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a student at the York College, which he entered in the month of Sept. 1816. He completed the usual period of academical education in this institution with distinguished credit to himself, and on leaving it succeeded the late excellent Mr. Howe in the pastoral charge of the Unitarian congregation at Bridport, where he continued to the close of life. He possessed unusual qualifications for the office he had undertaken, and gave himself to it with an ardour and singleness of purpose which shewed that he was deeply impressed with its importance and responsibility. The vigour and comprehensiveness of his mind, his habitual fervour of devotional feeling, and his benevolent anxiety for the immortal welfare of all who were connected with him, imparted uncommon force and im pressiveness to his pulpit services, the effect of which was heightened by the simplicity and energy of his manner, and the consistency and excellence of his character. His pastoral labours were continued during the week, as long as his health and strength permitted; and in his attention to the sick and afflicted, in his efforts to promote the mental and moral improvement of the young, and in the daily offices of life he proved himself a faithful servant of the Master whom he served. His humility and teuderness of conscience made him a severe judge of himself, while he was ever ready to form the most indulgent estimate of the motives and conduct of others. A gentleness and amenity of manners were united to firmness and decision in the execution of all plans of useful exertion, and his influence extended far beyond his congregation and immediate circle. A decliue of health was apparent soon after his settlement at Bridport, and in the autumn of 1825, he resigned his situation as pastor of the society. At their request, however, he continued among them, but with an assistant in the duties of the ministry, whose valuable services and affectionate attentious were continued to the hour of his death. The hopes of friendship were not realized, and increasing debility made him daily more unable to encounter exertion, aud gradually withdrew him from his labours. But in the season of weakness and decay the silent eloquence of his example was still influential.

"They also serve who only stand and wait;"

And his patient endurance of suffering,

his devout resignation to the will of his heavenly Father, and his unwavering confidence in the promises of the gospel, were an expressive illustration of the power and triumph of the Christian faith.

MRS. RICHARDSON.

On Sunday, April 29th, at the age of 58, of apoplexy, Mrs. RICHARDSON, of Cirencester, a member of the Unitarian chapel in that place. Mrs. Richardson was endowed with superior intellectual powers, and had taken considerable pains to store her mind with religious knowledge, which was her favourite pursuit. She was a Christian and an Unitarian from principle, and upon rational grounds. In private life she was distinguished by uncompromising integrity, by active be nevolence, and by an exemplary attention to family religion. Her death, though awfully sudden, was such as she had desired, and for which she was prepared.

MR. ROBERT BLAKE.

On Sunday, May 6th, aged 73, of a paralytic seizure, Mr. ROBERT BLake, Unitarian Baptist preacher at Hull. lu his youth, Mr. B. was an occasional preacher amongst the Calvinists, for three or four years; but, being convinced that the popular doctrines were unscriptural and derogatory to the character of God and of Christ, he became a convert to Unitarianism. It may be truly said that it was his meat and his drink to study the Bible, and to preach those doctrines which he discovered therein. He was for some time connected with the Unitarian Fund, and (although he was very lame, owing to a fall when a boy, and obliged to use a crutch and a stick) he was in the habit of visiting many places at a distance from Hull, where he was the first who sowed the seed of Unitarianism. Notwithstanding he was poor, and, on account of his circumstauces, much despised, he had preached in Hull for above forty years, to a small society of Baptists, without receiving any salary.

REV. JOHN HORSEY.

On the 12th of May, in the 74th year of his age, the Rev. JOHN HORSEY, fiftytwo years pastor of the congregation at Northampton, which was formerly under the care of Dr. Doddridge, and for many years one of the tutors of the Dissenting Mr. Coward's Trustees. Academy maintained at that place by

INTELLIGENCE.

Corporation and Test Acts.

THE active measures adopted to revive public interest in favour of the repeal of these absurd and degrading laws have already produced very important effects; and the question has assumed that degree of political consequence which it deserves, especially at a period when it is desirable that all subjects connected with the cause of liberty should be taken into account, and have their weight in the arrangements for the future administration of the country.

