him to suspend the public duties of his profession till within a few weeks of his death. Nor did his medical attendauts for some time apprehend danger the bursting of an abscess in the intestines, the existence of which had never been suspected, first revealed the nature of his complaint, placed him at once beyond the relief of medical skill, and terminated his life in a few hours. He was buried in the ground belonging to the General Baptist Congregation in

The

Worship Street, on Monday, June 25th. Dr. Rees officiated at the funeral, and also preached a sermon on the occasion of his death on the following Sunday, July 1st, at York-street chapel. black cloth with which the pulpit, desk, and communion table were covered, were first provided, a few weeks before, on the mourning for the, Duke of York, when Mr. Small preached a funeral sermon. They were next used for a similar service on his own decease!

Unitarian Marriage Bill.

PATIENCE and perseverance overcome many difficulties; even the House of Lords is not proof against their power, in a session too when reason and public spirit have not possessed very great sway over its deliberations. Lord Eldon now speaks with the odds which a station on opposition benches interposes against him, and the woolsack is occupied by a lawyer who has some disposition to listen to common sense and history.

We believe we may now congratulate the Unitarians on the certainty that re lief in some form will be conceded to them next session, for no one but Lord Eldon has opposed the principle; and he has done it only by the dexterous jumbling up of principle with details into which his own objections alone have driven the promoters of the measure. Our readers will see that, on this important occasion, (when the House of Lords has really, for the first time, set to work seriously to consider the subject in detail,) we have spared no pains in obtaining, expressly for our work, a perfectly accurate and minute account of all which passed. We shall, in the succeeding number, (as our limits compel us to divide the subject,) give the debate in Committee, together with a copy of the Bill, as it passed the Lords' Committee, and as it may be proper to bring it into the House of Lords next session, where the promoters, as well as opposers, will have the opportunity of making any further alterations. As it at present stands, it is to be considered as the project chiefly of the Bishop of Chester, and not as the plan of the committee of the Association. We were glad to hear that the real difficulty in regulating all these

matters was hit upon by Lord Redesdale in the committe. If there were (as it is a disgrace to this country that there is not) a good general register of all marriages, births or baptisms, and burials, there would be no difficulty whatever in allowing all Dissenters, under the regulations of such a registry, to solemnize their own marriages, without any of the incumbrances arising out of the ecclesiastical character of the present institutions, which are totally inconsistent with practical religious liberty.

It will be observed that the present Bill leaves the matter of religious ceremonial entirely to the parties; it provides only for the civil requisites, and this is all that the State has a right to concern itself about; it will be for the Unitarians, (or for each Unitarian,) to decide whether they choose to associate the occasion with any and what religious observances. Practically, we believe the Bill will not work inconveniently. If the magistrate is disposed to accommodate, (and in few places will it be difficult to find one who will,) there can be no great difficulties in its operation.

HOUSE OF LORDS,

JUNE 26, 1827.

The Marquis of LANSDOWNE, in moving that the House should go into a Committee on the Dissenters' Marriage Bill, wished to avail himself of that opportunity to make some observations on the principle of the Bill, which it had been agreed should be discussed in this stage. Before he entered upon these observations, he must remark upon the irregular discussion which had just occupied their time, not for the purpose of adding any thing to what had been already said upon that subject, but as an illustration

of the inconvenience of entering upon the discussion of subjects of which notice had not been previously given. He adverted to this inconvenience, as it had deprived him of the advantage of the support of the Right Reverend Prelate at the head of the Bench of Bishops, who had attended that evening, at great inconvenience, for the express purpose of supporting the Disscuters' Marriage Bill, but who was prevented from remaining in the House by the state of his health. Their Lordships, who had remembered the sentiments of that Right Reverend Prelate (the Archbishop of Canterbury) on a former occasion, must bear testimony to the spirit of liberality displayed by him, which he hoped would always characterize the Clergy of the Established Church, and by which he was particularly anxious to see the Heads of that Church distinguished. He was instructed, however, by that Right Reverend Prelate, on his leaving the House, to say, that his sentiments remained unaltered upon this subject. With regard to the measure before them a few words were necessary. Bills, containing provision for the relief of these Dissenters, had been two or three times sent up to that House from the House of Commons, and rejected by their Lord ships, chiefly from difficulties which presented themselves in points of form; but he was happy to say that a very general feeling now prevailed amongst many of those who had formerly opposed those Bills in favour of the principle of giving some relief to the Dissenters; and he believed he might even say, that several Right Reverend Prelates had expressed an auxiety, and had in fact contributed their assistance, to adopt some measure by which the Dissenters might be freed from the necessity of giving utterance, as a mere matter of form, to sentiments which they entertained not at heart; and, at the same time, to avoid that scandal to the Church which resulted from having its creed and its ceremonies prostituted by calling upon Dissenters, for temporary purposes, to give a false and feigned assent to doctrines which they declared they did not believe. That was the situation of the Church, and the evil from which the Right Reverend Prelate and other members of the ecclesiastical body wished to be relieved; aud, he confessed, it was beyond his power to conceive how those persons who attached importance to the due and strict observance of all the forms and doctrines of the Church, could wish to continue a state of things

