Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/449

 Ch. 15.

HE econd private relation of perons is that of marriage, which includes the reciprocal rights and duties of huband and wife; or, as mot of our elder law books call them, of baron and feme. In the conideration of which I hall in the firt place enquire, how marriages may be contracted or made; hall next point out the manner in which they may be diolved; and hall, latly, take a view of the legal effects and conequence of marriage.

I. law coniders marriage in no other light than as a civil contract. The holines of the matrimonial tate is left entirely to the eccleiatical law: the temporal courts not having juridiction to conider unlawful marriage as a in, but merely as a civil inconvenience. The punihment therefore, or annulling, of incetuous or other uncriptural marriages, is the province of the piritual courts; which act pro alute animae. And, taking it in this civil light, the law treats it as it does all other contracts; allowing it to be good and valid in all caes, where the parties at the time of making it were, in the firt place, willing to contract; econdly, able to contract; and, latly, actually did contract, in the proper forms and olemnities required by law. Rh