Page:Church courts and church rates.djvu/13

9 any which is recognized by the canons of the Church herself. For instance, the bill would not disqualify Jews or others, still willing to pay Church Rates, from serving as Churchwardens; nor would it prevent Unitarians still contributing to these rates from using any powers of compulsion which they at present possess to enforce the solemnization, in their behalf, of the Church Offices of marriage or burial. On the other hand there are numbers of ignorant persons in our agricultural parishes, members of the Church by baptism and education, who, for the sake of avoiding a heavy rate, might be tempted to excommunicate themselves and thus to lose privileges of which they are incompetent to estimate the value. Worse than this; for by the wording of the third section, "to or in favour of any person, &c," it seems that such persons might not only excommunicate themselves but their families, and, at the individual will of the clergyman, deprive their infants of baptism. By the 68th Canon no minister may refuse or delay to christen any child or refuse to bury any corpse unless excommunicated majori excommunicatione. This bill would be in the very teeth of the canon, since it virtually prohibits the Bishop from