parish of Midsomer Norton, Somerset; enlarging the church at Chepstow, Monmouth; repairing the church at Llandoget, Denbighshire; enlarging the chapel of St. Peter, Stockport, Cheshire; enlarging, by rebuilding, the church at Paulton, Somerset.

THE TENDENCY OF THE NEW REGISTRATION ACTS, &c.

EXTRACTS from a Petition unanimously passed at a Meeting of the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Totnes, convened at Totnes on the 23rd day of November, 1837, for the purpose of taking into consideration the tendency of the New Registration Acts, the venerable the Archdeacon in the chair. The petition. was moved by the Rev. H. F. Lyte, and seconded by the Rev. Prebendary Holdsworth.

I. Your petitioners would respectfully call the attention of your honourable house to the probable incompleteness of the new registers in reference to births. The recently appointed registrars have in many instances large and populous districts assigned to them, over which it is impossible for persons, who have generally other daily occupations of their own, to exercise such a superintendence as may insure their acquaintance with all the births that occur in them. In the more extensive districts, poor persons, such as labourers and mechanics, will not be disposed to sacrifice a day's wages in order to report the birth of a child to a registrar residing at the distance of some miles, nor can the registrar for the sum of one shilling per entry be expected to take the requisite journey in order to ascertain the particulars of the case for himself; and thus there is every probability of a very large portion of the births of the population of England being, under the new system, left altogether unregistered.

Again, the new registers are not only, we conceive, thus liable to great defects, but to gross inaccuracies. The entries they contain must at best be the mere records of reports made to the registrar by a third party; and their accuracy must therefore depend much on the character of the person who gives, and the person who receives, the information. In populous districts, however, if it should be the interest of any individual to place on the register a supposititious birth, it would, we humbly submit, be easy for him to do so without any great risk of exposure. The registrar would have no means of readily detecting the imposition thus practised on him, nor any strong inducement to give himself much trouble in investigating the case; and moreover the frequent changes to which the registrars are liable, the unsettled nature of their residences, the conservation of the registers in private houses, and their occasional transfer from the hands of the registrar to those of his deputy, are all circumstances that lay the registers open to inaccurate entries.

The new registers moreover, even where births are correctly entered, will, we humbly submit, fail in many instances in identifying the parties they profess to designate. Among all denominations of Christians, except quakers and baptists, Christian names are, we believe, permanently bestowed on children in the rite of baptism. If therefore Christian names be enrolled in the new registers before they are formally given in baptism, they may be changed in the subsequent performance of that ordinance; and those who know the careless habits of the humbler classes, and their indifference to matters of this kind, will not expect them in such a case to do much towards rectifying the registrar's previous entry. In numerous instances, however, the children will probably be entered in the register without any Christian name being there assigned to them; and if there should be many children of the same parents thus entered, they must consequently be undistinguishable one from the other. In either case the identity of the individual is lost, and the entry for all important purposes remains indefinite and useless.

II. From these considerations your petitioners proceed to others, which appear to them to afford still more serious grounds of objection to the new registration acts, and which they, as the constituted guardians of the spiritual interests of the community, feel themselves more especially bound to insist on. They mean the injury which these acts are likely to inflict on the cause of religion in general, and that of the church of England in particular. Hitherto the civil privileges resulting from registration could only be enjoyed in this country through the medium of religious ordinances, and the legislature thus appeared to give that countenance to religious observances which your petitioners conceive to be suitable to a Christian state. The new system, by separating the religious from the civil privileges, provides for the possibility of men passing through life without coming in contact with the ministers of religion or partaking of its ordinances at all. It tells the people, practically though not expressly, that the religious celebration of baptisms, marriages, and funerals, may now be dispensed with, and thus to a certain degree discourages and discountenances it. In the matter of baptism, by registering Christian names, which have been given to children in an irregular and unchristian way, it appears to throw a slight upon the great initiatory rite of Christianity. Inconsiderate persons will thus be induced (as actual instances have already proved) to substitute the civil entry for the religious ceremony, and having their children's names recorded on the register of births, will be tempted to neglect altogether the office of baptism; and in the case of illegitimate children more especially, an opportunity is now afforded to their parents of having their offspring named and registered without any of that exposure, which before in many instances operated as a wholesome check to vice. With respect to the marriage contract, the new system appears to your petitioners to operate injuriously on it in two ways. It deprives the ceremony of much of its publicity, and thus facilitates improper and clandestine marriages; and by allowing it to be solemnized by a secular person, in a private room, without any appeal to God, or reference to religious obligations, it strips the institution of its high and holy character, and robs it of its most impressive and influential sanctions. The results indeed which we deprecate may not immediately develop themselves. It may take some time to break down long established habits, and to overthrow deeply-rooted opinions; but let the permissive clauses of the new measure be once fully acted on, and those sacred ordinances be set aside which now shed a holy solemnity on the great events of life, which bring down grace on its commencement, and pour consolation around its close, and we cannot but anticipate the most demoralizing effects on the whole mass of society.

