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Untitled Article
pearing t 6 require a diversity of provisions much more proper to be suggested by communications of their own to the Legislature . " In conformity with this suggestion no time was lost in presenting to the Upper House the Bill dropped in the Commons at the close of the preceding Session , with such alterations as were necessary to constitute it a measure of
relief to Dissenters of all classes . The discussion on the second reading was very interesting . Even the Lord Chancellor conceded that some descriptions of Dissenters had just claims to relief , and promised his assistance to the noble mover in maturing some plan of relief in the next Session . Lord Liverpool , deeming the arguments for relief unanswerable , suggested the propriety of a short comprehensive service for those who objected to the
present one , and the Bishop of Worcester judiciously remarked that an abridgment of the service ought not to be deemed an alteration . The Archbishop of Canterbury and many other Lords expressed their intention to confine relief to the Unitarians , and the debate terminated by an equal division of the members present for and against the second reading , but with a majority of six proxies against it . On the 11 th of March , 1824 , Lord Lansdowne introduced the Bill , narrowed to a measure for the relief of
Unitarians , and after an animated debate on the 29 th of that month , distinguished not less by the frank and liberal admissions of the Premier , the Archbishop of Canterbury , and other Bishops and Lords in favour of the Unitarians , than by the Lord Chancellor ' s utter obliviscence of his pledge of assistance given in the preceding session , the second reading of the Bill was carried by a majority of two . In the mean time , the sentiments of the Episcopal
Bench had been consulted as to the details of the Bill , and a variety of clauses suggested in that quarter were prepared and intended for insertion in the Bill when committed , although many of them appeared to be uncalled for by any civil or religious necessity , and were liable to the objection of conferring upon the Dissenting minister an official character , in order to affect him with the civil penalties attaching to the Established clergy . A zeal for the Church transcending that of the Prime Minister and of the bench of Bishops was , however , organizing an opposition even to the further
discussion of the subject : and in defiance of the general admission in 1823 , that the Unitarians were labouring under a grievance , ( the Bill then before the House being objectionable as too general , ) a J esuitical attempt was now made to stigmatize them as religious outlaws , and therefore less entitled to relief than any others . Lord Liverpool ' s indignant reprobation of this quibbling will not be readily forgotten ; but the Bill was thrown out by a large majority upon an undefined principle of opposition , which would have been equally exerted whatever had been the plan proposed , and which even the Presbyter sanctions us in stigmatizing as morally unlawful and essentially
intolerant . ; The subsequent history of the Bill it is not necessary to dwell upon ; it was presented to the House of Commons early in the session of 1825 , and received the most liberal attention from the Secretary for the Home Department . Upon suggestions , principally emanating from , the highest ecclesiastical authorities , clauses were reluctantly added tor the registration of Unitarian places of worship and ministers for . the purposes of the Act , and ultimately , the registration itself was to be removed from the shoulders of the parochial minister , leaving him little except the onus of receiving hia fees . The Bill , thus loaded with precautionary clauses , passed the Commons without any opposition deserving notice ; but in vain had the petitioners sought to conciliate support , or at least neutrality , by adopting ail the aug-
Untitled Article
Review . — Unitarian Marriage Bill . 369
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1827, page 369, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1796/page/57/
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