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 doubly incompetent to retain control of a matter so important, and in its effects so wide-reaching, as marriage. They were not of themselves strong enough to resist the encroachments of civil authority; and, within the State, they could not reckon on the undivided support of the community. The State, and the State alone, had power enough, and a sufficiently undisputed title, to take control of marriage.

Accordingly, in every modern community we find that marriage is no longer a matter of ecelesiastical regulation, but has its place in the civil codes. Europe has in this respect returned to the conditions of the præ-mediæval epoch, when the vast fabric of the Roman Empire remained unshattered. It is important to bear in mind that the civil control of marriage is no novelty of recent birth, but an indispensable return to conditions which obtained before the dominance of the Church had been established. Ecclesiastical control of marriage could not possibly survive the