The Sun.
London, England, 1841-01-25 00:00:00

CHURCII-riATES.

GREAT MEETING AT LEICESTER.
LEICESTER, SATURDAY EVENINO.—This evening the
friends of civil and religious liberty held a public meeting
at the Theatre, Horsefair-street. The meeting was one
gat up under the auspices of the Leicester Voluntary
Church Society, and had for its object to potition Parlia-
ment for the abolition of Church-rates and Ecclesiastical
Courts, a 4 well as the immediate release of Mr. William
13 ines, now lying in the county gaol for non-payment of
Church-rates. The Leitester theatre, which is a very
large one, was on this occasion crowded to excess, and,
what is curious on such an occasion, where so vast an as-
sembly was collected together, there was not to be found a
single person to express a dissentient opinion. Every sen-
timent uttered by the speakers bearing on the question of
Church-rates was loudly cheered, and every resolution
proposed unanimously adopted.
In the course of the day the Members for the borough,
Mr. Easthopo and Mr, Wynn Ellis, arrived in town, and
they were soon afterwards joined by Mr. flume and Mr.
O'Connell, the latter accompanied by Mr. Hutt, who had
arrive .1 from the Leeds festival. In the course of the day
they all waited upon Mr. Baines is his prison, and had
a long and interesting conversation with him.
At six o'clock precisely, the Mayor of Leicester, John
Bigga, Esq., accompanied by Mr. Easthopc, Mr. Wyr.n
Ellis, Mr. O'Connell, and Mr. Hume, appeared on tl e
stage, end as etch was recognized he was greeted with
loud cheers.

Amid this applause it was moved by Mr. Lacs, and se-
conded by Mr. MILES, " That the Mayor, John Biggs,
Esq., should take the chair."
Mr. thous said that it was most painful to him in the
discharge of the duties of his office, that he shosld ba
called upon to carry into effect the law against conscience ;
or ;hat ne should be required to authorise the sale of
effects, belonging to those whose conscience told the:
th, y could not obey the law. For himself, he felt it to be
his imperative duty to carry into effect the law as he found
it ; but he also felt it to "be his duty to call upon the Le-
gislature to repeal a law that he looked upon as an out-
rage upon every principle of justice—(Cheers)—a law
that in his opinion must be soon repealed if they wished to
see, peace and order established in society.—( Hear.)
The Rev. Mr. MYATT said that when, upon the impri.
sonment of Mr. Baines, now two months since, he was
called upon to address a Leicester nsscmbly, he indulged a
fond and over-confident hope that the next occasion of pre-
senting himself to their notice would he one of rejoicing,
and that it would have been kis pleasing duty to mingle hie
congratulations with theirs on the honourable release of
tha noble-hearted captive.--( Cheers.) Although the
es cut had falsified his expectations, and the prisoner re-
mained to this hour in the tenacious gripe of the Church's
executioner, he could discover nothing unreasonable in
the grounds upon which at that time he based his faith.
He was not, indeed, so foolish as to imagine—no man
even partially versed in ecclesiastical history could have
given entertainment to the idea—that the State Church
would spontaneously relinquish her bold upon her vic-
tim. Whatever else she may at times have given up—
whether a long-cherished doctrine or a favourite rule of
discipline—it was never yet known throughout the
wide and diversified range of her history, that she had
foregone a pecuniary demand, or put a check upon
her insatiable lust fur gull —(Checre.) How should
she ? Money was the life-blocd of her system. Her
energies, her zeal, her libeurs, her hopes and fears are
all identified with money. Take away her property and
she dies; touch her filthy lucre and ycu touch her sire—
(Cheers)—fee the Establishment itself is but one vast and
too successful scheme to obtain money under religious
pretences.—(Hear.) He was not, therefore, senseless
enough to suppose that, in a case of subtraction of money,
however paltry the sum, truth, justice, or religion would
weigh with her.—(Cheers.) lie knew well she would
" have her bond," even though every drop of the victim's
blood should be sacrificed to her rapacity—and he was
sufficiently convinced that appeals which in all ordinary
cases would cleave their way t 1 rough the thickest pre-
judices, and lay bare corscicnces to the very quick,
would never !peke the slightest impression upon her
imperrn 'able avarice.—(Cheers.) But he did hope that
many thousands in her communion, somewhat blind,
indeed, to her defects, hut personally free from
her characteristic vices—stung with shame at this flagrant
violetion of all right, and unable to endure the burning
blush of indignation at the foul deed done is the name of
Christianity—he did indulge the persuasion that they,
looking at the character of the prisoner, at his station, at
his high-mindedness, and at the general sympathy which
his suffering had elicited, wculd have risen up in all the
virtuous anger of insulted humanity, cried " shame" upon
the perpetrator of this outrage upon conscience, and have
given to the world their indignant protest against these
odious exhibitions of ecclesiastical malignity.—(Cheers.)
