THE CONSERVATIVES AND THE CHURCH.
THE Conservatives are beginning to show signs of grace on the Church question. On Wednesday afternoon, in spite of the opposition of the Government, and in a very full House, the majority against Mr. Osborne Morgan's Burials Bill, for permitting Dissenters to bury their own dead after their own fashion in the Churchyards of the National Church, was only 14. The normal majority of the Government this session has been 70 or 80. Its mini- mum majority in case of a strict party vote is at least fifty. And yet, in a House of 487 Members (including the Speaker and the Tellers), Mr. Cross could obtain only a majority of 14 for the policy of absolutelyrefusing the reasonable demand of the Dissenters. Surely this should indicate to Mr. Disraeli that he is taking a wrong course, and that he made a serious blunder two years ago in himself moving the rejection of this innocent Bill,—and moving it, too, in a somewhat ostentatious and elaborate speech or manifesto. It is now pretty obvious that his own party will not heartily stand by him in de- claring war on the Dissenters,—that even to Conserva- tive minds, the policy of conciliation recommends itself as far safer, wherever it is practicable, than the policy of defiance. Make the Dissenters sore, and you make them formidable. Make them friendly, and you take all the enthusiasm out of their attacks. That is, of course, a mere plea of policy. But Conservatives will probably feel the argu- ment from policy even more than the argument from justice, and it is not improbable that Mr. Bright's fine speech on Wed- nesday deterred not a few Conservatives from recording their votes against Mr. Osborne Morgan's Bill.
For our own parts, however, we place the case for the Bill on much higher and much wider ground,—higher, because we find in it the barest justice,—wider, because it seems to us that, apart altogether both from policy and from equity, the obvious duty of a National Church is to spread as wide as possible all those fibres of connection with the life of the nation, and especially with the unattached part of the nation still outside the Church, by which it may best hope to gain the esteem and love of the Dissentients from the Church. We do not deny,--even Mr. Osborne Morgan him- self conceded,—that if the Dissenters are to have equal rights with Churchmen in the Burial-grounds of the Church, they ought to contribute something either by fees, or better, by rates, for the keeping-up of those Burial-grounds ; nor do we believe that if their right in the grounds were once fully con- ceded, the Dissenters would hesitate to assent to any arrange- ment which should secure from them an equitable contribution towards expenses in the equivalents for which they would then have an equal interest with Churchmen. But this point once settled, it seems to us impossible to maintain with any reason that it is not simply just to allow them to bury their dead after their own fashion, in the only place to which they have any right to go. It is urged, indeed, that the "sentimental grievance" which the Dissenters feel in being compelled either to submit to the Church's form of burial, or to go without any form at all, is no greater than the sentimental grievance which many Churchmen feel in allowing rites for which they may entertain a repugnance to invade the precincts of the conse- crated ground. But to this quibble Mr. Forster's answer seems absolutely convincing. He maintained that "the same consideration was not due to the feelings of a man who was intolerant of religious services "—of which, by the way, he need hear nothing—" other than those to which he was accustomed,—as was due to the feelings of a man who had either to allow his relatives to be buried with a service which he did not approve, or seek a burial-place at great expense, and it might be with great difficulty, in some other place." In fact, this plea really amounts to demanding an equal consideration for feelings of bigotry and for feelings of just self-respect. If you are to admit that it is a great grievance to a Church- man that the Churchyard should be desecrated by a ceremonial which he disapproves, though he has no occasion to be there at all, then it must be a great grievance to an Inquisitor that he is not allowed to burn those heretics who, as he thinks, deserve burning. It is tolerably obvious that the principles of religious charity must involve disregard to the principles of religious intolerance. If not, then it would be necessary to tolerate the acts of the persecutors as well as the acts of the persecuted, and how you are to protect both in the discharge of what they think their duty, especially since the one asks to be protected front the other, is not to us at all clear. Nothing can be plainer than that the 'grievance' of the Churchman who thinks it an evil to him- self that heretical services should be used in the churchyard where his own dead are buried, is the kind of grievance which bigotry, as such, suffers whenever it is not allowed free-play ; while the grievance of the Dissenter who is given his choice between prayers in which he cannot always join, and which offend him at a moment when his heart may be full of grief, and no prayers at all, is the kind of grievance from which a conscientious man cannot help suffering, even though his
heart be ever so right. The one grievance can no more be set off against the other, than the grievance of the bully who is not allowed to threaten and frighten his neighbour, against the grievance of the pacific man who objects to being thus frightened and bullied. Sir John Holker's argument was as worthress a bit of special pleading as ever fell from a barrister's. mouth.
