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    Untitled Article

    The writer of the pamphlet before us , who speaks with the assurance of' concurrence in our various denominations / only pleads for Church reform incidentally , as connected with the redress of dissenting grievances . Now that the Dissenters should claim such redress is perfectly right . They would deserve , did they not claim it , to remain a subordinate and degraded caste .

    Their silence would be a slavishness of spirit most dishonourable and contemptible . They ought to use the mighty influence which they possess , to vindicate their civil rights , and place themselves on a fair and full equality with the members and priests of the episcopal church . The juncture is not unfavourable to them . The present Government , suspected and hated by the hierarchy , will scarcely like to have both the tiger and -the buffalo to

    encounter at once . To endeavour to pacify both by a compromise , which shall proceed on no distinct principle , and but for a brief while quiet either , is not unlike their policy . But to resist the Dissenters in lirnine , and tell them their grievances shall continue , is what they cannot and dare not attempt . The Dissenters will certainly get something , probably much . And if giving them a sop be substituted for a radical reform of the Church , there will be the mischief of which we are more than half afraid .

    The catalogue of grievances alleged by the writer , and which corresponds with the statements put forth by some important bodies among the Dissenters , consists of the following particulars 1 . The state of the registration . The Dissenter , on the one hand , has been shut out from the parochial registry , except at the price of conformity ; and , on the other hand , his own registry , which was forced upon him , has been discredited and rejected , so as to prevent the confidence of the people /—p . 10 .

    Moreover , the parish register does not record births , but merely baptisms . There is no authentic registration of birth , which in a civil point of view is the only important matter of record . The inconvenience , which is the grievance , is almost as great to the Churchman as to the Dissenter . It will no doubt be redressed , at least in some degree . The only difficulty seems to be , that the clergyman is feed for performing and recording the baptism .

    lie would pocket less money if the country were put to less inconvenience . The Parliament is loath to make good and useful laws , if those laws , incidentally , occasion the clergy to pocket fewer fees . So there is a difficulty ; and that is the difficulty exhibited in its nakedness . The same obstacle has , for many years , and after repeated acknowledgments of the justice of the principle , prevented the passing of the Unitarian Marriage Bill .

    2 . The present state of the marriage law . The Dissenters complain , and very justly , not only of being obliged to submit to a ceremony which they characterise as c superstitious and indelicate / but of having to go at all to a

    Untitled Article

    64 The Case of the Dissenters .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1834, page 64, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2629/page/66/