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Untitled Article
was directed by an early No . of your work , [ vol . i . p . 555 . ] and concerning which I have sought in vain to get satisfactory information . Quero will , I hope ?
draw out some persons , acquainted with the nature and history of this Royal or Parliamentary grant , to explain it to the dissenters at large . The subject may be now
brought . into discussion , more properly than at almost any former period , as the prime distributQr of it is so truly respectable , and so far removed from all suspicion *
You will , I feel persuaded , give admission to nothing that shall be unfriendly , to that gentleman and his associates ; and they will con * cur with you , I am sure , in seeking to satisfy the public in a matter in which they , as the king ' s almoners , are nearly concerned .
There are a few questions which I beg leave to propose concerning the Regium Donum : 1 st . Is . it a royal or a parliamentary grant ? If it be voted annually by Parliament , is it one of those items belonging to the Civil List account , which the . kind's servants have very dexterously shifted from the shoulders of the monarch to those of his faithful commons ?
2 nd , Considered as proceeding , according to its title , from the king ' s bounty ^ is not the Regium Donumj strictly speaking , a . pension to dissenting ministers ? 3 d Considered as a parliamentary vote , is not the annual grant of the Regium Donum , an annual declaration of the establishment by the government , of the religion of Protestant dissenters , whose ministers are endowed out of the national purse ? 4 th , Is not the receiving of the
Untitled Article
Regium Donum , by the dissented an acknowledgement of the right of the civil power to take co < rnu zance of matters of religion f If they may confer privileges , may they not impose restrictions ; if
they may reward dissenting ministersj as such , may they not test ( as the Americans would say , ) their merits ? It is not insinuated that the Regium Donutn , whatever be its amount , l ^ s any weight upon the body of dissenters ;
but may not those of their minis , ters , who are fed by royal bounty , consider it a point of gratitude to pronounce the royal praises ? 5 th , Is not the grant of the Regium Donum not only annual , but conditional ! do not
dissenting ministers receive it quamdiu seibene gesserint ? May not the constant expectation of it be a tie upon the political freedom of the expectants ? 6 th , Is not the distributor of
the Regium Donum sometimes ehosen for his politics ? Was not the late distributor , Mr , Martin , appointed in reward of his known attachment to the court ; and was not the present distributor , Dr .
Rees , appointed to displace him , because Miv Martin's political conduct Avas displeasing , the Doctor ' s gratifying , to the " Fox ministry ? Were any distributor to make himself obnoxious to the
powers that be , by such a sermon as Dr . Price ' s , on the Love of our Country , or by such a publication as Dr . Priestley ' s Letters to the Inhabitants of Birmingham , would he not be instantly dismissed-7 th , The distributor of loOCMper annum [ the rumoured amoun of the Regium Donum y ] must possess considerable influence in * sect ; must , in other words , hav
Untitled Article
i 72 Regium Donum *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1811, page 272, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2416/page/16/
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