The Cincinnati Daily Star

AGE FOR LEGAL MARRIAGES.

There is considerable variation, in the different European States, of the age at which a legal marriage can be contracted. In Austria, the age of discretion for both sexes is fourteen. In Hungary, each religious sect makes its own regulations marriages being regarded as an entirely ecclesiastical affair. Russians can contract marriages at the age of eighteen in the case of males, and sixteen in that of females. The Italian law fixes the age at eighteen and fifteen years respectively. In Turkey there is no general law. The French and Belgian codes allow marriages of young men at eighteen and girls at fifteen, but powers of dispensation in special cases are reserved. In Greece, Spain and Portugal, parties of fourteen and twelve can contract a binding marriage, but in the latter country the consent of the parents is necessary if the parties are under twenty-one. According to the amended paragraph of the new German civil marriage bill, the state of wedlock cannot be entered upon under twenty and sixteen respectively, though the existing laws of Prussia and Saxony permitted marriages at earlier periods. There is much dissimilarity in the Swiss laws, every canton having a local regulation of its own. In some of them the consent of the parents is necessary up to the age of twenty-five. The influence of climate upon the temperament and constitution is observable in the earlier age at which marriage is allowed in the Southern nations, where maturity is reached at a much earlier period than among the Northern people.