The Sun.
London, England, 1834-03-13 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS•

In again reeommendiag the object of a general re-
gistry of births, marriages, and deaths, to which we
yesterday adverted, we need scarcely enter into any
proof of its extensive utility. Not only the useful-
ness, but the paramount importance of such a re-
gistration, is now acknowledged by all parties. It
has formed the basis of our former imperfect legisla-
tion en the subject. It has led to more complete
institutions for effecting its purpose in other countries,
where less resistance to change, when that change is
an evident improvement, has been experienced. And
on a more accurate examination of the deficiencies
of our present system, and the advantages of a great
reform, an universal concurrence of opinion seems to
have been established that a new measure is abso-
lutely necessary. Wherever a tolerable local ad-
ministration exists, we are sure to find a consider-
able degree of care bestowed upon parish re-
gistration, a systematic regularity observed in
continuing it, and a considerable expense in-
curred in preserving its accumulating records. In
countries so opposite in their forms of policy as
Spain and Prussia, as Austria and France, we find
rules of registration, or organized plans for effecting
it, infinitely superior to our own, and calculated to
furnish us with useful lessons. Whether the ministers
of the established church, or civil officers appointed
by the state, perform the office of registrars, an
accurate registration includes all classes and all
religions, without distinction of condition, rank, or
sect. The code of France, in this respect, seems
particularly worthy of attention, if not of imitation.
It prescribes the registration of births, marriages,
and deaths as a mere civil transaction; it provides a
civil officer in every parish or commune to keep and
to continue the record, and it enjoins on all French
subjects to announce the events in their families
which that officer is required to register. In doing so,
it makes no attempt to interfere with the conscience
of individuals, or to dictate in religious observances. It
respires so baptismal rite, no marriage ceremony, no
funeral service, as an accompaniment to the civil act of
duty or privilege. The parties may conform to their
own religious system in these respects as they please,
while the historical record of the most important
events in the civil annals of their families is rendered
independent of any compliance with the forms of
their religious worship or the tenets of their reli-
gious faith. As Catholics or Protestants, they may
of course celebrate the baptism of their children in
their own way, and at their own time, while the
civil officer only records the birth of their infants.
As Catholics, or Protestants, or Jews, their marriage
is registered before a civil officer, while they may
go to the church, the conventicle, or the synagogue,
for the religious sanction of their matrimonial
union; and as Catholics, Protestants, or Jews, they
are debarred from interring their dead till they have
announced to the registrar their names and the
circumstances of their death, though they may
afterwards resort to any religious acts which they
please to solemnize their decease or to con-
secrate their memory. Parents are required
within three days after the birth of a child,
to produce it to the registrar of the commune,
that its entry into the world may be recorded. In
marriage the place of celebration and the names
of the parties, with those of their respective pa-
rents, must be recorded. And no interment can
take place, without previous notice to the record-
ing officer of the coninzuna of the circumstances of the
deceased's death, his name, his age, his profession,
and domicile, attested by two of his nearest friends
or relatives. The accuracy of these parish records
has never been questioned, and their preservation
is secured against interpolation, as well as their
utility extended, by duplicates or copies lodged at
the tribunal of the district, or arrondissement, in
which each commune is situated. From these a
more general account is drawn in the capital,
comprising extensive statistical information on
the progress of mortality, or the amount of
diseases, the state of morals, as indicated by
the number of marriages or illegitimate births,
and the general movement of population. That
the great body of the people regard compli-
ance with such a record as no hardship, or
rather consider obedience to the law as a pri-
vilege, may be inferred from the circumstance that
this branch of the French administration has been
perpetuated with care in Belgium and other parts of
Napoleon's dominions from which the French arms
have since been withdrawn or expelled. But if such
a registry of births, marriages, and deaths can be
found so useful and important in other nations, its
immense benefits must be peculiarly felt, or its more
pressing necessity must be peculiarly recognized, in
the case of England. From the enormous extent of
cur empire in opposite quarters of the world—from
the migratory and enterprising habits of our people,
driving them from home to court fortune in our colo-
nies, or to seek occupation on stations of distant
service—and from the great revolutions which the
free operation of our laws permits in the circum-
stances of individual., some of whom, raised from
a humble origin to wealth and distinction, are less
solicitous to maintain their relationship with the class
which they have left than to court alliances with
that to which they have been raised—the utility of a
record by which the identity of persons may be
ascertained wherever they may have married or
died, and the right to property secured to their
heirs or relatives, must be too evident to allow a
doubt on the subject. If it were necessary, we might
appeal to the advertisements which we every day
see for the heirs or relatives of intestate persons
dying with property in our colonial possessions, or
to the amount of unclaimed dividends at the Bank
of England, for a proof of our position. This is en-
tirely independent of the incalculable advantages
which we might derive from a c:-meet registration of
births, marriages, and deaths, in a statistical, philan-
thropical, or medical point of view. By such records
we should have known better the movements of our
population,—the effect of the improved police of our
cities on the public health,—the result of increasing
manufactures on the national longevity,—the con-
sequences produced by the appearance or gra-
dual extinction of certain epidemics, and a
great number of other points which we need
not now enumerate. Above all, we should
have learned not to commit the blunders
in calculating the probable duration of life,
on which several of our insurance companies
ate founded. if these facts are admitted, it will
likewise be as readily allowed that our present sys-
tem of registration is, for any general purpose,
either totally useless or actually deceptive. It re-
cords only baptisms, and not births, in a country
where great bodies of dissenters object to the ritual
by which baptisms are celebrated ; and it records
only funerals, and not deaths, where the esta-
blished clergy alone are called to perform a funeral
service to which many dissenters entertain a reli-
gious repugnance. Besides, these parish registers,
imperfect as they are from these causes, are care-
lessly kept, are sometimes mutilated, are sometimes
interpolated, and at other times wantonly exposed
to loss or damage. They are, in fact, parsons' and
not parish registers, and in no respect answer the
purpose of accurate or secure parish annals. For
this purpose it is necessary that they should be a
civil instead of an ecclesiastical record—that they
should state the birth of a parishioner, though they
are not hiought to the baptismal font,

