The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-06 00:00:00

CHURCH-RATES-JOHN THORO•

GOOD.
(From the Dublin Freeman's Journal.)
It appears to be nearly " all up" with the collectors
of the Church-rates in England. The persecution
Of poor John Thorogood has had a very different
effect from what they expected. They thought all
opposition to their unjust and iniquitous demands
might be crushed for ever by the " strong arm of the
law ;" but, fools that they were, they forgot that we are
uow arrived at a period of the world's existence when a
law must be just that its arm may be strong. The
ponderous lever sinks into a fragile rod when there is
rottenness within it. Hence it is, that whatever be John
Thorogood's fate (and the people of England are re-
solved that, as far as lies it, their power, it will not be
one of unalleviated bitterness, for subscriptions are pour-
ing in from all quarters)—whatever by poor Thorogood's
fate, the late of tha imposition seems at the present
moment to be worse. A. cry has gone abroad against
it—the public mind is roused in opposition to the
odious impost. We all know that there is but little
sympathy for the Church of England. The majority of
her children have long since left her semi-Popish bosom
to wander in the paths of their own waywardness, and
the few who still remain cling to her by precarious ties.
England is a nation of Dissenters. Are then, the few
Churchmen scattered through it fools enough to imagine
that they will eventually compel all those sturdy and
self-willed fellows to put their shoulders to the ricketty
walls of their half ruined edified, and prop it up ? The
Church-rates are ostensibly intended for the repairs of
the churches. Alas, it is not the material houses alone
which require repairs ; the whole moral structure is
bad within ; it was rotten from the commencement,
and it will require more than the shillings for which the
parsons are persecuting the Dissenters, to prevent it
from tumbling into total and desolating ruin.
(From the Brighton Guardian.)
Again the rampant Church begins to excite!public at-
tention and public odium. The case of Mr. John
Thorogood confined for eleven months in Chelmsford
gaol for not paying a Church-rate of ss. 6d. is exciting
the anger of the Dissenters and the commisseration of
the general public. A great meeting was held a short
time back at Leicester to take this case into considera-
tion, which betoLns the renewal once more of the war
against Church-rates. The clergy will take no warning,
they will abate none of theie arrogant pretensions, they
seem, in fact, to become every day more haughty and
insulting, and must be resolutely resisted. Thorogood'e
case will, we hope, excite the Dissenters to make one
great, general, and united effort, and then they may
hope to get rid of Church-rates.

At Bradford, in Yorkshire, a rate has been refused by
a majority of mere than three to one, the whole rate-
payers apparently having polled, for 3,192 persons voted
against the rate, arid 993 for it. This glorious defeat of
the Church•rate party, which has just been imitated at
Newport in the Isle of Wight, is attributed to the in-
dignation which the case of Thorogood has excited and
will continue to excite. It is not to be borne, when the
payment of a just debt of forty times ss. is no longer
enforced or can be enforced by incarcerating the person
of the debtor, that an exaction by a body of priests, for
their purposes and contrary to the consciences of indivi-
duals, should be enforced by incarcerating the bodies of
Dissenters by an Ecclesiastical process issued by an
Ecclesiastical Court. This is contrary to all common
sense, it is eontrary to the humanity of the age, and
must be put an end to.
For eleven months has Mr. Thorogood, from an
opinion that he was bound conscientiously to resist the
payment of a rate levied for the behoof of a Church
which he never uses, and to remunerate priests whose
doctrines he disapproves, been shut up in a cold noisome
gaol, to the injury of his health and the ruin of his busi-
ness. If Englishmen suffer such oppression to be
worked in the land, they will no longer deserve the
character of free or even of honest men. They will be
the slaves of the priesthood, and the mere tools of their
power and their vengeance.

REGISTRATION OF BlRTHS.—Several cler-
gymen, especially in Kent and Sussex, have circulated
the following handbill among their parishioners, pro-
fessedly for the purpose of explaining the Act of Regis-
tration Much inconvenience having occurred to
some by a misunderstanding of the Act of Registration,
as far as burial is concerned, a word or two may be
needful to disabuse the public mind respecting a part
of that law. Be it observed, then, by all whom it may
concern, that registration by a civil officer is totally
separate from baptism by a spiritual minister, and that
every minisbor of the Church is bound not to bury the
corpse of any unbaptised person under any circumstances
whatever. That registering the name is not in any
way a spiritual ceremony ; neither when the name
of a child has been registered does that entitle it to
Christian burial. And not to use unnecessary expres-
sions in so plain a matter, let it be particularly remem-
bered, that no minister of the Church is allowed to per-
form the funeral service over any body which shall have
died without the baptism of the Church, and that it is
an error to suppose that the Registrar, who writes a
child's name in a book, has the power to ensure for
that child the funeral of a Christian. In accordance,
therefore, with the explanation which is here laid down,
of !that law commonly called the Registration Act'
let it be understood as a rule concerning burial, that the
Rubric remains unaltered, and that the officiating
the
clergyman of a parish is not permitted to perform
funeral service over the dead body of any person who
shall die unbaptised by a minister of the Church:'
TUB WEATHER.—This year seems likely to
go out in the same way as it came in—in water and
fog- Low-lying lands are under water, and nowhere
has the average quantity of wheat been sown, on ac-
count of the soaked state of the ground ; so that unless
the spring be unusually dry, there will be another
scanty crop nearly all over the country from the seed
pot being sown.---Shetjleid/riv.