gion of all that made her the grace, hope and consolation of her followers. While, therefore, he respected the merits of the Unitarians, he could not help remembering that they held opinions at variance with what the English Church considered as constituting the very essence of Christianity. The Church of England had marked those doctrines in a distinct and authoritative manner; and she considered those truths not merely in the light of speculative opinions, but as active and fruitful springs of action. But though he spoke of the Unitarian doctrine with pain, he did not wish to speak of its professors with harshness; for that was not consistent with the true Christian mildness on which all the articles and institutions of the Church of England were founded. It did seem to him, that the Church owed to herself, to her supremacy, and to the high and important truths which she taught, to mark in this Bill, her total dissent from the opinions of the Unitarian Dissenters. He had no apprehension, that such a step as the granting of the present Bill would lead to an injurious degree of indulgence, nor to a rash and indiscreet spirit of surrendering all the privileges of the Church. At the same time that he said this, he could not refrain from applauding the conduct of those Prelates, who had de precated any alteration whatever in the Liturgy. He could not but rejoice, that the Bench of Bishops had refrained from setting a precedent so full of danger. He admired the service of the Church of England; he particularly venerated the Liturgy, which he looked upon with an affection almost equal to that with which he viewed Holy Writ itself; and he thought the Bench of Bishops deserved the thanks of every supporter of the Church of England, for having offered their fair and open opposition to the principles of such a Bill. He was not afraid this relief would afford a means for the further extension of Unitarian doctrines; for, in his opinion, human nature itself happily furnished in its infirmities an antidote to their diffusion: man, amidst the sorrows and cares of this life, required something more consoling, more heart-sustaining, than their cold and precise doctrines. He did not think that such of the Bishops as supported this Bill could be accused of inconsistency, because they had spoken and voted against granting any further concessions to the Catholics. On the contrary, he could easily conceive that they might oppose one, and conscientiously vote in favour of the other. He thought this to be a measure not only of justice to the Unitarian Dissenters, but

to the Church itself. He should give his cordial vote that the Bill be committed, thought, with the view he had of the question, he should have thought it better for the Church itself to have asked for the relief which this Bill would give them, than thus to have accorded it as a boou to the Dissenters. He called it a relief to the Church, for the clergy must have felt uneasy in doing that which nearly amounted to profaneness; namely, calling on the Unitarian Dissenter, when appearing at the altar, to do violence to his conscience, in professing sentiments which he positively disavowed, or in using expressions that obliged him to screen himself under mental equivocation and reservation. For these reasons he should give his support to the Bill.

LORD WESTMORELAND opposed the Bill upon the general principle. He would not alter the laws of the land and the establishment of the Church in this particular. If any exception was made, it should be general, not specially for the Unitarians. He objected, also, to the Church being made subservient to such purposes, and to its being paid for what it was not thought fit it should perform.

The Bishop of LONDON said, at so late an hour of the night he would not take up much of their Lordships' time, but succinctly state what were the grounds upon which he would vote for this Bill going into a committee, where it might be discussed and be put into a better form. He thought the policy which had induced the Legislature to place the solemnization of marriage in the hands of the Church, was a very wise one. It contributed to that publicity which was so desirable in its celebration; and protected parties from having their ignorance or credulity practised upon by the designing and the vicious. It secured the decent and solemn performance of that which the law held to have been, in its origin, a civil more than a religious contract.