Except in a few individual cases, nothing of the kind had
taken place—the man and the gentleman had been merged
in the Churchman—and acts which thousands in their in-
dividual capacity would have loathed to perform, they did
not scorn tacitly to sanction and uphold under cover of
their Church.—( Hear, hear.) He freely confessed, how-
ever, that he had much more sanguinely anticipated re-
dress from tie legal Courts. After the emphatic opi-
nion pronounced by- Dr. Luahington in the House of
Commons upon Thorogood's case, that the only remedy
for contempt possessed by these Bishops' Courts was the
imprisonment of the person, it was not natural to conclude
that, contrary to all the analogies of law, they had power
t r proceed with the case in the absence of the defend-
ant, and to run up at their discretion a bill of costs, to
any amount that might satisfy the needy host of proctors
and doctors.—( Hear, hear.) But it had now come out
that Ecclesiastical Courts were "twice blessed"--.blessed
with the power to imprison, and blessed with the authority
to pillage; and that, if they prefer it—and who can doubt
but that in all future eases they will prefer it?—they have
unlimited licence, after pronouncing their victim in con-
tempt, to suspend for a season the pleasure of proceeding
to incarceration, and to employ the interval in heaping up
costs, with not a single item of which the defendant is ever
to be made acquainted.—(Hear, hear.) The existence
of this unique privilege they learned for the first time in
this case of Mr. Baines, and the confirmation of it by the
Courts of Law bad given rise to a pretty general idea that
the liberty of the subject was to be specially regarded by
the judges of the land; in all cases but that of disobedience
to the Church.--( Loud cheers.) He had had ono more
hope—it was hope in the dissenting community. He had
not yet abandoned Hear, hear.) The seeming calm
which had too long characterised the great body of
Boneonformists was not necessarily indicative of in-
difference. It might be, he trusted it was, the
stiffness which marked the period of thought, a drip re.
election and anxious deliberation, ere the fitti;,g hour of
energetic action had arrived—the coolness and composure
of men in council on the eve of battle.—(Hcar, h
A rumour was in circulation that London was preparing
to move.—(hear, hear.) He had reason for believing
that the rumour was well founded.—( Hear, hear.) Would
Manchester consent to lie under the stigma of stark insen-
sibility to the rights of conscience? Could Liverpool, vi-
talised lay the energy of a Voluntary Church Society, re-
main much longer mute ? Leeds had a well-earned re-
pute ion to sustain, and so had Bradford, for both took tap
the cause cf Thorogood ; they might, therefore, conti-
deafly rely upon their being afield soon after the op ping
of Parliament. Nottingham had already honoured itself
by sending an address and deputation to the prisoner,
--(Hoar.) Nottingham, of course, would not lag behind in
the general movement. The metropolis had only to give
the signal, and soon the beacon-fires of religious liberty
would bleats in every province. Men were from every
quarter of the country turning towards London Dissenters
a wistful and anxious gaze—their minds divided be-
tween hope and fear—hope that in this hour of extremity,
-when the rights of conscience were insolently trampled
under fcot, the, spirit of their forefathers would be awakened
within their bosom, and concern for religion persecuted to
bonds would impel them at last to take tie their post, and
fear lest a lax expediency, too prevalent amongst them,
should induce them to witness in silence the oppression of
a suffering brother Christian, their own degradation and
and
insult, and finally the calamitous triumph of their master's
foes.—( Cheers.) In the name of sacred truth, he raked,
tow and when do they mean to act? ila conjured them,
by the value they set upon religious liberty L-by the irepe-
eishabie fame of their noble aneos-ori—by the homage they
owed to vole ataxy Christianity—by ail that they profess to
knot of the spirituality of Christ's kingdom, to c,_vine
Iv: r I and hear their testimony, and lift up high their v ;ice
against the emplo)ment of force within the dornaies of the
Cliu-ch, in the name and for the support of the reli-
ion of Chris'.—(Cheers.) Mr. Bainee still continued
i confinement. '1 he question tow occurred, what coin-
eensation was to be awarded 11; for his long and patient
suffering? It was darkly intimated that Lord John Rus-
