The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-08-09 00:00:00

LONDON TIMES AND EVENING MAIL.
THE Public is respectfully informed that THE TIMES
arrives by EXP HESS every Morning at Half-past Seven,-
and witl he on Sale at the Office, No. 48, Lord-street.
THE EVENING MAIL three days per wee - iiy post—
Price 7d.
Advertisements and communications for e Editor are re-
quested to he iert at the Office, as above, as a Parcel is for-
warded to the TINIES-OFFICE Nightly.
L. T. GASKILL, Agent.

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

tors,—one great truth is manifest, namely, that the
grossly vituperated " House of Lords." or rather its con-
servative majority, is prepared to go all rational lengths
in its concessions to the principles reasonably propounded
by the third estate, representing the popular interests,
generally. One great objection to the marriage bill, in
a religious point of view, is the establishment of a purely
civil, or strictly legal supervision over that, which, in all
christian ages, has been considered to partake more of a
religious than a civil compact; and more proper at all
times to come within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, al-
though secured, as a matter of contract, by the agency of
the civil law.

Every conscientious dissenter must be aware, that when
our Saviour sent his apostles to " go and teach all na-
tions," he sent them to people who were in their fallen
state of unbelief, and in their condition of political and
moral degradation, in consequence of the desertion of a
system originally designed by God to be universal for
mankind. Thus, when nations became converted to the
faith of the gospel, they interwove in their schemes of
civil regulation most of those maxims expressly laid down
in the sacred writings—some upon the principle of imi-
tation only, but others upon the full faith, and even the
conscientious conviction, that they had a divine authority
for their adoption. Keeping then the model under their
eye, they adopted and moulded them to their social
polity, from time to time, as the circumstances of popu-
lation and the due authority of national law required.
For this there is abundant authority of various degrees,
which different men will estimate according to their own
judgment; but the government and discipline of the
Church of England have been formed upon it, and under
it she has preserved to the dissenters themselves all
those privileges and immunities of citizenship—the pro-
tection of established law, and security of their lives and
possessions—which they now prosperously enjoy, in com-
mon with the members of that establishment, which is so
ungenerously assailed by the " political order" of their
own body !

It should be fully understood, that this argument has
especial reference to christian governments. If we be-
lieve the scriptures, we are bound also to believe that
these governments, and the very portions of the earth
whereon, they rest, shall become the kingdoms of Christ,
as their supreme governor, even before that very earth
passes away, and a newer and more perfect one shall be
formed; and therefore (despite of all assertion to the
contrary) Christ's kingdom is of this earth. For this
great change of government our Saviour himself prepared
th4reliminary forms, or paved the way, by restoring
some parts of the patriarchal form of government. He
restored the primeval marriage, and that upon the prin-
ciple, that it was so in the beginning of time; and as he
was fully aware that even in so doing the Jews would not
obey the change, under their stubborn prejudice and un-
belief, and until their perfect conversion, he addressed
himself to mankind generally.

These are the views under which our Saxon ancestors
embraced the Christian covenant, and in proof of which
we find in the laws of Edmund, that the marriage con-
tract is expressly assigned to the priestly office. The
words explicitly are, "Let the priest be present at the
marriage ceremony: he by law must be present to bless
the marriage." Thus the sanctity of this rite was held
indispensable in the laws of the Heptarchy.
It may be objected, that this long respected form of
marriage, connected as it was with baptism, is a remnant
of the Saxon feudal system ; be it so : it is, nevertheless,
an evidence strongly supportive of the great principle of
our ancieni constitution in church and state. It proves
that religious faith formed the chief title and acknow-
ledgment in the tenure of all property, as well as the
possession of civil rights; and that the christian mar-
riage, and baptism, and the christian oath, connected
with the rights of primogeniture, were held indispensa •
ble in the conditions, and were joined thereby to the ci-
vil and military services of the state ; for the law of Ina
expressly decreed, that the man who neglected to have
his child baptised should forfeit all his land. As the law
at present stands, the clergyman not only performs the
religious rite, but also most properly decides the legal
right, before marriage, as was the practice and custom in
the time of the Saxons. The question, " Who giveth
this woman to be married to this man ?" being still re-
tained in the church marriage service; and showing the
right of protection and guardianship to be under the mi-
nister's control.

