British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV: July and October, 1871Various
History
British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV: July and October, 1871
Various
English periodicals
These are some of the allegations with which we meet Sir Roundell
Palmer's assertion that the Establishment no longer inflicts wrong on
those who think it right to dissent; but there are others, the aptness
of which will be still more apparent, because the facts come within
the knowledge of a far larger class. Whatever may be the case in the
great centres of population, it is certain that in the small towns,
and especially in those rural districts, in which, we are told, the
Establishment is so great a blessing, petty persecution, aiming at the
repression of dissent, is as rife as when that Establishment could
persecute by law. Is the dissenter a farmer? He is kept by Church
landlords and landladies out of a whole district, as carefully as the
rinderpest itself; or if he happens to be already in it, he is
deported as quickly as lease, or agreement, will allow. Is he a
shopkeeper? He must hold his head low, and consent to sell his
principles with his wares, or he loses half his customers. Does he
require education for his children? The day-school is, indeed, open to
them, but attendance at the Sunday-school and the church is insisted
upon, as part of the price to be paid for the education for which he,
in common with other tax-payers, largely pays. Is he poor? So much the
worse for him, when coals, blankets, and soup are distributed at
Christmas; when parochial charities, intended to be unsectarian, are
dispensed, or when misfortune makes him a fitting object for the help
and sympathy of all his neighbours. Nay! he may be wholly independent
of all around in regard to pecuniary circumstances--may have fortune,
culture, and all the gifts and graces of refined and of Christian
life; yet, if in the matter of the Lord his God he differs from those
who worship at the altars of the Establishment, he, too, pays the
penalty for conscientious Nonconformity, in the social exclusion, and
the haughty contempt, which to certain minds make country life one of
the hardest things to bear, and strongly tempt the children of wealthy
Nonconformists to desert, and ultimately to despise, the communities
to which they were once attached.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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