now considering be an exception to that rule? I have done my best
to understand why. I have read much bad oratory, and many foolish
petitions. I have heard with attention the reasons of my honourable
friend the Member for the University of Oxford; and I should have heard
the reasons of the honourable Member for Kent, if there had been any to
hear. Every argument by which my honourable friend the Member for the
University of Oxford tried to convince us that this case is an exception
to the general rule, will be found on examination to be an argument
against the general rule itself. He says that the possession which we
propose to sanction was originally a wrongful possession. Why, Sir, all
the statutes of limitation that ever were made sanction possession which
was originally wrongful. It is for the protection of possessors who are
not in condition to prove that their possession was originally rightful
that statutes of limitation are passed. Then my honourable friend
says that this is an ex post facto law. Why, Sir, so are all our great
statutes of limitation. Look at the Statute of Merton, passed in 1235;
at the Statute of Westminster, passed in 1275; at the Statute of James
the First, passed in 1623; at Sir George Savile's Act, passed in the
last century; at Lord Tenterden's Act, passed in our own time. Every one
of those Acts was retrospective. Every one of them barred claims arising
out of past transactions. Nor was any objection ever raised to what
was so evidently just and wise, till bigotry and chicanery formed that
disgraceful league against which we are now contending. But, it is said,
it is unreasonable to grant a boon to men because they have been many
years doing wrong. The length of the time during which they have enjoyed
property not rightfully their own, is an aggravation of the injury which
they have committed, and is so far from being a reason for letting them
enjoy that property for ever, that it is rather a reason for compelling
them to make prompt restitution. With this childish sophistry the
petitions on our table are filled. Is it possible that any man can be
so dull as not to perceive that, if this be a reason, it is a reason
against all our statutes of limitation? I do a greater wrong to my
tailor if I withhold payment of his bill during six years than if I
withhold payment only during two years. Yet the law says that at the
end of two years he may bring an action and force me to pay him with
interest, but that after the lapse of six years he cannot force me to
pay him at all. It is much harder that a family should be kept out of
its hereditary estate during five generations than during five days.
But if you are kept out of your estate five days you have your action of
ejectment; and, after the lapse of five generations, you have no remedy.
I say, therefore, with confidence, that every argument which has been
urged against this bill is an argument against the great principle of
prescription. I go further, and I say that, if there be any case which,
in an especial manner, calls for the application of the principle of
prescription, this is that case. For the Unitarian congregations have
laid out so much on these little spots of ground that it is impossible
to take the soil from them without taking from them property which is of
much greater value than the mere soil, and which is indisputably their
own. This is not the case of a possessor who has been during many years,
receiving great emoluments from land to which he had not a good title.
It is the case of a possessor who has, from resources which were
undoubtedly his own, expended on the land much more than it was
originally worth. Even in the former case, it has been the policy of all
wise lawgivers to fix a time of limitation. A fortiori, therefore, there
ought to be a time of limitation in the latter case.
And here, Sir, I cannot help asking gentlemen to compare the petitions
for this bill with the petitions against it. Never was there such a
contrast. The petitions against the bill are filled with cant, rant,
scolding, scraps of bad sermons. The petitions in favour of the bill
set forth in the simplest manner great practical grievances. Take, for
instance, the case of Cirencester. The meeting house there was built in
1730. It is certain that the Unitarian doctrines were taught there as
early as 1742. That was only twelve years after the chapel had been
founded. Many of the original subscribers must have been living. Many
of the present congregation are lineal descendants of the original
subscribers. Large sums have from time to time been laid out in
repairing, enlarging, and embellishing the edifice; and yet there are
people who think it just and reasonable that this congregation should,
after the lapse of more than a century, be turned out. At Norwich,
again, a great dissenting meeting house was opened in 1688. It is not
easy to say how soon Anti-Trinitarian doctrines were taught there. The
change of sentiment in the congregation seems to have been gradual: but
it is quite certain that, in 1754, ninety years ago, both pastor and
flock were decidedly Unitarian. Round the chapel is a cemetery filled
with the monuments of eminent Unitarians. Attached to the chapel are a
schoolhouse and a library, built and fitted up by Unitarians. And now
the occupants find that their title is disputed. They cannot venture to
build; they cannot venture to repair; and they are anxiously awaiting
our decision. I do not know that I have cited the strongest cases. I
am giving you the ordinary history of these edifices. Go to Manchester.
