ception of them as the rule of life, faith, and conduct -or was it a belief in certain expositions of those Scriptures by human beings? He would leave the Noble and Learned Lord on the woolsack to choose, in the dilemma to which he must be reduced. If the first point were held, then the Unitarians were in no sense affected by this common-law doctrine; for they held the Scriptures as sacredly as any of their Lordships. They held them to contain the rule of right, and rule of faith, and by them alone they stood.

If it were said, on the other hand, that the Christianity intended by the law was the Holy Scriptures as they were expounded by the Church, then, if the Noble and Learned Lord held that, it followed that he must be prepared to hold also, that, before the reign of Henry VIII., the Roman Catholics were the only Christains in England, (for, till that period, the Roman Catholic religion was part of the law of the land,) and that, when that King changed the sort of Christianity, he changed the common law. Another of the objections which had been raised was, that the proposed measure would make the Church of England ancillary to the Unitarian

Dissenters. He did not see the force of this objection. Did the Church of Ireland consider itself in this light of a waiting-maid? He did not believe it did; yet it either registered all marriages, or left the parties to celebrate them for themselves. But it was said, that the Church was to be deprived of privileges she held by long usage. He suspected, however, that, until the passing of Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act, the Church had never exercised that right which it was contended she could not forego without derogating from her dignity. All foreign marriages, previous to that period, were celebrated according to the lex loci; and all marriages duly celebrated by a priest, whether of the Church of England or of Rome, were binding. As to that pathetic part of the speech of the Noble Prelate, in which he had deplored 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

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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 Unitarians, 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 pleasing him this way. Surely it was the plainest and best way to give relief to those who came to ask for it. If no danger 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 ornament, 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, believ ing 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 irreverent,) 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 objection to repeat and explain the grounds of his doubts as to the situation of these parties at common law. The Toleration Act exempted from its benefit the deniers of the doctrine of the Trinity. The 9 and 10 William and Mary against blasphemy and profaneness, provided certian punishment against what it called crimes and one of these was stated to be the denial of any of the persons of the Trinity to be God. He could not conceive that because that Act was repealed, it was not still to be evidence of what was in the acknowledgment and understanding of the Legislature, a crime antecedently punishable, though not to that extent, at common law. Mr. Justice Blackstone so treated it, and spoke of it as an offence which the Legislature found it necessary to repress by severer punishments. The question had been treated in the Courts as one of importance. It had come before himself incidentally in charity cases, and lately it had come before the Court of King's Bench, where one judge was of opinion that it was still an offence, and the other three would not say it was not. There

fore he contended they ought now to be explicit, and to require something more determinate than the phrase used by this Bill, as to" persons entertaining scruples as to the doctrine of the Trinity." What did such a phrase mean? Every body might be said to have scruples on such a subject some time or other. But if the phrase meant any thing specific, it was what the Bill seemed cautiously to avoid acknowledging, (as if the parties were aware of their situation,) namely, that they came denying the essential doctrines of the Church. He was only contending that they ought not to leave it so. As to the quotation of Locke, he could only hope that when they came to discuss the Catholic question, he should be allowed the same privilege. It had been said, that he objected first to general measures, and then to particular ones. It was enough to say he objected to this, because he was quite sure that they could never pass this Bill, and refuse any other sect who chose to apply. He considered the Bill as the greatest blow that had ever been aimed against the Church. If this Bill did not lead to many others of the same sort from every species of objectors, he would claim little credit for

his power of prophecy; and then, if all sorts of Dissenters were to be let in, he defied them to retain their fees.

The Marquis of LANSDOWNE said, he must contend that the Statute which repealed the exception of Unitarians from the benefit of the Toleration Act, placed them in as good situation as if that exception had never been made. What then was the state of Dissenters generally were they not established in fact, and protected by the State? If he found on the highest authority, that the Toleration Act took the Dissenters under the protection of the State, would it not be clear that these persons were in the same predicament? That this was the case, he found expressly decided by Mr. Justice Foster, who, as if foreseeing the very objection, used the strongest expressions, holding that this toleration was not to be treated as a connivance or exception from penalty, but that the removal of the penalty took off the idea of offence, and took the worship under the protection of the law. Could it have been the intention of the Legislature to leave the Unitarians exposed to the penalties of common law? if they were, why did

not the Learned Lord state so at the time? If these persons were to remain subject to prosecution, why did he not in common candour let them know their situation, and not suffer them to be deluded by a fancied protection, when the Learned Lord knew all the time that it was a delusion? It had been said, why make the Church ancillary to these marriages? For this plain reason, that they legislated for the common advantage of the public. He had yet to learn that this was more than a civil institution, in which every member of the community had as much interest as any party before them. All that the Church was called upon to do, was to render the duty which it performed on all other occasions, to attend to civil regulations devised for the prevention of clandestine marriages and for due registration. It was no indignity which they were offering to the Church, but a benefit they were providing for the whole community, and for the Church itself, in saving it from being made the instrument for violating conscience, with no chance of good to itself or any one, with no prospect of bringing dissidents within its pale, with no probable end but that of defeating all the