This might not be indeed a primary view of the subject, but it went to shew the wisdom of the policy which the Legislature had pursued, in conferring a certain distinction upon the Church by con. fiding to it the care of marriages. It was in this view of the matter that he thought no alteration ought to take place in the law, except upon very weighty reasons indeed. Now it appeared to him that general dissent from the discipline of the Church of England was not a sufficient ground for effecting such alteration. It was only when the objection attached to a particular doctrine, recognized by the service itself, that he thought the party entitled to relief. For when a person

came to Church to marry, he declared no general conformity. He was not supposed to do so. He came there to be married because he could be married no where else. With respect to the class in question, if there was any entire and essential difference between their tenets and any doctrine recognized in our marriage service itself, he was willing to admit that that might constitute some ground for the sort of alteration he spoke of. Their Lordships would remember, that some time since there was brought into that House a Bill which proposed to give relief to Dissenters of all denomina tions, who entertained opinions that differed from those of the Church of En gland upon particular doctrines. No sect or class was named in it. To that Bill he ventured to offer objections as to the principle; but he supported the proposi: tion for its going into a committee. In the present instance, the case was very different. In this Bill a particular class of persons was named, and their parti cular scruples were defined; and their Lordships were told that while the parties felt all this difficulty as to the solem nization of marriage, they were agreed as to the necessity of offering every sort of civil security. He (the Bishop of Lon don) could not agree with the Bishop of Chester that the parties have a right to put what interpretation they please upon the terms of the Church service. But it still did not appear to him that the Unitarian by it made any concession of his faith. If any one were to say to an Unitarian, that because he had married according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England, he had therefore given up his own peculiar doctrines, and had recognized that of the Holy Trinity, the Unitarian would smile at the infer ence as a calumny upon him. No Unitarian, he apprehended, had ever scru pled to be married in the Church upon any such grounds. The measure before their Lordships was not one, therefore, which ought to override every consideration of civil policy; bnt the House ought to take sufficient security that it should not in any event be abused by individuals for the purpose of clandestine marriage, or other improper purposes; that marriages to be solemnized under it, should be solemnized with decency; and that, as far as possible, every fraud that it might be attempted to practise under colour of such an act, should be obviated. As the Bill was at present worded, it was to be observed, that banns might be falsely and unduly published, and marriage licences might be forged; and yet no parties were named as responsible, and no

punishment assigned as the penalty for such offences. The exceptions in favour of Jews and Quakers had been adverted to in the course of this discussion. He would be very willing to grant all that had been granted by the Legislature, in these respects; but their cases stood very differ. ently in a civil point of view. As to the Jews, it allowed them an exemption from the operation of the marriage law, where both the parties were Jews. But what was it that these Dissenters asked? A similar exemption, where even one only of the parties was an Unitarian. The Jews again married according to a very ancient and established form of their religion, which was well understood: but the Dissenters prayed that parties might be married according to their religious principles. What was meant by so vague and so extensive a phrase as this? Among the Jews and Quakers, the parties were liable to be called upon for the proof of their connexion with those persuasions, in order to give validity to their marriages. Let their Lordships observe, too, what securities there existed against clandestine marriages, both among Quakers and Jews. In the case of the Jew, they were derived from his prejudices, his habits, his religion, the usages of the people, and even the au thority of the Synagogue. There had once been a case decided against the validity of a Jewish marrriage, by the Learned and Noble Judge (Lord Stowell) who now sat in that House, and had formerly presided with so much honour to himself and to the country in the Consistory Court of London, upon the fact only, that one of the parties was proved to have entertained opinions that were not consonant with the general religious prejudices of the Jews. The Quakers again were another class, among whom the same securities would always exist to a great degree. The members of any brauch of this society coming from one part of the kingdom were obliged to produce testimonials and certificates, before they could be received or admitted into another body of the same connexion in a different portion of the empire. Without troubling their Lordships with any further detail, he believed he might say that courts of justice had never been called on to try a single case, in which the indulgence of the Legislature to the marriage of Jews or Quakers had been to be regretted. With regard to these Dis senters, (the Unitarians,) if they could give the same securities, possibly no great harm might result from extending the same indulgence to them; but no such securities could they offer, and there,

