plying like porters for employment, and performed the ceremony of marriage without license or question, in cellars, garrets, or alehouses, to the scandal of religion, and the disgrace of that order which they professed. The ease with which this ecclesiastical sanction was obtained, and the vicious disposition of those wretches open to the practices of fraud and corruption, were productive of polygamy, indigence, conjugal infidelity, prostitution, and every curse that could embitter the married state. A remarkable case of this nature having fallen under the cognizance of the Peers (in 1753) in an appeal from an inferior tribunal, that House ordered the judges to prepare a new Bill for preventing such abuses; and one was accordingly framed, under the auspices of Lord Hardwick, at that time Lord High Chancellor of England.” “It underwent a great number of alterations and amendments, which were not effected without violent contest and altercation; at length, however, it was floated through both houses on the tide of a great majority, and steered into the safe harbour of royal approbation.” For seventy-seven years after the passing of this bill the number of marriages was collected with tolerable accuracy, and published in the Parish Register Abstracts. No other country has so valuable an abstract of tables. Since that time the Registrar-General’s office has made this branch of our national statistics almost accurate. Premising that the documents from which our statements are derived are the Annual Reports of the Registrar-General, of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, in England, issued—not for a short term, but during the last six years—that the observations extend over a still longer period—we may proceed to cull out what appear to be the economical laws regulating matrimony, with any peculiarities characterising their operation amongst us. We would say the _general_ laws—for individual peculiarities will, of course, influence individual matches. One young lady will secure the youth of her choice by force of beauty, or by mere weight of purse; managing mothers will get husbands for their girls, whatever wind may blow, or however trade or politics may influence the less fortunate or less clever world. The great beauty, the great talents, and the great wealth are the exceptions in the lottery of life. In speaking of matrimonial prospects we, like the Registrar-General, mean the prospects of the great family of twenty millions of souls that make up the population of this land we live in.