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Untitled Article
fchom he was making laws !—In point of policy merely , the prompt and spirited opposition of the Dissenters and their friends was admirable , for the first blow is often decisive of the contest r had
the Bill been quietly suffered by the Dissenters to go into a Committee , the Government would have been at least neutral with regard to it , and then in all probabi - lity it would have passed into a law , and by this time many of our prisons would have contained humiliating proofs of the
pusillanimity of a people who could hold any other language with an adversary than that of opposition . But they were not so degenerate as to welcome an infringement of their dearest privileges ; they did not , like a celebrated premier , " now
i bo more /* toast the first man who | , should invade them ; they stepped I fcfward in the attitude of free-born I citizens , and said , as one man , " We want no change , and least of all such change as he would bring /*
" But is it not a scandal to religion that low-born , ignorant men should set up for Christian minis . lersi" Will then a * act of Parliament prevent arrogance ? Will a fine of a gaol secure modesty
?—In fact , however , what is the harm of tinkers , ( if you please ) becoming religious teachers ? Nobody is obliged to hear them , nobody is ° Wiged to pay them . If they talk to the winds , they cannot thereby
* awe a storm ; and if they get auditors , it is plain that they have someth ing to say which some peo-^« ni choose to hear , and why 8 ould not this entertainment be &Uow $ d in a barn , as well as the ^ decent chattering of punch in a P u t > peUst } Ow * Alt the wo \ ld
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knows that" one iPinker did nmkfc a powerful preacher , and that the experiment of & prison Was so far
from sending him back to his q \ A vocation that it qualified him for obtaining greater influence over the minds of the common people ^ and that from his dunneon he sent
forth an immortal work , which has amused , instructed , edified
and comforted thousands . u But the injury to the state !" Exemptions and privileges the preaching Tinker has none ; though perhaps he may diminish the Revenue a little , by withdrawing
men from alehouses and gin-shops ^ and leading them to rely upon their sober industry rather than upon the deceitful chances of a licensed Lottery : yet this is an evil which a moral statesman , like
Lord Sidmouth , may perhaps overlook and forgive . — tC Religion is disgraced by such low usurpers !* ' Be it so : yet this is not the most offensive disgrace which
religion sustains : we have heard of dignitaries of the Established Church bargaining with a prostitute for preferments . Let those teachers be first examined , whom the state hires into the service of
virtue , and , when they are purified , the Dissenters will allow Lord Sid mouth to prescribe for the moral health of their own ministers ; let him take the beam out of the
eye of his own Church , and we will assist him to extract the mote from our ' s . But as to the matter of right ,
we boldly contend with the enlightened inheritor of Mr . Fdx ' a principles , Lord Holland , that every maa is entitled to teach whatever he thinks that his fellowmeii ought to know . If he teach sedition or the invasion of his
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Refttctums upon Lord SidmoutVs Bill . 499
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1811, page 499, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2419/page/51/
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