Go to the Poll Early, and Victory is Certain!!
Committee Room, Swan Hotel, Dudley.
THE CHURCH RATE CRISIS!
“Coming events cast their shadows before.”—Cato.
Yea, and the fangs of an Ecclesiastical Court will attest their realities in the pockets of unfledged Anti-Church Rate victims.
Brother Dissenters,
The last two months has witnessed a vigorous and legitimate opposition on our part to that detestable of all Taxation, the Church Rate. Our triumphant success at the poll in St. Thomas’s district has incontestably proved to all parties, that the imposition of this tax rests alone with the Ratepayers, and that, as hitherto, a mere vestry coterie shall not tax the conscientious Dissenter without first giving him the honest and Englishman-like opportunity of ascertaining for what purpose he is to be taxed.
The fact having now been fully established, the staff having now been really placed in the hands of the Ratepayers, it becomes a question of the most vital pecuniary, as well as public and legal, consideration, how far we are morally justified in further resisting the claims of a Church Established by Law; after we have lately testified that those claims shall first receive our sanction and approval at the tribunal of a parish poll.
Fellow Christians, lose not sight of the fact that success has often intoxicated the victorious, thrown them off their guard, and given the enemy vantage ground. Beware of placing implicit confidence in the opinion of that class of agitating law-givers who deceive you by propounding to your ignorance what they and you would wish the law to be, keeping from you what it really is. Recollect, Ah! and enquiry will convince you, ye unfledged sons of popular opinion, that the laws were made for the Church at a time when ignorance was bliss, and it is now even a folly to be wise to the tune of an Ecclesiastical enquiry, viewing with Argus eye the value and extent of your goods and chattels from Westminster Palace Yard. Resist the law according to law, but for the sake of him whose name we all bear, “render to Cæsar the things that be Cæsar’s,” and lend not your conscientious sufferings, either to elevate a meanless party into public notoriety or compromise that brotherly love, which we profess to render even to our enemies.