4th.--The Marriage Bill was read for the last time. Charles Townshend again opposed it with as much argument as before with wit. Mr. Fox, with still more wit, ridiculed it for an hour and a half. Notwithstanding the Chancellor’s obstinacy in maintaining it, and the care he had bestowed upon it, it was still so incorrect and so rigorous, that its very body-guards had been forced to make or to submit to many amendments: these were inserted in Mr. Fox’s copy in red ink: the Solicitor-General, who sat near him as he was speaking, said, “How bloody it looks!” Fox took this up with spirit, and said, “Yes, _but you cannot say I did it; look what a rent the learned Casca made_, (this alluded to the Attorney,) _through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed_!” (Mr. Pelham)--however, he finished with earnest declarations of not having designed to abuse the Chancellor, and with affirming that it was scandalous to pass the Bill--but it was passed by 125 votes to 56. 6th.--The Bill being returned to the Lords, the amendments were read. The Duke of Bedford, who began to attack the whole Bill, was obstructed by the Chancellor, who would have confined him to the mere amendments; but the Duke, appealing to the House whether he might not argue against the face of the whole Bill as it now stood, the Chancellor seemed to acquiesce; but the Duke, not finding any disposition to support him, soon dropped the cause; objecting chiefly to the last clause on not extending the act to Foreign Countries. The Chancellor replied, that he was sorry the clause was there; but the Bill was too good to be lost, and might have much good engrafted on it hereafter.[230] Lord Sandys declared that he would agree to all the amendments made by the House of Commons, against any that should be offered by any body else. An absurd declaration, founded on the design of proroguing the Parliament on the morrow, which would leave no time for returning the Bill to the Commons; and a plain indication of the indigested manner in which a law of such importance was hurried on. On its being urged that several women could not write, the Bishop of Oxford, with a sophistry that would have distinguished him in _any_ church, replied that the Clergyman might write to himself, and give it to the woman, and she to him again, for that the Bill did not say, that when she gave her consent in writing, it must be of her own writing! Lord Bath said, the opposition had proceeded from faction and party. The Duke of Bedford replied, that his opposition had arisen from conscience, that he had not troubled himself about what the House of Commons did; yet he had perceived that the Bill had been crammed down both Houses.