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Untitled Article
ging up and cherishing very decided feelings . If a Whig Ministry will not lake the trouble to watch dissatisfied looks , and listeii to angry tones , but expect Englishmen to express their feelings with all the vivacity of Frenchmen , and to enunciate their opinions with the precision of Scotchmen , we warn them they will be roused from their error , both as it relates to Corn
Laws and to Church Reform , on the day of election , if not sooner . Instead of measuring its conduct exclusively by the petitioning public , the Government would be wise , whether in relation to the Irish Church , the Corn Laws , or the English Church , ( ke ; ping in view the amount of taxation necessary to defray the interest of the debt , and to meet the current expenses of the year , ) to ask itself whether , from the known circumstances of the case , there
must not be a non-petitioning public , which has pretty decided feelings , though it may not make public very distinct opinions on all these questions . The Whigs allowed the very best oppoi tuni y of converting the Church from a bad master into a good servant to pass by , and omitted to place its policy towards the Church ,
once and for aye , in a commanding and honourable position . Another opportunity is about to occur of emplo \ ing the Church o render a service to the State as important as it is honourable , — the service of national education . If a commission to inquire iato the state of education were to send their < assistants' through half the number of parishes which the assistant Poor Law
Commissioners have visited , evidences of such a mass of ignorance , and of such an extent of brutality , would be collected as would convince us of the necessity of at least offering opportunities of education to the people , and would prove that the danger of a good education being rejected as com p ulsory , exists only in the pretended fears of persons whose real fears are lest their supporters in the Church
should answer , Non placet nobis , dominis doctoribus ; non placet nobis , magistris . And , of course , the same timid spirit which causes Ministers not to do their duty on the question of national education , at least till they have the impulse and sanction of a petitioning public , will cause them not to meddle with the temporalities and spiritualities of the Church beyond the point to which the sanction of Convocation will extend , —Placet nobis ,
dominis doctoribus ; placet nobis , magistris . There is , we repeat , a non-petitioning public whom the Whigs ought to fear , a public which devolves on its representatives the power and responsibility of doing what is right about the education , the temporalities , and the spiritualities of the Church ; and
has its own opinions , and feelings , and expectations on the subject , and will express them on the day of election , if not earlier . This unpetitioning public will not allow itself to be answered , ' Gentlemen ! electors ! on such a day we sneered at the Church , and on such a day we complimented the Dissenters ; ' but will retort , r We did not put you in your places either to sneer at the ortho-
Untitled Article
389 Opinions oj the Non-petiticning Public
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1834, page 380, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2633/page/68/
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