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ada at the present time; marriage with a deceased wife's sister was not forbidden by the civil law, though contrary to the ecclesiastical law, subjecting the parties to prosecutions before Ecclesiastical Courts, whose decisions had to be enforced by civil authority—Courts which do not exist in Canada. The origin of the Imperial Act of 1835 (not in force in Canada) is as follows: Two sisters, nieces of the Duke of Wellington, had married Henry Somerset, seventh Duke of Beaufort. The first marriage took place on the 25th July, 1814; the second marriage of the Duke of Beaufort with his deceased wife's sister took place on the 29th June, 1822. The issue of the second marriage was Henry Charles Fitzroy Somerset, the present Duke of Beaufort, late Her Majesty's Master of the Horse. In 1835 Lord Lyndhurst introduced a Bill into the House of Lords to legitimate, ecclesiastically as well as civilly, the present Duke of Beaufort; though to do so the provisions of the Bill were of course general. The section of the Lords spiritual and temporal, having most sympathy with Rome, finding that they could not successfully resist the powerful influences brought to bear in favour of Lord Lyndhurst's Bill, prepared an amendment, as a ryder to it, declaring illegal all future marriages of that kind. Lord Lyndhurst was strongly opposed to the amendment or ryder; but finding that the rejection of it would endanger the passing of his Bill, admitted it; and it is this invidious and obnoxious provision of the Bill which has caused the agitation in England for its repeal from 1835 to the present time. Some time since an influential English paper. after stating the above facts, remarked:—
"His grace the Duke of Beaufort attended Her Her Majesty in the Royal carriage on the opening of Parliament; he sits in the House of Peers with an unblemished title; takes precedence of the Bishop of London by forty-and-one degrees; is patron of twenty-six livings, and has, indeed, every privilege that an Englishman can enjoy; while the issue of similar marriages, differing only in the time
