Page:A contribution to the settlement of the burials question.djvu/10

6 Church no one could be married at all. And if we go a little further back in our history we shall find that not only had every parishioner a right to a seat in Church, but that he could not worship God anywhere but in church without being subject to severe pains and penalties.

The provision, therefore, for the burial of all parishioners in the churchyard was exactly of a piece with the provision of seats for the living in the church, for the registration of all children in the parish register, and for the marriage of all citizens, and the registration of all marriages, by the parish clergyman. It was a provision natural for the times in which it was made, in accordance with the opinions and feelings of those times, and meeting more or less satisfactorily the wants of those times.

But it does not meet the opinions and feelings and wants of the present day. It is an arrangement which is not satisfactory to the Church; it is one to which non-Churchmen are beginning loudly to object. The Legislature, therefore, is bound to reconsider the existing provision for the Burial of the dead, and to bring the laws relating to the subject into harmony with the feelings and wants of the great community for which she legislates. The question is how shall this be done.

It is an acknowledged principle of English legislation to be guided by precedents, to run upon the same legal and constitutional lines as those upon which previous legislation has run, at least whenever the requisite reforms can so be brought about. It is, therefore, obvious to enquire, when we are called upon to change the laws of burial with a view, as it is said, to conceding to non-Churchmen their full rights according to English principles of civil and religious liberty, how has the law proceeded in securing to non-Churchmen such rights in regard to other matters.