III. Your petitioners would now proceed to notice some specific grievances which they inflict on themselves and other members of the community. * The members of the established church

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not only unnecessarily subjected to inquisitorial visits on the occasion of a birth or death in their families, and burthened with two registrations where they before had but one; but they find the new system made, what your petitioners are sure that your honourable house never intended that it should be, an instrument for weaning the members of the church from her pale; and the tone and bearing of the new functionaries (a large part of whom are dissenters) towards the church, its ministers and ordinances, are extremely irritating and offensive. With respect to their own particular grievances, your petitioners are not desirous of putting them prominently forward. They cannot however help noticing the jealous and suspicious tone which the new acts appear to adopt toward them, the subordinate position which they assign them with respect to persons generally regarded as their inferiors in rank and intelligence, the obligations which they are under by the act of 52 Geo. III. cap. 146, to keep up their old registers, while they are told that the new acts render these invalid and use

less; and more than all the manner in which these laws, made by the sole authority of the secular legislature, and without the sanction of convocation, have in some instances superseded the authority of the rubric, and virtually call on them to violate the obligation of their ordination vows; while finally they impose on them a penalty of ten pounds for a newly created offence, and that an offence which is in many cases hardly to be avoided, and in all cases is connected with the discharge of their official duties. These various considerations will, they trust, be deemed a suitable introduction to the mention of a few amendments and alterations, which they would now respectfully propose to it.

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First, then, your petitioners would pray, that as they are now by law compelled to keep parochial registers of baptisms and burials, these may be rendered complete by the addition of a column for births and deaths; or rather that their register books may be in all respects assimulated to those of the newly appointed registrars, and their entries received in all cases on the same footing as theirs, more especially in courts of law.

Secondly, that the act of registration by the clergyman after baptism and burial shall exempt persons from the necessity of being again registered by the registrar of the district.

Thirdly, that copies of these ecclesiastical registers be made at such intervals as the legislature may determine, and sent to the office of the registrar general in London, in addition to those transmitted annually to the registrar of the diocese; and that in the transmission of his various registers, whether of births, deaths, or marriages, and indeed in all his other proceedings, the clergyman shall be independent of the registrar of his district.

And further, should these propositions be adopted, your petitioners would leave it to the wisdom of the legislature to determine, whether or not it might be desirable to make it obligatory on the public to register their children within a certain time after birth, either with the ecclesiastical or civil registrar.

CHURCH MATTERS.

CHURCH COMMISSION.

It is now very many months since the writer, on the passing of the Established Church Bill, in deploring the precedents which it established, declared his conviction that the time was now come when anonymous writers respecting the changes proposed in the church could do little or no more good. While the principles of projected measures are under discussion, if reasoning is good, it matters not whether it is with or without a name. For the public looks little to principles, while the few who can appreciate good reasoning look to the matter, not the person. But when that season is over, and the measures are about to be carried into effect, the scene alters. The public mind, on which an impression must now be made, if the measures are to be opposed, is moved, not by good reasoning, but by knowing that many men of high character and influence are decidedly opposed to the measures, think them dangerous, and are preparing to do all they can to defeat them. All this is so obvious that it is hardly

worth saying. And yet it has been very little acted on. Dr. Wordsworth published a pamphlet shewing his wonted powers on one point; Mr. Bowles also wrote strongly on the subject; and though doubtless there must have been others which the writer does not recal, besides that of the Dean of Norwich, noticed last month, the number of pamphlets published with the author's name annexed has been doubtless very small. The chapters indeed memorialized, and did from that time all that in them lay; and there have been a few petitions from clergy in different quarters, many of which, however, referred as much to matters unconnected with the commission (as the Tithe, Marriage, and Registration Acts, and to the injustice of convocation having been so long prevented from proceeding to business,) as to the commission itself.

