The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-07-15 00:00:00

by 46 to 22; and there's an end of the lumbering Lord
COTTENHAM'S clap-trap.
On the same night, the registration of births bill, and
the dissenters' marriage bill, came before their lordships
for a second reading, the motion having beens ushered in
by a speech from Lord MELBOURNE, who, however, had
very little to say in favour of Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S
bantlings.
The Archbishop of CANTERBURY followed the noble
premier, and placed the question in its proper position.
As our space is too much occupied with local matters to
admit of our giving a report of the debate, we transcribe
in this place the leading passages of the most reverend
prelate's speech :
" It was not his intention to follow the noble lord through the state-
ments he had made. Were he to do so, he should be led to perpetual
contradiction of the noble lord, according to his own views, as he ob.
jected to almost every clause in the marriage bill. He professed him-
self favourable to the principle of the bill, but he was not favourable
to the manner in which that principle was proposed to be worked out.
He thought that the members of the church of England should be con-
tinued in possession of those advantages which they now enjoyed, and
with which in general the clergy as well as laity were satisfied ; but
at the same time he repeated that he did not object to a plan for the
relief of Dissenters, but let it be confined to them. With respect to
the registration of births, he objected that it was compulsory, and as
the bill now stood was td be carried on in an inquisitorial manner,
which would be grievous to those persons and families on whom it
would fall. Such a system of registration could not work in this
country. It went to separate two things which had been united since
the earliest periods of Christianity—the naming the party baptized at
the time of baptism. He saw no reason for taking away the custody
of the registers from the clergy. Let the Dissenters have a registry
of their own for births and burials, and have duplicates of the entries
sent to a general registry. Such a regulation would be a great saving
of expense, which in this case would press heavily on the poor, and he
thought it would' answer much better than the complicated system
now proposed. The Legislature had abstained from all interference
with the marriages of Jews and Quakers, and one reason was, that
according to their system there was a most perfect security against
clandestine marriages, but this bill did interfere unnecessarily with
thein, for by it they were bound to give notice to the registrar. Ile
would give the Dissenters all the relief they sought for if they gave
good security against clandestine marriages, as the Jews and Quakers ;
but he owned, that having carefully read over these bills, he did not
find that they gave any such security ; on the contrary, one of the
bills took away that security which had hitherto been derived from
the pnhlication of banns. Another objection to the bill was that it
took away the religious ceremony from marriage. There were several
other objections on which he would reserve himself till he came to
the committee. This was objected to in all the petitions which he
had presented on the subject. He was willing to make the bills what
they legitimately ought to be—to give relief to the Dissenters, hut at
the same time not to do anything which would wound the conscien-
tious feelings of the members of the church of England. (Hear, hear.)
These sentiments are worthy the Archbishop of CAN-
TERBURY. Give the dissenters all the relief that they
ought to have, but do not at the same time outrage and
aggrieve the members of the church. BAINES, MIAs,
and a few other twaddlers of the House of Commons,
s em to think that if they can frighten or humbug Lord
JOHN RUSSELL, their purposes are accomplished. They
will find themselves in the wrong box in this particular;
for however unimportant the " conscientious" dissenters
may consider a religious marriage ceremonial, the mem-
bers of the church have been taught, both by the Bible
and the practice of their fathers and mother 3, to enter-
tain different opinions; and BAINES'S scheme of placing
" all sects upon a level" is not yet destined to be worked
out. It is, doubtless, mighty agreeable to him to put
down the church ; but the church does not choose to be
so pulled down, and, " thank GOD I we have peers" to
uphold her against the levelling designs of her " con-
scientious" enemies.
Lord ELLENBOROUGH effectively exposed the absurdi-
ties, as well as the injustice, of these bills, and called the
attention of their lordships to the Patronage which they
threw into the hands of the Magdalene ministry—the ap-
pointment of upwards of 1,000 registrars—and we all
know for what description of local pests these offices
would be reserved. The noble baron said—

