§ Order of the Day for the Second Beading read.
§ LORD CARRINGTON, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, the object of the Bill was to make legal marriages which had taken place in this church through inadvertence, it not having been properly licensed.
§ Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a." —(The Lord Carrington.)
THE LORD CHANCELLORsaid, he must repeat what he had said on other occasions when Bills of this kind had been introduced into their Lordships' House—namely, that in his view it was a scandal to the law that such Bills should from time to time be necessary in order to legalize marriages in places which had not been registered. He had been in communication with the President of that branch of the High Court of Justice which had matrimonial causes under its jurisdiction, and it was his intention shortly to introduce a Bill for the purpose of dealing generally with cases of this kind, and with others in which doubts might exists as to the validity of marriages, on merely formal grounds.
§ Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Monday next.