In continuing the narrative of the proceedings of the united Committee, we have to state that they have met regularly every Monday, and their sub-committee appointed for the purpose of preparing suitable publications have also met generally once in every week. Communications have been opened with all parts of the country, and every where is manifested the same anxiety to redeem the character of Dissenters from the reproach of apathy and indifference which had so long weighed heavily upon them. The Committee was early joined by a deputation from the Scotch United Associate Synod in London. Our readers will have seen the statement prepared and affixed to all the principal periodical publications of the past month; and the Committee have since been engaged on a more extended tract on the same subject, and they also contemplate reprinting some valuable tracts which appeared on former occasions.

for concluding that his new allies would have been able at least to soften this resolution on a question in which they must be supposed to feel strougly; and it has rather an ominous appearance that one of the first acts of the new Minister, who has himself on principle refused to serve under any leader adverse to religious liberty as applied to the Catholics, should hope for cordial support from Whig associates, when not even neutrality, nothing short of decided opposition, is avowed as his principle of action against others who claim the benefit of similar principles, without most of the practical difficulties attendant on any plan of Catholic relief.

If this conduct proceed in him, or is acquiesced in by any other parties, from a reliance on the passiveness and want of energy of Dissenters, it becomes necessary that they should (whatever may be done as to pressing a motion this Session, which is not very likely to be thought advisable) shew their feelings somewhat strongly on the subject, and impress upon all parties to the contemplated arrangements the absolute necessity of an understanding on this head, and the determination of the Dissenters not to suffer themselves to be passed by quietly.

What has lately occurred impresses strongly on our minds the necessity of having the two questions (or rather the one question, for it is but one) regarding Catholics and Protestant Dissenters discussed contemporaneously. We fear much that there are many who use the arguments drawn from liberal views of civil and religious liberty only as weapons for the support of concessions to the Catholics, a matter which has no other interest with them than as a political embarrassment in which their fears and interests alone induce them to do justice, aud that, unless while these ar

In the midst of the Committee's preparations, and after Lord John Russell's notice of motion on the subject, occurred those changes in his Majesty's Government which have excited so much attention. The singular position of public affairs will, of course, render it necessary to weigh well the extent to which any Parliamentary proceedings shall be carried this Session; and on this point the Com-guments are in their mouths we assomittee have requested a meeting with their Parliamentary friends, whose advice will of course have due weight.

The Dissenters, however, cannot but feel some uneasiness at seeing what may, perhaps, be thought the unnecessary and uncalled-for announcement by Mr. Can ning of his intention to oppose their claims, at least on temporary grounds. The Dissenters had, perhaps, good reason

ciate them with our claims and identify them in their application, we shall find it very difficult to arouse the attention of these politicians to our less obtrusive interests, when the subject which now engages their attention and makes them think of these matters is settled.

Situated as the Government was when the question of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts was first resolved

to be mooted this Session, present success was the least probable part of the prospect; and the recent changes, if they have not improved it, have probably not made it worse. But there are, doubtless now, many considerations of policy which may render it expedient to watch a little longer the aspect of affairs, and to see whether the accession to the new administration of men whom the Dissenters have been accustomed to look up to as the friends of just and liberal principles, can wholly fail of counteracting that spirit of bigotry and hostility which it is plain exists in quarters where it ought to be least expected. We confess that the beginning of the new era does not inspire us with much confidence in its influence in favour of our prospects: and so far as the new leader is individually concerned his conduct towards the Dissenters appears to us to entitle him personally to no sort of consideration as to the degree in which our movements (if conducive to our own interests) would produce any sort of embarrassment to him. The conduct of the Catholics seems to be no proper rule for us; they have an avowed friend at the head of the Government and an expulsion of their enemies. They would, doubtless, be singularly unwise if they acted otherwise than in accordance with his wishes. We have an avowed opponent, and one who seems to find himself so strong in that opposition as not to feel that his meditated junction with our advocates will render it necessary to qualify his inclinations or impose any restraint on the indulgence of them.

Our own opinion is, that it becomes the Dissenters to act temperately and coolly, but with firmness and activity; that numerous petitions should be presented; that much will depend on the events arising out of the present crisis; and that if they do not take care to keep their case steadily before the public view, and to force it upon the consideration of those with whom all these topics must, if properly pressed, become the subjects of discussion and arrangement, they will be very likely to find themselves in the end overlooked and forgotten.

May 23, 1827.

A conference took place between the United Committee and many Members of Parliament, among whom we observed Lord Holland, Lord King, Mr. Brougham, Lord Althorpe, Mr. Byng, Mr. Calcraft, Mr. Calvert, Lord Milton, Sir R. Wilson, Mr. Fitzgerald, Lord J. Russell, Mr. Phillipps, Lord Ebrington, Lord George

Cavendish, Lord Clifton, Mr. J. Wood, Mr. Easthope, Lord Nugent, Mr. Maberley, Mr. F. Palmer, Mr. Monk, Mr. Sykes, Mr. John Smith, Hon. R. Smith, Mr. A. Dawson and several others. Letters or communications were also received from Dr. Lushington, Alderman Wood, Alderman Waithman, Lord Folkstone, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Hobhouse, Mr. Pendarvis, Sir R. Fergusson, Sir F. Burdett, and Mr. Birch.

