If you wish to save your Succession Duty, reform your Undertaker's Bills. There is nothing to prevent you but the censure of the lowest vulgar—the mob that does not think for itself: a mob composed of quite as many well dressed persons as ragamuffins. Unfortunately, however, this populace may be able to injure as well as hoot you; and that power it will exercise if you do not conform to its idiotisms; one of which is, the addition of upholstery to ashes, and drapery to dust.
It would therefore be a great boon to you—being a wise man, and likewise an executor or a legatee charged with an interment—if your expenditure were subject to be regulated by the subjoined ordinance:—
"In conveying dead bodies to the burial-ground every kind of pomp and publicity shall be avoided."
They manage these matters better in Spain, you will say: for this is one of the articles of a Royal decree that has been issued at Madrid.
But it is also ordained in the same decree, that
"No church, chapel, nor any other sign of a temple or of public or private worship will be allowed to be built in the aforesaid cemetery."
Now, the aforesaid cemetery is the Protestant cemetery. And it is further declared that
"All acts which can give any indication of the performance of any divine service whatever are prohibited."
The above regulations will be found in a Parliamentary paper recently published, containing official correspondence between General Lersundi and Lord Howden, relative to the Protestant Cemetery aforesaid at Madrid. The noble Lord's reply to the gallant officer will be found highly satisfactory, as conveying to the Spanish Government the assurance of that distinguished contempt for it, which is due to a set of imbecile and miserable bigots—utensils of their priesthood.
One would really think that the clergy of Spain and almost all other Roman Catholic countries were doing their very utmost to earn the crown of martyrdom—not, however, for themselves, but for their ecclesiastical brethren, together with all the lay partisans of Popery in Protestant countries. They appear to be trying as hard as they can to prove that the predominance of their religion is inconsistent with civil freedom. The struggles, then, so perseveringly made, both in and out of Parliament, to extend and establish an influence which, wherever it prevails, is seen to issue in tyranny the most hateful; what can they be considered but endeavours to spin cobwebs about our liberties? And have we not every temptation to sweep away the spiders? Resist it, however: resist it, Mr. Bull: don't crush the poor creatures, but destroy their webs.