of terror, there was an inevitable incorrectness in some of the minor details; and because from the mass of documents which has been since obtained, it is evident that that work would have been too limited and exceedingly incomplete. While they have, therefore, thought it their duty to withhold an imperfect narration, they hope and expect that a full and authentic statement will be presented to the public by a member of their body. "With peculiar satisfaction they renew the assurances of their respect and gratitude to those who nobly advanced to vindicate a just cause, and to relieve Protestants suffering for conscience' sake. The names and contributions which are subjoined, will demonstrate, that amidst all the efforts and artifices which embarrassed public opinion, the Committee were honoured with general and liberal support; and they are placed in one list that they may be preserved as a practical and honourable memorial to this and future generations, of the sentiments and virtues of the Protestant Dissenters of England, and the friends of truth and liberty in Scotland, of the present day. The amount, deducting the necessary expenses, has been remitted to those for whom it was justly and generously designed. Providence has opened for its distribution channels peculiarly suitable and satisfactory. With special adaptation to the circumstances of the sufferers, and a studied and scrupulous economy, the refreshing streams of Christian benevolence have been conducted to the scenes of protracted and inconceivable desolation. "The alarming disturbances which occurred at Nismes as late as last March, will satisfy you that it would be most impolitic and dangerous to give a particularity to their information, which, in ordinary circumstances, the Committee would have thought it their duty to have communicated; but they can state generally, that widows have been relieved from immediate necessity and perma nently assisted; orphans have been clothed, educated, apprenticed and taught to provide for their own future independence; prisoners have been furnished with means to procure legal assistance, and to pay the expenses of the tribunals; tradesmen have been enabled to recommence their business; artisans have been supplied, with implements and tools; weavers with looms; agriculturalists with ploughs, carts, horses, cows, &c.; houses have been rebuilt or repaired; furniture stolen or destroyed has been replaced; pensions have been given to the old and decrepid; bread, meat, clothes and bedding have been distributed as exigencies required, and the money thus applied has been spent as much as possible with persons connected with the sufferers, and almost invariably with meritorious Protestants. Many who must have sunk into the grave under the pressure of want, disease and despair, or have dragged on a miserable existence, or have grown up in penury, ignorance and vice, have been snatched, by the kindness and wise arrangements of the almoners of your bounty, from their miseries, and spared to their families and to their respective Protestant communities. "A member of the Committee passed part of the last autumn in the South of France. He saw the widows, the orphans, and the sufferers, who have received and are receiving your supplies, and witnessed the mode of administering relief. Houses still in ruins are partially restored; the tears and sorrows of the injured and bereaved, and the numerous and horrid recitals which he heard from persons who reflect honour on their country and on Protestantism, attested the melancholy certainty of all that has transpired. "The elements of mischief are still latent and powerful; the oppressors, though restrained, are neither dispersed nor disunited; the criminals, though unpunished, are implacable; and a favourable moment would be infallibly embraced. It is only the continuance of a liberal administration and the protecting care of Providence that can even now preserve the Protestants of the Gard from the most fearful calamities. "The Committee sincerely hope that the tranquillity and security of their brethren in France, will be confirmed and established: but should persecution unhappily revive, conso 1 376 Intelligence.-General Baptist Assembly. lation is already prepared by your past conduct. It is now known, that there is at least one body of men in Europe to whom the persecuted may confidently appeal, and by whom, as long as public justice lingers in the world, their oppressors will be exhibited to public view, and exposed to virtuous indignation. "Grateful for the confidence with which they have been honoured, the Committee, in the name of the general body, pledge their best exertions to their brethren, throughout the empire, whenever their humble efforts may be necessary, to protect or promote the interests of liberty and religion. "By order of the Committee, menced about nine and the public service at eleven o'clock. Mr. Evans, of Islington, as for many years past, read the Scriptures and gave out the Hymns, and Mr. Gilchrist, of Newington Green, preached from 2 Peter iii. 18. The preacher set out with assuming that the Old General Baptists were not, as a denomination, behind other denominations in moral and religious worth. On these topics, therefore, he