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have been annulled at any time by a suit instituted while both parties were living, but not afterwards. During this state of things, many persons related by affinity within the doubtful degrees, married in the full confidence that not one, as public opinion stood, would undertake the invidious task of disuniting them. The prohibition was thus virtually relaxed, and these voidable marriages acted as a kind of safety valve. Though they were frequent and notorious, the legislature did not interpose in 1835 with the view of stopping them. On the contrary, it being thought hard to keep whole families during perhaps half a century in doubt whether the tie was to be dissolved and the children bastardized, it was simply proposed to mitigate the hardship, by limiting the period within which the legitimacy of the children might be impugned. This was to be fixed at two years from the celebration in regard to future marriages, and six months in regard to marriages already solemnized. It was no part of Lord Lyndhurst's original measure to enact that all future marriages of the kind should be absolutely void, and an enactment to this effect was only suffered to pass unopposed in the House of Commons, upon an express understanding that the subject was to be fully reconsidered in all its bearings at an early period.
