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    warn - one that had long been a gtatiding toast among Protestant Dissenters . An Honourable Member of Parliament , and one who now belonged to the Upper House , had said , at a late meeting , that it was a sentiment which the Opposition

    had been in the habit of appropriating to themselves , but that he did not know why such an appropriation should exist ; and he therefore proposed , that the Tories should receive it with as much enthusiasm as the Whigs . Since then the toast he had to propose was no longer peculiarly appropriated to them ; they were at least bound to shew in

    drinking it , that they had lost none of the zeal which they formerly entertained for it , because they found that others were desirous of sharing in the honour . He begged pardon for intruding on the company with these introductory remarks , and would conclude with proposing , "Civil and religious liberty all the world over . "

    The toast being drunk , the Chairman said that he had been requested to announce , that a petition to both Houses , in unison with the sentiment which he had just proposed , had been prepared , and that it was now lying in the room for

    signatures from such gentlemen as might be willing to subscribe it ; and as it might be interesting to all to know its contents , he would request Mr . Edward Taylor to read it to the company . Mr . E . Taylor then read the following petition :

    " To the Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland , in Parliament assembled . ** The humble petition of the undersigned , being persons assembling as individual or representative Members , at the Annual General Meeting of the Unitarian Dissenters of England , " Sheweth ,

    " That your petitioners are , in common with other nonconformists , declared by law to be unworthy of occupying any place or office in the government or corporations , and of trust under his Majesty . "That your petitioners were , on

    account of their religious opinions , subjected , until lately , to laws conceived in the bitterest spirit of persecution , but from which they have been relieved by a more just , humane , and enlightened policy , whose existence and progress they gratefully acknowledge .

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    "That In all the efforts which , as Dissenters or as a particular branch of Dissenters , they have made or may continue to make , for their emancipation , from the penal enactments which more immediately affect themselves , your petitioners value any success which may follow their exertions , in the exact proportion in which it may conduce , to the assertion and establishment of the most exteuded principles of religious liberty ,

    and as it may tend to defeat and render odious that unjust , absurd , and impolitic exercise of power , by which the . community is divided into oppressed and oppressing classes , and religious opinion is made the pretence for civil disabilities , preferences , and exclusions .

    " That your petitioners have zealously concurred individually , and in their immediate circles , in petitions and remonstrances against the enactments by which Protestant Dissenters are with peculiar injustice and inconsistency made to feel the weight of insulting and degrading laws , avowedly directed to other objects , and now preserved only by

    prejudice or misconception ; but they gladly avail themselves of the opportunity afforded by the meeting of some of their brethren from all parts of the kingdom , thus to record , as a body , their solemn declaration , which they are convinced would be echoed J ) y the vast majority of their dissenting brethren of every denomination—that their desire for the

    blessings of liberty is limited by no reserves or qualifications ; that it is clogged by no exceptions ; that they seek to vindicate for conscience , and therefore for true religion , the free and unbiassed exercise of the judgment and

    understanding ; and that every where , and in every shape they deprecate , as alike futile , impolitic , and unjust , the principle of persecution , or the assumption of a right either to reward , to tolerate , or to punish , in matters which they believe to be too high for human controul .

    " Your petitioners , therefore , humbly pray your Honourable House , as the prayer most consonant to their feelings and understandings , most worthy in their judgment to be uttered b y a Christian and a well-wisher to his fellowcreatures , to discard for ever the

    wretched relics of ignorant and misguided zeal , by abolishing all penal laws in matters of religion , and , by placing all the members of the community , in that respect , on an equal footing * , to heal tjie divisions and distractions by which Catholic and Protestant , Churchmen and Dlssen-

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    intelligeYice . —British and Foreign Unitarian Association . 539

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• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1827, page 539, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1798/page/67/