Certainty is desirable in all transactions, and is especially desirable in regard to marriage; and the means of preserving evidence of such contracts is also desirable; but although these objects are desirable, they should not be prized so highly, or pursued so exclusively, as to endanger other advantages not less valuable." We think it is impossible for any one to peruse the foregoing extract from the speech of the Dean of Faculty, without being forcibly impressed by the soundness and strength of his argument. He is not contending against registration; he simply demands that through no pedantic desire for uniformity or precision, shall the general principle of the law of Scotland regarding marriage be virtually repealed. We are indeed surprised to find a lawyer of great professional reputation attributing to the established clergy of the Church of Scotland a desire to arrogate to themselves the functions of the Church of Rome, whilst, in the same breath, he asks the legislature to constitute itself into an ecclesiastical court, and to enact new preliminaries, without the observance of which there shall henceforward be no marriage at all. If the old principle of the law is to be abandoned, if consent is no longer to be held as sufficient for the contraction of a marriage, but if some further ceremony or means of publication are thought to be essential, we have no hesitation in saying that we would infinitely prefer the proscription and annulment of all marriages which are not performed _in facie ecclesiæ_, with the previous proclamation of the banns, to a hybrid measure such as this, which neither declares marriage to be the proper subject of ecclesiastical function, nor permits it to remain a civil contract which may be established and proved by any mode of evidence within the reach of either of the parties. If marriage is not a sacrament, but a civil contract, why take it out of the operation of the common law? Why make it null without the observance of certain civil ceremonies, unless it is intended virtually to confer upon the legislature regulating powers which have been claimed by none of the reformed churches, and which, when arrogated by that of Rome, have been bitterly and universally opposed?