[662] _Civil Laws of the Hawaiian Islands_ (1897), 700.
The laws regarding the civil ceremony are also seriously defective, if not in all respects equally lax. The magistrate in the exercise of his functions is not usually restricted to a local district sufficiently small to guarantee safe administration. In this regard the colonial and early state legislation was superior. At present in twenty-two states and territories the justice of the peace, or the corresponding local officer, is confined to his own county or district. Elsewhere he may act anywhere within the commonwealth; and this is almost universally the rule with the higher judges and officials who are granted the same authority. In no case, except in Virginia, and in Massachusetts under the act of 1899, is there any provision for the appointment of a person to celebrate wedlock for an area of less extent than the county. Nor are the persons to whom is confided this important social trust possessed of the needful qualifications. They are not selected because of special fitness. In no instance, unless in Virginia, does the law provide for the separate office of marriage celebrant. The duties of such a post are conferred, _ex officio_, in a haphazard fashion, upon a great variety of functionaries, who are either incompetent or else too busy with other matters to discharge them properly. As a rule, the justice of the peace is thus notoriously unfit; and there is something grotesque in giving authority to solemnize marriages to aldermen and police justices, as in New York; to speakers of the house and senate, as in Tennessee; or to the county supervisors, as in Mississippi. In this regard we have much to learn from European states, some of which have created special local officers for this branch of administration. Thus in France[663] all marriages are regularly celebrated before the mayor of the commune; in Germany,[664] before the registrar of the district in which one of the betrothed persons resides, or before some civil officer designated by him in writing; while in England the legal celebrant in case of civil procedure is also the district registrar, whose presence is likewise requisite at the religious ceremony when conducted according to the rites of the nonconformist sects. Massachusetts alone has taken a step in the right direction. The act of 1899, already summarized, not only provides that no justice of the peace--except when the holder of a specified clerical office--shall solemnize marriage unless specially designated therefor by the governor's certificate, but it also limits the number of justices who may be thus licensed. Touching another point in this connection the American lawmaker is at fault. Often there is no direct provision to secure evidence of the contract. Only nineteen of the fifty-three[665] states and territories expressly require the presence at the ceremony of even one witness; while in two or three other cases the statute appears to take their presence for granted.