[Footnote 775: The justice shall not act in any parish where a minister resides and has cure, "without permission first had and obtained from such Minister under penalty of five pounds proclamation money, to the use of the minister."--IREDELL-MARTIN, _Public Acts_, I, 45; for the fee see _ibid._, 46.] [Footnote 776: _Ibid._, 46; SWAN'S _Revisal_ (ed. 1752), 127-30; _cf._ WEEKS, _op. cit._, 244, 245.] [Footnote 777: IREDELL-MARTIN, _op. cit._, I, 45.] Regarding the scope and intent of the law of 1741, Weeks remarks that "in this, as in the former cases, the Assembly did not undertake to give" the right of celebrating marriages to the established clergy, "but simply recognized it as resting on prescription. But they might have granted this right to Dissenters as they proposed doing in the act of 1770. The Quakers seem to have been allowed to marry after their own fashion from the first," and why not grant the same privilege "to Presbyterians and Baptists"? Instead of taking such a just and tolerant course, "their preachers were debarred from performing the ceremony even among their own flocks. They were thus put to grave inconvenience, and the law of 1766 recites that the Presbyterians refused to consider themselves as bound by its provisions." Surely there was good reason to take this position, considering the previous law and custom of the colony. The Episcopalian government party seems to have been conscious of this fact, as appears from the discussion of the clergy bill of 1762. "The governor and council," continues Weeks, "tried to force on the lower house a clause by which it was enacted that 'no Dissenting minister of any denomination whatever shall presume on any pretence to Marry any person, under the penalty of forfeiting £50.' The law does not seem to have been successful, but it is a clear statement of the tendency of the act of 1741, and shows the position of a certain element in the province."[778] [Footnote 778: WEEKS, _op. cit._, 245; _cf._ _N. C. Col. Rec._, VI, 881, 952, 954.]