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WESTERN UNITARIAN SOCIETY.—The Annual Meeting of this Society will be held at Trowbridge, on Wednesday, the 13th of July, when the Rev. R. Aspland is expected to preach.

NORTH-EASTERN UNITARIAN ASSUcrATION. The Annual Meeting of the North-Eastern Unitarian Association will be held at Boston, in the county of Bincoln, on Thursday, the 14th of July. The Bev. George Harris, of Bolton, is ex pected to officiate upon the occasion. The morning service will commence at eleven, and the evening service at seven o'clock. The service of the preceding evening, which will be conducted by the Bey. William Selby, of Lynn, will com mence at seven o'clock.

THE Annual Meeting of the SUSSEX UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION will be held at Horsham, on Wednesday, the 27th of July, 1825, when a sermon will be preach. ed at the Baptist Meeting-house, by, the Rev. E. Chapman, of Deptford,

THE Annual Meeting of the UNITARIAN TRACT SOCIETY for WARWICKSHIRE and the neighbouring counties, will take place at the New Meeting, Birmingham, on Wednesday, July 27th. The Rev. W.J. Fox has engaged to preach on the occasion.

THE Annual Meeting of the SOUTHERN UNITARIAN SOCIETY will he held at Poole, on Wednesday, August 3d. The Rev. E. Kell, A. M., of Newport, is expected to preach in the morning; and the Rev. J. Fullagar, of Chichester, in the evening.

Mr. YEATES, late minister of the Uni tarian congregation at Sidmouth, has accepted the unanimous invitation of the members of the Unitarian meeting at Collumpton, Devon, to succeed their late deceased pastor, the Rev. John Davis.

At a Meeting of the General Body of the Protestant Dissenting Min isters of the Three Denominations, resident in and about London and Westminster, holden at the Library in Red-Cross Street, on the Third Day of May, 1825, the Rev. John Pye Smith, D.D., in the Chair,~ It was Resolved unanimously,

1. That the members of this Body, though differing widely in their modes of interpreting Scripture, and in the doctrines which they conceive to be deduci. ble from that sacred fountain, are unanimous in the persuasion that the forming of religious sentiments by free inquiry,

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the making an opeur profession of them, and the teaching and disseminating of them by argument and exhortation, by speaking, writing, and the observances of religious worship, or by any other peaceable and rational methods, is a right of mankind, inherent and imprescriptible, couferred by the Creator, essential to moral accountableness, and which can never be infringed without injury and insult to the sufferers, and deep criminality on the part of those who are guilty of the infraction.

2. That it is proved, by the evident reason of the case and the universal experience of mankind, that there is no greater obstacle to the improvement of the human race in knowledge and hap piness, to the solid interests of national economy, to the elucidation of religious truth, to the satisfactory termination of religious controversies, and to the eventual and universal triumph of the genuine Gospel of Christ, than persecution for the sake of conscience and religious profession.

3. That, whether such persecution wear its most barbarous form of direct punishment for religious opinions, or whether it be exercised in the way of refusing protection, denying justice, or any deprival whatsoever of civil rights, it is in principle the same; a high crime against God, and deserving the reproba tion of all good men: according to the memorable declaration of the Emperor Maximilian II., that "he would never arrogate dominion over men's consciences, which is the prerogative of the Deity alone; that no sin was, in his judgment, more heinous, than for any man to wish to exercise such dominion; and that those potentates who have attempted it, as they invade the sovereignty of Heaven, so they not unfrequently lose their own power on earth, and their names go down to posterity with infamy and reproach."*,

4. That, therefore, it is with astonish ment and sorrow that this Body has received, from different and credible sour

ces, the information, that in Switzerland, which used to be regarded as an asylum of those who fled from persecution, and particularly in the Canton of Vaud, under a Protestant Government and a Presbyterian Church, a severe persecution has been for more than a year exercised upon peaceable citizens, of spotless moral and political character, for no alleged crime, but the fact of their thinking it their duty

* Vid. WERENFELSII Dissert. Apol. pro Plebe Christiana, adversus Doctores Judicium de Dogmatibus Fidei illi auferentes; et de Jure in Conscientias ab Homine non usurpando: apud Opuscula, pag. 63. Basilea, 1718.

