The Sun.
London, England, 1834-05-20 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times of yesterday contained a report
of last Saturday's meeting, calling itself the
" Protestant Society for the Protection of
Religious Liberty," when Lord Durham took
the chair. This society, under the comprehen-
sive name of " Protestant," is, and has always,
for between 20 and 30 years, been in fact a
society of Dissenters. The crisis in which the
Dissenters now stand,—the sanguine eager-
ness with which that body had been pursuing
a series of objects of much real importance to
their welfare as members of society, but with-
held from them by the existing law—the bitter-
ness of their disappointment at some recent oc-
currences, and the unwarrantable violence of
the consequent declarations and measures
adopted by many amongst them—had con-
spired to attach an interest to the meeting con-
voked for Saturday, of which there was no pre-
vious example. Some of the dissenting speak-
ers, to do them justice, were not slow to ac-
knowledge, in becoming terms, the progress
of a kindly and liberal feeling towards
them, which has been manifested by a
large portion of members of the Established
Church ; and we must add, that if the senti-
ments of our own brethren of the church of ,
England, on seeing the poor attempt at relief
to the Dissenters, miscalled " Lord John Rus-
sell's Bill," could be fairly examined and can-
vassed, there would be found in them a disap-
pointment, if not quite so bitter or resentful, at
least as disinterested and sincere, as that of the
loudest murmurers among those very Dissenters.
Mr. Wilks, the secretary, enumerated to the
meeting a few instances of individual unkind-
ness, or want of courtesy, shown to Dissenters
by members of the Established Church, which,
however disagreeable in themselves, we must
say had little to do with the proper object of the
meeting, which we suppose must have been to
promote an amelioration of the laws that pressed
upon the comforts or worldly welfare of the
non-conformists,—not to attempt the impracti-
cable and fiivolous purpose of mending
the manners, or tempers, or tastes, of
particular persons. Such a course might help
to exasperate the angry feelings now too preva-
lent with certain classes of dissenters, and to
put them upon the use of extravagant and
offensive language, thereby blowing the coals
between them and the sticklers for their perse-
cution ; but we can hardly imagine Mr. Wilks
to have been governed by such a motive.
There were many things referred to as griev-
ances by Mr. Wilks, which are familiar under
that description to readers of this journal—such
as the questions of registry, of the celebration
of marriage, and of admission to graduate in
the universities ; all of which demand from
parliament the most prompt attention and
redress. At the same time there are one
or two matters of another kind, which seem
to us to have been either unfairly stated
by Mr. Wilks, or to have justified in-
ferences which that gentleman omitted to de-
duce from them. It is not true that the dis-
senters ought to feel themselves placed in a
worse situation with regard to church-rates by
Lord Althorp's measure, than they had been
previously. Nor are they " insulted" when
no insult has been meant. They are now (if
the bill be persevered in) called upon to con-
tribute, in common with the whole nation, out
of the general revenue of the country, their
share of 250,0001. per annum, for the repair of
churches. They had paid their proportion of
near treble that sum, in the offensive form of
church-rate. Mr. Wilks need not exaggerate
an injustice to obtain the reparation of it. The
church-rate measure of Lord Althorp is good
so far as it goes, by diminishing the amount of
the rate, and changing it from a direct to an
indirect contribution. But there is, never-
theless, so much of adherence to a vicious
principle in the bill, as must, we apprehend,
be fatal to • it. The church has, at least
prospectively, the means of defraying this
strictly ecclesiastical charge out of her
own revenues. The estates of deans and
chapters ought hereafter to become available
to the wants of the church itself, instead of
being reserved to indulge the laziness of indi-
vidual pluralists or sinecurists, and the destina-
tion of part of such revenues to the ends for
which church-rates had been hitherto levied,
ought to have been held out to the country by
Lord Althorp as a distinct principle of his mea-
sure. The surplus left, after such appropria-
tion, might be most beneficially applied, so far
as it went, to one of two objects of essential
value to the church—either to the increase of
small livings, or to the formation of a fund for
the support, in the decline of life, of super-
annuated clergymen, no longer capable of ser-
vice in the active ministry of religion. Mr.
Wilks assumes much credit to the " voluntary
principle," for the great increase, within the
last seventy years, of dissenting congregations
iii Wales. Why is that ? Because from the
wretched, the despicable, and most impolitic
scantiness of the funds reserved for the main-
;:enance of the established clergy, and the
impassibility of obtaining, in many cases,
educated and competent ministers to undertake
the duty, the quality of the religious in-
struction delivered was so bad as to offer no
inducement to rational minds to continue mem-
bers of the establishment when anything more
tempting offered. Be this as it may, the Dis-
senters have begun to play an offensive and
dangerous game. One of the resolutions passed
1)v the above meeting, and more than one of
the speeches uttered there, insisted on the " se-
par4tlgrl of church and state," that is, on an
entire overthrow of the existing church esta-
blishment, to favour an experiment of the " vo-
luntary principle," by a confiscation, we take for
"graie,ted, of the whole property of the church,
since toe Dissenters disavow all notion of seiz-
ing palp of it. This, we can tell our Dis-
senting fellow,subjects, they will not succeed
in. The Church of England is stronger than
they flatter their own prejudices by suspecting.
She has immense power—she is weak no where
but in her abuses. The Ministers have been
shortsighted to infatuation in not correcting
these, mid thereby rallying not only the entire
body of members of the establishment in defence
fit* its constitutional rights, but the sound and more
sober portion of the Dissenters likewise. There
are bills now actually in progress for redress-
ing all but one of the solid grievances of the
dissenters. The Registry Bills and Marriage
Bill, brought in by Mr. Brougham, cover
everything of which they can seriously com-
plain, but the exclusion from degrees in col-
leges, and the imperfect measure relating to the
church rates. Two main abuses of the church
of England are attacked by the Chancellor in
his proposed bills for the abolition of pluralities,
and the prevention of non-residence. The ex-
tinction of tithe in its present shape is a pledged
measure. We have, from the beginning, been