Unitarianism has been taught there at least seventy years in a chapel
on which the Unitarians have expended large sums. Go to Leeds. Four
thousand pounds have been subscribed for the repairing of the Unitarian
chapel there, the chapel where, near eighty years ago, Priestly, the
great Doctor of the sect, officiated. But these four thousand pounds are
lying idle. Not a pew can be repaired till it is known whether this bill
will become law. Go to Maidstone. There Unitarian doctrines have been
taught during at least seventy years; and seven hundred pounds have
recently been laid out by the congregation in repairing the chapel.
Go to Exeter. It matters not where you go. But go to Exeter. There
Unitarian doctrines have been preached more than eighty years; and two
thousand pounds have been laid out on the chapel. It is the same
at Coventry, at Bath, at Yarmouth, everywhere. And will a British
Parliament rob the possessors of these buildings? I can use no other
word. How should we feel if it were proposed to deprive any other class
of men of land held during so long a time, and improved at so large a
cost? And, if this property should be transferred to those who covet it,
what would they gain in comparison with what the present occupants would
lose? The pulpit of Priestley, the pulpit of Lardner, are objects
of reverence to congregations which hold the tenets of Priestley and
Lardner. To the intruders those pulpits will be nothing; nay, worse than
nothing; memorials of heresiarchs. Within these chapels and all around
them are the tablets which the pious affection of four generations
has placed over the remains of dear mothers and sisters, wives and
daughters, of eloquent preachers, of learned theological writers. To
the Unitarian, the building which contains these memorials is a hallowed
building. To the intruder it is of no more value than any other room
in which he can find a bench to sit on and a roof to cover him. If,
therefore, we throw out this bill, we do not merely rob one set of
people in order to make a present to another set. That would be bad
enough. But we rob the Unitarians of that which they regard as a most
precious treasure; of that which is endeared to them by the strongest
religious and the strongest domestic associations; of that which cannot
be wrenched from them without inflicting on them the bitterest pain and
humiliation. To the Trinitarians we give that which can to them be of
little or no value except as a trophy of a most inglorious victory won
in a most unjust war.
But, Sir, an imputation of fraud has been thrown on the Unitarians;
not, indeed, here, but in many other places, and in one place of which
I would always wish to speak with respect. The Unitarians, it has
been said, knew that the original founders of these chapels were
Trinitarians; and to use, for the purpose of propagating Unitarian
doctrine, a building erected for the purpose of propagating Trinitarian
doctrine was grossly dishonest. One very eminent person (The Bishop
of London.) has gone so far as to maintain that the Unitarians cannot
pretend to any prescription of more than sixty-three years; and he
proves his point thus:--Till the year 1779, he says, no dissenting
teacher was within the protection of the Toleration Act unless he
subscribed those articles of the Church of England which affirm
the Athanasian doctrine. It is evident that no honest Unitarian can
subscribe those articles. The inference is, that the persons who
preached in these chapels down to the year 1779 must have been either
Trinitarians or rogues. Now, Sir, I believe that they were neither
Trinitarians nor rogues; and I cannot help suspecting that the great
prelate who brought this charge against them is not so well read in the
history of the nonconformist sects as in the history of that Church of
which he is an ornament. The truth is that, long before the year 1779,
the clause of the Toleration Act which required dissenting ministers
to subscribe thirty-five or thirty-six of our thirty-nine articles
had almost become obsolete. Indeed, that clause had never been rigidly
enforced. From the very first there were some dissenting ministers who
refused to subscribe, and yet continued to preach. Calany was one; and
he was not molested. And if this could be done in the year in which the
Toleration Act passed, we may easily believe that, at a later period,
the law would not have been very strictly observed. New brooms, as
the vulgar proverb tells us, sweep clean; and no statute is so rigidly
enforced as a statute just made. But, Sir, so long ago as the year 1711,
the provisions of the Toleration Act on this subject were modified. In
that year the Whigs, in order to humour Lord Nottingham, with whom
they had coalesced against Lord Oxford, consented to let the Occasional
Conformity Bill pass; but they insisted on inserting in the bill a
clause which was meant to propitiate the dissenters. By this clause
it was enacted that, if an information were laid against a dissenting
minister for having omitted to subscribe the articles, the defendant
might, by subscribing at any stage of the proceedings anterior to
the judgment, defeat the information, and throw all the costs on the
informer. The House will easily believe that, when such was the state of
the law, informers were not numerous. Indeed, during the discussions of
1773, it was distinctly affirmed, both in Parliament and in manifestoes
put forth by the dissenting body, that the majority of nonconformist
ministers then living had never subscribed. All arguments, therefore,
grounded on the insincerity which has been rashly imputed to the
Unitarians of former generations, fall at once to the ground.
