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INTELLIGENCE.
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Untitled Article
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Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Intelligence.
INTELLIGENCE .
Untitled Article
Unitarian Marriage BUI . We resume our account of the proceedings on this Bill . By some means , alterations have been made in the preamble aud in the addition of the last clause for which we are unable to account . Nothing was said on the subject in the debate . The public will readily guess whence they come , and will only
learn still more to appreciate the cunning which , where it cannot prevent , strives to mar every thing that does not square with its own bigotry . Of course such a clause as the last is not one which will be tamely submitted to , aud several other alterations ( made either in ignorance or iu a desire to render the measure as troublesome as well could be ) will have to be revised in another session .
HOUSE OF LORDS , Thursday , June 28 th . The House having , on the motion of the Marquis of Lansdowne , resolved itself iuto a Committee , the Bishop of Chester proceeded to move several amendments , relating to minor points of detail . On his moving that a justice " being a clerk in holy orders" should not be required to act , Lord Krnyon proposed to move a similar exception of " peers . " He saw no reason why they should not have their feelings respected as well as the clergy . Lord Eldon said , he had always held that a lay magistrate had as much right to be regarded as a clergyman .
The Bishop of Chester said , if these sort of amendments were to be attempted , they had better at once move to throw out the Bill altogether . Lord Lansdowne contended that it was a benefit to the community , not to these Dissenters , to provide securities . It never could answer to turn them adrift .
Lord Ken yon only meant to contend , that a peer who was a justice had as good right to have his feelings consulted as a clergyman . He thought it very unchristian to call on a Christian magistrate to perform such acts . Lord Ellenborough concurred with
Lord Kenyon that the feelings of a layman were as much entitled to favour as a clergyman ' s . If there was degradation , it was as much « o to ^ one as another . He confessed he did not like this dis-
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pensing with all religious ceremony ; he liked . the former plan better of leaving marriage to the Unitarian ministers , and he thought it would perhaps be better now to require that the parties should first go through some religious ceremony and bring a certificate of it to the magistrate .
The Bishop of Chester reminded the House that a Dissenting minister was in their view only a layman , and therefore a marriage by him was in their eyes marriage by a layman . There was the same objection , therefore , to registering a marriage by an Unitarian minister as one had before a magistrate . He saw no difference iu principle .
A Noble Lord ( we believe Lord Redesdale ) observed , that a great deal of the inconvenience of the machinery of this Bill seemed to him to arise from an anxiety somewhere to retain the fees . He did not approve the plan at all , and thought if they did any thing they should only do as they did with the Jews and Quakers . He for one should feel no scrupies as a magistrate if the State ordered it , but he could easily conceive that others
might , and if they were relieving one man ' s conscience , they had no business to load another ' s . He thought that these persons ought to be excepted as the Jews and Quakers were , providing , however , that they should iu someway celebrate the marriages in their own congregations . He did not think the present Bill adapted even to their own wishes and feelings . They were not adverse , as he understood , to a religious ceremony , but rather desired it .
Lord Malmesbury thought they were committing themselves by thus discussing minor amendments in this clause , where he for one should oppose it altogether > n every way . Was it considered that if the Bill received these amendments it was to go forth as sanctioned in that state by the House , or was this only pro formd ?
Lord Holland . The question before them was on the amendment for excepting clerks , to which it had been proposed to add peers . The amendment of the Bishop of Chester was only to meet Lord Eldon ' s objection against the clergyman ' s being required to do as a justice what was not imposed on him as a clergyman . Then came the question whether it was expedient to receive all the amendments , in order that the flense of
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1827, page 696, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1800/page/64/
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