A FEW FACTS ABOUT MATRIMONY.

Modern science is invading all the old realms of whims and fancies, charms and witchcrafts, prejudices and superstitions. No kind of ignorance seems sacred from attack. The wise men of our generation are evidently bent beyond recall on finding out all things that may by possibility be discoverable, no matter what pains the search may impose. Not content with making lightning run messages, chemistry polish boots, and steam deliver parcels and passengers, the savants are superseding the astrologers of old days, and the gipsies and wise women of modern ones, by finding out and revealing the hitherto hidden laws which rule that charming mystery of mysteries—that lode star of young maidens and gay bachelors—matrimony.

In our fourteenth number we gave a description of the facts made out by the returns of the Registrar-General on the subject of life and death in London and the Country. The office of that official has some other duties, however, beyond that of chronicling the business of mortality and birth in this land of ours. There is a third great heading in his tables, under which there are long lists of serious looking figures, and they tell, not in units, or in fews, like the back page of a newspaper, but in tens of thousands, how many marriages take place in England. And besides the mere number of these interesting events, these figures reveal what are found to be the laws regulating their frequency and other circumstances connected with them, such as how many couples are joined by the costly and unusual mode of special license; how many by ordinary license; how many (and they are the great majority) by the old English fashion of “out-asking” by banns; how many by the new systems introduced for the union of various classes of dissenters, at Registrars’ offices, in registered places of worship; how many between Quakers and between Jews; and, beyond all these particulars, how many young folks, hot of heart and full of courage, take the awful plunge into matrimony whilst “not of full age;” how many men reject the advice of Sir Roger de Coverley, and marry widows; and how many widows, like the wife of Bath, love matrimony so well that when once released from its bonds they tie themselves up in them again. The history 375of this registration of marriages is soon told. This plan of recording the matrimonial engagements of the country commenced in 1745, when the marriage act came into operation. Before that date marriages were performed clandestinely, and by such extraordinary persons that any correct record of their number was impossible. “Fleet marriages” are thus noticed by Smollett:—“There was a band of profligate miscreants, the refuse of the clergy, dead to every sentiment of virtue, abandoned to all sense of decency and decorum, for the most part prisoners for debt or delinquency, and indeed the very outcasts of human society, who hovered about the verge of the Fleet Prison to intercept customers, 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.

About a century ago, the marriages in London were under six thousand a year—they are now four times as many. In all the country, the increase has been most remarkable in the Metropolis and in Manchester. In particular localities the proportion is found to differ. Thus Yorkshire, the seat of the Woollen manufactures and of prosperous agriculturists, appears to be the most marrying district of all England; Lancashire and Cheshire, the Cotton districts, coming next; and London third. Staffordshire and Worcestershire, Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire stand next, followed by other counties more or less blessed by the presence of Hymen, but descending gradually till we reach the matrimonial zero which is found in the agricultural parts of Middlesex. The average annual number of weddings is about one hundred and twenty-three thousand. It would help a winter night’s amusement to decide how many pounds weight of Californian produce must be wanted for the rings? How many garlands of orange blossoms for the hair and bonnets of the brides? The probabilities of marriage, of course, vary; but the rule seems to hold, that about one in seventeen unmarried women, between the ages of fifteen and forty-five, are married in a year throughout the country. Marriages have their seasons. They are least numerous in winter, and most numerous after harvest in the December quarter; the births and deaths, on the contrary, are most numerous in the winter quarter ending in March, and least numerous in the summer quarter ending September. War diminishes marriages by taking great numbers of marriageable men away from their homes; whilst a return of peace increases marriages, when soldiers and sailors with small pensions are discharged. Trade and manufactures have also become more active in England on the cessation of wars, and the employment and wages thus induced, have contributed still more to add to the numbers of those entering the married state. The establishment of new, or the extension of old, employments promotes marriages: the cotton manufactures, the canals of the last century, the railways of the present day, are examples. Indeed, an increase of their incomes, is taken by the generality of the people for the beginning of perennial prosperity, and is followed by a multitude of marriages. There are only about fifteen persons married annually, for the first time, out of a thousand living. There are about five children born in wedlock to every marriage. The births now exceed the deaths in England, 376in about the proportion of three to two—three young subjects present themselves for Queen Victoria, in place of every two that pass away. “The number of marriages in a nation,” says the Registrar, “perhaps fluctuates independently of external causes; but it is a fair deduction from the facts, that the marriage returns in England point to periods of prosperity, little less distinctly than the funds measure the hopes and fears of the money market. If the one is the barometer of credit, the other is the barometer of prosperity—a prosperity partly in possession, and still more in hope.” The year 1845 was a great matrimonial year, the proportion of persons married being more than had been known in England for ninety years before. It was a season of great speculation, activity, and temporary prosperity. Three years before, in 1842, on the contrary, there was a great diminution in the number of weddings. It was a year of difficulty and high prices. Rather more than ten per cent. of the persons married in 1845, had been married more than once. When food is dear, as in 1839, marriages are few; as food becomes cheap, as in 1845, marriages are many. When a cheap food year indicates a year of “marrying and giving in marriage,” another sign is generally found; the price of consols indicates a condition of national affairs much more conducive to matrimonial arrangements, than young ladies would imagine. In what may be called the great English matrimonial period, the three per cents. were about par, instead of being about 88, as they were in the unfavourable season a short time before. When employment is plenty, trade active, and money easy, Doctors Commons becomes brisk, clergymen have long lists of banns to declare, and the Registrar’s column of marriages fills up.