We have not thought it decorous to report the proceedings of a meeting which was properly of a confidential character, further than to observe, that strong opinions were delivered both for and against proceeding in the present Session; though certainly more numerously against than for such proceeding. The United Committee adjourned to Monday the 29th May, for further consideration of the subject, first, however, directing their Secretary to communicate to congregations the resolution then passed,—that it was highly expedient and desirable in the opinion of all that as many petitions as possible should be immediately sent up and presented.

Petition of the General Body of Ministers of London and the Vicinity.

THE humble Petition of the under

signed, being the General Body of Protestant Dissenting Ministers of the Three Denominations residing in and about the Cities of London and Westminster,

Sheweth,

That your petitioners are sincerely and devotedly attached to the civil constitution of these realms, and that they are always eager to acknowledge, with gratitude to Divine Providence, the degree of religious liberty which they and their fathers have enjoyed under the wise and liberal Goverument of the kingdom established at the glorious Revo lution of 1688, and confirmed by the accession of the august House of Brunswick.

That in their private and public conduct, and especially in their character as ministers of the gospel, your petitioners have ever maintained and inculcated the principles of order and loyalty, and endeavoured to promote submission to the Laws, confidence in the Legislature, and respect for the Throne.

But that your petitioners have never ceased to feel aggrieved at the disqualifications under which the members of their community labour by the operation of the Corporation and Test Acts, which,

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under heavy penalties, require the partaking of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites of the Church of England, as an indispensable condition of holding any place of trust, emolument or honour under his Majesty's Government; with which condition the greater part of the Protestant Dissenters are withheld from complying, by their deep sense of religious duty. That it appears to your petitioners, that the exclusion of so large a portion of His Majesty's subjects as the Protestant Dissenters from rendering such services as may be in their power to their King and country, is inconsistent with the first principles of civil policy, and is, moreover, productive of division amongst those whom Divine Providence has made brethren.

That your petitioners are not ignorant of the wise consideration shewn by the Legislature in passing an annual Act of Indemnity for the benefit of such persons as may have incurred the penalties enacted by the Corporation and Test Acts; but they beg humbly to represent to your Lordships that the efficacy of this Act, in protecting conscientious Protestant Dissenters, is held by some of the learned in the law to be very doubtful; and further, that if the protection afforded by it were complete and certain, they could not rest contented under the imputation, which an Indemnity Act implies, of their being offenders against the law of the land, since the Toleration Act, which was happily enlarged in his late Majesty's reigu, during the Regency of his present Majesty, virtually declares Nonconformity to be no longer a crime.

That in the only construction which your petitioners can put upon the Sacramental Test, it is designed as a solemn overt declaration of entire communion with the Church of England, and that, therefore, the enforcement of it is a snare to the consciences of Protestant Dissenters; and your petitioners are utterly unable to conceive in what manner an act of insincerity can promote the good of the community, or how an occasional compulsory conformity can add to the security or dignity of the Church as by law established.

That your petitioners have witnessed with grief and shame, that whilst conscientious Protestant Dissenters have been restrained in numberless iustances by the Sacramental Test from taking offices to which they appeared to be entitled by their rank and talents, or to which they were actually called by the voices of their fellow-citizens, this test

has opposed no bar to the advancement of unbelievers and scoffers, who regard it as a mere civil ceremony.

That, as ministers of the gospel of Christ, your petitioners cannot but look upon every religious test of civil and political merit as preguant with injury to the sacred cause of religion; and that they deem it their bounden duty humbly to state to your Lordships their deep conviction that the use of the holy and solemn ordinance of the Lord's Supper, as a qualification for civil and political office and trust, (a thing unheard of, as your petitioners believe, except in this Protestant country,) is a degradation and perversion of a rite of peculiar sanctity, instituted by our Saviour for high and momentous spiritual purposes, and enjoined upon all Christians to the end of the world, as a memorial of the love of their common Lord, and an instrument and pledge of peace and union and brotherly love.

That, in the candid judgment of your petitioners, the administration of the Lord's Supper, as a passport to civil and political office, must be no less a burthen and a scandal to the consciences of the ministers of the Church of England who are called upon to administer the Sacrament for this end, than to those of Protestant Dissenters who may be reluctantly compelled to this occasional conformity.