did not think it peculiarly incumbent on him to dwell at that time; but there was one point on which he did feel it necessary to say that he considered the General Baptists as falling below some of their fellow-christians-it was in mental cultivation. This, therefore, would be the subject of his discourse. In illustrating and enforcing his subject, the preacher clearly marked the distinc tion between mere learning and useful, practical knowledge; he cautioned his hearers against being deterred from the perusal and study of some of the best productions of the human mind, by the cry of heresy or infidelity which had been raised against the names of their illustrious authors; and concluded with giving some judicious rules for rendering study really subservient to mental improvement. The Sermon, which it is understood will shortly be laid before the public, was characterized by manly firmness, and much "Library, Red Cross Street, May of its author's wonted originality of 17, 1819. At a meeting of the above thought. mentioned Committee, the Auditors reported, We have examined the Secretary's accounts and found them This is followed by a list of the Contributors to the Fund; after which are inserted the following minutes:"Library, Red-Cross Street, May 7, 1819-At a meeting of the Committee of Inquiry, Superintendence and Distribution, on behalf of the Persecuted French Protestants, Resolved, That the Rev. Alexander Waugh, D. D., the Rev. T. Cloutt, and the Rev. F. A. Cox, A. M. be appointed Auditors to examine the Secretary's accounts of receipt and expenditure, and to make a Report to the Committee." correct.' "ALEX. WAUGH, Auditors." General Baptist Assembly. THE Anniversary Meeting of the Unitarian Baptists was held on June the 1st, at Worship Street, London. This meeting has been annually held on the Tuesday in the Whitsuntide week, for nearly a hundred years past; and as the Unitarian Fund Anniversary is always holden on the day following, it affords those who are friendly to the objects of the two meetings an opportunity of attending both. The business of the Assembly com On the business being resumed, the letters from the churches were read; and although they contained no account of any material increase of mem bers, yet several of them evinced not merely liberality of sentiment, but also a style so considerably improved, as to inspire a hope that the preacher's advice was well-timed, and that it will not be wholly inefficacious. The Report of the Committee consisted chiefly of a detail of circumstances relative to Mr. Evans's resignation of the office of Tutor to the General Baptist Academy, and the institution being removed to Newington Green, Mr. Gilchrist having been prevailed on to accept the office as Mr. Evans's successor. A vote of thanks to Mr. Evans, for his longcontinued and generous services, was proposed and carried unanimously. The report mentioned to his honour, that he had for many years past received 10l. per annum less for his divinity than for his lay students; be sides allowing the former gratuitous access to his library, for which the parents of the latter paid two guineas at their entrance. On Mr. Gilchrist's ability for training up acceptable ministers of the gospel, it would be premature to make any observations; but should it hereafter be found that the Committee have made a judicious choice of a Tutor to the Academy, the writer will perhaps be allowed to say,—this institution is deserving the attention and support of the Unitarians at large, as being the only one in the South of England in which, without a creed being subscribed, their views of Christian truth will be inculcated on the minds of divinity students. When the business of the Assembly was finished, the ministers, representatives of the churches, and several friends not in connexion with the General Baptist denomination, retired to the White Hart, Bishopsgate Street, and sat down to dinner, in number about sixty. The preacher, as is usual on this occasion, was in the chair, and, after the cloth was removed, gave several toasts. In the course of the evening the company were addressed by different gentlemen, among whom the chairman, in his prefaces to the sentiments he proposed, was necessarily conspicuous. Mr. Marten, of Dover, in alluding to the Committee, observed, that hitherto they had not done much calculated to effect any particular change in the state of the cause at large; but he was aware that they had been prevented from doing what they might have thought advisable, in consequence of not having funds at their disposal. He, however, hoped, that they would hereafter be furnished with the means of adopting such measures as they might consider expedient, when Fellowship Funds, established in all the churches, as recommended in the Committee's Report and sanctioned by the Assembly that day, should be in a state of effective operation. The evening was spent in uninterrupted harmony, and the company broke up at an early hour. E. D. Unitarian Association. THE Annual General Meeting of the Unitarian Association was held at the London Tavern, Bishopsgate,on Thursday, the 3d of June, at one o'clock. Thomas Hardy, Esq. was called to the Chair. The Secretary read the following Report of