Now, is it not a burning shame that churchmen still resort to this disreputable means of “raising the dust” to save their own miserable pelf? Why will they not render unto God the things that are God’s without sending the Constable to lay his hands upon Dissenters’ goods? Cannot they partake of the Sacrament at their own cost, without bringing down upon the solemn ceremony the suspicion and reality of unspeakable shabbiness? Cannot they remove their own dust and dirt without making use of the cleaner hands of their dissenting neighbours? Why not quite as reasonably call upon the Dissenter to pay their Bakers’ and Butchers’ Bills? Why not tax him with the washing and mangling of the Vicar’s Shirts as well as the Vicar’s Surplices.
I wrote some time ago to the high-spirited D.C.L. of Dudley, offering to pay the amount of my present and all future church rates, towards the support of what are called his Schools; which I could conscientiously do; because Education benefits and blesses Society at large; it does not, like Church-of-Englandism, take my goods and in return tell me that I shall “without doubt perish everlastingly”: I have received no answer:—of course, a person doomed like me was not entitled in this upper world to any politeness from one who without doubt will lie in Abraham’s bosom everlastingly.
What a miserable mockery it is to plead a Law in defiance of such wretched practices! What is called the Law in Dudley is no law at all in Ireland:—In the large towns of Birmingham and Wolverhampton;—in Westbromwich and in every other place, in which intellect, intelligence and education have the upper hand of vulgar, ignorant and unscrupulous wealth, the inhabitants have swept the accursed tax indignantly away.
Besides, is it quite certain, that my goods are gone to the support of the Right Church, to the “Right of Private Judgment” Church, or to that more ancient church which forbids the Right? It is notorious that a sort of leaning lovingly towards the elder Sister with the Scarlet Robe extensively prevails in the Church of England, and that if the temporalities of the Church did not stand corruption-like in the way, great numbers of your Reverend Doctors and divines would fall, “nothing loth,” into the arms of the “nameless one” of Rome.—Verily, the Shepherds are infected, if the flocks be free.
Let us hope, that in no long time the Churchman will be shamed into dropping this wretched tax into oblivion for ever: for if it continue many years longer to annoy and distress Dissenters without the slightest semblance of common sense or common justice; they will, I’m afraid, be led on to regard the Churchman with suspicion and aversion, and his church, as our Saviour regarded the temple at Jerusalem, when he chased from its precincts the Money-mongers who defiled it.
I am, fellow townsmen,
One doomed by the Church of England “without doubt to perish everlastingly” and through Church-rates, to pay the expenses of his own condemnation.
JOSEPH PITCHFORK.
Dudley, June, 1848.
The subjoined placard will shew that everyone in Dudley was not a believer in Mr. Samuel Cook’s politics and singular religious tenets:—