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times , these remonstrants further urge , made addresses highly inexpedient ; for his Majesty ' s ministers evidently wanted to strengthen , their hands , by racing a political alarm , and to excite
a cry of danger to the throne , in order to drown the prevailing cry of danger to the constitution : they have succeeded ; and to the addressers we may partly attribute the measures , which our children will rue , of suspending the Habeas Corpus Act and thereby abolishing Trial by Jury in the most
important causes , and of preventing the people from meeting , according to the provision of the Bill of Rights , for the expression of their grievances , except under restrictions , which will constitute public meetings a trap for the
unwary . The Edinburgh Reviewer penned ilis paragraph before the ministers and deputies drew up their addresses : he cannot therefore refer to these ; nor do we know to what he refers , unless it
be to some of the sermons of Dissenting ministers upon the late successive enlargements of Toleration , which are , to be sure , quite as loud in praise of the administration as such compositions could be , -their authors at the same time retaining their sincerity . The
gratitude of individuals may have been excessive ; religions liberty is not a boon to be implored at the hands of a fellow-mortal , it is a right to be as-- serted , and if it be lost to be reclaimed :
such is the opinion and feeling of Dissenters at large , who do not con-. skier themselves bound by personal r , obligations to support the Lords Liverpool , Sidmouth and Castlereagh . Some of the Nonconformists addressed
-James II . rather flatteringly on his assuming the dispensing power in their / favour , ; but the mass of them united . to bring on the glorious Revolution of - Ifiga , and to prepare the way for the „ accession of the Brunswick family to - -the British throne .
. ¦ - The candour or rather the justice of the . Reviewer deserves praise , in his acknowledgment that the ' * Crown has no immediate connection with the Dissenting priesthood . " It would be captious to remark that the last word
91 the sentence is not legitimatized ,, among l ) issenters ; they have no pj ^ ests j they make their ministers , yvho ttre no longer their ministers than whilst they render them service ajod who never cease to be brethren amongst brethren : it is the people ' s
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- voice that gives Holy Orders . Passiiig this , ——the Reviewer is correct in absolving the Dissenting ministers from the suspicion of ¦** immediate connection" with the Crown ; but he needed not to qualify the phrase ; there is no connection whatever ,
mediate or immediate : even the Hfgium Donum is no bond of connection ; that has become a parliamentary grant , a mere bounty to poor Dissenting ministers ; and the character of the principal receiver and distributor is a pledge of the fairness of the distribution . It may be otherwise
with the Regium Donum in Ireland ~ y but in England it answers no political purpose . It is not at the option of the minister of the Crown to grant dr to refuse it ; it is part of the
establishment of the government : the vote is never preceded by inquiry or accompanied by remark : this is not one of the public expences upon which atiy reformer wishes to put the finger' of retrenchment : it is the establishment
by Parliament of Nonconformity amongst the poor , the endowment t > f Dissenting worship in villages arid hamlets , the appointment 01 a class of religious teachers for those whose ignorance or whose consciences bar them from the oldest established
worship : the bounty is voted equally by Whigs and Tories , by ministry and opposition , and neither party gets or loses election-influence by it . Some have doubted whether it be consistent
and manly in the Lay Dissenters to suffer any rank of their teachers to lie under this apparent obligation to the state , which is , as far as it goes * an alliance between church and state ,
and a contradiction of the favourite principle of the more sturdy Nonconformists : but this scruple implies more than is commonly expressed , for an the very same principle that it is proposed to refuse the Regium Donum , there ought to be a rejection of other immunities , whicti
Dissenting ministers enjoy without any reluctance of conscience ^ such as" exemption from the militia , from f firochial offices and from servmg on juries . These too are boons from the state , granted to the '
Nonconforrnmg teachers on the gfroanxr of their religious character , an < $ thoogh they are not money , they are , a ^ eveifcy man in a civil capacity knows * by experience , money ' s ^ vorth- ^ - - " The practical lenity of the test
Untitled Article
» 164 Political Character of English Dissenters .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1817, page 164, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2462/page/36/
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