the Committee: Although, by the resolution of the meeting in which this Association originated, the members of the present Committee continue in office till the General Meeting of 1820, they conceive it be their duty to give an account in the mean time to the members of the Association, of the matters which have occupied their consideration during the short interval which has elapsed since their appointment. "The objects to which the Committee of this Association can be called upon to direct their attention, must of course be very uncertain in their occurrence. The cases in which they may have to afford their assistance and support to resist aggression, will (it is to be hoped) seldom occur, and the propriety of endeavours to enlarge the limits of religious freedom must depend, for the most part, on the contingency of opportunities favourable to exertion. "The only matter of public interest, in which the committee have hitherto felt themselves called upon by the general wish to interfere, is the present state of the Marriage Law, as it more peculiarly affects Unitarian Dissenters; and they have thought the present a fit time for the agitation of the question. “În investigating the subject, they have found that the grievance complained of, is one comparatively of very modern origin;-that prior to the Marriage Act, which was passed only sixty-six years ago, all Dissenters were legally entitled to the celebration of marriage as a ceremony, in the manner most consonant to their particular opinions, so as the legal requisites of a contract binding on the parties were preserved;-that they have, therefore, now only to ask for a restoration of the rights which have been suspended by the operation of an act which, it is evident, was never intended to infringe on religious li berty; and are at any rate entitled to claim that the service in which they are required to join, should not be one totally repugnant to their feelings and opinions. It appears to the Committee indisputable, that by the ancient law of this country, as well as of, perhaps, all other Christian states, inarriage is essentially a civil contract; and that though in the progress of the ecclesiastical spirit of appropriation, which sought to bring the properties and business of all mankind under its jurisdiction, attempts were made, as far as the power of the Church extended, to usurp the controul and celebration of the marriage ceremony; yet that in the eye of the law, so far at any rate as it regarded the legal consequences of marriage, the subsistence of a binding contract between the parties was alone essential or material. The Dissenters, therefore, of England were entitled to the celebration of their marriages, more especially after the date of the Toleration Act, which legalized their religious services,-aud that these marriages were valid in law, is clear from the existence at the present day, of the same right asserted in actual practice among the Quakers, with regard to whom the legal question rests at this moment on precisely the same grounds as it did with respect to the general body of Dissenters before the act of the 26th George II. "It is however truc, that the Dissenters in general did before that act conform in practice to the ritual of the Church, and several reasons contributed to induce this. It was, in the first place, of extreme importance that publicity and regularity should take place in celebrating and recording the marriage contract:-in the next place, the Dissenters agreed for the most part in doctrine with the Church, and many of them felt little or no repugnance to occasional conformity; and lastly, though the common law courts supported their marriages, and the ecclesiastical courts had no power to annul them, yet the latter had in several ways the means of annoyance and inconvenience to those who did not submit to their regulations. In this state of things the Marriage Act was passed, and appears to have met with no opposition from the Dissenters, for the same reasons whicht had induced them to conform in previous practice. The measure was undoubtedly intended by those who brought it forward, as a mere matter of civil regulation:-in those cases where it appeared to clash with religious discipline or opinion, relief was readily extended by excepting the parties from its operation;-and upon the same principle the Unitarians of the present day are (especially since the extension in their favour of the benefit of the Toleration Acts) entitled to claim the same indulgence as one which, they are warranted in saying, it appears from the tenor of the Marriage Act, would have been granted them if they had been of suf ficient political consideration to have rendered it easy or prudent for them to protest against it at the time it passed. "The Committee directed their attention in the first place to framing a petition to the Legislature, which they might recommend to the adoption of those who should be desirous to come forward on the occasion. Several petitions have accordingly been signed by individuals of different congregations, and forwarded for presentment to members of the two Houses of Parliament; the principal of those the House of Commons being entrusted to William Smith, Esq., who readily