THE DISSENTERS AND THEIR LIBERALISM.
THE Daily News of Tuesday asserts that the Nonconformist Electors are all but alienated from the Government, and intimates that it will be generous in them if they do not allow that alienation to stimulate them into the act of shattering the Liberal party, and wise in Mr. Gladstone not to drive them into such a course. Now, considering what has happened of late years, considering that we have secured all , but absolute equality for Dissenters in the Universities, that I we have disestablished the Protestant Church in Ireland, that I we have put Dissenters on an absolute equality with the Church in relation to Education, and that even on the one remaining question, the English Establishment,—on which the Dissenters themselves are very much divided,—Dissenting Members of the Government are allowed to abstain from voting,—there does strike us as something very unreasonable in this state of mind,—if it be true, which we doubt, that it is their state of mind. It would seem, if it be so, that the appetite for political authority certainly grows by What it feeds on. There was a time when Dissenters, though strong and ardent in their Dissent, valued their Liberalism so much more than they valued their special tenet, that they supported Lord Russell and Lord Palmerston enthusiastically in their various reforms. They did not wait for a Government which would do their whole will, to give freedom to the colonies, or to strike blow after blow at protection. They did not wait for a Government which would do their whole will, to pass the Divorce Act, or to consolidate the In- dian Empire. Nor, even with Mr. Gladstone hitherto, have they conditioned for absolute power before helping him to pacify Ireland and to amend the Reform Act. If they begin to desert him in the midst of this great effort to reform the Army, solely because they wish for Disestablishment and desire secular education in order that the Church may have no public field left in which to compete with Dissent, as the Daily News seems to fear, they will be more likely to throw grave doubts on their own Liberalism than to carry by a coup de main their special measure. It is certainly not by a mere political manceuvre of the Dissenting electors that such grave steps as the destruction of the Establishment and the secularization of popular education can be triumphantly carried. The Dissenters may, no doubt, put the Tories in power when they please ; but they will not be able, by such a threat as that, to extort from the Government concessions for which the nation has not yet expressed the slightest desire.
But we cannot help doubting seriously whether the Dis- senters,—though they may be a little out of humour when they see the Church too powerfully represented, as they hold, upon a town School Board,—are really in the disaffected state which the Daily News fears. Look at the Burials' Bill debate of Wednesday. We may conclude, we suppose, that the Dis- senters were quite satisfied with the conduct of the Govern- ment in that debate, and that they materially helped to swell the majorities by which the going into Committee and the other votes were carried. But can we suppose that Dis- senters of the most starched and rigid type,— Dissenters who regard all affiance between the State and Church as "unholy," to use the strong phrase of our respected correspondent Mr. Baldwin Brown,—would have voted for that Bill ? Why we, for our own part, have begun to hesitate about even Mr. Richard's rigidity of conscience on this great question of principle, since we observed that he throughout supported this Bill which practically extends to Dissenters, though no doubt only in an infinitesimal degree, the right to avail themselves of the aid of the State in matters concerning their religion. We quite admit that the most rigid Dissenters are perfectly consistent in claiming the use of the State-church- yard in places where there is no other churchyard available for them for the burial of their dead,—a civil and secular fight claimed for a civil and secular purpose. But certainly we should have supposed that they would have even insisted on performing the religious part of the ceremony in their own churches or their own houses, and in refusing to allow their ministers to lead religious services in places reserved by the nation for national objects. As Mr. Beresford Hope very justly said, the step from the use of the church- yard for religious purposes, to the use of the church , for the same purposes, is an infinitesimally small one, and will be rendered absolutely inevitable by the occur- rence of a thunderstorm during a Dissenter's burial. The "rainy-day argument" being, as Mr. Beresford Hope so justly says, quite unanswerable, we look with great satisfaction on the readiness of the Dissenters to make use of the State burial- ground for their religious services. From that they must go. forward to equal willingness, and even eagerness, to make use of the State Churches for the same purpose,—and then what becomes of the absolute principle ? The Dissenters seem to us to be discovering that there is nothing so very "unholy," after all, in availing themselves of the aid of the State, so long as their own religious liberty is unaffected. But grant this, and then the question between them and the State becomes one of mere comprehension ; and when once that stage in the con- troversy is reached, we may, we think, look forward with per- fect equanimity to the gradual absorption of Dissent into the National Church. So far from regarding the Dissenters as taking a very rigid and stiffnecked attitude at the present moment, we regard them as visibly.losing bitterness, and 'showing signs of even abandoning the rigid 'principle' on which we had hitherto supposed them to take their stand. And we hail this relaxation of the cast-iron frown with which they have hitherto regarded all help from the State with unmixed satisfaction.
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