Worse regulations, we are bound to say, never were invented. Why select the church door? Why post up the names amidst lists of candidates for registration, notices of roups, and advertisements of the sale of cattle? Is not the present mode of announcing the names _within_ the church more decent than the other, and likely to attract greater notice? But the whole thing is a juggle. The bill gives ample facility for evasion, should that be contemplated; for it is easy to divine that, with the whole proof in his own hand, and no check whatever placed upon him, no registrar would be hard-hearted enough to refuse dispensing with the preliminaries in any case where the amorous couple were ready and willing to remunerate him for the risk of his complaisance. So much for marriage by registration, which, instead of throwing any obstacle in the way of ill-advised or hasty unions, would, in effect, have a direct tendency to increase them. But the case is absolutely worse when we approach the other form of marriage, which was to supersede that solemnity which is at present in every case preceded by the formal proclamation of banns. The provisions of the bill were as follows:-- No clergymen could solemnise a marriage, unless, 1st. Both or one parties should have been resident for fourteen days within the parish in which the marriage was to take place; _or_, 2d. In some other parish in Scotland: the certificate in both cases to be granted by the Registrar; _or_, 3d. Unless both or one of the parties had been for a fortnight a member or members of the congregation resorting to the church or chapel in which the clergyman solemnising the marriage usually officiates; _or_, 4th. Unless they had similarly attended _some other place of worship_; the same to be certified by the minister of such congregation; _or_, 5th. Unless they could produce the registrar's certificate of a week's notice; _or_ 6th. Unless they had been regularly proclaimed by banns.