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    almost alL of us a feeling of personal bereavement , to r oe it has brought an additional anxiety . This anxiety I would willingly confine to myself , bad I a conscientious option : but it is clearly my duty to lay it freely and immediately before you . The office of Assistant of Mr . Taylor I am now

    called upon to exchange for that of Successor . < This change in no respect alters the relation to you which , with great happiness to myself , I have sustained for the last three years . But , by calling upon me to receive att annual portion of the Royal Bounty , it places me in a new relation to the State , which seems to me seriously objectionable , and which , after long and earnest deliberation , I find it impossible to hold . I sincerely regret that this decision , on the one hand , must occasion some inconvenience to

    you , my fellow-christians , and , on the other , places me in a position of singularity with respect to my brethren in the ministry in which I feel no desire to stand * But you would not wish me , for the sake of saving you from a troublesome deliberation , to sacrifice what I must believe to be a great principle of duty ; nor are there any of my brethren who would either

    silence my opinion because it differs from their own , or prevent my acting , like themselves and all honest men , in conformity with my own convictions . Strong , however , as my confidence is that you will put no unkind misconstruction on my conduct , you are entitled to know my reasons for departing from the practice of my brethren . They are briefly as follows :

    1 . The Royal Bounty is a religious monopoly . It is an exclusive appropriation of a fund which ought to be general . For the contributions which a nation raises for the state , it has a right to expect an equivalent , in the various blessings of good government : they are the price paid for these blessings ; and every portion of the amount should be returned to those who pay it in some corresponding advantage * The governors are the

    acting trustees of the governed : and when they administer the fund at their disposal for the sole benefit and according to the peculiar views of a small portion of the community , they are , I think , clearly chargeable with a vio- ^ lation of trust , and with a fraud upon the remaining portion of soeiety - Now * I cannot but think that the Royal Bounty exemplifies this misappropriation . The nation at large contributes -P , resbyterians alone receive .

    The member of the Society of Friends , the Freethinking Christian , the Unbeliever , the Jew > are compelled to support a separate ministry which they agree in conscientiously disapproving : and , of the remaining contributors , an immense majority totally dissent from the form of Christianity which the sum is levied to sustain . If the question were proposed to those

    from whose property this fund is raised , whether they would or would not subscribe its amount to the Presbyterian Church , there is no doubt that the grant would be withheld ; so that it is not a free-will offering , but an exi action from reluctant consciences , depending for its continuance entirely on the irresponsibility of the public trustees . There is not one of us , my friends , that would not feel it a hardship to be compelled to support the

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    On the Receipt of Public Money by X > issenting Minister * . 833

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1831, page 833, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2604/page/37/