fore they asked more when they ap plied for the same indulgence. To be sure they proposed to maintain the. formalities as to banns and registration, but they gave no security for the parties being bona fide Unitarians, nor for the character of their ministers. As to the fees to be received, that was a subject that he spoke of with some regret and doubt. It was very true, that in large towns a considerable part of the emoluments of the clergy arose from marriage fees; and he was most unwilling to take from them any portion of those fees, or any other part of their income. Still he was very unwilling to place the minister in the situation which this Bill would. place him. In his view, the Church lost more by this plan in privilege than in emolument. It placed the minister in several respects, in a disagreeable predicament. At present, the gracious part of the service, that of uniting two persons attached to each other, lay with him, and that kind and pleasurable office was often remembered with gratitude through life. Under this Bill that gracious part of the office was transferred, and the minister of the Church had only to appear in the odious character of a tax-gatherer and an imposer of delays and forms. He felt therefore great difficulty in retaining that clause, at the same time that he did not like, by giving it up, to offer any sort of premium to dissent.

ing that the most certain way to win them to their ruin, and to lure to destruction, was the application of extravagant praise and compliment. The Reverend Prelate had begun his speech by observing, that never was man more deeply impressed with the principles of toleration than himself. He (Lord Holland) believed him; but he was sorry to observe that the Rt. Rev. Prelate, with so much in his breast, should so seldom approve of any particular application of his general doctrine. The Rt. Rev. Prelate considered that the scruples of certain individuals were not such as ought to be respected by Noble Lords, and had entered into a detailed and ingenious argument to shew that there were no grounds for such scruples. Now really, in the first place, every man was himself the best judge of his own scruples. If a man told him that he felt them, he (Lord Holland). knew not what right he had to doubt his sincerity. The individual must be judged by his own language and actions, and not by the opinion of another, however learned the personage might be. The Right Reverend Prelate had said, that the Unitarian, in the marriage service, was not required to subscribe or repeat any thing contrary to his conscience, and that on other occasions he repeats the very words he here objects to; that is to say, he repeats them on an occasion and in a sense in which he thinks them used in scripture, in the sense which he affixes to them, and which is known and understood in his (the Unitarian's) church. But really this was a most cruel requisition. The Unitarian was to be required to repeat words to which it was avowed the priest annexed one meaning and he another. Could it be wondered at that the Unitarian objected to the repetition of words in this way? But then came the Benediction; and the Learned Prelate slipt over this very ingeniously. It does the Unitarian no good, to be sure, he said: but did it do him any harm? Good God! was this the language they were to hear, and from a prelate too? Was this the way such matters were to be disposed? Why then did he renounce the Virgin Mary and the invocation of saints? Would it be painful to him to join in such worship? And why then did he erect himself into a judge of the Unitarian's conscience? It was quite clear that such matters must be painful and revolting. "Oh! but," (said the Lord Chancellor,)" they never found it out till the Act against them was repealed." Why, he asked, had they never found out that before? Why did they never complain? The Noble and Learned Lord, in the number of years he had held his pre

Lord HOLLAND observed, that the question was so plain, and so ably elucidated by the Noble President of the Council, and especially by the most Reverend Metropolitan—in such a Christian disposition, he would add, as proved that the Church of England deserved much of the credit attributed to it by a Noble Lord (Calthorpe)—that he could say but little on the question. Some objections, however, had been urged to the Bill by a Right Reverend Prelate, and by the Noble and Learned Earl on the woolsack, to which he would shortly address himself; and he did hope that the Noble and Learned Lord would not leave the House without entering a little into some explanation of the opinions he had offered to-night. And first, as to the Right Reverend Prelate (the Bishop of Chester). There was a figure of rhetoric which they had all heard used but too often in that House, and on this sort of occasion; that when a man was about to violate any important and received principle, he thought it necessary to begin by very loud and anxious praise of it, meaning in the end to violate it. Rhetoricians of this description dealt with such principles as libertines did with weak women, thinkVOL. XIX.

