BILL FOR REGISTRATION OF BIRTHS, DEATHS, AND MARRIAGES, ETC.
On the 12th of February Lord John Russell brought in bills for relieving dissenters from the necessity of celebrating their marriages according to the forms of the church of England, and for establishing a system of registration of marriages, births, and deaths. His lordship stated that the two bills were not connected with each other, but that the establishment of a proper system of registration was, in his opinion, an indispensable pre-requisite to any measure for removing from the dissenters their grievances relative to marriage. It was further, he said, an important object, in a national point of view, to have a general scheme of registration. At present there were no registry of births, but only of baptisms; no registry of marriages, because they were only such marriages as were performed by ministers of the church of England; and no registry of burials, as the only burials registered were those in which the service was performed by clergymen of the establishment. He argued that it was necessary we should have a registration, which should comprehend, indifferently and impartially, all sects of the people. The late change effected in our domestic policy, he continued, seemed to furnish the means of attaining this end without any heavy additional expense. By the poor-law amendment act there were two hundred and twenty-eight unions already in England and Wales; and it might be calculated that, when the whole country was divided into unions, there would be more than eight hundred. In every union there was a relieving-officer, each union consisting of about twenty parishes, and containing from sixteen to twenty thousand inhabitants. There was likewise an auditor appointed by the board of guardians. Now the government proposed that the poor-law commissioners should have the power of appointing the relieving-officer, or any other person whom they might think fit, to keep the register of a certain number of parishes; and the auditor of the union, or his clerk, or any other person appointed by the poor-law commissioners, should superintend the register of that part. There would further be a registry-office in each county, and a chief office in London, subject, however, to the authority of the poor-law commissioners. The superintendent in each union was to send the registers to the county office every two months, and copies would be transmitted thence to the central office in London. As regarded the manner in which the registration was to be made, his lordship said, that the bill would require notice to be given by the occupier of the house in which the child was born within eight days after that event had taken place, and that within fifteen or twenty days the registrar might call upon either the father or mother of the child, or upon the occupier of the house, to give him certain particulars, in order to fill up accurately the register in respect to that child. The person who furnished these particulars would also be required to furnish the name of the child; if that was declined at the time, and withheld to a future period, it would be necessary to postpone it, and the party would be obliged to produce to the registrar a certificate of the baptism of the child, and to pay him a fee of one shilling for making the entry. In cases of death likewise the occupier would have to give an account of the deaths which happened in his house—of the time and circumstances of the event—in the same manner as was provided in the case of birth. The registrar, within a certain time, would also call upon the next of kin, or any person living in the house, to furnish him with further particulars with respect to the death, the age of the deceased, information as to what part of the country the deceased belonged to, and all such other information as was usual and material in such cases. Persons who gave this information would not be required to pay any fees for the entry, or, indeed, for anything; but copies or certificates of the entry at any time afterwards supplied would have to be paid for. Every registrar would receive two shillings and sixpence for each name entered by him within twenty days after birth or death, and one shilling extra after that time, and the superintendent of the registrar would be paid two-pence on each entry. It was calculated that altogether there would be about 812,000 entries made in the course of one year, and that the amount paid to the registrars thereon would be somewhat more than £40,000. The total expense, including superintendents and the register-office in London, would amount to about £80,000 per annum. For the present the lords of the treasury would be empowered to pay the expenses of the central register-office in London; the future expenses would be borne by the parishes, according to the number of entries supplied by each. Lord John Russell next proceeded to state the provisions of the registration of marriages. He laid it down as a principle that the state had no interest in the form of the marriage ceremony, beyond that of its being binding on the consciences of the parties. When it was ascertained that due notice of the contract had been given, according to the form requisite to be followed by all parties, that the contract was duly registered, and that the manner in which that contract was entered into was binding upon the consciences of the parties to it, then the state had learned all that it was essential or necessary for it to know. The law of the country, however, as it at present stood, took a very different view. By the marriage law of 1754 it was declared that a marriage, in order to be valid, must be performed—after bans published in the church, or licence granted by authority—in the church, within certain hours, except under a special licence, and in all cases by a clergyman of the church of England. This law he considered as an unnecessary violation of conscience, and he proposed to leave the marriages of the members of the church of England as they were under the present law, and to allow the Protestant dissenters to be married in their own chapels, according to the religious form most acceptable to themselves. Instead of the publication of bans, he proposed that all persons, whether of the church establishment or Protestant dissenters, should give notice of their intention to marry to the registrar, and that their names should be entered by him in a notice-book, open to inspection for twenty-one days prior to the celebration; but that persons intending to marry by licence would be required to give only eight days’ notice; and special licences, issued under the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, would