Lord Granville made an admirable speech on Monday in bringing
forward his resolutions in favour of allowing Dissenters far from any cemetery to bury either without any service, or with such orderly and Christian form as may seem fit, in parish Churchyards. There was, he said, and had been for sixty years, a real grievance in the matter, and even their Lordships would feel it, if they were obliged to see their children or other relatives- buried by a Roman Catholic priest, with the Roman Catholic service ; or by a Dissenting minister, with a Dissenting service; or if the Roman Catholic priest objected that the child had not been duly baptised, or the Dissent- ing minister objected that the child had been baptised before it was of full age, and on these grounds refused a religious ser- vice. In Ireland, in Scotland, in France, in Turkey, in Russia, as Lord Granville showed, this difficulty is got over, and for the- most part, in the tolerant manner he recommends, and it was prepos- terous to say there was an unconquerable difficulty in England. So far from tending to Disestablishment, it took the most formidable weapon out of the hands of the Disestablishment party. Lord Granville could not have put his case better, but he certainly glided over the practical difficulty,—how to define and test "a Christian and orderly religious observance,"—with bland uncon- sciousness and unconcern.
Previous page