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plored the hard fate of the clergymen, who by this Bill would be deprived of their fees, all he (Lord Holland) had to say in reply, was, that the Bill provided they should have their fees. But, said the Noble Prelate, those for which the Bill provided, are only the actual dues, and, beyond these dues, it is usual for parties to give a small gratuity on the solemnization of marriages, which form a considerable source of emolument to the officiating clergyman. Well, it might be so; but was it not at least likely that an Unitarian would be willing to bestow as large a gratuity when he had his marriage solemnized and registered in such a manner as should satisfy the scruple of his conscience, as when it was performed in a manner irksome and painful to his feelings? It was said too by a Noble Lord, Why should we grant this favour to Unitarians alone why is it not to be granted to every other sect? After the answer which had been given to this by the Noble President of the Council, he (Lord Holland) would not take up the time of the House any more than by saying, because it was not favour they were to grant but justice, and because the others did not ask for it, and they, the Unitarians, did. He could not help thinking the Unitariaus very hardly dealt with. If general relief was sought for them, up jumps the Noble and Learned Lord from the woolsack, and complains that it was too general. He cries out, "Who and what are you? Are you Jumpers, Shakers, Southcotians, or what, for God's sake, are you?" and fears, if the relief were given in this shape, they would not be able to make head or tail of it. Then he was in a great hurry that it should be postponed until the next session, in order that the points should be discussed one by one: but, when the next session came, the Noble and Learned Lord says, "Why do you come alone? Why do not all come ?" There was no pleas ing him in this way. Surely it was the plainest and best way to give relief to those who came to ask for it. If no dan ger should appear in doing so, he would grant it to all; but it did appear to him to be the most strange, unparliamentary and illogical reasoning that could be imagined, to say, "We won't give you the relief you ask for, because there are others who want it as much as you, and they do not ask for it." It might be a very good reason for granting the relief to all, but it could be no reason for withholding it from any. He concurred entirely in the principles and statements of the Noble and Reverend Metropolitan, and he thought it but justice to him, and to the Church of which he was an orna

ment, to say, that he thought his objection to altering the form of the Liturgy was well founded. He (Lord Holland) would not shrink from saying that he thought certain parts of the Liturgy might be omitted; there were parts of it which, if it were in his power to make an alteration, he would willingly alter. But high as he held the principles of religious liberty, he did not think the members of one church had a right to call upon those of another to make any such omissions: that would, indeed, be making the functions of the Church ancillary to the Dissenters. But the measure proposed to the House was one purely ministerial and of a civil character. The law had made the solemnization and registration of marriages a part of the clergyman's duty, but it was no part of his ecclesiastical functions, and the Church could, therefore, be in no sense called ancillary to the objects of Dissenters. He, for one, should be for leaving out the licence, as that was the only thing which the Church was called on to grant; but there, he was afraid, the little doctrine of fees would come across them. One good-natured Prelate, too, had felt the loss of the pleasure of uniting fond couples more than of the fees, and it would perhaps therefore be well to retain the licences, that he might feel the pleasure in signing them, which he was grieving at losing in another form. The Noble Lord concluded by saying, that the Unitarians, believing as they did in the Holy Scriptures, were as much Christians as any other persons could be. If the law did hold deniers of revelation, in general, to be blasphemers (and even on that point he should be inclined to go further than many of their Lordships) and punishable, it would not affect persons who admitted that revelation as the rule of their faith. The Church admitted, and, indeed, the only distinction between Popery and Protestantism was, the right of all to judge and interpret for themselves. If Divine Revelation could, with decency or propriety, be said to be part and parcel of a code of laws, it could only be in the sense in which the Unitarians held it as well as the Church; and if their Christianity was, as the Noble and Learned Lord said, (the phrase he thought was something irreve rent,) part and parcel of the law of the land, there could be no reason why this class of Christian Dissenters should be called upon to do violence to their consciences upon one of the most interesting and solemn occasions of their lives.

The Lord CHANCELLOR had no objec tion to repeat and explain the grounds of his doubts as to the situation of these parties at common law. The Toleration