardians; and if the marriage was to take place without a licence, a notice was to be read at three successive meetings of the Poor Law Guardians of the district in which one of the parties lived. Many most respectable persons objected to this, and many were thereby deprived of the benefit intended by the Act of 1836. The object of the Bill was to substitute another mode of proceeding, and instead of notice being given to the clerk of the guardians, and the notice being read three times at different meetings of the guardians, the notice was to be given to the superintendent registrar, and be affixed in some conspicuous 1336 place in his office for twenty-one days. The measure was much considered in the other House by Gentlemen of all sects, both of the Church and Dissenters, and had come up to their Lordships' House with their full sanction.
§ Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.
§ Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Tuesday next.