THE BURIALS BILL.
WE certainly shall not deny that the Burials Bill is a measure into which a large amount of compromise might' fairly and wisely have been imported. But there are compro- mises and compromises, and the rejection of Mr. Illingworth's, amendment seems to us to be a compromise of the bad kind,— one which gives up the principle on which the Bill to which it re- lates is founded, which will not really conciliate those for whose' edification it may be supposed to be intended, and leaves a' question open which, in the interests of all concerned, cannot be too soon closed. There are two intelligible and consistent ways of regarding the right of burial in the parish churchyard. According to one view, it is a right pertaining to parishioners in their ecclesiastical capacity,—that is, as members of the reli- gious communion to which the parish church belongs. According. to the other view, it is a right pertaining to parishioners in their civil capacity,—that is, as residents within a certain defined' area. Until now, the right of burial in the parish churchyard has been taken in the former sense; only, for convenience' sake, the law has insisted on regarding all dead persons awaiting; burial as members of the Church of England. It has now been determined by Parliament that this association between, the parish churchyard and the ecclesiastical conception of parishionership shall be abolished, and the natural and rea- sonable thing to have done would have been to put the civil' conception of parishionership in the place of the ecclesiastical conception, and to say that all citizens shall have a right to be buried with such accompaniments of burial as please them, provided that public order and public decency be not outraged: Instead of this, the parish churchyard is to be thrown open neither to Churchmen as such, nor to citizens as such, but to Christians,—the definition of " Christians " being one the mean- ing of which is known only to Lord Selborne, who is expected to die without disclosing the secret. The right of burial will in future be limited to persons whose friends propose to use a service which has on some former occasion been used.by a• sect or person calling themselves" Christian." The moat exemplary Mahommedan, or Hindoo, or Buddhist must be buried as a member of the Church of England ; but a member of any sect, however loose its morality, might, but for the happy insertion of the word orderly "—which really covers a good deal more than the word " Christian " in the sense Lord Sel- borne gives it—be buried with a service filled full of more or less objectionable nonsense, provided that his friends eau show that it was composed by some madman who, in his lifetime, had held himself to be the one true Christian in the world, and had put together the hodge-podge for use at his own funeral. If Lord Selborne thought the retention of the term " Christian " in the definition of the service at the grave so essential, he might, at all events, have hit upon a better interpretation of it. Why did he not compose a " Book of Funeral Services,': affix it as a schedule to the Bill, and enact that a Christian service should mean any one of the services contained therein I This would have made the limitation intelligible, but even this would have left it hopelessly irrational. The State knows the Established Church, but it knows nothing of other religions. At least, it knew nothing of them prior to this Bill. Now it may be said to have founded a new Established Church which is common to all Christians. Henceforth, it will be illegal, th treat Churchyards as the property of the Church of England; but it will be equally illegal to treat them as the property, of the State. They will belong neither to English Churchmen nor to English citizens, but to a hitherto unknown species— English Christians. The only reason that can be assigned for this extraordinary, act of legislative creation, pending' the publication, of Lords Selborne'a private journals, is the wish to prevent the Bilshops. from persuading the House of Lords to throw out the Bill. We shall say nothing about the probability of the Bishops taking this line, or succeeding in it if taken. It is enough to remark that, assuming the danger to have been real and- formidable, it would have been very much better to have ,Idt- the Bill stand over to another Session, than to- pass it in its present absurd shape. It is incredible that the Clergy"—and if anybody is to be conciliated, it should be the Clergy, rather than the Bishops—should feel complimented by.having any. kind, of service put on a level with their owns so long as it is called a 'Christian service. In so far as the Clergy really. feel themselves injured by the Burials Bill, the- injury will
surely be greater under the Bill as it stands than under the Bllf as Mr. Illingworth would have made it. Under the Bill as Mr. Illingworth would have made it, Parliament would -have pronounced no opinion upon the relative merits• of different religious services ; it would simply have thrown the churchyard open to all citizens. Under the Bill as it stands, Parliament is made to affirm the necessity of a Christian ser- ;vice, thereby implying that any service whatever, so long as it be Christian, is as good as the service of the Church of England. If this conciliates the Clergy, they must be very easily conciliated.
It might have been thought that, amid all the various opinions which have been held about this much debated measure, there was one in which every one would agree, and that is the inexpediency of having a new agitation set on foot in behalf of a new Burial Bill. It is this unanimous con- viction that the House of Commons has ignored, by its rejec- tion of Mr. Illingworth's amendment. No one who watched the course of the Bradlaugh controversy can doubt that there is a new and aggressive type of Atheism springing up in many quarters, which will not long be content with exclusion from what it considers the full rights of citizenship. Whenever this new temper is in want of food for agitation it will seize on this new grievance,—that Atheists are denied the liberty extended to every variety of Christian. The cry, will be,—The Established Church we know, and citizenship without distinction of creed we know ; but what is this new test, devised by a Lord Chancellor who combines the narrow- ness of the lawyer and the ecclesiastic, and imposed, where .tests should least of all be admitted, at the side of the open grave ? So long as there are other and more immediately interesting subjects awaiting consideration, this claim may be allowed to slumber. But when the more pressing of these have been disposed of, or at any moment that it happens to be inconvenient to take them up, this agitation for a new Burials Bill is certain to come to the front. Whatever incon- venience or scandal may arise therefrom will be due to the action of a strong Liberal Government, which, as regards the Burials Bill, either was not brave enough to form an opinion, or had not the courage of its opinion when formed.
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