"Or have their names With holy rite applied,"

that they should state a marriage, though no esta-
blished priest blessed the union,—and a death,
though no funeral service was said over the grave.
Fur this purpose it would appear necessary that the
registration should he universal,—that to be univer-
sal, it should be compulsory,—and that to render
compulsionjust or equitable, the most easy means of
compliance with the law should be provided for all.
This latter poirrt, or, in other words, the invention
of a machinery by which a secure and universal re-
gistration may be effected constitutes the great prac-
tical difficulty which meets the legislator. Some
may object to the establishment of a civil registrar
in every parish as likely to entail on the country great
expense. Jut the objection is founded on a mit-

taken notion, that beeause in England and Wales,
as we find by the Poor Law report lately published,
there are 15,535 parishes, as many registrars would
he required as there are parishes. But, in point of
fact, 511 of these parishes have less than 30 inha-
bitants, and no less than 1,170 of them are not
peopled with 100 parishioners. In such cases it would
be preposterous to establish a registrar, with so insig-
nificant a task to perform as the making of some half
dozen of entries in a parish volume in the course of
a year. The overseer, being a constant official, and
accustomed to keep books, may probably be em-
ployed for the purpose_ If the bill to be introduced
be in other respects eligible, we see no objections
to intrust to the magistrates in quarter sessions a
new circumscription of districts for registration, in
cases where there are a great number of smaller
parishes ; while in cases where the parishes are so
large or so wealthy as already to require and to pay
the services of a fixed assistant overseer, the duty
might be intrusted to him. At any rate, returns or
copies of the register should be transmitted to the
clerk of the peace every year, or every six months,
in England, as to the Procureur du Roi in the dis-
trict tribunals in France, and a particular office of
record should be set apart for them at the expense
of the county, in which they might with facility be
consulted. A general analysis of the whole to he
presented to Parliament every year, or every five
years, would require that attested abstracts or copies
of these returns should be sent to a metropolitan
office from the office of the clerks of the peace in
the different counties.—Time:.
It seems Lord John Russell—with reference to
his patronage of Mr. Gleig—stated in the House
of Commons " that he had nothing with which to
reproach himself." If this defence of himself had
not been made, as the public opinion has been very
decidedly expressed against this abuse of power—
and it is probable, therefore, that so disgusting an
act will not be repeated—the subject might have
been dropped. But those who have been the or-
gans of the general indignation, owe it to themselves
to show that the noble Paymaster of the Forces has
promoted an individual unworthy of his favour.
The proof of this position need not be rested upon
a repetition of the notorious facts antecedent to
he appointment, but on his conduct subse-
quently to it. Mr. Gleig, in his published let-
ter, says, " I am not, nor ever was, the edi-
tor of any newspaper, either in Kent, or else-
where. I plead guilty to the charge of having
written various papers in opposition to the Reform
Bill. But from the moment the fate of this mea-
sure became determined, I ceased to make politics,
in any shape, the subject of my literary labours,
Arc." It will be recollected that the Reform Bill
received the royal assent in May, 1832 ; in the
ensuing October the following letter (which we
take from the Maidstone Gazette of Tuesday) was
addressed, in the hand-writing of the Rev. Gen-
tleman, to a member of Sir William Geary's com-
mittee, who was a candidate for West Kent, upon
conservative, otherwise anti-reform principles ! The
triumph of Sir Edward Knatchbull over the re-
form candidate in East Kent, was mainly attributa-
ble to the zeal of the clergy (among whom Mr. Gleig
was the most prominently active), and theiinfluence
that the large possessions of the church of Can-
terbury gave them in that district :

" Ash, near Wingham, Oct. 14, 1832,

" SIR,—I beg particularly to call your attention to an article
which will appear in the Kentish Observer of Thursday next.
It refers to the great importance of using the press in favour of
conservative principles ; and calling upon all well-disposed
men to support ova new and Tory paper.

