584 The Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Question : [ October, 
prohibited degrees, as appended to the Prayer-Book, we find 
grades of consanguinity and affinity not shown separately, 
but mixed together as though of equal significance. Nay, 
whilst ten degrees of consanguinity only are specified as 
constituting a bar to marriage, the degrees of affinity ex- 
cluded are twice ten, as if to show that, in the opinion of 
the framers of this table, affinity constitutes a more important 
impediment than consanguinity ! 
The advertisement above quoted continues : — “ In all 
countries where the Marriage-Law has been relaxed in this 
one particular, other relaxations have, after some lapse of 
time, been adopted ; in some countries not only may a woman 
marry her 'deceased] sister’s husband, and a man marry his 
[deceased] brother’s wife and [or] his wife’s niece, or, as in 
the State of New York, his wife’s daughter, but in others a 
man is freely permitted to marry his niece by blood.” 
The writers of the lines just quoted evidently fail to 
recognise the difference, toto ccelo , which exists between con- 
sanguinity and affinity, or they would never speak of 
marriage with a niece by blood being a relaxation likely to 
spring from sanctioning marriage with a deceased wife’s 
sister. If, like ourselves, they would protest against the 
intermarriage of uncle and niece, they should remember 
that this is merely an extension of the “ relaxation ” which 
already exists in England, — the permission for the inter- 
marriage of cousins. The advocates of the Deceased Wife’s 
Sister’s Bill are more or less consciously moving in a direc- 
tion which will give the English Marriage-Law a definite 
principle. Not a few of them, whilst seeking to expunge all 
prohibitions based upon mere affinity, aim at securing for 
the law a definite physiological basis by forbidding the mar- 
riages of cousins. They aim not at laxity, but at a rational 
consistent strictness. 
Of this we may be sure, that if marriage with a deceased 
wife’s sister be wrong, it can be wrong only in virtue of evil 
consequences, just as drunkenness is wrong because it ruins 
the health of the drunkard and of his descendants. Let, 
then, the “ Marriage-Law Defence Union ” bring forward, 
if they can, faCts, vital statistics. Let them show, if they 
can, that the issue of such marriages is more liable to deaf- 
mutism, blindness, idiocy, insanity, consumption, scrofula, 
&c., or that they have a greater tendency to crime than the 
average of their neighbours, countrymen, or contemporaries. 
Let them supply such evidence as this, and no one would be 
more eager for the maintenance of the existing law in this 
respeCt than ourselves. But in this direction, let it be noted, 