under which those ceremonies were used for the purpose of extorting a consent, intended to evade, and not to fulfil, the purposes of the Legislature. He could easily conceive that the careless and indifferent could view these matters with little concern, but in proportion to the seriousness of a Churchman's convictions ought to be his desire to free the doctrines and services of his church from this compulsive conformity. Under the strong impression of the scandal which the law, as it stood at present, brought upon the Church, he could not but express a hope, that their Lordships would do something to meet the difficulties which presented themselves with respect to those laws. Different modes of meeting these difficulties had been suggested at different times. A Noble Earl, lately at the head of his Majesty's Government, (Lord Liverpool,) and who, he was authorized in saying, felt deeply the inconvenience which resulted from the state of the laws affecting the Dissenters, had expressed an opinion that the difficulty might be best met by allowing some alteration to be made in the service of the Church of England, but the Right Reverend Prelate thought other wise upon that subject, and no attempt was made to carry that suggestion into execution. Different plans had since been submitted to their Lordships and rejected. The Bill which he had now to bring under their consideration attempted to reconcile, as far as possible, the jarring opinions which prevailed, and proposed to meet the objectious which had been made at various times to the measures which came under their Lordships' attention. Its design was to unite two objects-that of making the ceremony of marriage a civil security, combined with attention and consideration for the religious scruples of the conscientious Dissenter. In this country, up to the times of the 26th of George the Second, the object now contemplated by the law had been very imperfectly provided for; but an innovation upon the existing law, commonly called Lord Hardwicke's Act, then received the sauc tion of the Legislature. At the time when Lord Hardwicke introduced that measure to their Lordships, it became necessary, however, to exempt two classes of religious believers from its operation-the Jews and the Quakers; but he apprehended that no man could rise up in that house, and contend, that this exemption was intended to fix any slur upon the marriage of those persons, or to declare that they were not perfectly

some satisfaction to have been able to state the grounds of that difference in his presence. He wished, in the first place, to separate from the consideration of the question every thing which had been said with regard to the state of the Jews and the Quakers. In his opinion the state of the Jews had no possible connexion with the subject before their Lordships. It was somewhat different with regard to the Quakers; and he would here take leave to make au observation or two upon what had fallen from the Noble Marquis when he spoke of a doubt having been thrown out respecting the validity of a Quaker's mar. riage. If that doubt rested on any thing which had fallen from him, he desired to say that he must have been completely misunderstood; for he had no doubt on the subject, and on the contrary, desired distinctly to give it as his opiniou, that their marriages were perfectly valid according to law. He was the more anxious to say this, because he was aware that doubts had once been raised as to the law on that subject. In 1661, they would find that a proceeding at law took place on the subject, which ended in establishing the validity of such marriages; and again, in 1730, in another proceeding at common law, though a doubt was cast upon the legality of a Quaker marriage, its validity was afterwards confirmed. The 7th and 8th of William and Mary contain, however, a clause which certainly had given rise to doubts on the subject, (though he thought they were not of much weight,) for by a clause of that act (which he concluded was the one adverted to by the Noble Marquis) it was for the purposes of taxation declared that all persons living together after the manner of the Quakers, should be taken and held to be married persons, whether they had been married or not according to the established forms. Having now looked into this question more than he had been able to do on a former occasion, he was of opinion, not only that the Quakers were intitled to the benefit of the law as valid marriages, but that they ought to have further benefits in that respect which he believed they had not, with reference in particular to the ecclesiastical law. Certainly, if the House did more for the present applicants, that same they ought to do for Jews and Quakers. With respect to the marriages of Jews, a question arose in the Court of Chancery as to their validity so lately as the time when Lord Rosslyn was Chancellor. A man claimed a legacy as due to him on