But, it is said, the persons who, in the reigns of James the Second, of
William the Third, and of Anne, first established these chapels, held
the doctrine of the Trinity; and therefore, when, at a later period, the
preachers and congregations departed from the doctrine of the Trinity,
they ought to have departed from the chapels too. The honourable and
learned gentleman, the Attorney General, has refuted this argument so
ably that he has scarcely left anything for me to say about it. It is
well-known that the change which, soon after the Revolution, began to
take place in the opinions of a section of the old Puritan body, was a
gradual, an almost imperceptible change. The principle of the English
Presbyterians was to have no confession of faith and no form of prayer.
Their trust deeds contained no accurate theological definitions.
Nonsubscription was in truth the very bond which held them together.
What, then, could be more natural than that, Sunday by Sunday,
the sermons should have become less and less like those of the old
Calvinistic divines, that the doctrine of the Trinity should have been
less and less frequently mentioned, that at last it should have ceased
to be mentioned, and that thus, in the course of years, preachers and
hearers should, by insensible degrees, have become first Arians, then,
perhaps, Socinians. I know that this explanation has been treated
with disdain by people profoundly ignorant of the history of English
nonconformity. I see that my right honourable friend near me (Mr Fox
Maule.) does not assent to it. Will he permit me to refer him to an
analogous case with which he cannot but be well acquainted? No person
in the House is more versed than he in the ecclesiastical history of
Scotland; and he will, I am sure, admit that some of the doctrines now
professed by the Scotch sects which sprang from the secessions of 1733
and 1760 are such as the seceders of 1733 and the seceders of 1760 would
have regarded with horror. I have talked with some of the ablest, most
learned, and most pious of the Scotch dissenters of our time; and they
all fully admitted that they held more than one opinion which their
predecessors would have considered as impious. Take the question of the
connection between Church and State. The seceders of 1733 thought that
the connection ought to be much closer than it is. They blamed the
legislature for tolerating heresy. They maintained that the Solemn
league and covenant was still binding on the kingdom. They considered
it as a national sin that the validity of the Solemn League and Covenant
was not recognised at the time of the Revolution. When George Whitfield
went to Scotland, though they approved of his Calvinistic opinions, and
though they justly admired that natural eloquence which he possessed in
so wonderful a degree, they would hold no communion with him because he
would not subscribe the Solemn League and Covenant. Is that the doctrine
of their successors? Are the Scotch dissenters now averse to toleration?
Are they not zealous for the voluntary system? Is it not their constant
cry that it is not the business of the civil magistrate to encourage any
religion, false or true? Does any Bishop now abhor the Solemn League
and Covenant more than they? Here is an instance in which numerous
congregations have, retaining their identity, passed gradually from one
opinion to another opinion. And would it be just, would it be decent in
me, to impute dishonesty to them on that account? My right honourable
friend may be of opinion that the question touching the connection
between the Church and State is not a vital question. But was that the
opinion of the divines who drew up the Secession Testimony? He well
knows that in their view a man who denied that it was the duty of the
government to defend religious truth with the civil sword was as much a
heretic as a man who denied the doctrine of the Trinity.
Again, Sir, take the case of the Wesleyan Methodists. They are zealous
against this bill. They think it monstrous that a chapel originally
built for people holding one set of doctrines should be occupied by
people holding a different set of doctrines. I would advise them to
consider whether they cannot find in the history of their own body
reasons for being a little more indulgent. What were the opinions of
that great and good man, their founder, on the question whether men not
episcopally ordained could lawfully administer the Eucharist? He told
his followers that lay administration was a sin which he never could
tolerate. Those were the very words which he used; and I believe that,
during his lifetime, the Eucharist never was administered by laymen
in any place of worship which was under his control. After his death,
however, the feeling in favour of lay administration became strong and
general among his disciples. The Conference yielded to that feeling. The
consequence is that now, in every chapel which belonged to Wesley, those
who glory in the name of Wesleyans commit, every Sacrament Sunday, what
Wesley declared to be a sin which he would never tolerate. And yet these
very persons are not ashamed to tell us in loud and angry tones that it
is fraud, downright fraud, in a congregation which has departed from its
original doctrines to retain its original endowments. I believe, Sir,
that, if you refuse to pass this bill, the Courts of Law will soon have
to decide some knotty questions which, as yet, the Methodists little
dream of.
