for the dissolution of that union has been actually submitted to the legislature. But the attack, though suspended, is not abandoned. Our opponents have not found the support and co-operation on which they had calculated. A large majority of the members of the legislature have declared their determination to maintain the church establishment, on the ground that it is the bounden duty of every government to provide for the religious instruction of its subjects; and consequently to provide that the ministers of religion shall be rendered independent of the capricious exercise of voluntary bounty. While the people, far from joining in the cry for the destruction of the established church, have shewn a disposition to come forward with declarations of attachment to its doctrines and its ordinances, and of their deep sense of the benefits which it has conferred upon society. Disappointed in their expectations, our adversaries have deferred the execution of their schemes to a more convenient season; and have contented themselves, for the present, with placing on record their inextinguishable hostility to all religious establishments.

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"I am assured, my reverend brethren, that I only express a feeling which you all share with me, when I say that I have seen, at once with grief and surprise, the sentiments avowed in many of the public declarations of the protestant dissenting communities of this kingdom :—with grief, because it must be painful to every conscientious member of the established church, to find that by a numerous portion of the community it is regarded with determined enmity; with surprise, because on looking back to the conduct adopted by its ministers, more especially in recent times, towards those who are separated from it, I can find nothing to account for the existence of this hostile spirit. Seeing, however, that it exists, I am thankful that it has been avowed. Had not our opponents thus openly declared their intentions, we might have indulged in a false security, and taken no steps to avert the impending danger. We are now apprised of its full extent; we are apprised that our only choice is between tame submission and firm and uncompromising resistance. In vain do we offer terms of peace to those who proclaim aloud that the evils arising from the union of the church with the state are of a character so malignant as to be susceptible of no mitigation; and that the dissoJution of the union is the only cure. The time for attempting to conciliate by concession has passed; the attempt will avail us nothing; it will be regarded as the effect of fear, or of a base desire to retain for a brief space the temporalities of the establishment ; instead of averting, it will accelerate our destruction, and will render us contemptible in our fall. We must therefore prepare for the contest; and in preparing for it derive comfort from the reflection that it is not sought by us, but forced upon us; that we are not assailing others, but acting in self-defence; and struggling for the preservation of institutions which we are pledged by the most solemn engagements to maintain in their essential integrity."

The bishop then enumerates the five grievances:-1. Payment of church rates and other ecclesiastical demands. 2. Want of legal registration. 3. Marriages of dissenters in church. 4. Exclusion from the universities. 5. Exclusion from burial grounds. After some excellent observations on the uses of an establishment, the bishop proceeds thus on the subject of church rates:

2. Dissenters' Grievances.

"Our opponents, while they declare their conscientious objection to the alliance of any ecclesiastical system with the civil power, assure us that they do not mean at the present moment to insist on the dissolution of the union between the church and state. They are content to wait until the public mind is more thoroughly enlightened on the subject; and will, in the meanwhile, be satisfied with the removal of practical grievances. By this procedure, while they obtain credit for the moderation of their views, they pave the way for the success of the attack which they meditate in due season on the establishment; since under the plea of seeking the redress of practical grievances, they demand concessions in which the very principle of a church establishment is involved. They complain of the liability of dissenters to the payment of churchrates, and other ecclesiastical demands. Yet we know that in agricultural districts the dissenter contributes nothing, or next to nothing, towards the maintenance of the minister of the established church; and that even in towns his contribution is trifling. The income of the clergy are derived for the most part from land or tithes. If the established church should be annihilated to-morrow, and the property attached to it declared national, the dissenter, who now pays tithe or rent to the clergyman, would still have to pay the same sum at least to the public collector. It is chiefly, therefore, of the payment of church rates that the dissenter can complain as a practical grievance;

and the sum which he contributes, even in this shape, is so small, that the importance of their abolition to him must consist, not in the removal of the practical grievance to which he is subject, but in the concession of the principle involved in their abolition. If he can once obtain the admission that the property of all the subjects of the.state, whatever their religious profession, is not liable to contribute towards the support of the established church, he knows that the principle of an establishment can no longer be maintained. The ministers of the crown, in forming their measure for the commutation of church rates, appear to have been sensible of the impossibility of escaping from this conclusion; and to have felt that they could not, without inconsistency, profess a determination to maintain the established church, and at the same time exempt dissenters, as dissenters, from the payment of church rates.