" One principle object of the gentlemen by whom this publi-
cation has been set on foot is, to render it an organ of sound
principal both in West and East Kent. A similar disposition
prevails, I am aware, among Sir Wm. Geary's most active sup-
porters, by whom, indeed, the proposition has been made, that
an office should be regularly opened at Maidstone. To that we,
of East Kent, will gladly accede, provided your committees
undertake, in order to defray the expense, that 300 copies of
the paper shall be purchased in West Kent. In this case •
CERTAIN NUMBER OF COLUMNS WILL BE REGULARLY RESERVED
FOR YOUR COMMUNICATIONS, and we shall have at last, what the
country has long wanted, an able and sound paper.
" I make no apology for writing to you thus, because though
personally unknown, I am well aware of your real and activity
in the good cause.
I am, Sir, your very obedient servant,
" To , Esq. " G. R. GLEIG."
Thus far the latera scripta. We find further
in Mr. Gleig's Kentish Observer, of January 17,
1833—six months after the passing of the Reform
Act—that he attended a public political dinner at
Ramsgate, and from the report given in that paper
of his speech on the occasion (which doubtless
passed under his own eye before it was printed), we
subjoin a short extract :
" The struggle had of late been one of death—a struggle
which has brought not only our civil institutions, but our re-
ligion and the morals of the country into hazard—for he need
not tell them that in all countries the triumph of anarchy and
the outpourings of popular fury carried off both religion and
good morals in the tide.—(Loud cheers.) He conceived, then,
that with such a prospect before them, the clergy were not only
justified, but in duty bound, to lend all the assistance in their
power towards the averting of such calamities. And hence it
was, that they had cotne forward to fight in the same ranks with
their brethren of the laity. If it should please Providence to
bring back again the day of good government and order, then
they might rely upon it that the clergy would fall back with
thankfulness to those quiet circles from which they had emerged
with regret—but should those times not return, he trusted that
the clergy would never be found traitors to their country and
their God" The rev. gentleman then gave as his toast—
" Those high-minded men who had fought their battles in
other Parliaments, but whom the wild enthusiasm of the mo-
ment had driven into private life.' "

Mr. Gleig, in his letter since his appointment, gives
as his reason for altering his course since the Reform
Act passed, " Because he always believed, and must
continue to believe, that it was his duty as a clergy-
man to set an example to those around him of
obedience to the laws, and attachment to the con-
stitution of his country." We leave these docu-
ments to the consideration of Lord John Russell
without comment. Mr. Gleig has shown a perti-
nicity in adhering to the old corruptions unparalleled
in his profession, except in the instance of the
priests of Spain and Portugal, who, like the Con-
servative clergy of this country, are seen leagued
to ❑phold all profitable abuses.— ilforningebronicle.
The petition presented yesterday from Birming-
ham by Mr. Wilks stated that there were thirty-two
dissenting chapels in that town, and only thirteen
churches of the establishment, and that 12,000
children were educated by the Dissenters, and only
4,000 by the Church. This furnishes a tolerable
criterion of the relative strength of the Dissenters
and Episcopalians in that great town. A memorial
to the government has been transmitted to us from
Edinburgh, agreed to at a public meeting of the
Dissenters of Edinburgh and Leith, calling in strong
and determined language for a separation of the
union between Church and State :
" They call (they say) for the adoption of measures by which
religious opinions shall cease to be the grounds of difference
between citizens in respect of civil or constitutional privileges,
by which every kind of direct taxation for the support of any
religious system shall be abolished, and by which the property
and revenues at present wasted in upholding two sects that em-
brace only a minority of the people, shall (after due considera-
tion of the claims of its present incumbents) be applied to
some civil national purpose ; as, for example, the remission
of taxation."