"To show the clumsy way in which this bill was drawn up, he
would only mention one other fact connected with it. The hill en-
acted that register-books should be kept in iron boxes, of which two
keys should be kept, and no more ; but when once the books got
into those boxes, he did not see how they could be got out again
without the commission of a misdemeanour by some party ; for
it was a misdemeanour to disobey the directions of an act of Par-
liament, and by this bill it was proposed that when the books were
put in " the register-box shall always be kept locked." (A laugh.)
How they were to get out of this locked box would puzzle those
who dwelt much more in acts of Parliament than he did. (Hear,

hear.)"
We understand that Lord MELBOURNE was quite in a
fidget during the discussion, and yet he could not help
laughing at Lord JOHNNY'S bundle of contradictions. He
admitted_ that there were " difficulties" in the bills, yet,
he said, he did not think they were of such a nature as
might not be got over. What a compliment to the House
of Commons! He begged hard that the bills might be
allowed to go into a committee, where the hand of cor-
rection might be applied—and the house consented; the
committee to commence its labours on Monday.
We were right, then, in assuming that the Peers
would not permit these stupid and mischievous measures
to disgrace the statute .book in their present shape.

In the House of Commons, on the same night, Mr.
WALTER, in an able speech, called attention to the doings
of that irresponsible and somewhat mysterious body of
persons, the emigration committee, who, it seems, have
shipped off for Van Diemen's Laud, and other parts of
our Australian colonies, ship-load after ship-load of fe-
tnales,a large portion of whom, on their arrival in a land
of strangers, are consigned to want and prostitution ; to
such an extent, indeed, has this system grown, that at
Hobart Town, in Van Diemen's Land, whole streets
have been built for the reception of unfortunate females
of this class; and we are sorry to add that the last ac-
counts from that island confirm Mr. WALTER'S state-
ments, and intimate that a great number of persons, of
both sexes, were suffering all sorts of privations from
want of employment. Mr. WALTER moved—

"That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, praying
that he will be graciously pleased to issue his Royal orders that a
placard entitled Emigration to Van Diements Land,' which the
several postmasters throughout the kingdom have been directed to
put in a conspicuous place in their several post-offices, and to cir-
culate among the clergy and the parochial authorities, be withdrawn."

This motion was negatived; but it will probably have
the effect of making government more cautious in aiding
the projects of a set of hair-brained economists, whose
leading dogma is that any place is better for Englishmen
and Englishwomen than England, yet they take special
care to stay at home themselves !
In all new settlements the males out-number the fe-
males in the proportion of from three or four to one ; and
it is desirable for many reasons, that respectable females
should be induced to go out to Australia ; nevei theless,
this wholesale expatriation of young girls, without due
precaution and regulation, is a crying evil that cannot
be too soon put an end to.
On Monday night, Mr. SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE
SPRING Rica again distinguished himself with reference
to the stamp bill-
It is well known that when Mr. GOUIBURN undertook
to amend the stamp laws, lie set about the work like a
man who understood what he was at, and divided the
subject into eleven classes, bringing in as many separate
• bills, and thus all difficulty was obviated.
Mr. SPRING RICE. borrowed the greater part of Mr.
GOULBURN'S details ; but, as he wished to have some
feature that he rr4glit call his own, he conceived the
bright idea of shaking up the eleven small bills in a bag,
and agglomerating them into one huge bill of nearly four
hundred clauses. Never was such a monstrosity before
seen! But Mr. RICE strutted about to Whitehall and
the precincts of the house with the tremendous bill under
his arm, and strenuously resisted all attempts to lessen
its ponderosity, aware that if he assented to a divorce, he
immediately surrendered the single idea he had to call
his own in the whole matter.
Things continued in this state till Monday night. The
right honourable gentleman then went down to the
house, picked out the newspaper clauses, made one bill
of them, and threw all the rest under the table, as a con-
tributon to that immense mass of lumber which is annu-
ally printed, at a terrible expense to the country, by way
of pleasing JOSEPH HUME. Mr. RICE said that no false
fear of being charged with inconsistency should prevent
him from changing his mind from wrong to right. We
commend his discretion, however late he may be in the
exercise of it ; but we do think that a gentleman who
fobs £t3,000 a Year of the public money should be at
least capable of seeing, at the outset, that a bill of be-
tween three and four hundred clauses most of necessity
prove a great nuisance if passed into a law in that form.
However, a separation has happily taken place at
last; the house went into committee on the bill, and the