The Sun.
London, England, 1833-08-05 00:00:00

REFORM BILL.

DISSENTIENT,-
1. Because his Majesty being bound in his executive
and legislative capacity by the Coronation Oath to maintain
and preserve inviolably the settlement of the united church
of England and Ireland, and the doctrine, worship, disci-
pline, and government thereof, as try law established, within
England and Ireland, and the territories thereto belonging.
and to preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England
and Ireland, and to the churches there committed to their
charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or
shall appertain to them, or any of them ; and this Bill
being a fundamental alteration of the discipline and gn-
vernment of the Irish Church, and directly invading the
rights and privileges of the Clergy, it appears to us that
such B II cannot be passed into a law with a proper obser-
vance of the Coronation Oath.
2. Because such Bill is opposed to the wishes and inte-
rests of the great body of the Clergy in England and
Ireland, whilst the people at large have not petitioned or
expressed any desire for its adoption.
3. Because it is contrary to all justice and equity to
exempt those hitherto properly liable to tde payment of the
chinch assessments in Ireland, and to impose such burden
arbitrarily on the impoverished Protestant eergy of that
country.
4. Because the imposition of a tax on all parochial liv-
ings of a certain value in Ireland interferes with the vested
rights of the owners of advowsons, by lessening the value
of that species of property which they had acquired with-
out such diminution of value.
5. Because the abolitien of ten Irish bishoprics appears
to us to be an act of spoliation, and to afford a fa•al pre-
cedent for the future destruction of the whole Protestant
hierarchy in that country.
6. Bi-cause this Bill in its principles and enactin,nts ap-
pears to us as tending to advance the Roman C itliolic. and
to weAien the Protestant religion in Ireland, both in a
temporal and spiritual point of view; and while it pre-
pares the way for future acts of injustice, hardship, and
oppression, towards the Protestant Clay), there, it gives
to the enemies of the Reformed Church increased strength
to degrade and impoverish its ministers, to impair ita effi-
ciency, and, finally, to establi,li the R man Catholic reli-
gion in Ireland, predominant in wealth and influence.
(Signed) ERNEST.

ON THE 15SOTION THAT THE JEWS DISABILITIES REMOVAL

w,ll only stimulate the desire tor, and Imitate the intro-
duction of, v,•t mary fatal innovations.
BEXLEY. ERNEST. .
KENYON. ORFORD.
WYNFO RD. S. ROCHESTER.
COLCHESTER: I'ENSHUR,a" (for thebth and
6th reasons).

