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exaggeration , which would be weir worthy of the Noble Lord's attention . On a former night , wheu a Right Reverend Prelate expressed some anxiety about the tithes and dues , the Noble and Learned Lord said , " Oh , these are all objections
of very inferior importance , for if you once allow such a Bill as this to passif you once allow Unitarians to enjoy the same civil privileges with respect to marriage as Jews and Quakers , there will be an end to the whole thing—there will he no Church' —away may go all such little things as tithes and
emoluments ; the dignity of the Church is gone for ever if this Bill passes . " Now , if there were any ground for this reasoning , if the dictum of this Protestant Pope were iufallible , that respectable and venerable matron the Church of Ireland was already extinct , for Unitarians might marry in Ireland , without being forced into the inside of a church . If the
Noble and Learned Lord , therefore , did not retreat from his own argument , he must admit that there was in reality no Churchin Ireland ; and a glorious thing this would be when they came to discuss the revenues of this Irish Church . Now , they should have full play to deal with her tithes and properties . What would the Noble and Learned Lord care for such little
considerations as these ? The dignity of the Church was gone — Unitarians could marry as they pleased . Oh unfortunate Ireland 1 This then was the climax of her miseries—this the key to all her distresses . Her venerable Church was gone , for the Unitarians were not bound to
swallow there the doctrine of the Trinity . Really , really , all this was too preposterous to argue with . What then was the evil to the Church , that the Noble Lord had in his head ? He found it easy enough to talk loudly of certain evils which were to befal us , ( and especially which were to befal the Dissenters , for he was most anxious on their account
it would seem , ) but how all this dreadful catastrophe was to come about nobody could make out . He ( Lord H . ) was on Ihe contrary anxious that the Bill should pass , because it gave relief to a highly moral and valuable class of the
community , ( judging of them by their fruits , ) because It would afford that relief , without in any way interfering with those precautions which , whether wisely or unwisely , had been taken by the Legislature against clandestine marriages ; and
because it did so without depriving either the clergy or any other classes of the fair privileges which they now enjoyed . With respect to the question of registration , of which so much had been said , it formed no part of the institutions of the
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Church of England ; it had no ecclesiastical foundation ; it was , ia faer a mere civil regulation imposed by an Act of Parliament . When the Noble and Learned Lord expressed so much apprehension of every thing like change , he should recollect that the Unitarians prayed only
in substance that the law might be restored to the state in which it stood before Lord Hardwicke ' s Act , and in which it now stood ' in Scotland and Ireland . The Noble and Learned Lord had , indeed , said , " Why don ' t you bring another sort of Bill ? Why don ' t you put these Dissenters exactly on the
footing of the Jews and Quakers ? " Had he done so , he could easily chalk out ( though of course not so eloquently ) the sort of speech the Noble Lord would meet it with . But it was sufficient to say , " If you admit the principle ho ^ nestly and fairly , and don ' t like this Bill , do you bring in another ; if ours will not suit you , let ns have one . that will , but at present we are satisfied with our
own . " He repeated , that this Bill was calculated to give relief not only to the Unitarians , but to the Clergy of the Established Church themselves , as it would
relieve them from the odious and painful duty of compelling a reluctant Dissenter to go through the solemn mockery of repeating forms , for which he , in his conscience , entertained no respect , but which it was not less the inclination than
the duty of the Established Clergy to revere . The Earl of Liverpool said , he was sure no one who had watched his political life but would believe , that in a sincere attachment to the Church of England , he yielded to no man ; but , after having heard all that had been said by his Noble and Learned Friend on the
Woolsack , and all that had been urged by some Right Reverend Prelates , he could not perceive one scintilla of a ground for maintaining that this Bill could be injurious to the interests of the Established Church . This Bill , as a measure of relief
to the Unitarians , went no further than to place that class of Dissenters on the same footing on which they stood antecedently to Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act ; for before that Act it was competent to all classes of Dissenters to contract
matrimony according to their own forms . His Noble and Learned Friend had pressed strongly upon them , that the principle of this Bill would extend the same relief to all other classes of Dissenters . He ( Lord L . ) might observe , in conformity to what had been already stated by the Most Reverend Prelate , ( the Archbishop of Canterbury , ) that the case of the Unitarians was materially different from that
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312 Intelligence . —^ Parliam en tary ' : Unitarians Marriage Bill .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1824, page 312, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2524/page/56/
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