promised his assistance on the occasion. "On the subject of the relief to be sought, different opinions may, per haps, be formed, and have indeed existed in the Committee. It would certainly be the fairest and most liberal plan to release every Dissenter from a compulsive conformity to the Esta blished Church, and to make the legal contract again in practice as well as theory merely civil, securing the essentials of regularity in celebration and record, and leaving each indivi dual to add to the legal contract such religious rites as might appear to himself expedient or proper. But unless the general body of Dissenters were likely to unite zealously in support of such a proposition, it does not seem at all probable so important a change in the civil policy of the country would be proposed with any chance of success; and if they are in general not inclined to object to perform the ceremony (considering it as a matter of civil regulation) in the Church, the utmost, perhaps, which is likely to be obtained, or which it might be prudent to ask, would be to be relieved from joining in the devotional part of the service. This might be very readily effected by an act to permit the celebration and registration of the marriages of those Dissenters who should require it, on the use of that part of the service only which contains the mutual plighting of the parties, and is purely civil. This mode would in fact secure all the municipal objects of the Marriage Act, at the same time that it would put an end to the anomalous conformity which Dissenters are at present obliged by law to practise to the religious services of a Church, from which the same laws protect them in separating; and it would leave them of course at full liberty to add, if they pleased, to these civil regulations, any religious service which they might think proper to adopt, at their own place of worship. "There is undoubtedly a middle course which may come under consideration, (though likely, perhaps, on several accounts to meet with more opposition,) that of allowing each sect the celebration of the marriage ceremony according to its own form, providing only for proper registration in the parochial register, on the certificate of competent persous, and on payment to the minister of the accustomed fees. It is, however, perhaps premature to discuss at any great length this branch of the subject. It will be brought generally under the consideration of the Legislature; and the mode in which relief may be afforded, if at all, will probably depend upon considerations on which it is impossible to speculate in anticipation, with any degree of certainty. whenever called upon for their assistance on such an occasion, do all in their power to oppose a position so hostile to the progress of free inquiry, and the exercise of complete religious liberty-so inconsistent with the true and enlarged principles on which Dissenters form themselves into societies. They have not, however, been called upou to interfere on the subject; and they trust that the disgraceful attempt which was recently made or countenanced by persous calling themselves by the name of Dissenters, while they violated every principle that could entitle them to it, will, on cooler reflection, be abandoned. "The Committee will, perhaps, be expected to notice the subject which was much under discussion at the time the Association commenced, namely, the liability of a congregation to dispossession of property arising even from its own immediate contributions, on account of any change (whether real or existing only in the deductions of legal fiction) in its opi nions or discipline. The Committee need hardly say, that they would, "In the discussion of the case to which the Committee have just referred, a point was also raised of considerable importance, as it was levelled not only against the property but the liberty of Unitarians, who, it will be recollected, were there contended to be still subject to prosecution as offenders against the Christianity said to be alone recognized by law. The Committee have not found it necessary to take any steps towards removing the doubt which has been thus raised, particularly as it seems involved in the consideration of a case which may still be said to be under judicial decision, and they can therefore only observe, that the more the arguments used in support of the proposition just alluded to are considered, the less foundation do they appear to have in any principles which would not equally apply to the whole body of Dissenters, who differ in any degree from the doctrines of the Established Church. "The Committee, in conclusion, are happy to have it in their power to congratulate the General Meeting on the gradual, and they trust, firm establishment of "The Unitarian Association." They are able to report many congregations as having already united themselves in support of its objects; and they have no doubt that they shall, before the next meeting, enrol in its connexion by far the greater part of the existing bodies of Unitarians in the kingdom. It must be unnecessary for the Committee to enlarge on the beneficial influence of institutions like the present. Independent of their utility in redressing actual injuries, and protecting the |