378 Intelligence.—Address of Catholic Association to the People of Ireland.

to dissent from the Church Establishment of that country, and their attempting accordingly to hold assemblies for religious worship, in the way which to them appears most agreeable to the Holy Scriptures, and most conducive to their own moral improvement. This persecution has consisted in the disturbance of religious meetings, in affording countenance to assaults and cruelties inflicted by savage mobs upon innocent individuals, in the refusal of protection from such injuries when formal application has been made to the magistracy, in acts of the Government denouncing severe penalties upon all persons who may hold religious assemblies, however small, excepting those of the Established Com munion, and in the infliction of those penalties, by fine, imprisonment, and banishment, upon various respectable persons, among whom are ministers of unquestioned character for piety, learning, and usefulness.

5. That while this Body disclaims any pretence of a right to interfere in the affairs of foreign nations, it acknowledges itself bound by the obligations of humanity, to testify its sympathy with the oppressed and persecuted; and by the principles of our common religion, to use every lawful and practicable effort for the relief of innocent sufferers, and to contribute towards removing the foul reproach of persecution from fellow christians and fellow-protestants in any part of the world.

6. That this Body indulges the hope that calm reflection and an experience of the mischiefs produced by intolerance will speedily lead the Government of the Canton of Vaud, to repeal the unjust and cruel edicts which it has issued against Dissenters, and to give effect to those principles of religious freedom which are the basis of the Protestant Religion and are a main support of the prosperity and happiness of our own country.

7. Finally, that we invite our fellowchristians, and especially our brethren in the holy ministry, of every denomination, to implore, in their private and public supplications at the throne of grace, the bestowment of present consolation and speedy relief upon all who, for conscience towards God, are enduring unmerited sufferings, from cruel mockings, bonds, and imprisonment, spoliation, destitution, and exile.

J. PYE SMITH, Chairman.

Address of the Catholic Association to

the People of Ireland.

[This document is so important that we think it right to register it on our

pages, though it has been some time published, and must be well known to many of our readers.]

Fellow-Countrymen,

We are your friends, your sincere friends, desirous to protect and to serve you; we address you from motives of pure kindness and disinterested affection.

Listen to us, because we are your friends; attend to us, because we are most desirous to be of use to you; weigh well and deliberately what we offer to your consideration; consider carefully; we appeal to your good sense and your reason; make use of that common sense which Providence has in its bounty given you, in a degree equal, and perhaps superior to any people on the face of the globe; think coolly and dispassionately upon the advice which we give you, and you will find it consistent with good sense and honesty, and strongly recommended by every principle of morality, and by all the sacred dictates of religion.

We advise you to refrain totally from all secret societies; from all private combinations; from every species of Whiteboyism, or Ribbonism, or by whatever other name any secret or private association may be called. We would not attempt to deceive or delude you; we could not obtain your confidence if we were to state falsehoods; and if we could, we would not purchase confidence at the expense of truth.

We do not come to tell you that you have no grievances to complain of, or that there are no oppressions to be redressed; we are sorry to be obliged to admit that you have just cause of complaint, and that there exist many and bitter grievances which ought to be redressed; we know that these grievances and oppressions are the excuses which too many of the uneducated classes of our countrymen have given for turbulence, violence, and the forming of secret associations; but we also know that, proceedings of that kind only aggravate the mischief, and increase the quantity of suffering which they pretend to redress.

It is to this that we call your particular attention; it is to this that we request your deliberate and full consideration.

We most solemnly assure you, that secret and illegal societies-that Ribbonism, and Whiteboyism, and violence, and outrage, and crime, have always increased the quantity of misery and oppression in Ireland, and have never produced any relief or mitigation of the sufferings of the people. Every one of you have heard of, and many of you are old enough to have seen, the effects of secret socię

Intelligence.—Address of Catholic Association to the People of Ireland. 379

ties, and of various descriptions of Whiteboyism, and of much illegal violence, and many minor crimes, as well as horrible outrages and murders.

Now, setting aside for the present all other objections, we will ask you whether any good has been ever produced by such proceedings or atrocities? You must auswer in the negative.-You must per ceive that the people have never derived any benefit from them. Many individuals have suffered long imprisonment by reason of them-they have caused multitudes to be severed from their families and nearest connexions-they have crowded the decks of the transport vessels, and they have thronged the gallows with victims.

There are other evils which have attended Whiteboy and Ribbon disturbances; and, in particular, the innocent frequently suffered for the guilty. When property is burned, or otherwise destroyed, the value is levied off the parish, barony, or county. The person intended to be in jured, gets as high, and frequently a higher price for his property than he probably would otherwise obtain for it. But, who are they who pay for it? Why, ninetenths of them must be persons who had no share in the crime-and who is it that can make restitution to the innocent people who are thus obliged to pay their money? What a load of guilt does not this bring home to the persons who commit the crime they can never make adequate restitution for! And how can they ever expect to obtain mercy from the alljust Providence, while they are the means of uncompensated injustice?

