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of thek successors * They will have played away their last stake . The completion of Reform , in political and municipal institutions , will then he inevitable . Meanwhile those dilemmas , of which the alternatives are the getting good put of the Tories , or the getting nd ot them , cannot be too often repeated by the Opposition * After the vote on the malt tax there can scarcely be another dissolution at present . The force of that threat is neutralised .
The constituencies should everywhere make such arrangements as that it may never again be formidable to anhoneat representative whatever his lack of property . The present House will probably last as long as the present Ministry , And ill indeed must the Reformers manage if we do not receive from it sundry particular measures of improvement , while the means are maturing for the ulterior realization of the one comprehensive blessing of good government , in theory and in practice , ia the organization of institutions and the administration of affairs .
The Dissenters Marriage Bill . —This bill ia a good bid for the Dissenters * , It will not purchase them now , whatever it might have done three years ago . Their price is up in the market , and the Tories must advance yet more and more , and lose them at last . They have overstood then ? time . Nevertheless the bill is a good bill—a very excellent bill ; and goes on the true principle of recognising marriage as merely , in the eye of the law , a civil contract . This is the right ground to take , and which should and might
have been taken from the first , but for these very Tories . One of the Unitarian marriage bills nibbled at the principle , whereupon there was awful talk of desecration , and licentiousness , and infidelity , and the horrors of the French Revolution . The clergy and the country gentlemen stand these things better now . The bill , no doubt , is to pass the Lords , unless
the Tories be kicked out meantime . The subject will no longer present the insuperable difficulties which so often made the Bishops bewail that they could not help the Unitarians . There is one good thing about Tory reforms , they always do the thing out and out . It is as nauseous as physic to them but when it must be taken , they swallow it whole . The Premier sings the ' Tragala' to his party , ' Gulp it down , dog / and , with one wry face , the business is done .
Taking the medicine is enough , without helping to mix it , ' said Tom Moore to Jeffrey , when the seconds were loading the pistols * with wnicl ^ thank heaven , the police , and blank cartridge , they did not shoot one another . We do not accuse the Tories of the original invention or concoction of this liberal measure , any more than of sundry other reforms , which now they say are * to be , ' but which were ' not to be / before that their holding office thereby was ' the question / The bill is no doubt an immeasurably better bill than that unhappy , rickety , deformed , and unfornied offspring of
Lord John Russell , commonly called , par excellence , ' The Abortion / which was buried last session , bewept with tears of derision by all parties " : but nevertheless , let the Whigs have their due , for good intentions and all . " The bill is , in principle , substantially the same with one which Mr . William Brougham had prepared to introduce as an appendage to his registration measure ; save and except , indeed , the five ' shilling Jee to the clergyman : that bill having provided a recording angel of a civil character , who would that bill having provided a recording angel of a civil character , who would
blot the book at less than half the charge . The proportion of fees by the May , the division of the seven-shilling piece , which will in future betoken Non . Con . Nuptials , as a crooked sixpence used to typify true love , is not without its meaning . Two shillings to the magistrate for the marriage , and five shillings to the clergyman for the registration , are no bad emblems of Church aad State . The usual proportions of duty and pay are pretty faithfully preserved in this distribution , except that the clergyman does something ; which is not always the case . The great objection to the bill is the clause which requires an path that
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1835, page 219, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2643/page/75/
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