The integrity and durability of the Chinese empire over two millennia rested on the strength of its fiscal capacity. From antiquity, sovereignty was linked to the ruler’s duty to provide for the economic as well as moral welfare of his subjects. Rulers of the Bronze Age manifested and reproduced their authority through distribution of wealth among their kinsmen and noble allies. The autocratic monarchs who rose to dominance after 500 bce amassed wealth to buttress their military prowess, but they also strove to protect the independence and livelihood of the smallholder family farmers who undergirded their economic prosperity. The institutional apparatus of the fiscal state – centralized planning of taxation and expenditure to satisfy the state’s commitments to good governance – became a defining feature of the first empires, beginning with the Qin dynasty (221–206 bce). Yet at the same time the rise of a market economy also shaped the relationship between the state and its subjects. Even the command economy instituted by the Qin Empire made accommodations to markets, merchants, and money.

The conception and design of the Marriage Act 1836 was shaped by the various unsuccessful proposals for reform that were advanced between 1819 and 1835. Protestant Dissenters were deeply divided on the question of what shape reforms should take. Some proposals for reform applied only to specific religious groups, while others were general in scope. Some focused on regulating marriages in places of worship, while others proposed a new secular alternative. The challenge for lawmakers was to establish a process that was sufficiently rigorous to assuage any concerns about a new law being used as a cloak for clandestinity and sufficiently independent of the existing Anglican structures to satisfy Dissenters. The solution was found in the machinery of the New Poor Law, which provided the basis for a new system of civil registration. Yet the 1836 Act’s reliance on this machinery was to pose problems, the most pressing being that it was not yet in place in most parts of the country. The implementation of the New Poor Law had to be speeded up, generating considerable opposition, and various makeshift provisions had to be put in place for the parishes that remained outside its ambit.