HOW IT CAME ABOUT.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1337, 27 March 1883, Page 2

HOW IT CAME ABOUT.

Talking of stories reminds me of a yarn that ought to interest you colonials which recently appeared in " Truth," It : is about marriage with a deceased wile's sister, and asserts that but for the recklessness and levity of the late Lord Lyndhurst unions of this description would have been legalised in England nearly iifty years ago. The real, if unavowed object of the Lyndhurst Act, which forbids a man to marry his deceased wife's sister, was to make -things pleasant for certain aristocratic personages who had married their sisters-in-law, notably the late Duke of Beaufort, who, having no malo issue by his first wife, had, after her death, married her sister, by whom he had a son. According to the law as it then existed the marriage, though not void, was voidable; and if set aside in tho lifetime of the parents their children would be illegitimate. The Duke's younger brother, Lord Granville Somerset, had a son who in that case would have been heir to the dukedom. Now, Lord Lyndhurst was a very intimate friend of tbe Duke and Duchess, and having been informed of their very natural uneasiness he, with characteristic audacity, undertook to altor the law:to meet their caso. He intended to bring in a Bill to legalise both antecedent and subsequent marriages; but it being represented that perhaps there would be a clamor against thip, which would not fail to prejudice the prospects of the Tory party, he exclaims " Oh! —-it; put it tlie other way, and forbid all future marriages. lam sure I don't care a button which way it is."