Page:A contribution to the settlement of the burials question.djvu/8

4 dies; but subject to the necessity of being buried by the clergyman of the parish, and with the Church's Burial Service.

It is with regard to this portion of the population that the difficulty arises. The non-Churchmen object to their dead being buried by the ministers, and with the service of the Church to which they do not belong; Churchmen object to any ministrations but those of the Church being used in the precincts of the Church. The difficulty is to reconcile these conflicting views without injustice to either party.

Now, it is not difficult to see how each party approaches the subject. The non-Churchman says, The law of the land assigns to me the churchyard as the place in which I have a right of burial. That right is clogged with a condition quite out of keeping with those rights of conscience, and with that religious liberty, which are universally acknowledged at the present day in England, and which I, as an Englishman, claim as my inalienable inheritance. I demand, therefore, that, while I retain my right to burial in the churchyard, the obnoxious condition be removed.

The Churchman says, By the common law of England, by the Statute law, by immemorial custom, upon every ground of justice, and fairness, and decency, in accordance with all acknowledged ecclesiastical principles, the churchyard, like the church, which is a part of it, belongs exclusively to the Church, and all ministrations in it can only be those of the Church's Ritual. To force other ministers and other services into the Church's sacred ground would be an act of tyranny and oppression, which nothing but force could induce us to submit to.