As an instance of the influence of the price of food and want of employment upon the number of marriages, let us take an illustration from the Registrar as to the period from 1792 to 1798. The weather was bad, the funds low, and bread excessively dear, and upon particular districts a change of fashion made the burthen fall with still additional weight. The “Church and King” riots broke out in July, 1791, in Birmingham; and the mob burnt Dr. Priestley’s library, several houses, and some dissenting chapels; in May, 1792, they again rose, but the magistrates this time evinced some vigour, and put a stop to the outrages. A staple manufacture of Birmingham had been subject to one of the mutations of fashion, which caused great distress; for it is recorded, that, on December 21st, 1791, “several respectable buckle-manufacturers from Birmingham, Walsall, and Wolverhampton, waited upon His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, with a petition setting forth the distressed situation of thousands in the different branches of the buckle manufacture, from the fashion now, and for some time back, so prevalent, of wearing shoe-strings instead of buckles. His Royal Highness graciously promised his utmost assistance by his example and influence.” After the recovery of George III. from his first illness, in 1789, an immense number of buckles were manufactured about Birmingham; Walsall among other places invested the greater part of its available wealth in the speculation. The king unfortunately went in the state procession to St. Paul’s without buckles: and Walsall was nearly ruined. Shoe-strings gradually supplied the place of straps. The effect of this freak of fashion and speculation on the marriages of Birmingham was to reduce them most seriously; and it had probably more to do with the licentious Birmingham riots, than the more patent political agitation of the day. The disuse of wigs, buckles, buttons, and leather breeches at the close of the eighteenth century, is supposed to have affected the business of a million of people. In 1765, the peace of London had been disturbed by the periwig-makers, who went in procession to petition the young king, “submitting to His Majesty’s goodness and wisdom, whether his own example was not the only means of rescuing them from their distress, as far as it was occasioned by so many people wearing their own hair.” When change of fashions influence unfavourably the employment of the people, and when, at the same time, influenced or increased by lack of work, their poverty increases, matrimony is at a discount. It is not simply the poorer classes, dependent on weekly wages for their support, who feel the influence of times of business activity, and allow it to impel them to matrimony. When the workman is busy, the trader makes profits, the landlord gets his rents, and all sections of the community feel the beneficial influence of a prosperous season. The number of those persons entirely removed from such social sympathies is very few; indeed, as a great rule, when the workmen are prosperous, all classes above them are thriving too: and when the one section of the great English family is influenced to matrimony in an unusual degree, the others feel the influence of the same law. When the reaction, a period of depression, arrives, the number of marriages declines, but they have never fallen back to their original numbers. A time of prosperity lifts up the total in a remarkable manner, and when the happy time ceases, the number falls—but not equal to the level from which it sprung. It is to a certain degree a permanent increase.

As to the mode in which marriages are performed, it appears that nine out of ten take place according to the rites of the established church. The marriages by banns are about six times as numerous as those by license. Upon these weddings, by aid of Doctors Commons, there is, it seems, a vast sum of money spent; but who are the lucky men receiving it, does not appear very clearly, and the services they render for 377the cash is still more doubtful. There are about eighteen thousand licenses granted by Doctors Commons and by country surrogates every year. The usual cost of the license at Doctors Commons is 2l. 12s. 6d. There is 10s. 6d. additional for minors; and in the country, surrogates, it is said, obtain higher fees. At only 2l. 12s. 6d., the tax on eighteen thousand licenses is 47,250l. a year. The stamps on each license are 12s. 6d. Deducting this sum, the licenses to marry yield at least 36,000l. a year. The expense of granting licenses in a manner the most useful and convenient to the public would not be considerable; and it is not easy to see why the surplus revenue derivable from the tax, should not go into the public treasury, when a portion of the expenses of the registration of births, deaths, and marriages, is paid out of the Consolidated Fund. The aggregate amount of charges for the General Register Office, at which all the returns of the country are examined, indexed, and analysed, and the Act is administered, was 13,794l. in 1846; and the six hundred and twenty-one superintendent registrars received 9097l. for examining certified copies. After discharging the expenses of the civil registration, defrayed by the Consolidated Fund, and the cost of the decennial census, a large surplus would be left, out of 47,250l. for licenses, to go to the public revenue of the country. And this would not interfere in the slightest degree with the marriage fees; which would continue to be paid to the officiating clergy. In the places of worship registered by Dissenters, there were not quite ten thousand marriages in one year; nearly four thousand in the same year took place in the Superintendant Registrar’s offices; one hundred and eighty-four according to the rites of the Jews; and seventy-four marriages between Quakers. The only fortuneteller who can henceforth be believed, is the one who answers the question, “When will the wedding take place?” by saying, “When trade flourishes, and when bread is cheap.”