Legislators, who draw large
revenues from the registration fees, and the Bourgeois dynasty, which
benefits by the notary's profits, affect to overlook the fact that
three-fourths of the poorer class cannot afford fifteen francs for the
marriage-contract. The pleaders, a sufficiently vilified body,
gratuitously defend the cases of the indigent, while the notaries have
not as yet agreed to charge nothing for the marriage-contract of the
poor. As to the revenue collectors, the whole machinery of Government
would have to be dislocated to induce the authorities to relax their
demands. The registrar's office is deaf and dumb.
Then the Church, too, receives a duty on marriages. In France the
Church depends largely on such revenues; even in the House of God it
traffics in chairs and kneeling stools in a way that offends
foreigners; though it cannot have forgotten the anger of the Saviour
who drove the money-changers out of the Temple. If the Church is so
loath to relinquish its dues, it must be supposed that these dues,
known as Vestry dues, are one of its sources of maintenance, and then
the fault of the Church is the fault of the State.
The co-operation of these conditions, at a time when charity is too
greatly concerned with the negroes and the petty offenders discharged
from prison to trouble itself about honest folks in difficulties,
results in the existence of a number of decent couples who have never
been legally married for lack of thirty francs, the lowest figure for
which the Notary, the Registrar, the Mayor and the Church will unite
two citizens of Paris.
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