It has, I own, given me great pain to observe the unfair and acrimonious
manner in which too many of the Protestant nonconformists have
opposed this bill. The opposition of the Established Church has been
comparatively mild and moderate; and yet from the Established Church we
had less right to expect mildness and moderation. It is certainly
not right, but it is very natural, that a church, ancient and richly
endowed, closely connected with the Crown and the aristocracy, powerful
in parliament, dominant in the universities, should sometimes forget
what is due to poorer and humbler Christian societies. But when I hear
a cry for what is nothing less than persecution set up by men who have
been, over and over again within my own memory, forced to invoke in
their own defence the principles of toleration, I cannot but feel
astonishment mingled with indignation. And what above all excites both
my astonishment and my indignation is this, that the most noisy among
the noisy opponents of the bill which we are considering are some
sectaries who are at this very moment calling on us to pass another
bill of just the same kind for their own benefit. I speak of those Irish
Presbyterians who are asking for an ex post facto law to confirm their
marriages. See how exact the parallel is between the case of those
marriages and the case of these chapels. The Irish Presbyterians have
gone on marrying according to their own forms during a long course of
years. The Unitarians have gone on occupying, improving, embellishing
certain property during a long course of years. In neither case did any
doubt as to the right arise in the most honest, in the most scrupulous
mind. At length, about the same time, both the validity of the
Presbyterian marriages and the validity of the title by which the
Unitarians held their chapels were disputed. The two questions came
before the tribunals. The tribunals, with great reluctance, with great
pain, pronounced that, neither in the case of the marriages nor in the
case of the chapels, can prescription be set up against the letter
of the law. In both cases there is a just claim to relief such as the
legislature alone can afford. In both the legislature is willing to
grant that relief. But this will not satisfy the orthodox Presbyterian.
He demands with equal vehemence two things, that he shall be relieved,
and that nobody else shall be relieved. In the same breath he tells us
that it would be most iniquitous not to pass a retrospective law for his
benefit, and that it would be most iniquitous to pass a retrospective
law for the benefit of his fellow sufferers. I never was more amused
than by reading, the other day, a speech made by a person of great note
among the Irish Presbyterians on the subject of these marriages. "Is it
to be endured," he says, "that the mummies of old and forgotten laws are
to be dug up and unswathed for the annoyance of dissenters?" And yet a
few hours later, this eloquent orator is himself hard at work in digging
up and unswathing another set of mummies for the annoyance of another
set of dissenters. I should like to know how he and such as he would
look if we Churchmen were to assume the same tone towards them which
they think it becoming to assume towards the Unitarian body; if we were
to say, "You and those whom you would oppress are alike out of our pale.
If they are heretics in your opinion, you are schismatics in ours. Since
you insist on the letter of the law against them, we will insist on the
letter of the law against you. You object to ex post facto statutes; and
you shall have none. You think it reasonable that men should, in spite
of a prescription of eighty or ninety years, be turned out of a chapel
built with their own money, and a cemetery where their own kindred lie,
because the original title was not strictly legal. We think it equally
reasonable that those contracts which you have imagined to be marriages,
but which are now adjudged not to be legal marriages, should be
treated as nullities." I wish from my soul that some of these orthodox
dissenters would recollect that the doctrine which they defend with so
much zeal against the Unitarians is not the whole sum and substance of
Christianity, and that there is a text about doing unto others as you
would that they should do unto you.
