Men who are by law allowed at twenty-one[26] to be fit for governing the realm may well be supposed capable of choosing and governing a wife."[27] Lord Folkestone condemned with great earnestness the expression in the preamble that the bill was dictated "by the royal concern for the honor and dignity of the crown," as implying a doctrine that an alliance of a subject with a branch of the royal family is dishonorable to the crown--a doctrine which he denounced as "an oblique insult" to the whole people, and which, as such, "the representatives of the people were bound to oppose." And he also objected to the "vindicatory part," as he termed the clause which declared those who might assist, or even be present, at a marriage contracted without the royal permission guilty of felony.[28] The ministry, however, had a decided majority in both Houses, and the bill became and remains the law of the land, though fourteen peers, including one bishop, entered a protest against it on nine different grounds, one of which condemned it as "an extension of the royal prerogative for which the great majority of the judges found no authority;" while another, with something of prophetic sagacity, urged that the bill "was pregnant with civil discord and confusion, and had a natural tendency to produce a disputed title to the crown." It may be doubted whether the circumstances which had induced George III.

to demand such a power as that with which the bill invested him justified its enactment.

He was already the father of a family so numerous as to render it highly improbable that either of his brothers or any of their children would ever come to the throne; while, as a previously existing law barred any prince or princess who might marry a Roman Catholic from the succession, the additional restraint imposed by the new statute practically limited their choice to an inconveniently small number of foreign royal houses, many of which, to say the least, are not superior in importance or purity of blood to many of our own nobles.
Nor can it be said to have been successful in accomplishing his Majesty's object.

It is notorious that two of his sons, and very generally believed that one of his daughters, married subjects; the Prince of Wales having chosen a wife who was not only inferior in rank and social position to Lady Waldegrave or Mrs.Horton, but was moreover a Roman Catholic; and that another of his sons petitioned more than once for permission to marry an English heiress of ancient family.

And our present sovereign may be thought to have pronounced her opinion that the act goes too far, when she gave one of her younger daughters in marriage to a nobleman who, however high in rank, has no royal blood in his veins.