The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1876-03-14 00:00:00

THE BURIAL OF DISSENTERS.
(From de Examiner]

'Are they to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully
seek their own salvation r Who is the author of all these
words —the First Clown in Hamlet, the Bishop of Lincoln,
Mr. Croat, Mr. Disraeli, or the Pall Mall Gazette I The
pious Clown has suffered • grave infringement of his
copyright. When he put that incredulous question to his
fellow-gravedigger, he anticipated the only coherent
objection that can be maintained against Mr. Osborne
Morgan's Burial Resolution, The Clown's feelings were
deeply wounded by the impiety of the proposal to lay
Ophelia in hallowed earth, and the fact that Churchmen
entertain a similar prejudice as against Dissenters is the
only ground on which the concession claimed by Mr.
Morgan can be consistently denied. No other argument
Is tenable for • moment. But for the aversion of a few
fanatic Churchmen to Dissenters, the difficulty would
never have been raised. We must either go the whole
length with the Bishop of Lincoln, or at once give up the
defence. "The bishops and clergy and Parish Priests
of England are not the owners of the churchyards. They
are the trustees of them under Cod, who is their pro-
prietor, and they cannot, without breach of trust, and
without being guilty of a heinous offence in His eight,
take away from God • single foot of a chtuchyard for the
purpose of giving a share in it for pubic funeral services
to persons who rend asunder His Church by schism, which
is condemned by Him in His holy Word as a deadly sin.
Such an act on the part of bishops and clergy would be •
robbery of God. It would be an act of sacrilege, treachery,
and cowardice," "Are they to be buried in Christian
burial that wilfully seek their own salvation',"
The points involved in this grievance are of the simplest
nature, so simple that one cannot help admiring the
ingenious length of the debate im Mr. Morzan'a motion.
It requires considerable practice in the art of much speak-
ing to involve in obscurity either what the Dissenters
have, or what they want, in the churchyards. By the
imrninon law, they have a right to burial ground in the
churchyard of their perish. It does not matter whether
the parish 14 an old parish or a new parish. As long as the
Church of England is connected with the State, if a new
church is put up as the centre of an ecclesiastical district
approved by the State, and provided with a churchyard,
the church If legally the chinch of the parish, and the
churchyard is legally the churchyard of the parish. The
privilege of restricting its churchyard to the use of its own
membent is denied to a State Church, because it is more
than a religious body; it is part of the State. When the
churches are dissevered from the State, if new churches
belonging to the Anglican conuuunio.s are set up, and have
districts assigned to them, not by the State, but by their
Church collective, they may do with their churchyards
what they like ; but, as matters stand, their churchyards,
however provided, are as open to Dissenting parishioners
as to Church parishioners. That right the Dissenters have.
But at present it is clogged with • condition. The clergy-
man of the osOsh cannot Out the pato. of Urea churchyard
against the Dissenting parishioner, but he may insist upon
reading over every coffin that is allowed to enter the
Burial Service of the Church, except in the cases of
unbaptised persons and suicides, over whom the Church
does not permit him to read it. Now, why should he wish
to read the Burial Service over a dead Dissenter I Why
should he be eager to bestow this attention where it is not
wanted Charitable as the intention might be, there are
few clergymen who would insist upon it from any other
motive than to make the churchyard disagreeable to the
dead man's friends. The only reasonable construction of
any such clergyman's intention would be that, being
legally prohibited from excluding the dead body by physical
means, he desired to do so by spiiitual means, desired
to use • service consecrated to the most solemn duty
that man has to discharge in this world as a scarecrow or a
mosquito-protector. Whom huts clergyman whon2 official
familiarity had blinded to the beauty of the service could
be guilty of such an act? And very few clergymen, very
few indeed—fortunately for the credit of humanity it can
be said—would care to do such a thing. Ninety-nine out
of every hundred laymen would be ready to denounce it
as a sacrilegious profanation. Yet how much better are
those who would refuse to permit one who differed from
them on some small point of religious faith to use at the
grave of • dead sister, mother, wife, or daughter, any
form of wards from which he might derive consolation?