To any intelligent man who has no object except to do justice, the
Trinitarian dissenter and the Unitarian dissenter who are now asking us
for relief will appear to have exactly the same right to it. There
is, however, I must own, one distinction between the two cases. The
Trinitarian dissenters are a strong body, and especially strong among
the electors of towns. They are of great weight in the State. Some of
us may probably, by voting to-night against their wishes, endanger
our seats in this House. The Unitarians, on the other hand, are few in
number. Their creed is unpopular. Their friendship is likely to injure
a public man more than their enmity. If therefore there be among us
any person of a nature at once tyrannical and cowardly, any person who
delights in persecution, but is restrained by fear from persecuting
powerful sects, now is his time. He never can have a better opportunity
of gratifying his malevolence without risk of retribution. But, for my
part, I long ago espoused the cause of religious liberty, not because
that cause was popular, but because it was just; and I am not disposed
to abandon the principles to which I have been true through my whole
life in deference to a passing clamour. The day may come, and may come
soon, when those who are now loudest in raising that clamour may again
be, as they have formerly been, suppliants for justice. When that day
comes I will try to prevent others from oppressing them, as I now try
to prevent them from oppressing others. In the meantime I shall
contend against their intolerance with the same spirit with which I may
hereafter have to contend for their rights.
*****
THE SUGAR DUTIES. (FEBRUARY 26, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF
COMMONS ON THE 26TH OF FEBRUARY, 1845.
On the twenty-sixth of February, 1845, on the question that the order of
the day for going into Committee of Ways and Means should be read, Lord
John Russell moved the following amendment:--"That it is the opinion
of this House that the plan proposed by Her Majesty's Government,
in reference to the Sugar Duties, professes to keep up a distinction
between foreign free labour sugar and foreign slave labour sugar, which
is impracticable and illusory; and, without adequate benefit to the
consumer, tends so greatly to impair the revenue as to render the
removal of the Income and Property Tax at the end of three years
extremely uncertain and improbable." The amendment was rejected by 236
votes to 142. In the debate the following Speech was made.
Sir, if the question now at issue were merely a financial or a
commercial question, I should be unwilling to offer myself to your
notice: for I am well aware that there are, both on your right and on
your left hand, many gentlemen far more deeply versed in financial and
commercial science than myself; and I should think that I discharged
my duty better by listening to them than by assuming the office of
a teacher. But, Sir, the question on which we are at issue with Her
Majesty's Ministers is neither a financial nor a commercial question.
I do not understand it to be disputed that, if we were to pronounce our
decision with reference merely to fiscal and mercantile considerations,
we should at once adopt the plan recommended by my noble friend. Indeed
the right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of
Trade (Mr Gladstone.), has distinctly admitted this. He says that
the Ministers of the Crown call upon us to sacrifice great pecuniary
advantages and great commercial facilities, for the purpose of
maintaining a moral principle. Neither in any former debate nor in
the debate of this night has any person ventured to deny that, both as
respects the public purse and as respects the interests of trade,
the course recommended by my noble friend is preferable to the course
recommended by the Government.
The objections to my noble friend's amendment, then, are purely moral
objections. We lie, it seems, under a moral obligation to make a
distinction between the produce of free labour and the produce of slave
labour. Now I should be very unwilling to incur the imputation of being
indifferent to moral obligations. I do, however, think that it is in
my power to show strong reasons for believing that the moral obligation
pleaded by the Ministers has no existence. If there be no such moral
obligation, then, as it is conceded on the other side that all fiscal
and commercial arguments are on the side of my noble friend, it follows
that we ought to adopt his amendment.
The right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of
Trade, has said that the Government does not pretend to act with perfect
consistency as to this distinction between free labour and slave labour.
It was, indeed, necessary that he should say this; for the policy of the
Government is obviously most inconsistent. Perfect consistency, I admit,
we are not to expect in human affairs. But, surely, there is a decent
consistency which ought to be observed; and of this the right honourable
gentleman himself seems to be sensible; for he asks how, if we admit
sugar grown by Brazilian slaves, we can with decency continue to stop
Brazilian vessels engaged in the slave trade. This argument, whatever
be its value, proceeds on the very correct supposition that the test
of sincerity in individuals, in parties, and in governments, is
consistency. The right honourable gentleman feels, as we must all feel,
that it is impossible to give credit for good faith to a man who on one
occasion pleads a scruple of conscience as an excuse for not doing a
certain thing, and who on other occasions, where there is no essential
difference of circumstances, does that very thing without any scruple
at all. I do not wish to use such a word as hypocrisy, or to impute that
odious vice to any gentleman on either side of the House. But whoever
declares one moment that he feels himself bound by a certain moral rule,
and the next moment, in a case strictly similar, acts in direct defiance
of that rule, must submit to have, if not his honesty, yet at least his
power of discriminating right from wrong very gravely questioned.