Star.
London, England, 1824-03-30 00:00:00

di* state of the law, such had been the good nature ol
the people, that there had been no collision among
them. The usual practice had' been to bury the Ca-
tholic without any display of the peculiar rites of the
' Catholic Faith. lie was happy to state the fact, as it
proved that religious differences were not of that nit-
akieasable nature that had been commonly supposed.
—As long as that was the case, it was unnecessary to
have tecoutse to prospective regulations. But within
the last year, giounds of dissention had arisen, and con-
tradictory statements had been made. He believed,
whenever these had occurred, they had arisen from a
sense of duty. The Government could not, from the state
of the existing law, interpose with effect ; and a new
enactment had become indispensably necessary. By the
present state of the law, if carried into effect, the 'great
bogy of the Catholics in Ireland would be excluded
from the tombs of-their forefathers, and the dearest feel-
ings of human nature—feelings common to all mankind,
in eVery age, would be violated. The lion: Gentleman
said, cne remedy was to have sepaiate places of inter-
ment, butaliat he must deprecate, as tending to fix a
perpetual bar, ier between the Protestant and the Catholic.
The second was, to give the Catholic an absolute. tight,
under certain limitations. By the present Bill, the Pro-
testant Clergyman was to have the power to grant the
permission of burial. The Protestant Clergyman was
not bound to admit to burial a Protestant, and could
not be legally punished for a refusal, much less was he
bound to perform the burial of a Catholic. By the pre-
sent Bill, every Dissenter was entitled to burial in a
Protestant church-yard. If the Clergyman refused, he
was bound to state the. reason to the Ordinary, snd he
to the Lord' Lieutenant. The duty was in fact madc
mandatory upon the Protestant Clergyman: cases,
might arise, in which the permission might be capii-
ciously refused, of might petulantly be abused. But it
would be time enough to deal with such cases when they
should actually arise. Neither did the Bill afford any
well-founded cause of alarm to the members of the Esta-
blished Church, but rather relieved them from an irk-
some duty. They were new enabled to do that by law,
which in almost every case they had been in the habit
of doing without law.- He should move that the Bill
be read a second time. —The Bill was read a second
time, and committed for to-morrow.
On the motion that the House should resolve itself into a Com-
mittee of Supply,
Mr. W. 11 'WA NIS begged to put a questiol to the Right
honourable Home Secretary, with respect to a MS. lately flisco-
irered, and said to be the undoubted- work of Milton. He under-
stood there was no question whatever as to the genuineness of the
work ; that it was in the hand-writing partly of Phillips, Milton's
nephew, and bore otherwise suilleirne marks of 9tiebenticity ; and
he was desirous, therefore, of knowing how it had been disposed of,
and whether it was to be printed?
Mr. Secretary PEEL said, that the MS. in question had been
found among sonic State Papers. It was a theological work, de
Dei etilil4, treating o( the truths of the Christian religion, and no
doubt, as far as evidence could go, authentic. now the MS: had
come into the situation where it had been discovered, it Was impos-
sible to pleas; but It had been submitted to the King, who imme-
diately said " A work of Milton's must be made public." (Loud and
continued cheers.) Accordingly, it was placed in competent beads,
and would shortly be printed, under the auspices of his Majesty.
In answer to a question from Mr. Hume,
Mr. WYNN stated that Bencoolen had been ceded by
the British Government to the Dutch, who )n return
had given up Syncapore, but the interest of the nation
had been attended to in the transfer.

The House went into the Comnftitzee of Supply.
BRITISH MUSEUM.

5e4,547 being asked for the British Museum for the year 1824
Mr. BENNET rose to make a general complaint of
the state of the Museum, and of the manner in which it
was managed. He had read with much attention an
aiticle which some time since appeared in The Edinburgh
Review upon the subject ; and upon examination he
found the statements contain.:d in that article substan-
tially true. If he was not entirely mistaken—and he had
taken some painCto inform himself—the whole depart-
ment of natural history in the Museum was in the most
disgraceful state imaginable. The Herbarium was to-
tally destroyed. The bit ds, beasts, and insects were en-
tirely gone. In short, the vaults of the British Museum
were like the vaults of a common church or chapel—
they contained only the dead and buried, and there was
no resurrection from them. The Hon. Gentleman then
proceeded to state particular instances in which the col-
lection formerly held by the Museum had become
pidated. The insects, which belonged to Sir •Hans
Sloane's collection, had dwindled from 5,000 to about
SOO. This was not the effects of time ; insects would last,
preserved, for .more than 50 years. Again, in the de-
partment of animals,u distinguished traveller some years
since had presented his whole most valuable accumula-
tion to the Museum 3 on going some time after to took
at the specimens, he had been informed that they were
no longer in existence. The want of room was no ex-
cuse to the trustees for having allowed this destruction
oi property to go on ; they could have come to Parliament
for funds, and it was their duty to have done so.—
The Honourable Member then canvassed the manner in
which the collection of Sir Joseph Banks had been neg-
lected by the Museum ; and quoted a statement from
the article to which he had before alluded in the Edin-
burgh Review, from which it appeared that some of the
properties left by Sir Joseph Banks to the Museum, had
been given away by its officers, unexamined, to.the Col-
lege of Surgeons ; that those properties had been ex-
changed by the Members of the College of Surgeons,
for certain other articles (which they wanted) out of
Bullock's Museum ; and that, finally, upon the breaking
'up of Bullock's Museum, the same specimens, being
destined to-change hands again, had been purchased by
the trustees of the British Museum, who had in the first
instance given them away ; and that, at an expense of
not less than several hundred pounds. Nothing was
more necessary, to prevent the recurrence of such mis-
management, than an entire change in the system of
making-trustees. He objected to making trustees ex-
qfficiu—trustees of straw—trustees merely for the sake
of their names. The Lord Chancellor was a trustee, and
had never been in the Museum, he (Mr. Bennet) under-
stood, but once; and then only because some matter of
form compelled him to go. Now, such trustees were
quite useless: men of activity were wanted. It was
really disgraceful to the country, the state of our Bri-
tish Museum, when compared with the condition of si-
milar Institutions on the Continent.

Sir C. LONG wished the Honourable Member for
Shrewsbury had made inquiry before he gave credit to
the Edinburgh Review; he would then have found
that many of its statements were utterly devoid of
foundation, and the rest generally so exaggerated as
to be quite undeserving of any credit. As Sir Hans
Sloane had been dead seventy years, and much of
his colleCtion had teen accumulating for fifty years
before, it was nut surprising that some of the articles
in it should have dis.ipeared ; but • every specimen left
by Sir Hans Sloane (11 not the ideuticarinsect) was in
the Museum; and the total number of insects there at
present exceeded 70,000. Wry few wcre tar:nevi to'