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their legal proceedings in the Lady Hewley case . If the law ( which we cannot believe ) authorise their exclusive appropriation of funds , which were originally left , and have hitherto remained unfettered , why let them up and take possession . But until the plunder be legalized ,
let them cease to malign those who , not by any effort of their own , but in the natural course of events , have been placed between them and the object of their cupidity . We pass on to a quotation which Dr . Hutton has accompanied with commendations from which we must dissent . His letter thus concludes : —
' And now , my dear Sir , I take my leave , yet not before I quote one eloquent passage from your Address , breathing a spirit which I could not but wish had animated the whole . " We felt / ' you say , ( p . 11 , ) speaking of the Corporation and Test Acts , in the repeal of which JDissenters of every persuasion have so much cause to rejoice , " we felt deeply the unprovoked wrong . It was not a question of paltry calculation , —the high-minded have other rules to determine their injuries
and other sensibilities to appreciate them . We were insulted , for we were tolerated ! We were grievously persecuted , for laws were extant which only were not executed because their enormity made them void ! But now our hands are free ! When our mind caught the first con * sciousness , cherished the first conviction , that we were free , that our children were free , with what ardour we sprung to the altar of Liberty , with what devotion we knelt at it , no words can describe :
but as there we bent our hands , our enfranchised hands , now thrown , aloft with the rapture of the new emotion , and then clasped in gratitude for the acquirement of the unexpected boon , we breathed the vow that they should never cease—until disease enfeebled and death palsied them , ( Heaven has heard it ! Earth shall prove us faithful to it !) to undo every burden that depresses the human mind , to break every fetter that galls the human conscience . Let the emancipated Catholic say whether we be forsworn . Let the chain be clanked from whatever
shore that we would not snap asunder . " The spirit of this is everything that could be wished . I will only remind you that the chains which obloquy forges may be as galling as those of oppression , and that to be unjustly pointed at with the finger of scorn , as unbelievers * and transgressors of the dictates of common honesty , may be even more painful , than to be denounced by laws , which lie dead in the course of nature in the statute-book , and are only waiting for that formal interment , which shall completely hide their loathsome remains from the human eye/—Hutton , pp . 44 , 45 .
The worst of this flourish is , that it is all mere flourish . It is not true . For the last thirty or forty years orthodox dissent has done little or nothing for the cause of civil and religious liberty , unless when its own operations were directly impeded , with the single exception of the question of negro slavery . Their hearing would be worth but a short purchase if all the chains they have left untouched were to be clanked in the ears of the orthodox . The Unitarians could rattle a link or two .
Moreover , we have not forgotten * laws which only were not executed , because their enormity made them void , ' and not because there were . wanting * self-styled * liberators occasionally to invoke their execution . This was before their famous vow , it may be said . Well then , we ask ,
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Critical Notices .- —Single Sermon * . 54
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1832, page 53, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1804/page/53/
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