still be retained. If the parties were unknown to the registrar, some person known to him would be required to declare that they were the parties they professed themselves to be. After the names had remained twenty-one days on the notice, the registrar would have to give them a notice to that effect, and the marriage might be celebrated within three months from that date. If the parties were members of the church of England, the clergyman, on the production of the certificate within the period, would be empowered to perform the ceremony without the publication of bans; or, if the parties were dissenters, they would be at liberty to go to a dissenting chapel with the certificate of notice, and, on its production, the ceremony would there be solemnized. The chapel, however, must first be duly licensed, on the application of at least twenty householders, who must declare that it was a dissenting chapel, used as a place of worship, and that they desired it to be licensed for the celebration of marriages. It was further proposed that as a dissenting minister was not known so well as a clergyman of the church of England, and that as he might take upon himself the office and lay it down again, the registrar should be present at such marriages, and should afterwards enter the names of the parties on the registry. To those who considered marriage to be altogether a civil contract, he would give something like what had been proposed last year by Sir Robert Peel, with this exception, that the parties, instead of going before a magistrate, would go before the registrar of marriages for the district in which they resided, who would enter the marriage contracted before him in a form of words set out in the bill. In respect to the registration of other marriages, the only difference between members of the establishment and dissenters would be this—that the established clergyman might enter the certificate of marriage in his own register, and send a duplicate copy thereof to the superior registrar of the district, to be forwarded by him to London; while, in the case of dissenters, it would be required that the ceremony should be performed in the presence of the registrar, who would certify that the marriage had taken place after a compliance with all the forms.
The bills were brought in, and were read a second time on the 15th of April without any opposition. The registration bill passed through committee without any important alteration; and the house of lords passed it on the 15th of August, with several amendments, to which the commons agreed. In the committee on the marriage bill, it was proposed to continue the publication of bans in rural districts, as a more effective means of giving notice to families interested in preventing a clandestine marriage than a register, which would require to be daily examined. It was also proposed to allow a dissenting chapel to be licensed for marriage purposes on the application of ten householders belonging to the congregation, instead of twenty, because there were many such chapels which did not contain ten householders. Both these propositions were rejected, as was also a motion for the rejection of the clause which allowed persons who objected to marry in church, or in a registered meeting-house, to marry at the office of the registrar. This clause was objected to on the ground that it altered the whole marriage law of England, and separated the contract of marriage from all religious sanction; but a large majority decided in its favour. On the third reading Mr. Goulburn moved the insertion of a clause requiring, in all cases where marriages were not solemnized in a church or chapel, nor according to the rites of the church of England, that the parties should make the following declaration:—“I do solemnly declare that I have conscientious scruples against the solemnization of marriage according to the rites and ceremonies of the church of England.” This motion, however, was rejected by a large majority, and another was carried, which went to reject the eighteenth clause of the bill, which required persons married before the registrar solemnly to declare that their had conscientious scruples against marrying in either church or chapel, or with any religious ceremony. Sir Robert Peel said, that the bill thus altered had assumed an entirely different aspect; while it provided for the relief of the dissenters, it passed a gratuitous and most intolerable insult on the feelings and principles of the members of the church of England. Lord Lincoln, after making similar remarks, moved, as an amendment, that the bill should be read that day six months; but the third reading was carried by one hundred and four against fifty-four. In the lords the second reading encountered no opposition, objections to it being reserved for the committee. In the committee the Bishop of Exeter moved, in order to avoid the desecration of the marriage contract when the ceremony was not performed in church, that the parties should make the following declaration:—“In the presence of Almighty God and these witnesses, I, M., do take thee, N., to be my wedded wife, according to God’s holy ordinance; and I do here, in the presence of God, solemnly promise, before these witnesses, to be to thee a loving and faithful husband during life,” instead of, as it stood in the bill, “I call upon these persons here present to witness that, I, A. B., do take thee, C. D., to be my lawful, wedded wife.” This amendment was carried; but on the bringing up of the report, the bill, on the motion of Lord Melbourne, was restored in this respect to what it had formerly been. The lords, however, struck out that provision of the bill which abolished the proclamation of bans, and they enacted with regard to all marriages of members of the established church, that bans should still be proclaimed. They likewise enacted that the superintendent of each district should send to the clerks of the unions the names of all persons who gave notice of their intention to marry, they being Protestant dissenters, and that their names should be read weekly, for three successive weeks, at the meetings of the guardians of the poor. Finally, in some parts of the bill they introduced an oath in place of a declaration, and required the interference of the superintendent-registrar, instead of the registrar. Some of these amendments were very unfavourably received by the dissenting interest in the commons, and an amendment was carried expunging the enactment that the names of dissenters intending to marry, should be read by the guardians of the poor at their weekly meetings. To all the other amendments of the lords, the commons, on the advice of Lord John Russell, agreed.