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    bled , naked and In the state they died , at the sound of a bell , into a night-cart , and thence carried to a pit beyond the city walls , there to rot in one mass of undistinguished putrefaction . This

    system was so strongly encountered by the established habits , as well as by the natural feelings of a highly civilized and polished people , that it was deemed advisable , at no great distance of time , to bury the edict itself by a total revocation . In the southern American

    establishments of the European nations , coffins do t not appear to be used . In our country , the use of coffins is extremely ancient . They are found of great apparent antiquity , of various forms and of various materials—of

    wood , of stone , of rnetals , of marble , and even of glass . ( See Gough's Sepulchral Monuments . ) Coffins , says Dr . Johnson , are made of wood and various other matters . From the

    original expense of some of these materials , or from the labour necessary for the preparation of them for this use , or from both , it is evident that several of them must have been occupied by persons who had filled the loftiest stations of life . In modern practice , chests or

    coffins of wood or lead , or both , are commonly used for persons who can afford to pay for them ; for persons of abject poverty , whom the civil law distinguishes by the title of the miseraliter egeni , what is called a shell is used , and which I understand to be an

    imperfect coffin , and in very pqpulous parishes is used successively for different individuals , unless charity , public or private , supplies them with a better . Persons dying at sea , are , I believe ,

    usually committed to the deep in their bed-clothes and hammock ; but I am not aware that any of these are nominally and directly required . A statute , 30 th Charles II ., has required that the funeral vestment shall be made of wool ,

    and coffins must , bjr the same statute , be lined with wool , but the use not enjoined . I observe that in the funeral service of the Church of England , there is no mention ( and , indeed , as I should rather collect , a studied avoidance of

    the mention ) of coffins . It is througbbout the whole of that service , the corpse or the body . The officiating priest is to meet the corpse at the gate of the church-yard ; at certain parts of the service , dust is to be thrown , not upon

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    the coffin , but upon the body . Certain parts of the service are to be recited while the corpse is making read y to be put into the grave . I observe likewise , that In old tables of parish fees , a distinction is stated between coffined

    funerals and uncoffined funerals in point of payment . There is one of 1627 , quoted by Sir Henry Spelman , in his Tract de Sepultura , where a certain sum is charged for coffined burials , and half the same sum for uncoffined burials , and expressly under those general heads of coffined and uncoffined

    funerals . From whence I draw this conclusion of fact , that uncoffined funerals were at that time by no means so unfrequent as not to require a particular notice and provision . The argument , therefore , that rests the right of admission for particular

    coffins upon the naked right of the parishioner to be buried in his churchyard , seems rather to stop short of what is requisite to be proved , —the right of being buried in a large ches * or trunk of any material , metallic or

    other , that his executors think fit . The law to be found in many of our authoritative text-writers , certainly says , that a parishioner has a right to be buried in his own parish churchyard ; but it is not quite so easy to find the rule in those authorities that gives

    him the right of burying a large chest or trunk along with himself . This is no part of his original abstract right , nor is it necessarily involved in it . That right , strictly taken , is , to be returned to his parent earth for dissolution , and to be carried there for that purpose in a decent and inoffensive manner : when

    those purposes are answered , his rights are perhaps satisfied , in the strict sense in which his claims , in the nature of absolute rights , can be supposed to extend . At the same time , it is not to be denied that very natural and laudable feelings prompt to something beyond this—to the continuation of the

    frame of the body beyond its immediate consignment to the grave ; p . nd an indulgence of such feelings very naturally engrafts itself upon the original rights , so as to appear inseparably with it , in countries where the practice of it is habitually indulged . For , however men may fe ^ l , or affect to feel , an indifference about the fate of their own mortal remains , few have firmness , or rather hardness of mind , sufficient to

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    698 Sir W . Scott ' s Judgment on the Patent Coffin Case .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1820, page 698, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2495/page/10/