There is no intention of impugning the motives, or indeed the acts, of the many highminded and influential men who remained silent. They, doubtless, had good reasons for so doing; and an anonymous writer, who presumed to blame them, would be justly censurable for ignorant presumption. Still the fact is, that while we had shoals of pamphlets during the church reform mania, the whole published since the time referred to would make a very thin volume indeed. But just now a new crisis has occurred, for the commission is extinct; and this season has been most judiciously chosen by Dr. Spry (who has been long actively engaged as a prebendary of Canterbury in the matter before) for sending out a pamphlet, which will not only doubtless produce great effect now, but, as containing a clear, able, and succinct statement of the course of things, will be most valuable as an historical record hereafter. The state of things as set forth in his work is this:-After the Church Rate Bill was brought forward, the episcopal commissioners ceased to act. They had drawn a rough draft of a fifth report, which was so left; and it is impossible to tell what modifications it might have received had their deliberations gone on. It was left in their drawers. The six months allowed for the commission to exist after the demise of the crown are expired, and so the commission itself is deceased. The minister gets this rough draft, and on this means to found a bill, which however is not even to adhere to the draft itself! Such is the state of things pointed out by Dr. Spry, who justly asks whether this is not a crisis when petitions should be addressed to the proper quarter. There may, under such circumstances, be indulged a hope which it seemed idle to indulge before; and, at all events, they who are anxious for the preservation of chapters have now an opportunity which they never had before since the report on that subject appeared.

Most earnestly is it to be hoped that these petitions will confine themselves to two great points-the chapters, and the permanency of the ecclesiastical commissioners board. If petitions go off to the Tithe Bill, and Registration, and Convocation, and other points unconnected with the matter in hand, however important, they will do no good. It is the permanency of the ecclesiastical commission which is its great evil; and not, as some petitions have said, any powers which it now has. The Established Church Bill is a prospective bill: many of the changes which it orders cannot take place for years; and the eccle

siastical commission, as it now exists, has no powers of doing anything whatever beyond what that act orders, except changing small details, and even that in the spirit of the bill. It is evil at present as far as the act is evil, and no further. But Dr. Spry rightly points out the much larger powers proposed to be given to it in the Cathedral Bill. The powers also to be given in the Pluralities Bill are, in the same manner, deserving of notice. And even this is not the real evil; because, enormous as these powers are, even they are defined. The real evil is, that men of all opinions feel the want of an executive in the church; and so surely as this commission goes on, unless watched with the strictest care, it will be found convenient (and convenience now-adays justifies and smooths everything) to throw power after power into its hand, till by degrees it will absorb all, and make episcopacy a mere name. Then will come in all the objections so well urged against it by Mr. Manning, in his excellent letter to the Bishop of Chichester, which no one can read without increased regard and respect for the author.* If the executive body of the church consists of more laymen than bishops, there is an end of episcopacy. That is a proposition which no one can deny; and few, who have attended to the course of public matters, will be inclined to doubt the high probability -not to say certainty-of everything being thrown into the hands of an existing and ready-formed body.

This is the point, then, to be pressed everywhere; and if this paper were extended indefinitely, it could point out no other source of alarm perhaps so great. Nor, on this, could it say more than the simple statement of the case must convey to all persons of reflexion.

With respect to deans and chapters, nothing fresh has appeared on the merits of the question, nor, indeed, was it necessary. It is a singular coincidence, that Dr. Spry, and the second number of the "Prebendary," have both reprinted Bishop Hacket's truly valuable speech on the subject. The first number of the "Prebendary" was only briefly noticed here before. It contains much valuable matter; and it is to be hoped that the writer will go on reprinting the whole of his letters in this form.

It will give great and general satisfaction that the commissioners have consented to abandon that part of their new regulations which related to the bishop of Sodor and Man. Thus an ancient see, endeared to the church, and hallowed by so many remembrances, will

The

There is one point to which the writer would draw Mr. M.'s attention. latter part of the pamphlet speaks at great length of the guilt which we shall incur, by not preventing and checking certain evil operations of the state; and inquires, as an extreme case, whether, if we allow all this, the House of Commons may not pass a bill which shall, in fact, overthrow our church, and erect a non-episcopal establishment? The question is, who are the we here spoken of? That the legislature can do this no one doubts; nor has the writer the slightest notion who can stop any of their monstrous proceedings. We churchmen are bound to remonstrate; but does Mr. M. think we can do more, in the worst imaginable case, except separate? Now whatever some persons may think of that, at all events it would be no cure for the interference of the state, where it ought not to interfere, with an established church, which is the question in hand. When we come to separation, there is no such question at all. The state then cannot interfere. 2 U

VOL. XIII.-March, 1838.