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    that the Bill should be committed , the opposition was revived , and it was understood that most active measures had been taken during the interval to ensure its success . The question was again long and ably discussed , but on a division , the Billvvas once more lost by a majority of 39—the numbers being 105 to 66 .

    Your Committee , however , see no ground of discouragement in any thing which has taken place . On the contrary , the general character and mode of argument , both of the opposers and supporters of the measure , give every reason to believe that time and perseverance alone are wanted to ensure final success ; and thev can only recommend to their successors to embrace

    every opportunity for urging their claims in the most efficient manner . — Meantime they have directed their attention to keeping up the public interest as muclr as possible , and , maintaining the position which their case now occupies in the estimation of all parties ; they have taken care to preserve and publish full , and they believe accurate , reports of the debates ^ and one of their last acts has been to appoint a sub-committee to prepare a pamphlet , which they recommend should be printed , and circulated as widely as possible ,

    under the direction of this Society , explaining the nature of the grievance complained of , and of the remedy proposed , urging the arguments by which it is supported , and replying to those which have been put forth ' by its opponents . With the same view they have prepared , and will submit to this meeting ' , some resolutions , briefly stating the leading features of the case * which , it appears to them , might usefully be published in several of the principal newspapers and periodical publications .

    On the whole , they trust that the Society will consider the past year to have been one in which effectual progress has been made . They look with confidence to the result of continued exertious , directed to the same end ; and they are rather inclined to believe that the Bill , if carried earlier , might have been clogged with many difficulties and regulations , which a more mature and candid consideration of the subject will shew , are not only inconvenient , but unnecessary , oh any grounds of civil expediencv .

    The Committee cannot pass over their notice of these discussions without adverting to the attempt again made to raise doubts as to the legal effect of the repeal of the Act of William and Mary , and of the clause in the Toleration Act which excepted deniers of the doctrine of the Trinity from its benefits . They need not observe how unfairly such doubts are set afloat ( and , a $ it would appear , carefully left undecided , and therefore put in the most mischievous form ) by a person who , if he was not the real cause of their existence by preventing the more extended measure of relief originally contemplated , might , at least , have been more honourably employed in setting such a

    question , in one way or another , attest . But the Committee see , in the expression of these doubts , only an additional reason for urging on a Bill which would , indirectly at any rate , add to the security of Unitarians , by giving them a specific recognition and establishment , totally inconsistent with the idea of any illegality or offence in the eye of the Legislature ; and , in the meantime , they have had the gratification of hearing from the mouth of the

    Prime Minister a candid and honourable reprobation of the course pursued by his colleague , and an avowal , not only of the plain intention of the Legislature to grant to the Unitarians an equal measure of protection with that afforded to other Dissenters , but of his conviction that they were entitled , as a matter of right and justice , to have all doubts on the subject removed , if they cauld be really shewn to exist .

    Your Committee must also congratulate the Society on the encouragement which arises from the general tenor and tone of the discussion , even on the part of those who took the most active part in the opposition . There were no imputations upon character , no attributing of improper motives , no question as to the sincerity of the parties in the religious scruples they professed , no denial even of their name as a sect , which it would have beeu expected some of the theologians at any rate would have disputed - , and the Unitarians ,

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• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1824, page 5, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1715/page/31/