7th June.
We endeavoured to show that it would be quite feasible for a missionary and a—what is the feminine?—missionarine, residing in the interior at a spot remote from Consuls and Clerks in Holy Orders, to get themselves married by means of the Chinese ceremonial. There might at first sight seem to be a difficulty in the way of obtaining the consent of the persons respectively authorised to give away the man and the woman. Bat we understand that in cases where native female children are received into the boarding schools of foreign missionary ladies, a stipulation is made that the ladies, as aforesaid, shall on the children coming to full age, have the right to dispose of them in marriage; shall, in short, take the place of their grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts or elder brothers, as the chw hun or persons entitled to control their marriage and what is of far more consequence in Chinese eyes (to judge from the Penal Code)—to pocket the wedding gifts. It would obviously be easy when a candidate for the C.I.M. presents himself at the London office to require from hin, in addition to his certificate of vaccination, a document signed by his father (or grandfather, or elder brother, as the case may be) making over to Mr. "Taylor, his heirs executors and assigns, all right part and property in the person of the said candidate, in so far as the disposal of his hand was concerned. The document should be drawn up by preference in Chinese, and when in the course of two years or so the candidate had become a passed student, so to speak, and qualified for matrimony, Mr. Taylor might issue a document—also in Chinese—authorising his marriage to Mou Kuniang, A similar procedure would be followed in the case of female candidates.
The go-between should of course be invariably a Chinaman or Chinawoman, never a foreigner; for the Code insists that this indispensable person must be ming, clear' or obvions'—thereby plainly putting Europeans out of Court. Few further difficulties would present themselves, particularly as by this time both parties will have become fairly accustomed to Chinese methods. The lady's price might not always be easy to settle, but—especially if there were other aspirants for her hand—this could be arrived at by auction. Or she might be appraised by a Committee of Elders.
The real question still remains, namely whether after a most careful conformity to all Chinese essentials British Courts of Law would consent to recognise the pair as duly wedded. The two most recent cases of marriage by lex loci that have any bearing on this int are those known familiarly as the hel and the Brinkley. Thegeneral deductions from these two cases are, first, that marriage to be marriage must be "the union for life of one man with one woman to the exclusion of others," and secondly, that where all parties are desirous that the marriage should be admitted, the Court will do its utmost to admit it. This was remarkably illustrated by the Brinkley case, a case of the utmost importance in our present. enquiry. It had been held in the previous case that Teepoo, niece of the Barolong chief had not been duly martied to Bethel, (1) because Barolong custom, though permitting only one head wife, allowed at the same time of any number of inferior wives; (2) because though Bethel could have married Teepoo in a mission chapel he refused to do so; (3) because he never in his letters home spoke of her as his wife or of himself as being married. In the Japanese case, the fact that Japanese customs so far resemble those of Bechuanaland in that a Japanese can have as many ladies in his harem as he pleases, and. legal heirs by them, was kept in the background; nor was stress laid on the fact that the applicant—the British subject—could easily, had he wished, have been firmly married at the Legation at Tokio or the Consulate at Yokohama, but neglected todo so. What made the Probate Court practically reverse its previous ruling was the important diffi erence that, in this later case, it was the man himself who made application to have his local marriage declared binding. Furthermore, he was able to produce a certified copy in Japanese and sealed by the Japanese authorities, of the registration of his marriage by 2 Japanese official. The Court bowed low to this evidence of the progressiveness of Japan, and with a few compliments to the civilisation of the Mikado's Empire gave its decision in favour of the applica ant—a decision which, however much might be questioned from the points of view of law and precedent, was undoubtedly in accordance with the general fitness of things.
It may be that in its glorious uncertainty the Law would reverse this decision should a similar case come before it, with a Chinese ceremony in place of the Japanese. The one (and as it seems to us, the only) reason why it should so reverse it is the fact that Chinese marriages between Chinese subjects are not registered in any official bureau. In all other respects the couditions appear precisely similar, Ifa Chinaman can divorce his wife for any of the{Seven Causes—of which talkativeness is one—so can a Japanese; nay the ordinary (we do not say the high class) Japanese avails himself of the privilege to a far greater extent than the ordinary Chinaman. Public opinion in China is against divorce; the Penal Code endeavours in every way to strengthen and exalt the position of the chi or wife as compared with the chieh or mistress (while, it is true, safeguarding the latter), One argument against British recognition of the Chinese form generally understood by foreigners, that might possibly be found in the fact, not the Penal Code allows a separation when both parties desire it. Yet British law recognises a marriage. contracted in those free and easy American States where, as they say, through trains stop forty minutes for refreshment and divorce." Moreover, as we may have occasion to show, this separation is not held by Chinese jurists to amount necessarily to a dissolution of the marriage. The weight of the contention against the validity of our proposed Chinese ceremonial for Inland Mission marriages would lie with that absence of registra~ tion. The native official whom we have consulted on these matters (a 'I'aotui, but we will not say which Taotai) explained that if a District Magistrate had to register every marriage in his district he would be busy night and day registering, and have no time to collect land-tax, try banditti, or pay calls. Yet (we did not like, for obvious reasons, to tell him) provision has actually been made in one of the di or later Jaws of his Penal Code for registration of at any rate one class of marriage. Staunton did not translate the 7, and so we must provide our own version. "In the case of intermarriage between the savages of Hunan who have not yet adopted the queue and the ordinary population, where the customs of the latter are followed in respect. to bridal gifts and nuptials, go-betweens must be called upon to draw up the marriage deed and a report must be made to the local authorities for entry in the archives." Now if our Inland Missionaries don't mind—in so good a cause—posing for the nonce as "savages of Hunan," it would seem that they have the means of overcoming the last possible scruple of a very indulgent Probate Court, and could produce in their turn hieroglyphic marriage lines adorned with official chops.' the discovery is most opportune. It is almost providential,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.