Your petitioners, therefore, humbly implore of your Lordships to take the premises into consideration, in order to relieve their consciences from a grievous burthen, and at the same time to rescue a most holy ordinance of the Saviour of the world from abuse and profanation, and to remove a bar to the union and co-operation of all classes of his Majesty's subjects by the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, in so far as relates to the Sacramental Test.

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, shall ever pray, &c.

Corporation of London.

A SPECIAL Court of Common Council was held on Wednesday, the 9th of May, pursuant to a requisition to the Lord Mayor, signed by about one hundred members, for the purpose of considering the propriety of petitioning both Houses of Parliament for the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, and to take such other measures as might be deemed expedient for the same purpose.

Mr. FAVELL introduced the subject by observing, that he felt peculiar anxiety

apon the occasion; not because he had any doubts as to the goodness of his cause or the spirit of that Court. The cause he knew to be of paramount importance, and the Court had already practically testified its dislike of the Corporation and Test Acts by abstaining from compelling its members to qualify in order to take their seats; his anxiety was occasioned solely by his apprehensions lest the great cause of religious liberty should suffer in his hands. He begged to say this was not to be considered as a narrow sectarian question. It involved the interests of two millions of Protestant Dissenters, and it deeply concerned the whole Scottish nation, as every Scotchman who crossed the Tweed was exposed to the penalties of these statutes. They were also a serious grievance to every respectable clergyman of the Established Church, who was compelled by them to administer the sacrament to all persons who applied for it as a qualification for office, whatever might be their character. They limited, besides, the prerogative of the Crown by putting it out of the King's power to select for his servants particular classes of his subjects; and they were equally an infringement on the rights and privileges of the people.

cussion of a subject like this, relating to the rights of conscience, from the increasing knowledge and liberality of the age, and the efforts everywhere making to diffuse the light of true religion: he next took a rapid view of the history of the Acts, and pointed out in numerous particulars their absurdity, impolicy and injustice. After which, he adverted to the necessity under which the Legislature found itself, from the proved impossibility of enforcing them, of passing an Annual Bill of Indemnity to relieve those who had neglected to qualify from the heavy penalties they had incurred. These Indemnity Bills were, after all, imperfect in their operation, as they only allowed further time to qualify, which supposed that the parties could conscientiously conform, and therefore did not meet the case of Dissenters who had abstained from principle. They were also objectionable, as implying that such persons had been guilty of some criminal offence in acting upon their religious convictions. He could not, besides, too strongly reprobate the practice thus attempted to be enforced of prostituting a sacred ordinance of the Christian religion to be a passport to state offices. To shew that no danger was to be apprehended from the measure now sought to be obtained, he adverted to the case of Ireland, where It was far from his wish in bringing the law imposing the Sacramental Test forward the subject to create any emhad been repealed more than forty years; barrassment to the present administra- and yet the cause of Protestantism and of tion. He had been grieved at the de- the Church of England had subsequently claration of hostility said to have been been strengthened rather than weakened. made by the gentleman at the head of He wished his resolutions to be discussed the government, against the Dissenters on their own intrinsie merits, without rein their application for relief. He could ference to any particular parties in the state not but consider such a declaration to whom they might affect. The Court had, have been hasty and imprudent; and he in former times, acted on the same liberal confessed that he could not understand principle. In 1689 it had petitioned the the reasons by which it was attempted House of Commons to be freed from all to justify it. He did not believe that restraints in serving the public, by the repeal sought for would injure the having full liberty in the choice of its Catholics in their applications to Parlia- members, without reference to their rement. On the contrary, he thought that ligious sentiments: and in the present the success of one measure must be of times it would, he was sure, be the last benefit to the other. As, however, he to maintain the necessity of these stahad been given to understand, by some tutes as bulwarks of the Constitution, members of the Legislature, that it was for it had ceased to enforce them in its deemed inexpedient to agitate the ques- own case. He had ascertained, from tion in Parliament at this time, he official authorities, that out of 260 memshould, in deference to their opinion, bers composing that Court, not more not press his original proposition of than 90 had taken the sacrament as a petitioning for the repeal of the Acts in qualification. Many of those who had question. He should content himself refrained were yet members of the with moving certain resolutions which Church of England. They could not might be placed on record as the de- then surely consistently refuse to supclared sentiments of that Court. He port him in seeking the repeal of laws then said, that he considered the present which, by their conduct, they declared times peculiarly favourable for the dis- to be at least unnecessary, and there

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