THURSDAY, MAY 31, 1900. PRESENT-DAY GRETNA GREENS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 22, 31 May 1900, Page 17

THURSDAY, MAY 31, 1900. PRESENT-DAY GRETNA GREENS.

to spend each a life-time in regretting their hasty and illassorted union. European and American 'high life' has furnished us with many warning instances of the truth of the story which Crabbe declares he ' based on facts,' and which has been crystallised in the well-known proverb : ' Marry in haste, and repent at leisure.' It will be sufficient to refer here to two conspicuous cases in point that set heads shaking and tongues wagging in their time. The one was that of the Princess I«ai3F.lt \, grand -nnn*". of the present boy-king of Spain. She eloped with the Polish Count Gurowski one dark night from Enghien (jiear Paris), after a perilous and romantic scramble down the usual ropeladder. The couple escaped to England, were married there, quarrelled violently, and soon separated. The case of the mother of the present Queen of Italy was much more tragic. She contracted a hasty and secret marriage with an artillery officer. The union turned out for her ■ a lease of woe,' and the unhappy lady committed suicide. Disraeli makes one of the characters in The Youny Duke say that • it destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.' Be this as it may, we may easily conclude that hastily-wedded couples run special risks of having their lives — in the words of Spicca in Sant 'Ilan'o — a 'lingering torture.' * • • At Gretna Green in the old runaway days nothing was required by law beyond a mutual declaration of marriage to be exchanged in the presence of witnesses. The ceremony was brief enough to meet the exigencies of even the most closely pursued pair of callow lovers of the coaching days. But the Act of 1856 curtailed the resort of hurried English couples to border Scottish villages by requiring 21 days' residence of one of the parties in the Land o' Cakes previous to the marriage. In the United States, however, the laxity of the marriage laws has rivalled Gretna Green in the encouragement it gives to impulsiveand ill-considered unions. The editor of the Ladies 1 Nome Journal, in a recent article on the subject, says :—: — As it is now anybody can marry. Even the minister has become an unnecessary factor, and so has the civil magistrate. In some of our States all that is necessary is the mere introduction of a woman by a man as his wife, in the presence of a third party, to create a binding and legal marriage Or simpler still, a man and a woman passing under the same name for a brief period of time have been legally adjudged man and wife. It is an open-door policy of the gravest kind that we are countenancing here in America, and the results are of a most demoralising character. We are putting a premium on marriages of impulse, elopements, and foolish wedlocks of all sorts. The same writer points out that, as a result of the laxity of the marriage laws, over 10,000 runaway unions were recorded in the United States statistics for i 899, while the concealed cases would probably double that number, and that ' there were over 1)00 cases of secret marriages, where, for months, the parents and friends of neither party knew of the nuptials.' • • • In Australia and Great Britain a like evil result ih achieved by matrimonial agencies. Many of our readers will recall the extent to which the notorious Kinsman, of Melbourne, brought about the marriage of minors, chance acquaintances, etc., and the scandalous proportion of such hastily wedded couples who subsequently sought relief from the charing bond in the divorce courts of the colony. In what is described by the Melbourne An/us of June f>, 1804, as ' a remarkable sermon,' the Rev. Dr. Stacev Chapman' (incumbent of St. Paul's Church of England, Kyneton) referred to the matrimonial agency business as an ' intolerable public disgrace and scandal,' 'a lucrative system for the promotion of degradation among women and of profligacy among men,' and added that it was ' contrary to the wellbeing of the community, and should be suppressed.' Referring to a suggestive advertisement purporting to be from four ' gentlemen ' with good incomes * seeking the acquaintance of four domesticated young ladies, with a view to matrimony,' the same preacher continued :—: — He would hardly be believed when he told them that this advertisement brought f>2 answers. Forty of these from girls and women writing from the fashionable suburbs of Toorak, Hawthorn, Mataern, St. Kilda, etc., and of fair education were at once dismissed from consideration. The correspondence opened with the rest disclosed, amongst other things, one that might well ' give us pause,' namely, that not one of t htm teas a Roman Catholic,

This is just what we might expect. For the least instructed Catholic girl has an idea of the sanctity and indissolubility of the marriage bond such as was never taught to the ' revolted daughters ' of the various Protestant denominations who, according to Dr. Chapman, sought a y share in the hearts and incomes of the four enterprising Melbourne advertisers. * • • Mr. Cnr T m,AN. the New South Wales Government statist, has shown that the scandal of the ' marriage shop ' is equally rampant iv Sydney — to such an extent, in fact, that among a large class ' the tendency is away from the Church and towards the agency.' Commenting on his figures, the Sydney Daily Telegraph says: — Amusing stories are told of how ministers in good standing with their deuominations have endeavored to keep their arrangements with matrimonial agencies secret. In some cases they have refused to perform th« ceremony at the agency, but have volunteered to marry ' as many as you like ' on the agency's terras if sent along to the minister's own house. It is not difficult for the Churches to find out who are the officiating ministers at agencies. Several have been warned off, and, on representation being made to the authorities, persons enjoying the privilege of a marriage license have been struck off the roll. All the leading Protestant Churches appear to have acted in concert in the matter. The Roman Catholic authorities .vein to hare had no nerd to take action. Of course they ' had no need to take action.' The Catholic Church teaches that marriage is a Sacrament, a divine ordinance of the New Law, and not a purely natural or civil contract, or a mere matter of convenience, and her discipline effectually prevents her clergy being turned into the servants and tools of brazen-faced commercial adventurers of the matrimonial agency type. 'Against impulsive, hasty, and secret marriages,' says Father Lambert in the New York Freeman, ' the Catholic Church has the law requiring the publication of banns ; the law requiring the parties to be married by their own parish priest or by other priest having the pastor's permission and authority ; the law requiring the consent of parents or guardians ; the law forbidding and declaring null and void the marriage, of divorced persons under any circumstances whatever.' There was, after all, a ray of saving wisdom in the humorous caution displayed by a youth who inserted the following advertisement a few months ago in a Paris paper : 'A young man, of agreeable presence, and desirous of getting married, would like to make the acquaintance of an aged and experienced gentleman, who could dissuade him from taking the fatal step.' A modicum of such salutary hesitation would save many foolish youths and maidens from lightly entering upon a bond of the sanctity and true import of which they have little or no idea. And we can cordially agree with Dr. Stackt Chapman that matrimonial advertisements should be made illegal ; that % marriage shops ' should, in the interests of morality, be suppressed ; and that divorce i 3 k inimical to society and contrary to divine law.' A return to a h'rm and practical belief in the Catholic doctrine as to the sacramental character of matrimony is, however, the only real remedy for the present evils of the marriage laws and of the marriage relation.