Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches - Volume 4 by Thomas Badington Macaulay (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

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.

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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