the ground of its having been left to a person whom he called his wife. The persons were a Jew and a Jewess, and the question in the case was whether the legatee was his wife. The Lord Chaucellor sent the question to be tried by the Ecclesiastical Court, and the case came on before the present Lord Stowell. Lord Stowell, and also Sir W. Wynn, who afterwards affirmed the judgment of Lord Stowell, expressed their surprise that this case should have been sent to an Ecclesiastical Court by the Court of Chancery, inasmuch as the Lord Chancellor had just as much right as an Ecclesiastical Court to decide incidentally on the vali dity of a Jewish marriage, or on that of a foreign marriage. They, on the other hand, were Ecclesiastical officers, and bound by the stricter rules and maxims of Ecclesiastical Courts. They decided, however, that a marriage of Jews was to be considered as a marriage of foreigners. Now the validity of a foreign marriage must be decided by the lex loci; but it is a maxim of law, that the Jews, who are in one sense every where, are, in effect, no where; being foreigners, and yet having no country to which they can be assigned. As the Jews, therefore, have no place, as they have no locality, no lex loci could ap ply to their case, but the validity of their marriages must be determined by their conformity with their own peculiar laws. But whatever had been done for the case of Jews and Quakers, the legislature had never yet called on the Church of England to assist them. Whatever it might be disposed to do with regard to the marriages of this particular class of Dissenters, he trusted it would never assent to any measure, the effect of which would be to degrade the Church of England in the public estimation, as he would presently shew this Bill would do. With respect to the marriages of Quakers, he was certainly of opinion that it was fair to ar gue that the very exception in the 26th George 11. implied that they were to be considered legal marriages. But let their Lordships consider at what period of the Session it was that they were discussing, and were called upon to decide, this most important question. He (Lord Eldon had given the greatest attention to this Bill; he had weighed every sentence aud line in it; but he found it utterly impos sible to assent to the passing of this Bill without a great number of alterations. Now if, labouring as he (Lord E.) had done, with a view to make this Bill better than it was, he had been unable to accomplish his object, he did think that no time or labour their Lordships could be

tion, and the first words that fell from the lips of the preacher, after giving out his text, were-"The Lord Chancellor asks, What is an Unitarian?" This was, certainly, rather a singular commencement of a Sermon; it was, however, he must do the preacher the justice to say, a very good and well-written sermon, as far as he could understand subjects of that kind. But the reason which led him (Lord Eldon) to ask the question-and if their Lordships should go into the Committee, he should ask it again-was, that it might be recorded upon the face of this Bill what an Unitarian was. He again called on the Reverend Bench to define the term. He should like very much to see that Rev. Bench vote that a person who denied the divinity of their Saviour (if that was, as he understood, the definition of these persons' opinions), was, on that account, deserving of this especial favour. His object was to get a plain and distinct definition of who it was they were thus called on to favour. He did not know what distinction there was between Unitarians and another set of persons who were before their Lordships, calling themselves Free-thinking Christians, who also entertained these scruples about marriages; but he begged their Lordships to look at the language of these petitioners, that they might judge of their claims to the special interposition of the Legislature.-The Noble Earl proceeded to read some passages from a petition lately presented by the Free-thinking Christians, in which they " declare and avow that the Church of England, whose religious worship they are thus called upon to sanction, they know only as a Church, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men:'-as a Church professing a religion which has no other claims than that of being by law established;-as a Church whose laws have no earlier date than Popery, no higher authority than Acts of Parliament," &c. The petitioners proceed thus: "Viewing the Church of England as part of such a system of political religion and corrupt spiritual power-regarding the form of marriage, as contained in the Book of Common Prayer, as one of the rites of such a Church, how can your petitioners conform thereto? How, in the language of Scripture, can they do this thing, and

stow upon it would enable them to execute their work as, in his judgment, it ought to be executed. If this Bill was now to go through a committee, he for one must withdraw from the attempt to make it, as he should wish to do, better even for the parties than it then was, if the House determined that they were to be relieved. If their Lordships introduced amendments, the amendments of this most important Bill would go down to the House of Commons on Friday, and on that very evening the other House of Parliament must decide upon the propriety of all of them, for their Lordiships were perfectly aware that no other opportunity would be afforded for considering them. The time, therefore, at which this measure was brought under the consideration of their Lordships, was a sufficient ground for not passing it, even if the objections to it were less strong than he believed he should be able to satisfy the House they were. It had been argued, that it was but just to do for Dissenters of this deseription what the Legislature had done for Jews and Quakers. But, admitting that the marriages of Jews and Quakers were legalized under the exception in the Marriage Act, he begged again to ask their Lordships whether the Church of England had ever been called in to assist in those marriages by publishing their banns and registering them? In the time of the Commonwealth, when men were married, as it was now proposed, before Justices of the Peace-a measure then adopt ed for the express purpose of degrading the Clergy-the Clergy were not called upon to aid and assist in their own degradation. If their Lordships should think it right to do that for Dissenters generally which had been done for Quakers, let them do so, but let them not say that they were justified by that precedent in doing more than they had done for those parties, as they would do if they passed this Bill. He begged to call their Lordships' attention a little to what this Bill did, and to what it did not. In the first place, he should be glad to know who the persons were whom this Bill proposed to relieve? It was said, indeed, in the preamble, that these persons had scruples, and that they were called Unitarians, but neither their scruples were explained, nor their name. What an Unitarian was had never yet been explained. He had taken occasion last year to ask a Right Reverend Prelate, who was now unfortunately absent, what was an Unitarian, aud he could get no answer. Since that time he had received the present of a Sermon, preached by a Minister before an Unitarian congrega

His Lordship seems to have practised a little stratagem here. No such petition was ever presented, we learn, to the Lords at all; and it does not appear that his Lordship moved for a copy of it from the Commons.