MARRIAGE BY PROXY

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 22, 20 October 1917, Page 4

MARRIAGE BY PROXY

THE ANGLICAN VIEW. Tho Federal Prime Minister {Mr. W. SI., Hughes)-stated in Parliament recently.', ill reply- to iin inquiry, that practically tho whole of the churches wore in opposition to tho proposal to legalise marriages of soldiers on active service by proxy. At tho opening session of the Melbourne Church of England Synod subsequently Archbishop Clarke read tho reply of the Archbishop of Sydney in the name of tho Church. It. stated that a marriage, ceremony in which one of tho contracting parties was represented by a proxy was not unknown, though of the rarest and most unusual experience. The Church of England had made no provision for such cases. At the most a proxy, who might be of either sex, could be no more than.a witness in. the marriage ceremony. Itfono of tho causos for which matrimony was ordained was provided for in a marriage by proxy. The. cases of hardship to which reference had been made- had been already generously provided for by the Commonwealth on the financial side, and the argument that the laws should intervene to cancel tho consequences of indiscretion was morally unsound. If Australian soldiers had to contemplate a prolonged absence from homo there was nothing to prevent them from fulfilling their obligations to any woman in Australia until the -time eamo when they could become man and wife in reality and not in name only. The laws of tho various States in the Commonwealth allowed the legitimis.itiou of children born to paronts before their marriage, and as a marriage by proxy could not bo completed until the man and wifo came together thcro was no hardship which could not be provided' for by existing powers.