Again, wherever Whiteboy or Ribbon offences are committed, many innocent persons will inevitably be convicted of crimes which they never committed. How many innocent persons have been known to suffer transportation! And how many have we seen suffer death by reason of Whiteboy crimes! Some may blame the administration of the laws for these frightful results-but good sense will soon convince every dispassionate man, that they are the necessary results from the passions which are naturally excited by Whiteboy and Ribbon outrages and crimes, and from the rewards which at such periods are justifiably offered to informers; amongst whom will be found the very basest of mankind.

Fellow-countrymen, we tell you nothing but the truth. No good, no advantage, no benefit has ever been produced in Ireland by Whiteboyism or Ribbonism, or any other species of secret association. Such associations are forbidden by the law of man-and, as they are necessarily productive of crimes, they

are more powerfully forbidden by the command of God.

By the law of the land, any man who joins a secret association, bound together by an oath, or any engagement or promise whatsoever, is liable to be transported. Any person who joins such a meeting by day is liable to fine, imprisonment, and whipping. Any person who joins them by night is liable to transportation. Any person who joins them by night, in rapping at a door, or even verbally demanding arms, or ammuuition, or horses, or uses any threats or menaces against the inhabitants of the dwelling-houses, is liable to be executed quite as much as if he had committed robbery or murder. And, besides all these punishments in the regular course of the law, there is the Insurrection Act, which can be applied by the Government to any disturbed district, and by the means of that Act, any person who is out of his dwelling-house from sun-set to sun-rise, may be transported without Judge or Jury.

We have given you this brief abstract of the legal punishments that await the disturbances produced by secret societies. Every act done by them is illegal, and liable to punishment. We deem it a duty we owe to you, to put you on your guard against incurring either the guilt or punishment.

There is another and a more important object. These secret societies, and the outrages which they generate, are forbidden by the awful voice of religion. Your religion directs you to be submissive to the laws-it orders you not to do an injury to any man whatsoever-it tells you that you are not to commit any crime whatsoever, however small, even though such crimes were to produce the greatest possible good. Your religion informs you, that if you take and injure the property of any man, you cannot obtain forgiveness of the offence, without making restitution to the full extent of all the property you are possessed of. We need not tell you how your religion abhors every thing that approaches to robbery, murder, or blood. You cannot really be Catholics-you cannot really be Christians, if you do not feel and know, what we say to you is literally and exactly true.

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ever was or is benefited by them, and beyond these crimes it is not possible that any success can attend the perpetrators; they are totally unable to face the constabulary force in open contest; half a dozen of policemen are quite sufficient to put down the strongest White boy force in any thing like a regular attack; and if they are not, the police are reinforced by the yeomanry corps, and these again by the regular army. The Government has at its command upwards of one hundred thousand infantry, cavalry, and artillery; aud, if it wanted foreign aid against domestic disturbances, it could easily procure one hundred thousand more so that all notion of being successful by means of Whiteboyism or secret societies, is as ridiculous and absurd as it is wicked and criminal.

Let it be recollected, too, that in all those disturbances and secret societies, no person of education, character, or property, takes a part; they are condenined by every honest and every intelligent person, and, above all, they are reprobated by your truly amiable, intelligent, laborious, pious, and beloved clergy. How is it possible that you can forget the admonition and advice of that clergy? Do you not know that they have no other interest but yours; and no other object but your temporal, as well as eternal welfare?

[To be concluded in the next No.]

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wish to have a part of his history; and, of course, by the LORD CHANCELLOR, who seems pledged to resist every measure designed to extend the boundaries of liberty, civil or religious. This celebrated lawyer again threw out his doubts (or rather more than his doubts-for he seldom has any doubts in the House of Lords when the question is to remove or lighten restraints upon conscience) with regard to the toleration of Unitariaus at common law. In consequence of this strange speech, (so even the Prime Minister avowed that he regarded it,) a few individuals sent to the Legislature the petition which will be found below. Mr. W. Smith's speech upon presenting it to the House of Commons, and any debate that may take place ou its being presented to the House of Lords, as well as the above debate on the motion for the second reading, shall be given hereafter. To shew how the question is regarded by dispassionate men of all parties, we extract the following paragraph from the Courier (the government paper) of June 4, on the rejection of the Bill:

"The second reading of the 'Unitarian Marriage Bill was moved by the Marquis of Lansdowne, who prefaced his motion with a speech that ought to have secured the attainment of his object. "We regret that it did not. Upon a division, there was a majority of five (four) against the Bill. The relief sought for by the parties interested in the measure, being one which purely affected the conscience, the scruples involved in it are entitled to respect. It has nothing to do with civil or political exemptions. They ask only permission to solemnize a most important contract with those forms, and after that manner, which they honestly and sincerely consider essential parts of it."