If the Dissenter has • legal right to burial in the church-
yard, those who try to impede him, whether by ending
over him • service which he does not like, or by refusing
to allow him to read • service which he does like, occupy
virtually the same position of bigoted intolerance. We
were unable to believe that any educated layman could
possibly make up his mind to take up such a position
until we found it defended by the Pall Mall Gazette. which
seems as anxious now to distinguish itself by the "bru-
tality' of its religion as formerly It was by the "bru-
tality" of its negation. Free-thinkers have reason tore-
lobe that the Pall Mall Massifs basrenounced their friend-
ship. The Dissenters, it admits, have • right to burial in
the parish churchyard, but only on ouch conditions as
the law imposes. If they will not accept the conditions,
they may go elsewhere; but they have no right to com-
plain. This Ii most clearly argued, as if by • Daniel
come to judgment, The Burial Service of the Church
la in the bend ; the Pall Mall Gazelle cannot see any other
service in the bond. But what the Gazette also fails to
see is, that this does not in the least affect the reason-
ableness or good feeling of those who keep it in the
bond, which is the only point raised when an appeal is
made to have the bond altered. The Dissenter may
show • want of dignity in wishing to lay his bones by
the side of his f wefathers or his neighbours, although in
life he did not entertain precisely the same beliefs as
they did about the Unknown; but these who try to ex-
clude him by "quiddities, quullets, CISSeI, tenures, and
tricks," surely show the want of a still more cardinal
virtue even than dignity.
We cannot believe that the narrow bigotry which
denies to Dissenters the privilege of burying their dead
in the common churchyard with whatever rights the)
prefer, is widely spread among the English laity. It is
simply incredible that the vote in the House of Commons
can represent the free opinion of the country. We have
no doubt that if the laity were polled their fillsilifer would
he that the Dissenter 'should be allowed to bury their
dead wherever they pleased, and with what service they
pleased. This certainly would be the verdict of educated
men under no obligation to obey the Church. The oppo-
sition to Burials Bills and Resolutions is rooted in Cleri-
calism. It is • strange position for the author, or eider and
abettor, of the Bill te Put Down Ritualism, to find him-
self associated in this matter with the extreme partisans
of the High Church, with the Clown of Shakespeare,
and Bishop of Lincoln. To do Mr. Disraeli justice
he seemed to feel it. Ile tried to appease his conscience,
which we have been told by very high authority is •
most active faculty in the Semitic mind, by proving that,
after all, it was • very small matter, which affect
neither Ireland nor Scotland, and not more than • third
of the English people. Not more than one-third of the
Enzlin people are buried in Churchyards; the rest are
buried ih cementries, where the relatives of the interred
lU:SY comport themselves at the brink of the grave
as they like, dance like the Shaken, or penetrate
obscene rites like the Malays, subject always to
the supervision of the police. But it is • sufficiently
well recognised principle of legislation that minorities,
however insignificant, should not be oppressed unless
their opprenton is for the good of the community; and
as nobody can preteud that the use of any Burial Service
by the Dissenters in churchyards can do ahy aim to any-
body else, except to the over-sensitive feelings of red-tape
zravediggen and frantic High Chnrchinen, with which
Mr. Disraeli dose not profess to sympathise, it was
necessary for him to profess some other reason than the
numencial insignificance of those who suffer froni the
grievance. This other reason he found in the sanitary
defects of churchyards. The question, he said, was
rather sanitary than sectarian. Now Mr. Disraeli is
always strictly logical, and by this he could only mean
one thing—that the dead bodies of Dissenters are more
unwholesome than the corpses of orthodox Churchmen.
They must be kept out of the churchyrds at all risks,
As the gravedigger would have put it. "Tour dissent is
a sore domyer of your deed hod y. Your good Church-
man will hut you many years ere he rot, and even when
be rote, there Is nothing pestilential in his smell. But
your Dissenter Is rotten before he die, soda corpse of •
very bad Disinter Is enough to infect • county. This is
law; ay, marry, is it; sanitary law."
The argument that the privilege of using their own
service in the churchyards Is only the thin end of the
wedge destined to separate Church and State, the pre-
ummary to a demand for the use of the churches, is
exceedingly plausible. It is more than plausible; it is
no doubt quite true that this modest demand is part of
a general tendency towards dlesstablishment. But it is
not so true that the concession of what is asked for in
the churchyards would help the advocates of religious
equality in their saltation for • further lopping-off of
privileges.tiw, contrary, they could desire nothing
hotter for their purposes than resistance to this demand.
Nor is It true that the use of the churchyard for burial
services cannot be granted consistently unless Dissenters
are also to be permitted to use the churches for devotional
and didactic exerriees. If those who use this argument
will reelect, they will see that there is some little difference
between the two cases; half-a-dozen dead people, how.
ever great their diversity of Opinion, can usually get on
moire quietly in the same field than half-a-dozen live
conflicting views In the same build....
twin n pr d
ac tint difference which eves the Pall Nall
Gezerte 1:11L on reconsideration, allow to be worth taking
Into account But even If the Burials Bill Is supported
by the same men who clamour for dlsestablishment, and
lilt should lead to • demand for • weekly revival of the
day of Pentecost In every parish church throughout the
country, that Is not • valid reason for He rejection. It Is
bad policy, as well as bad manta, to refuse to yield to-clay
that which you know to be right, for fear that you be
asked to-coorrow yiwid that which you believe to be
wive&