The great argument for the Burials Bill remains,—that the National Church ought to desire, both because it is a Christian Church and because it is a National Church, every possible opportunity of extending peacefully its relations with those who do not belong to its communion. That the Dissenters should acknowledge one more tie to the Church of the nation, that they should have a fresh motive for thinking with sympathy and even tenderness of the Church which they think it their duty politically to oppose, is a great good, and not an evil,—a new "door of grace," as the old theo- logians would have called it, for the Church to use. And for a National Church to grumble at such opportunities is a stupid piece of judicial blindness. What is the good of calling the Church "national" if it offers nothing more to the nation than the Churches which are not national? The Coo- servatives urged on Wednesday that they had never heard of Dissenters who wished to give room in their burial-grounds to members of the Church or to Roman Catholics. Well, as regards the Church of England, that may be partly because they see no occasion to take coals to Newcastle ; and as regards the Catholics, it may be from a keen feeling of the ceremonial differences between them. But Dissenters of one creed do con- stantly admit other Dissenters to the use of their Burial-grounds, and this is a step towards comprehension. Moreover, Dissenters are not called upon to do all that a National Church is called upon to do just because it claims to be national. A national park should be at the disposal of all, without causing offence to the feelings of any who desire to use it ; but the owner of a private park does something generous if he opens it to the public at all, even on his own conditions. And so, too, a national Burial-place should be freely at the disposal of all Churches in the nation which want to use it, and that without conditions which are harder upon one Church than upon another. But no one expects a sectarian burial-place to be opened freely to all ; it would not answer adequately its purpose of providing a place available for the special sect, if it were so. Indeed, it is an act of charity and generosity if it is opened freely to any except those for whom it was provided.
What strikes one most in the debate is the exceeding feebleness of the objection,—the only real objection that was made,—that the admission of Dissenting funerals into Church Burial-grounds may produce disorder and public scandals. The answer is so simple. In Ireland, the very land of public quarrels, of occasional battles, no such result has ever been complained of. Cannot we, then, restrain our tempers in England, at least as well as the excitable members of opposing Churches in Ireland restrain theirs ? When Conservatives are driven back on so feeble an excuse as this, we do not wonder that their majority dwindles to 14.
The Conservatives would have done much better to carry the Bill against their own Government. Nothing would have a more truly Conservative influence on pend- ing agitations than a generous concession by the Con- servative party of this very reasonable claim of the Dissen- ters. The political as well as religious wisdom of Christ's little parable, "If any man would sue thee at the law, and take away thy cloak, let him have thy coat also," makes far too little im- pression on ecclesiastical politicians. Instead of it, they are disposed to substitute, "If any man would sue thee at the law to recover a genuine debt, resist, lest he should go on to claim possession of what is not his own." The Conservatives won't concede the churchyards, lest the Dissenters should ask for the churches. The wise and truly Conservative policy would be,—so far as the churches are not wanted for their proper purpose,—to let those who would sue us at the law for our churchyards, have the use of the churches also. But we admit that in the present state of ecclesiastical opinion, this is a "counsel of perfection," which we do not expect strict Churchmen to accept. Still, they should not let the fear of a claim which they regard as unfair, shut their hearts against a claim which is plainly and conspicuously fair. It is a fatal prudence which unjustly occupies a neighbour's territory by way of sustaining a military outpost against a possible aggression upon our own. Such a prudence really causes what it proposes to prevent.
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