sell meditated adding insult to-cruelty—that he would at-
tempt to carry into effect the recommendation of the Eccle-
rasiical Commissioners, that he would give to Church-
wardens the power of levying Church-rates, and to the
Magistrates at quarter scissions authority to enforce them
by distraint. As yet, he could not believe that his Lord-
ship would venture upon so infatuated a course. They
had not forgotten his taunts, they would not put up with
his blows. Mean-spirited, cringing, fawning parasites as
he deems them, they were not sunk so low as that. The
body upon whose shoulders his Lordship had been borne
into power still had the fate of the Whig Cabinet in their
hands. Already it had too long forborne • their tenderness
for Ministers bad already assumed the aspect of treachery

to the cause committed to their keeping ; but there was,
nevertheless, some blood in them, sluggish though it
might be ; and if the Colonial Secretary was desirous of
quickening its circulation, and raising its temperature to
boiling point, he had only to propose this confirmation of
their bondage.—( Hear, hear.) What, then, were they
willing to accept as compensation for their imprison.
ment ? I answer, nothing but the total abolition
of Church-rates.—(hear, hear, hear.) Was this an
unreasonable demand ? With an income of 5,000,0001.
a year, with the undisturbed possession of all parish
churches, the property of the nation, with an aris-
tocracy of unbounded wealth professedly attached to
her communion, with bequests in hundreds of the parishes
in the kingdom especially applicable to the maintenance of
the fabric and services of the Church, with power in the
hands of herCpponents to prevent the levying of a rate in
hundreds of parishes more, was it too much to ask this
Church to give up squabbling for the paltry remnant, and
cease to annoy the consciences, and wound the selt;resTsehst
of thousands of upright, loyal, and religious men
than thisen
was the compensation they demanded.
g's wouldno t aucoe
not abolish,
pt.—(Loud i es hs
oeue
tros
r.)
s would NV a t o the
ro
long
abolish
telYetwuroeuld
deferred,
h
themselves.ith
p r
osoutly Wearieds
start
art andu
up as
theen••d w
vindicators
of their own claims. For every refusal of payment now
t w otd
exhibited, there would soon be a thousand--( Hear, hear)
prisoner there would be hundreds.
—for__(Cheers) ev e recclesiastical
y From
parish
to parish, from county to county,
the determination to pay no more Church-rates would travel
on all the fester tee in proportion to Lord John Rus-
sail's efforts to perpetuate them—until the lesson
shOuld have been: thoroughly learned by the Dissenting
community, that man owes no allegiance to the State in
relation to spiritual affairs.--( Hear, hear.) The immedi-
ate issue of this case might be extremely doubtful—it
might terminate in more stringent laws for the enforce-
ment of ecclesiastical demands, or it might wring from
an unwilling Legislature the abolition of the degrading
impost. But the great practical truth involved in it,
freedom of conscience, could not ultimately be stayed in
its progress.—(Hear.) A 3 it was now universally recog-
nised as a maxim of British law, that " a man's house
is his castle, and that, although the four winds of heaven
may whistle through it, the king of these realms dare not
set his foot within it," so must it sooner or later be re-
cognised as a principle of all Governments, that a man's
conscience is sacred, and that the statesman who dares to
intermeddle with it, not only may but ought to be re-
sisted.—(Cheers.) To this truth they swore eternal alle-
giance. Upon this in all solemnity they placed their foot,
and reared their standard to the breeze of heaven.—( Loud
cheers.) Rather than yield a foot of this ground, he said,
welcome contempt, welcome bonds, welcome death
itself.—(Cheers.) They might die in the struggle, but
the truth they contended for would lire for ever. Let the
great leviathan—the monster of the political deep—laugh
in fancied security at the shaking of the spear; let clever
but puny statesmen, like Lord John Russell, ever busying
himself with great things in a small way, utter their gibes
and parody bad verse in the delighted hearing of a House
of Commons majority, to whom anything beyond a party
squabble was matter of ignorant derision; let Blomfield in
the upper house, the house of hereditary wislom, pronounce
his oracular condemnation; and Exeter, the modern Bon-
ner, blurt his venom upon them and upon their principles.
