Note 932 — Chapter XIV · OPTIONAL CIVIL OR ECCLESIASTICAL MARRIAGE IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES
Reading edition
On Sept. 29, 1755, in an address to the governor, the assembly declares that "they [the assembly] are not, however, chargeable with exacting Money from the people which by law they had no right to exact, as we apprehend the Governor does in the Fees for Marriage Licenses, by which many thousand Pounds have been drawn from the Inhabitants of this Province. If this be not dispensing with Law 'tis making Law, and we presume the Governor alone has no more right to do the one than the Assembly alone the other."—Pa. Col. Rec., VI, 633, 634. Cf. ibid., II, 455; IV, 175; and Pa. Archives (1728), I, 235, 236, where the bishop of London says that "some occasional perquisites that the Clergy us'd to enjoy, are now cut off" in the matter of licenses.