Page:Church courts and church rates.djvu/11

7 land tax. That of Lord Monteagle, revived last May by Sir William Clay, for replacing these rates by a sum raised from an increased value to be given to Church lands, was more reasonable. Sir W. Page Wood's amendment to Mr. Trelawny's motion for their abolition in 1849, appears to have formed the groundwork of Dr. Phillimore's plan. The former differs from the latter, especially in its omission of the excommunicatory clause, which (as it seems to me, in the teeth of the Canons) is added to those civil disabilities to which both plans subject persons exempted from Church Rates.

Both these schemes require the registration of exempted persons, and both consequently ignore that equality of Dissenters in the eye of the law for which, all along, they have been contending, and which is, constitutionally, of far greater importance to them than the mere exemption from a trifling impost. The Bill is drawn up with the presumption that the Church of England can still claim to be a privileged community. It is an Act of Toleration in an age when Dissenters repudiate the idea, and demand nothing less than equality.

These are the heads of Dr. Phillimore's proposed Bill:—

1. Dissenters shall be exempt from Church Rates upon sending a written statement to the Church-wardens or Minister of the parish.

2. Persons so exempted shall cease to be eligible