They would tell them honestly they knew the odds, and
they were prepared to encounter them.—( Cheers ) At
all events they know their duty—they had taken their
vows : they threw down their gage to ecclesiastical domi-
nation, and from that moment they deliberately and un-
dauntedly would advance to the conflict with the fervent
prayer on their lips, " God defend the right." Ile con-
cluded by proposing the following resolution :—" That, in
the opinion of this meeting, the levying of Church-rates in
England is a grievous wrong inflicted upon a large portion
of the community--that their exaction invades the rights
I of conscience and the freedom of religious opinion - that
they lay heavy and unequal burdens on those who, at
their own expense, provide for the maintenance of places
of worship, and for that religious instruction which their
own sincere and honest convictions approve ; that they are
a fruitful source of strife, and discord, and ill-will in so-
ciety, exposing the persons of excellent and virtuous men
to cruel, capricious, and unlimited persecutions—to bound-
less vexations and large pecuniary sacrifices; and therefore,
for the sake of peace and justice, that Church-rates ought
to be at once and for ever abolished."
Mr. WYNN ELLIS was received with loud cheers. He
bid ever declared and felt that the enforcement of Church-
rates from Dissenters was contrary to every principle of
justice, and at direct variance with the letter and spirit of
that Christianity of which the Church assumed to be the
especial protector and guardian.—(Cheers ) Mr. Ellis
continued by saying, numerous authorities have at various
times been quoted; but one, to my mind, quite satisfac-
tory and conclusive, is G2d Law of Ethelred, where we
find these words concerning tithes, " The King and tho
wise men have decreed, as is just, that the third part of the
tithes be given to the compensation of the Church, a se-
cond part to the minister, and the third part to the poor."
—( Hear.) In those times, it may be as well to remark
that even tithe was a part of eleemosynary payment ; and
on the subsequent endowment of the tithe on the parish,
is it likely that the landowner would subject himself and
his lands to the payment of a rate, seeing to what pur-
poses the tithe then endowed had been hitherto de-
voted ? There exists no reason for thinking that a de-
parture then took place from that tripartite division of
the tithe to clergy, Church, and poor; so that the ques-
tion of right remaining with the objectors to a rate
at the present day, the right to consent or refuse a
rate remains with the people, and this rate can only be exer-
cised by the conscientious Dissenter its an unqualified refu •
sal. That refusal in so many large towns and parishes by
the majority ought long since to have taught the digni-
taries, the clergy, and the thinking laymen that the injus-
tice was too glaring to be submitted to, and that the rights
and consciences of Dissenters could no longer be violated,
and that it would be well to remove the disquiet by the
abrogation of all pecuniary claims and all pretensions of
ecclesiastical supremacy. The Dissenter has con:cientious
objections to support a Church in alliance with an earthly
head ; he knows nu master but Christ in spiritual matters,
and denies the right and power of the Church as by law
established to shackle that freedom of thought which an
all-wise Creator has placed beyond all human power and
subjection. The c,inscientious Christian resolves to resist
—a gloomy prison, with separation from friends, and all the
endearments of home and family may follow ' • and this is,
indeed, an evidence of his consistency, and the faith which
guides and directs him; and it ill becomes the par-
tisans of the Church to attempt to cast ridicule upon
his conduct, or to question his motives : for the
latter he is answerable only to the head of his
Church, and the attempt may give rise to questions
sufficiently perplexing to the Establishment—how came
there to be Dissenters, and what the cause of their
great increase of late years, s: Bing that their numbers ex.