"It may be said that, if the ecclesiastical revenues, instead of being assigned exclusively to the clergy of the established church, were distributed among the ministers of the different religious communities existing throughout the kingdom, the dissenter would then be relieved from the burthen of contributing towards the support of his own minister, and would thus get rid of a practical grievance. This argument may be fairly urged by those who wish us to adopt the system pursued in the States of New England, in which Christianity generally, not any particular form of Christianity, is established. But it cannot be consistently urged by the adversaries with whom we have now to contend;-they begin with proclaiming their determination to reject every offer of assistance from the State, and declare their deliberate conviction that all religious denominations should be left to their own resources and arrangements. "To proceed in our list of grievances :-The dissenters complain of the want of a legal registration of births, marriages, and deaths, without submitting to religious rites to which they conscientiously object; and especially of the compulsory conformity to the rites and ceremonies of the established church in the celebration of marriage. If these are hardships on dissenters, they are hardships in the removal of which I shall most cordially co-operate; for I have been accustomed to regard them rather as hardships on the clergy of the established church. Far from wishing to compel dissenters to conform to the rites of the established church, I rather deem it a grievance to be compelled to administer any one of those rites to them. The State thinks it essential to the well-being of the community that clandestine marriages shall be prevented; and that births, marriages, and deaths, shall be correctly registered. In order to effect these objects, it has employed the instrumentality of the clergy of the establishment, by requiring that all marriages shall be solemnized in the church; and that registers of all baptisms, marriages, and burials, shall be kept by the parochial minisWe acquiesce in the decision of the legislature; but if any measure can be devised, by which the object of the State will be accomplished, and the clergy at the same time relieved from the necessity of performing religious services for members of a different religious communion, far from objecting to such a measure, I shall hail it with satisfaction.

ter.

"The two remaining grievances of which the dissenters complain I shall dismiss with a very brief notice. They complain that the right of burial by their own ministers, according to their own forms, in parochial cemeteries, is denied to them. Of this complaint it will be sufficient to observe, that some even of the most strenuous of their own advocates designate it as utterly destitute of reason and of justice.

"They complain that they are excluded from the privileges of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Before this grievance can be removed, it will be necessary, not only to annul the subscriptions required previously to admission to an academical degree, but also to expunge from the statutes of the several colleges in both Universities, those which require attendance on the services of the established church; an attendance pronounced by the dissenters to be an intolerable hardship. I say to

"We must, however, in passing, remark, that nothing can exceed the want of fairness, and of common reason, shewn by some among the sectaries in discussing these questions. Thus, they claim the right of burial in the very churchyards which they refuse the means of supporting. Let there be no rates, say they-let churchmen keep up the churchyard-but let us, who pay nothing towards it, have the privilege of burying our dead in it. Except among Irish landowners, and the accomplices or the dupes of Irish agitators, was ever so glaring a want of fairness as in this pretension? We trust it is confined to a small body of the English sectaries."— Edinburgh Review for January, 1834, No. exviii. p. 506.

expunge those statutes; for though it has been suggested that the object might effec tually be accomplished by a special exemption of dissenting students from attendance in the college chapel, it is certain that such an exemption would speedily lead in practice to the same result as a total erasure of the statutes. The chapel doors would soon be closed, and even the forms of religion be banished from our colleges. I may be told that the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge were for the most part Roman catholic foundations; and that by the original statutes the members were required to say masses for the souls of the founders and others. Those statutes were altered at the time of the Reformation by the royal visitors; and the statutes which now require attendance on the services of the established church may in like manner be altered. Doubtless they may: and when the consummation so fondly anticipated— the dissolution of the union between the church and the state-shall take place, doubtless they will. But, till then, let our adversaries shew the same consideration for the religious scruples of others which they claim so vehemently for their own. Let the not complain of us for insisting, in compliance with the directions of the founders, that the students shall assemble every morning and evening for the purposes of social worship; or for using in the celebration of that worship the services of the established church."

(These Extracts will be completed in our next Number.}

To this it may be right, in order to shew what temper we are to expect from the Dissenters, to set before the reader the following document from them. If, when the Whig government came in, the Tory clergy had met and issued such a document, actually pledging themselves to oppose an untried government, what would have been said?