The Edinburgh Dissenters endeavour to prove
that the establishment of a sect Leces=arily renders
that sect inimical to good government, and that
there is nothing singular in the hostility of the
clergy of the establi-hment to a reform ministry.
" The Memorialists (they say) object to Church Establish-
ments, because they imply a right in Rulers to legislate in mat-
ters of religion, which they will never concede to any human
authorities. Such institutions are thus oppressive to conscience,
the principle of religious loyalty, which owns God alone
as its Lord. But they are no less politically expedient. The
elevation of one sect necessarily produces the degradation of all
the rest ; and as it creates a powerful political body, with in-
terests different from, and it may be adverse to, those of the
nation at large, and allies this body with the Executive and
the Legislative, it throws the people into divisions and parties,
whose mutual jealousies embarrass the movements of govern-
ment, and render insecure all our political institutions. Every
Dissenter who has sense to feel, and spirit to resent injustice,
can be only, as it were, semi-loyal, so long as the state is in
union with the church ; and the church, so long as it depends
upon the state, must urge it to withhold those free and impar-
tial institutions, which secure that every class of citizens shall
have its just influence in the constitution. The experience of
this and of all countries amply demonstrates that the most im-
placable enemy to freedom, and therefore to good government,
is an established church."

However, the Scotch Dissenters do not expect

that these views shall be adopted as a matter of
course and without delay :
" That they should be adopted rashly they do not desire. On
the contrary, it is their decided opinion, that both in fairness to
the large and influential body of British Dissenters, and in
justice to the country, whose dearest interests are at stake, no
measure of any kind should be adopted, without being preceded
by a free and extensive inquiry into the general condition of
religion in these realms."—Morning Chronicle.

It is quite as difficult to defend the practice of
impressing seamen upon any ground of justice or
morality as to defend negro slavery; and why ?
They are both the exercise of the tyranny of the
strong on the defencelessness of the'weak. They are
both a robbery of the person and liberty of man, by
the hand of power, unchecked by justice. Com-
mercial cupidity first tore the simple African from
his native shores and his wild freedom to toil and
crouch in chains beneath the overseer's whip, in the
"house of bondage" of our sugar plantations. What
is called a state necessity first introduced the inde-
fensible practice of manning our vessels of war with
seamen torn from their homes and their families by
the hand of savage violence. Such "necessity"
may well be called the " tyrant's plea." The ne-
cessity which makes the Arab of the desert plunder
the unprotected traveller is an equally valid excuse
for violence and spoliation. The hero of Hounslow-
heath had as good an excuse for stopping those way-
faring persons who could afford to relieve his
necessities at the point of the pistol. What
signifies it that some lawyers, anxious to re-
commend themselves to power by finding reasons for
any established abuse, have pleaded immemorial
usage in its favour. The argument of usage was
as valid in support of ship-money without vote of
Parliament ; and yet, after Hampden's glorious
struggle with the Crown, and the opinions of Crown
lawyers and judges in its favour, it was declared to
be unconstitutional and illegal. So was the argument
of immemorial usage in favour of general warrants;
yet it did not avail, because the principle of general
warrants violated all notions of justice ; and it is a
maxim of the law of England, that usage or cus-
tom cannot make any practice legal which is
obviously unreasonable, unjust, or absurd. Sir
Michael Foster endeavoured to trace the practice
of impressing seamen to the common law. It was
a hold attempt, no doubt, to try and reconcile
the " perfection of reason" with the perfection of
injustice. Sir Michael Foster failed in showing that
the common law ever sanctioned impressment; but
had he succeeded, what then ? He would have still
left the question where he had found it, for it would
not bring him one inch nearer to being able to prove
that any practice so monstrously unjust and op-
pressive should not be abolished, as violating not
only the principles of a free constitution, but being
utterly at variance with the genius of civilized so-
ciety. He who uproots this ferocious custom from
the land will deserve the thanks of his country and
of human nature. Our Whig ministers will never
do it, any more than extirpate any other great abuses
which they used to rail at in the days of their po-
litical privations and patriotism, unless compelled to
it by the irresistible power of public opinion—a
power that can make a Tory as well as a Whig Go-
vernment bend to the wishes of the nation. We,
therefore, advise Mr. Buckingham, who has, very
creditably to himself, taken up this great question,
to persevere. It is a cause that will bear repeated
repulses, at the hands of either ,of the avowed op-
ponents or the renegade friends of liberal principles
and enlightened policy. Whatever defeats it may
suffer, it has that within itself which must make
victory certain—something that demands the sup-
port of every heart and mind not callous to the cries
of humanity—not insensible to the demands of jus-
tice. The glory of the British flag will not be less
bright, by cleansing it from the stain of oppression.
—Morning Herald.

COURT OF CHANCERY, MARCH
12.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL V. THE HABERDASHERS' COM-

PANY.

This was an information filed against the Haberdashers'
Company, that an annual payment of Si., left them by a
person named Hazelfoot, in order to enable them to keep
up their stock of corn for the supply of the markets of the
city of London, might be applied under the direction of
the Court. The Vice Chancellor dismissed the infortna-
tion with costs, as one that could not be supported, and
on the ground thEit the bequest was not a charitable one.
Against this decision the appeal was brought. His Lord•
ship was clearly of opinion that the appeal must be dis-
missed, and with costs.