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94*] ANNUAL REGISTER   For the YEAR 1772. [*95
there being no legal record of any one of them. 
That as to the opinion of the judges, in 1717; it was not only extrajudicially obtained, but their deliberations were carried on with fo much fecrecy, and the whole conducted in such a manner, as leaves room for the most unfavourable suspicious; but that however they carried this right no further than the children, and the late opinion only a degree farther' and that the laft declare expressly that they find no authority for extending it farther.

Much stress was laid upon the dangerous consequences of this bill with respect to posterity. It was supposed that there were 30,000 persons in the kingdom at present, who had some of the blood reoyal in their veins,, some of whom were known to be in the lowest conditions of life; that it may therefore be naturally expected, that, in a very few ages, every family of property in the kingdom will, in consequences of intermarriges, become in a state of warship to the crow; more especially, as the boasted opinion of the year 1917,on which of much stress waid at present, supposes that the care and approbation of the marriage includes the education and custody of the person; and this matter was the more alarming, this principle of the opinion had been frequently supported in the course of there debates. It was therefore frequently urged with great earnestness in both houses that, to prevent this obnoxious effect, the strong prerogative, now claimed and given to the crown, should be limited to the reign of his present majestly; or, if it was determined to make it perpetual with respect to the royal family, to confine it within its natural bounds, and not to suffer it to extend beyond those who flood within a certain degree of the throne. Several mothions were accordingly made, which tended only to remedy this particular part of the bill; but which met with the fame success as all the others. 

The subsequent divisions upon this bill were less numerous, and the majority greater. The debates were not however intermitted;  every sentence, and almost every particle it contained, because the subject of discussion. 
Mar. 24. 

Upon the last reading, after the considerable debate, in which many of those arguments that were already exhausted were again repeated, the numbers, upon the final division, were 115 against, and 165 for passing the bill. Some trailing alterations it met with, which neither changed its nature not substance, made it necessary to send it back to the lords, where they were agreed to without any difficulty. 

Among the great objections made to the general principles of this bill, by those who were the most violent opposers of it, were the following that it militated with every law, human and divine, relative to the matrimony; that it was subversive of those natural rights inherent in making, which are independent of the laws, and superior to all legislatures: -- that, being equally contrary to the canon, the civil, and the common law, and repugnant to the natural rights of mankind, it is in itself null and invalid, and thus having no legality to support it, can be submitted to only as the effect of power; that, whenever that power slackens, the injured will naturally appeal to justice. 

Transcription Notes:
Please note the difference between the form of f and s in this typeface. The long S lacks the crossbar. The modern s shape is used at the end of a word.