ceed the population of Great Britain and Wales a century
ago?—( Hear.) The answer must be, that the clergy &ept
in luxurious ease, leaving the people a prey to the assaults
of Setan, and, but for the energies of the Dissenters, the
people, especially in the great towns, would have sunk in
ignorance, depravity, and vice; that to the Dissenters so-
ciety is under the highest obligations; they alone opposed
the torrent of infidelity, and wore unceasing in their
efforts to seek and to save ; and it ill became the Church,
now just awakening from its lethargy to a sense of the
danger from which society ha; escaped, to theew ridicule
upon the religious sentiments and views of those to whose
piety and efforts they owe their own and their country's
comparative security, and of the claims of Dissent, rs not
conceded. Will not questions most inconveniently per.
p'exin,g as to the founiatim of the Church as by law esta-
blished arise ? Her varied shiftings and changes during
that discreditable period of her history in the days of Henry,
Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth, be scrutinize'', exa-
mined, and condemned ?—(Hear, hear.) Sincerely de-
siring that these unseemly pretensions may be abated, and
that the strife may be for the gain of souls, rather than
_worldly glory, greatness, and pre-eminence, I heartily de-
sire that the Church will co-operate in an act of justice
and right to Dissenters; and that all Christian men unite
in promoting the designs and commands of the Gospel,
remembering that great commandment, that they love one
another.--( Cheers.)
The resolution was then put from the Chair, and
passed unanimously.
Mr. Htlem, was received with loud cheers. He was not
one of 'those who wished to countenance violence on any
occasion; but he was one who wished to see men, when
they professed- independent principles, act up, to their
opinions, and prove the sincerity of their conviction,
by advocating and maintaining them with all the powers
that they had.—( Hear, hear.) The Dissenters had failed
to do so, and they had been trampled upon as they de-
served.—(Cheers.) He had been, he said, much struek
with one thing that had fallen from the gentleman who
had proposed the first resolution, an& he wishedtto ask that
gentleman whether he was certain that he could be correct in
what he had stated with respect to Lerd John Russell and
the part that Noble Lord was about to take on this sub-
ject? He had been present in the House of Commons and
had heard what had fallen from the Noble Lord when he
advocated the abolition of this oppressive tax oppressive
not so much in amount, but oppressive because it marked
inferiority in one class and superiority in another.—( Hear,
hear.) He was ono of those who were opposed to the do..
mination of the Church, for he held that every man in this
country ought to be, and by the Constitution was, entitled
to equality of civil rights. All men were entitled
to have their religious feelings respected and their civil
rights equally maintained. The man, then, who professed
it, sincerity and honesty his conscientious opinions should
not be persecuted for so doing. The Dissenters proved
that they were perfectly sincere, for he knew that they sa-
crificed advantages which they might have had if they corr.
plied with the Church forms. They did not do so, and
that to him was a proof their sincerity. Let him not be
told, then, that the Dissenters were not both honest and
sincere. No proof could be stronger than a man maintaining
his principles at the sacrifice of his private interests. Disc
senters had, highly to their honour, always done so; for their
opinions they had sacrificed place, emolument, and high
rank in society.— ( Hear.) But then they had not done their
duty, and he would tell them how. When Lore! Althorp,
from his sense of the injustice of the Church-rates, had
risen in his place in the House of Commons to denounce
them, and a motion was brought forward on the subject,
Lord John Russell, he could say, made a speech on the
occasion which showed the necessity that some measure
shnul.l be passed which would remove this injustice. Lord
Althorp certainly on that occasion proposed a measure, or
rather the means of putting an cud to the cause of these
disturbances in every parish, and that once for all would
remove this evil from the Dissenters. It might appear
strange that, in an assembly like the present, he (Mr.
Hume) should rise up to say. that though the Dissenters
did not, as
we unde rsteod, object to this plan, yet that he
said that he
never would consent that the Church-rates,
even according to their present mode of collection, should
be put an end to for the purpose of placing them on the
consolidated funds of the country.-_( Hear.) And before
be left this subject, he to state that he moved an
amendment to the effect Lat it h
the House,
before they were warranted was
in ipnleacTugbentth?is additional
burden on the consolidated funds of the country, to
look to he administration of the ample funds already in
the possession gt the Church. On this
question going to
a division, he Wa3 beaten by a majority of 130 ; but he