Strand, Nov. 19, 1834.

Ar a Meeting of the "United Committee appointed to consider the Grievances under which Dissenters now labour, with a view to their Redress," held at Dr. Williams's Library, in Redcross-street, on Tuesday, the 18th day of November, 1834, HENRY WAYMOUTH, Esq., in the Chair,

Resolved,

That, while this Committee bows to the exercise of the royal prerogative, they have learned, with feelings of unfeigned and profound regret, the sudden dismissal from his Majesty's Councils of his late confidential advisers, entertaining, as they do, a cordial approbation of the general measures of their administration, and confiding in their principles, as the sincere friends of civil and religious freedom.

That, while this Committee cannot but express their disappointment and sorrow that the just claims of Protestant Dissenters have hitherto been postponed, they are convinced that such delay on the part of his Majesty's late Government arose chiefly from the obstructions to which they were subject, both from ecclesiastical and political opponents. The regret which this Committee feel at the dismissal of the late administration is also greatly aggravated by the assurance that it has occurred at a moment when its members were preparing the means of redress for the chief prac tical grievances of which Dissenters complain.

That, in the probable event of a general election, this Committee confidently anticipates from the Protestant Dissenters throughout the empire the most decided and uncompromising opposition to that political party who have avowed themselves the unflinching opponents of their interests, and whose speeches and votes on the Bill for the admission of Dissenters to the Universities ought never to be forgotten; and, in the event of such election, this Committee relies also on all classes of Dissenters for the immediate adoption of measures best calculated to ensure the return as representatives to parliament of men liberal and enlightened in their views, the tried friends of religious liberty, national improvement, and universal freedom.

That this Committee pledges itself to persevere in seeking the full and immediate relief of the practical grievances of Protestant Dissenters upon the principles they have repeatedly avowed.

That these resolutions be published in the usual public journals.

-Morning Post.

(Signed) HENRY WAYMOUTH, Chairman.

There is one matter, of extreme importance to the Irish church, which must not be overlooked. It appears from an account in the public papers, as well as from private letters, that at Carlow the Roman catholic priest had made a return to the church commissioners of above three hundred protestants as Roman catholics, that the protestant clergyman gave himself no trouble, and that, but for the exertions of a spirited individual, the commissioners would have had no means of correcting the mistake. There was, at the time the commission was appointed, an indisposition expressed, on part of some of the Irish clergy, to give them any information. To the writer, at least, this seems a fatal mistake. A return will be made under this commission, and will have the authority belonging to all official returns. It cannot possibly be prudent to leave it in the hands of the opposite party. Undoubtedly the commission was issued by persons any thing but friendly to the Irish Church, and might therefore be well looked on with the strongest suspicion; and it might very naturally be supposed that the commissioners would have the same unfriendly bias against that unhappy church as the persons who appointed them. But, as was before said in this Magazine, it was to be supposed also, that, as gentlemen and men of honour, they would be impartial and faithful as to matters of fact, if the means of right judgment were afforded to them. Those means can be best afforded by the clergy, and they, on all grounds, must have the deepest interest on the matter. The mode adopted by the commissioners has every appearance of good sense and fairness. Without entering farther into the detail, it is sufficient to say, that they are willing to receive voluntary lists from any parties who will send them-that they have that which they think of adopting (based upon returns made to Dublin Castle three years ago, corrected by voluntary information,) placed in some public position in the parish, and then give notice that so many days after they will hold a court personally for obtaining farther corrections, hearing objections, &c. It is quite obvious that they can do no more -that if the matter is left to the Roman catholics, they will not neglect it, and will not neglect to augment their numbers without scruple, as they have always done-and that, if the clergy do not systematically come forward, it will be only here and there that any one else can be expected to do so. The writer can state, from certain information, that where the clergy have come forward they have established two most important facts-the one, that the actual number of protestants is far greater than was supposed; the other, that protestantism is growing, on a comparison of its present state with the returns of three years ago; nay, that in one town (exclusive of births) it has increased three hundred. Facts are stubborn things; and false facts, till disproved, quite as stubborn as true. Let the Irish clergy then beware of leaving such an engine in the hands of our enemies. return will be made. It is to our interest that it should be true, and we alone can make it so.

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