The trammels and delays, the expences and annoy-
ances, arising out of the complex machinery of civil re-
gistration, and the consequent appeals to registrars., will
more than outweigh the advantages the dissenters hope
to obtain from the passing of these bills, in a religious
point of view ; and with reference to civil advantages,
purely, the political and worldly minded amongst the dis-
senting body will, with their more conscientious brethren,
contribute to the establishment and furtherance of a sys-
tem infinitely more secular and more selfish, as well as
far more despotic in principle, than the tried customs
they so assidiously labour to abrogate. This is their own
look out. Our duty is to maintain the cause of our chris
tian church, which, by God's help, we will do, and that
fearlessly in the face of all her enemies.

Tlie objections urged by Lord Wynford in his place
to the registration of births bill, (both in principle and
practice,) although it is likely to become the law of. the
land, have our hearty concurrence. They convey senti-
ments which do honour to the heart and judgment of the
noble and learned lord ; and we would, if possible, urge
the reflecting portion of our non-conforming brethren to
ponder them seriously ; they partake not of the spirit of
intolerant bigotry, but display a sound and dispassionate
legal knowledge of those effects which must inevitably
result from the proposed new system. "He (Lord Wyn-
ford) fully believed, that pedigrees could be traced with
greater facility under the present system than under the
provisions of this bill. He could not consider the office
of the superintendent registrar quite so good a place in
which to preserve the records as the diocesan and eccle-
siastical registries. Under the new system, a person
who wishes to search the registry will have to go to the
church first to obtain his information ; not succeeding
there, he will have to go to the office of the registrar,
and then, perhaps, to every dissenting minister in the
neighbourhood, before he can know the truth. Thus con-
siderable expence and inconvenience will be entailed
upon the parties seeking such information, who, under
the present law, might obtain the required certificate
from—the- clergyman himself at once. At present, the
party obtaining the certificate would have to pay for it;
but by this bill the expence was to be thrown upon the
funds raised for the poor of the country ; and this, to-
gether with the other additional burthens which this bill
would create, he was sure would give great dissatisfac-
tion." Let it be borne in mind that these are the opin-
ions of a judge, practically acquainted, by long habit and
experience, with the subject, who records his conscien-
tious protest against the' interference of the bill with the
members of the established church. i4,1{3

As, however, a " a sop must be thrown to Cerberns,"
the political section of the dissenters may conscientiously
hail this semblance of a boon as the measure " of entire
and ample relief" so amiably promised by Mr. Spring
Rice, to " our dissenting brethren and fellow-subjects,"
at the memorable Cambridge dinner. True it is, that
the dissenters cannot but admire the great piety displayed
by the pliant Lord Melbourne on this occasion, in de-
claring marriage to be "a recognised holy ordinance,
which demanded the sanction of religion ;" nor will they
quarrel with the condescension of the Peers in rejecting,
on a division, the Bishop of Exeter's amendment in
clause 22, which went to bind more securely the due ob-
servance of the obligation, by a more solemn declaration
than that stipulated for by those who represent their in-
terests (temporal and spiritual) in "another place!"

We should not do justice to the protestant inhabitants
of the Isle of Man if we did not congratulate them on
the stand so ably made by the Earl of Ripon for the pre-
ervation of their ancient bishopric. It was one of the
recommendations of the ecclesiastical commissioners that
this venerable see of fourteen hundred years' duration
hould be abolished, and united with that of Carlisle.
Much as we are inclined to yield generally to the re-
forms proposed by the commissioners, we are inclined to