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 authority to interfere actively to dissolve any marriage validly contracted, but only to declare what the law was as to the alleged marriage,—the marriage de facto, as it was called,—to declare that there never was any marriage; to declare it 'fuisse et esse invalidum ab initio.' That such a result must have followed a proceeding in the Ecclesiastical Court, calling in question the second marriage of Thurstanus, is a matter which can admit of no doubt. But if so, how can the true character of the marriage be altered by the accident of whether any third person did or did not think it worth while to call it in question? It is not the proceeding in the Ecclesiastical Court which made such a marriage void; the Court in this country could not affect by its decree a valid marriage; its jurisdiction was only of a declaratory nature, that is, to declare the legal invalidity of an act already complete, but which was not what it purported to be—a marriage.

"Where it has been the policy of the law of any country to prohibit marriage under any circumstances, the prohibition attaches to the subjects of that country wherever they go. It was on this principle that the case of the Sussex Peerage was decided. The marriage there was clearly valid according to the laws of the country where it was contracted; but it was held in this House that the Royal Marriage Act having prescribed certain steps by which alone the descendants of King George II. could contract marriage, the laws of this country would prevail wherever the marriage was contracted."

"My opinion is, that by the law of England the marriage of a widower with his deceased wife's sister was always as illegal and invalid as a marriage with a sister,