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parties should fee ! assured that the comtnon law would not visit them as if their unconformity was an offence . The act of the 53 rd Gto . 111 . cv 160 , which recited the act 19 th Geo . III ., exempted Protestant Dissenters from all penalties to
which they'Were previously liable at law for non-subscription to certain doctrinal articles and oaths ,. So that he inferred that nothing' could be clearer than this fact—that it was only the denial of
Christianity in general , or blasphemy , which was au offence made penal at common law , and not mere nonconformity to particular points of doctrine . By introducing the 53 rd Geo . 111 ., he ( Mr , Smith ) had flattered himself at one time that he
had done some service by amending and explaining the law in the respects he had mentioned . The penalties denounced agaiust the profession of these tenets by the common law were of the most severe and heavy kind , —fine and imprisonment , at the pleasure of the judge , who was authorized , therefore , if he should see fit , to take from a man the half of his
fortune and years of his liberty for dissenting from the received doctrine of the Established Church . With the knowledge of facts like these , how was it possible , let him be allowed to ask , that he ( Mr . Smith ) should have made any such agreement as that imputed to him ? ( Hear ,
hear . ) Really a statement of so serious and so mischievous a nature ought not to have been lightly made in the quarter to which he was alluding . The Honourable Gentleman , adverting to the other bill he had brought in for the relief of
Unitarians from the obligation of going through certain forms prescribed by the marriage ritual , observed , that after it had received , with one exception only , the sanction and support of all the most
efficient and responsible of his Majesty ' s ministers , it was thrown out in the other House . The petition he had now the honour to present , entered so fully into ^ e object of the petitioners , that he could not do better than refer the House
* o the object of their prayer , premising ° wy , that if the House should feel hereafter disposed to accede to its prayer , the denial of Christianity as such , and biasphemy , would of course remain , as they j 11 present were , offences at common law .
. ^ F ; Robertson expressed himself deadl y adverse to the prayer of the peti-™> ners , and cautioned the Mouse to be ware how they encouraged too niuch the Hrevailmg spirit of innovation . The pel was then bftmgtit up and read , and ord ered to be printed . ^ mm '
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Intelligence . —Parliamentary : Dissenters and Catholic Claims . 441
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Conduct of Dissenters ttiiih regard to Catholic Cfattt ** April IB ; 7 Miu Brougham presented a . petfeloa from Great and Little iJoiton , \ ti faviMijr of the Catholic Claim * , liiis Petition had attached to it more than 9000 &ig ~
natures , aiid the petitioners , Without reference to the peculiar merits of tlie Roman Catholic question , went to point out the i nj ustice , us well as the iinpofit ^ , of subjecting any set of men to disabilities upon the ground of their religious fiith , and prayed the abolition of all tests .
He was glad to find that the petitioners adopted this mode of reasoning , because their opinions were entirely in unison with his own , and he had frequently so expressed them both in that House and elsewhere . He was glad that they advocated principles of universal tolerance , because he held a man was as little
answerable for his religious belief as he ^ vas for the physical conformation of his body or the construction of his mind , over neither one or the other of which had he any controul . If this were so , then to bittd men down by tests , was nothing more than to make them hypocrites ; for who would venture to tell him that to conforin
to a particular form was to entertain a belief in that form ? ( Hear , hear !) Entertaining such a feeling-, he had listened with much of pain and sorrow , and bitter disappointment , to she few op * servations which had beeu made within a few minutes , and but a few minutes only had they occupied . It was not to be
wondered at that persons out of doors entertaining , and , perhaps , conscientiously entertainiug , the hostile opiuiotis expressed towards the emancipation of the Roman Catholics , should confide their petitions to the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Home Department , and the Honourable Meinber foe
Somersetshire , ( Sir T . Lethbridge , ) as men who entertained a similarity of feeling with themselves upon that question . It was right that the petitions should b £ so entrusted 3 but he saw with sorrow , not unmixed with a portion of shame , the quarters from which those petitions came . That petitions such as those presented from the county of Kent should darken their dodrs was uot to be
wondered at . It was up matter of surprise to him to find that the dean aud chapter of one district , or the recto * and clergy of another , or the clergy atiid select vestry of a thirrt , should aid and
abet hi getting up sUch petitions ; all this was ip the natural order . ot things , and could surprise no man , at least' ua man who knew the church . But that a
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vo » , . k * . 3 .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1825, page 441, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2538/page/57/
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