The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-04-14 00:00:00

DISSENTER'S MARRIAGE BILL.

It has rarely been our lot to encounter an instance of per-
versity more gross than is to be met with in a pamphlet which
has lately fallen into our hands from the pen of William Howitt,
of Nottingham, on the new marriage bill. It proves to demon-
stration that, legislate for them as you will, you can never sa-
tisfy "the dissenters." Remove from them a pretended griev-
ance and they are more indignant with you than ever, seeing
that it is upon such pabulum that they live. If you deprive them
of it they must sink at once into god, every-day acquiescing
people ; and this is a " consummation" which they devoutly
hope it may never be their lot to achieve. In his plain re-
marks on the proposed measure, Mr. Howitt sets out with de-
claring, as one of his peculiar qualifications for the task he has
taken upon himself, that the class of dissenters to which he be-
longs enjoy all the immunities they desire in regard to mar-
riages; and that, therefore, the new bill will not affect them
prejudicially. His avowed motive for complaining is, according
to his own statement, suggested by the absence of all reason-
able ground of complaint, as far as he and his sect are con-
cerned. He comes, therefore, as the volunteer champion
of a class of persons who really stand in no need of his chivalry.
There is something so insolent and overbearing in the dogmati-
cal interference of Mr. Ilowitt on this occasion as to injure
rather than uphold the cause he professes to have at heart, that
we can find no terms adequate to express our sense of the fully
and impertinence of his conduct. He and his clamorous elan
of nonconforming agitators have raised, from time to time,
.the
most violent outcries against the recognition of the ceremony of
marriage as a religious ordinance; but no sooner is the means
suggested of putting an end to this fruitful source of contention,
than he turns round on his benefactors, and asserts that,,as there
happen to be many dissenters who may not he disposed to re-
gard marriage as a civil contract, the proposed bill will violate
the consciences and outrage the feelings of all such persons.
He studiously conceals the fact that, although it admits of
persons doing as they, please in the matter, it enjoins nothing
which need compel them to do any violence to their consciences
by regarding it in that light. lie is like a sulky urchin who
attempts to revenge himself upon his nurse by quarrelling with
his bread and batter. According to this Solon the compulsion
to go before a magistrate is a restraint upon the conscience of a
dissenter, who ought to be left to take that step or not, as he
may happen to be disposed. His next ground of complaint is.
that it leaves the quakers, of which body be is a member, wholly
unmelested,with full liberty to celebrate their marriages according
to their own taste, and that this affords them an immunity which
is withheld from other dissenters. Ilere is a man who writes a
pain phletaccusing parliament in general,and his majesty's minis-
ters in particular, of " injustice and illiberality," because they
have shown a greater disposition to humour the pig-headedness of
his own class of dissenters than they have manifested towards
those of other denominations. Instead of being thanWul to
theta for the concession, he actually abuses them for their kind-
nesses, on the ground that they want to behave more civilly to
him than to his neighbours. " Either (says he) these privi-
leges ought to be withdrawn from friends, or they ought to be
granted to the whole body of dissenters." Quakers must be in
a happy condition, truly, when the chief fault they have to find
'ith a lfgislitifie enactment is, that it treats them_. WettlerVian
their neighbours. What would they have said if it had treated
them worse? Mr. II owitt's objections to take the oath which
is recNired to be taken before the magistrate, 'and which he
and his brethren are not called upon to take, are equally gra-
tuitous. But the whole of his remarks are dictated by a rancor-
ous hatred to the church, and a fierce and savage intolerance
of the simplest and least objectionable of its forms, worthy the
liberality of a bigoted, still-necked non-conformist. It is not
surprising that Sir IL Peel's legislation in their behalf should
fail to satisfy dissenters, for such an achievement could not be
accomplished by an angel from Heaven-, much less by a mortal
and a minister.—Old England.