AGAINST THE REJECTION OF THE BILL FOR REMOVING

THE CIVIL DISABILITISS OF THE JEWS.
Dissentiere-1. Because it sepeais to me irreconcileable
with the rules of natur .1 justice, and with the maxi s or
!ethical wisdom, as well as repusnant to the spirit b
of the institutions under which we live atsl the religion
which we process, to exact, unless under the pressure of
necessity and for self preservation, any negative or positive
test of a man's religious faith, either as a qualification for
his serving his Prince or country in a capacity purely
temporal or political, or as a r-ndition to his enjoyment
of those privileges to which his faith and allegiance would
otherwise entitle him. Ths general ititistic • and impolicy
of all such exclusions are obvious, whatever principles ot
civil policy we adopt. If civil government b, originally
founded, as writers of great'authority (1) have contended,
and as the laws (2) passed at ti ,e revolution of 1688 set tn
to acknowledge, on a contract between the people and their
government, it follows that all from whom allegiance and
o iedience are exacted, are prima facie entitled to the
privileges secured by the contract as birthrights to the
inemb rs of the coonnunity to which they clung. It is
true that ti,e perpetration of crimes, and even some special
or peculiar circumstances may in particul ir instances, or
fur a season, justify the suspensiun ot such privileges.
Hut the burden of proof is in all suce cases
thrown upon these who enforce or maintain the
exception, and not on the party who claims the benefit of
the g• net al rule. In like manner, if, according to other
prevalent (3) and more recent notions, u alit. alone be the
principle from which the reciprocal duties of prince and
people, of government and governed, can he deduced, it is
equally clear that the application of thar principle will confer
on all from whom allegiance or obedience is expected, such
privileges and rights as are found gen rally useful in insurine
the affect ion of the stniject to the State, unless some special
or temporary circumstances should intervene to render the
suspession of the said rights and privileges in the parti-
cular instance expedient or necessary. But the burden
of proof in this, as in the other hypothesis, is thrown upon
those who enforce an exception, not on those who solicit
the benefit of a general rule. That the genius of our
Constitution is to admit all from whom it exacts the
duties of allegiance to the full enjoyments of political rights,
and especially that of an eligibility to offices and trusts of
political power, is an axiom abundantly sanctioned by his-
tory and authority, and practice ly manifested by this strik•
ing fact, that no subject of the British Crown is or has
been incapacitated from holding such offices or trusts,
except by the operation of positive statutes, and that the
common law of the land, which in the language of
the great Lord Mansfield (1), "never fails to work itself
pure by rules drawn from the fountain" of justice, would,
if unrestrained by statute, secure to every free born sub-
ject within the realm, the entire right of serving his
Prince and country in any office or trust merely political
and temporal, to which the favour of his Sovereign
might legally appoint, or the confidence of his fellow
subjects du y elect him. This view of the constitutional
right of the natural born subjects ot England is repeatedly
confirmed by Acts and Declamations in Parliament, cap,-
ciaby in the conferences which took place between the
two Houses in 1702, upon a difference relating to the
Bill of Occasional Conformity, then pending in Parlia-
ment. Upon that occasion the Lords solemnly recorded
their opinion, " that an Englishman cannot be reduced
to a more unhappy condition than to be put by law under
an incapacity to serve his Prince and country, and there-
foie nothing but a crime of the most detestable nature
ought to put him under such a disability." And the Com-
mons, though they deny the conclusion drawn by their
Lordships from these premises, yet distinctly admit that
an Englishman " is, indeed, reduced to a very unhappy
condition who is made incapable of serving his Prince
and country."
That the spirit of a religion which inculcates universal
charity, and teaches us to " love our neighbours, and to
do unto others as we would that others should do unto
us," must be averse to all exclusion of our fellow-subjects
from the benefits generally extended to their countrymen,
except on the proms of necessity, will not, I presume, be
disputed, and might be inferred by sundry texts and
parables drawn from the Holy Scriptures themselves, as
well as by quotations from the earliest and must
approved fathers of the church.
2. Because a Jew born within the King's allegiance is,
to all intents and purposes, an Englishman, and therefore
entitled to all the right of a natural born subject, save and
except such as may by the operation of statutes actually in
force be withheld or dented him.
The legal designation of a natural-born subject suffi-
ciently indicates that birth, not parentage or religious
faith, entitles him to the privileges appertaining thereunto.
The notion founded on a passage of Lord Ciike's, that
Jews, though born in England, are on the footing of alien
enemies, or stigmatized and infamous persons, has been
ousted by common sense, reason. and practice, by dicta
solemnly pronounced from the Bench, by words in Acts of
Parliament, and by decisions in Courts of Justice.
English Jews, born in the allegiance of his Majesty,
cannot be subject to the pi ivations and disabilities, any
more than they can he entitled to the exclusive jurisdic-
tions, exemptions, and privileges, which they are said to
have enjoyed before the eXpulidin of persons professing
their faith, in the time of Edward I. The passage of
Lord Coke, which was written while the law of banish-
ment, and no other relating to the Jews, was in force,
could not be meant to apply ta Jews born in Engl for,
in the persuasion of the 'writer, there were then no one
such. It has, moreover, been declared, in the course of
a solemn judgment in the Exchequer Chambers (Omy-
chund v. Barker), by Chief Justice Wilkes, to be contrary
to religion, sense, and humanity, and in that opinion no,
only rse Solicitor-General Murray, but the Judge a there
present, int luding Chief Baron Parker and Lord Chan•
cellor Hardwicke, seem to has concurred. English Jews
have been recognised and described as his Majesty's /tub-
j -co in more than one statute ; and by an Act of 10 Geo.
IV. cap. 4, they are authorized to exempt themselves from
registering their real and personal property, by taking the
oath of abjuration, without the words of " upon the true
faith of a Chrisiian." A provision of indulgence and
relief, which nut only recognises them as natural born
subjects, but manifestly implies their right of holding reap
property. That right, if never solemnly adjudged, be
cause never regularly disputed, has been virtually admitted
by various judicial proceedings, where the sale and pur
chase of lands by Jews have been brought collaterally
before the obsei vatiou of the courts.
3. Because the words in the oath of abjuration which.
render Jews scrupulous of taking it, are not in the substan
tive part ot the oath, ani. were not introduced with a
view ot confining the benefits arising from taking it to
Christians, or of excluding Jews from office or from Par-
liament. And the same words in a declaration required by a
more recent Statute to be made on the acceptance of office
was it traduced into an Act which had far its object the
relief of Priors ant Dissenters, and not the extension ot
any disabi ities and penalties to other classes ot his AI jesty',,
subjects. It seems, therefore, unreasonable as well as
unjust, that men should be exposed, by a side-wind. to
disabilities reserved in the language of our ancestors for
crimes of a most detestable nature, by the accidental
operation of provisions directed to other purposes, and
adopted without any view to that effect by the Legislature.
4. Because, even if reason and law did nut teach me
to consider all unnecessary exclusions on the ground of
religion as acts of persecution and inju-tice, I should still
question the generosity and wisdom of refusing to the
supplications of the weak that relief from disabilities
which has been recently, and in more than one instance.
accorded to the no less just, but far more peremptory de
mends of the str rig, the powerful, and the numerous.
(Signed) VASSALL HOLLAND.
August 2, 1833.
(I) Locke. (o) Vide Bill of Rights. (3) Paley, Hume,
Bentham, and others.
(4) Speech in Omychund v. Barker, Alkyas's Reports.

KING FISHERS.—Mr. LEGOOD, of the Fea-
thers Inn, North Wal.ham, his now in his possession a
nest of these beautiful little birds, five in number, which
was taken from a hole in the side of the canal, six feet
from the aurlace,—Norfolk Chronicle.

An honest Scotchman, on hearing of the
birth of the heir to King LEOPOLD, and h a intended tile,
exclaimed, " Well, Gu•le gude, that the little Duke of
Brawbant may prove a brow bantling 1" 111 ny a worst
pun has cost more trouble, for honest Sawaey never per-
ceived it until it we, pointol out,

Treasury
Prinee EsTERHAZY and Pr;nei.t TALutvamirn had in-
ti•iviewe with Visitount PAL3VEItSToN ott Saturday, at the
Foreign-office.
The -f 'MixTo has returned to hie mission at the
Court of Berlin.
Tiie Chevaiiei de NIATTos, the Brazilian Minister,
tron,.acted huain,o4 on Si,urday dt the For.lgn.nffice. The
Right Hon. Sir S. CANNING also trsnsic Pd hth,ity.4 at
the Sectetiry of Star.-'l4 offi,,e tar F Teien Affairs.
Rawl BL Low. the Prussian entertain,-d a
lect party et dinner last evening, at his residence
is
Great Cowl erland-place.
D,spatches were forwarded to his MAJESTY at Windsor
on SlVirday evening, after the breaking op of the Cabinet
Council.