The Law Relating to Nonconformists and their Places of Worship.
By Reginald Winslow. (Stevens and Sons.)—This is a very clear and excellent handbook of the subjects with which it deals. It is apparently exhaustive, and treats of Protestant Dissenters under every aspect, from birth to burial. It is constructed on the right lines of laying down the principle before it descends to details, and stating the rule of law before illustrating it by decided cases. On the whole, Nonconformists appear no longer to suffer under any disabilities or even inequalities compared with the Established Church, except in regard to the law of burials, and in a few relatively unimportant details which are due rather to accident than design. In regard to Dissent- ing places of worship, a somewhat insulting proviso that their doors may not be bolted or barred during service is still law, but is, of coarse, of no practical inconvenience. It has also been recently decided that in regard to the assessment made on the owners of premises abutting on new streets, for the purpose of making up new streets when the local authorities take them over, chapels are not exempt from such assessment, as are the churches of the Established Church, though they are by law expressly exempt from Poor-rates. In regard to burials, there does seem to be a certain hardship in requiring notice to the chaplains of cemeteries kept by a Burial Board or local authority under the Public Health Act, that it is intended to bury a person without the rites of the Church of England. The notice is reasonable in the case of a parish churchyard, which is under the Hole control of the clergyman of the parish ; but it seems unreasonable and vexations when a cemetery has been provided out of the public rates, and the Church of England chaplain is merely a paid official employed to read the service for those who wish for his services. The summary of the law as to marriage before a Registrar iH clear and interesting. In view of a retest cause aldbre, it would appear that it is highly desirable that some better means should be pro- vided of giving publicity before a marriage is allowed. That a man should he able to obtain a licence on payment of £1 10e., with 10s. stamp-duty to the Registrar, and be married the day but one after application for the licence, no public notice of any kind being given, is somewhat startling. It is well worth consideration whether the whole system of licences, whether by an Archbishop or a Registrar, should not be abolished, and some more effectual public notice be enforced than banns in church and suspension of the notice in a Registrar's office.
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