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Untitled Article
They can only organize themselves in open defiance of the l * w , and should that ever happen , it will scarcely be for the purpose of petitioning . The topics themselves have not those consideration * of local or urgent temporary interest which facilitate the holding
of meetings . Two large sections of this body are opposed to petitioning ; those who have not yet lost all confidence in the pre ~ sent Ministry , and those who have lost all hope either from Ministers or the present parliament . It is not improbable , that the coarse of events will ere long unite these two sections with the
present petitioners , in a common course of action . They will then show a formidable front . They are , in fact , the whole body of reformers , who were reformers anterior to the adoption of that question as a Ministerial question by those who are now in office ; together with a large addition which must have been made to their number by the occurrences of the last two years * The second class of petitions shows an extraordinary activity in the four great ecclesiastical bodies , the Established Churches of
the three kingdoms , and the Dissenters of England . Neither the Catholics nor the Presbyterians of Ireland appear in this list , in their corporate capacity . Both have their reasons ; but not exactly the same reasons . The former are past hope of getting any thing , and the latter not past fear of losing something . The Irish petitions ( unless the little marriage petitions are from that country , and excepting those against tithes , ) are all episcopalian
and anti-reforming , showing , or at least according with the fact , that in that unhappy country , so long divided into the oppressors and the opprest , the plunderers and the plundered , the Government is hated by the former , and not trusted by the latter . The Scotch petitions show that the nuisance of which they complain , and which is indeed a corrupt and corrupting excrescence , must be abated . The character of the Protestant Dissenting marriage
petkions , we have already shown . They are machine-made . They are woven in the parson power-loom . This grievance has never been complained of till very lately , nor did it seem to press , with any weight upon the orthodox Dissenters , until the Unitarians had shown considerable restiveness under their peculiar burden , and made some progress towards its removal . Then the congregations were stirred up , and they have done the duty to which they were invited . The great display of religious organization is in the
Sabbatarian petitions . We believe the motives and desires of these petitioners to be so various , that it is utterly impossible to say what they would have . If they can agree , the people who can muster a thousand petitions , though with only a little more than 200 names to each , must be pretty sure of carrying their point . We wish it had been public instruction ; but when has the power of ecclesiastical or sectarian organization been directed to that object ? On the third class we have little to remark . The subject of Corporation Reform is the only one ( except perhaps that of Colo-
Untitled Article
446 Petilitmi to Parliament .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1833, page 446, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2618/page/6/
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