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that which was before illegal, legal-that the Dissenters' way of worship is permitted and allowed by that Act-that it is not only exempted from punishment but rendered innocent and lawful-it is established-it is put under the protection and not merely under the connivance of the law"-and that there cannot be a plainer position than that the law pro tects nothing in that very respect in which it is in the eye of the law at the same time a crime."

That this decision was come to after full argument and in opposition to the opinion then held by certain lawyers and judges, and even delivered on that occasion in your Honourable House,-that although the penalties of the acts against Nonconformists were repealed, the offence or crime against which those acts were directed must in law be considered as still subsisting.

That your petitioners were until lately excepted from the benefits of the Toleration Act, but that by an act lately passed this exception was repealed.

That your petitioners therefore conceived, and that it was till very lately the universal understanding of the nation, (as they are sure it was the intention of the persons in communication with whom the measure was so liberally forwarded,) that on such repeal your petitioners became entitled to all the privileges of the Toleration Act, and to the full benefit of the above noble decision of your Honourable House.

That your petitioners have, however, to their great surprise and concern, heard it lately asserted or insinuated, that this their expectation was altogether illusory, that the boon conceded to them only left them exposed to a vague and undefined liability,—that notwithstanding the protection and sanction and (to use the words of the above great judge) the "establishment" of their worship, they are liable at common law to certain pains and penalties for teaching and preaching in that very mode of worship so sanctioned, licensed, and established by law.

Your petitioners submit that the questioning of a particular doctrine forming part of that mode of Christianity which is established by law, never was and is not now an offence at common law. That the cases on which the common law prosecution of offences against religion rests proceed solely (and are so stated by all the text writers) on the principle that it is an offence against society to attack religion and divine revelation in general, which is the basis of moral obligation and the sanction of judicial oaths. "For that (to use the words of Chief Justice Hale in Taylor's case) to say religion is a cheat, is to dissolve

all moral obligation, whereby civil so cieties are preserved." And in the same manner Lord Raymond in Woolston's case (which is themain foundation of all the law on the subject) expressly declared, that "to write against Christianity in general was an offence at common law punishable in the temporal courts; but desired, however, it might be taken notice of that they laid their stress on the word general, and did not intend to include disputes among learned meu upon particular controverted points." In another report of the same case, his Lordship is stated to have said, "We do not meddle with any difference of opinion, and we interpose only where the very root of Christianity is struck at, as it plainly was there, the whole relation of the life and miracles of Christ being denied."

That in the spirit and acting on this principle of the comman law, the Act of 19th Geo. III. (recited in the Act of the 53rd Geo. III. c. 160) has, as your petitioners submit, declared and enacted that the only profession of faith which it is necessary for the interests of society to enforce and require, is the declaration therein set forth, that the party is a Christian and a Protestant, and as such believes the Scriptures to contain the revealed will of God, and that he receives the same as the rule of his doctrine and practice. This profession of faith your petitioners need not say they are at all times willing to avow and maintain, although they differ, and have by law a right to differ, from the Established Church in their interpretation of those Scriptures.

That the controverting of particular doctrines of Christianity as received by the Establishment, never amounted in law, as your petitioners submit, to any thing more than heresy, which was not cognizable by the civil magistrate, although it was, doubtless, in former times considered a crime, and perhaps, in the words of 9 and 10 William III. 66 a detestable crime." That the cognizance of heresy was the province of the ecclesiastical courts, whose jurisdiction is by the Toleration Act taken away; that the civil magistrate has only interfered with heresy under particular and positive law, and that, according to this view of the subject, Mr. Justice Blackstone correctly states the statute of 9 and 10 William

III. (so far as regards your petitioners) as only giving the magistrate a power of interposition for the more effectual suppression of a particular species of heresy which the ecclesiastical courts were found insufficient to repress,

Although there appears to your peti- tioners, therefore, to be no ground for

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