On Tuesday, a Conference convened by the Dissenters and the
Society with the long name,—" The Society for the Libera- tion of Religion from State Patronage and Control,"—was got together at the Westminster Palace Hotel on the Govern- ment Burials Bill. The meeting posited certain drastic resolu- tions against the Bill, resenting the concession of a "silent burial," insisting that relatively v'ery few churchyards are likely to be shut up and superseded by cemeteries, on any purely sanitary ground ; further, that the proposal to open such cemeteries would be wasteful, and get for Nonconformists the opprobium of spending public money on their private whims; that its consolidation of adding laws is not a recommendation to the Bill, seeing that some of the existing laws are objectionable and ought net to be consolidated ; and that the division of burials grounds into consecrated and unconsecrated, and the opening of two mortuary chapels, are very objectionable ; and finally, that the Bill
ought to be thrown out. Mr. Osborne Morgan described the Bill as an attempt to treat the funerals of Dissenters much as the funerals of suicides have been treated,—namely, to make them silent. And this he regarded as a pure insult. At all events, it is clear that in this matter the Dissenters have no intention of justifying the analogy suggested between them and suicides. '1'hey will not 'commit suicide by supporting the Bill.
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