maketh the beart sick! "Were we to form our systems on the credibility of such suggestions," says a writer alas too deeply interesting, "who would kill the darling of his heart with knowledge? The apprehensive nature of parents must shudder at the first scintillations of common sense, and fancy death to lie in ambush behind every shew of intelligence, the grave to spring a miue under the feet of genius: the skill of education would but betray its victims into the clutches of the universal enemy; the pen of the writer would become a poisoned arrow, the voice of the teacher would only be heard to sing a dirge over the extinction of his species!"

With others who have had like cause of grief, and are resigned under such a dispensation, her parents are thankful for the time, though short, this affectionate and lamented child was allowed to comfort them with her endearing society; they look forward with ardent expectation to an improved state of being where their child will be returned to their longing arms, where disorder, physical or moral, can have no existence, and where death itself will cease to be necessary! Praises, immortal praises to the Lord and Father of nature, who, whilst be afflicts by these bereavements, allows his rational offspring such a consolation, even in such sorrows!

On

On the 10th December, 1816, GEORGE, the infant son of Mr. Joseph GRISBROOK, of Tenterden. The immediate occasion of my transmitting to you an account of the death of one so young, is to state to the Protestant Dissenters in general, and particularly to those who avow their faith in the Divine Unity, and in the proper humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ, the following circumstance. the day of the burial, a written inquiry was sent by the vicar of the parish, in what name, in what doctrine and faith, and by whom the deceased child had been baptized. To this an answer was sent, that it was baptized by the writer of this memorial, in the usual form; or according to our Saviour's own words, Matt. xxviii. 19. The vicar sent word that this was not satisfactory; and soon after in a note, that except it had been baptized in the name, in the faith and in the doctrine of the holy and indivisible Trinity, no burial service should be read at the grave over the corpse. It was of cousequence buried without the church burial service. To console the parents, a funeral address was delivered in the house: about ten days after this, the vicar sent word

Malkin's "Memoirs of his Child."

that he would read it in future; but positively and repeatedly denied our right to it. This led on to a correspondence with the deputies of the Protestant Dissenters, through their secretary and solicitor, Mr. Webster: the form of words used being stated, and our denomination that of Presbyterians, though like many other congregations, not having any connection with or acknowledging any ecclésiastical authority over us on the part of the Scotch Kirk. This was followed with letters from the committee, through their secretary, that the refusal was illegal; and that the burial service was matter of right and not of favour.

In two following instances, the burial service has been read over Unitarians; the vicar still denying our right. It was therefore judged to be necessary to insist upon it, in the case of Mr. Grisbrook's child, or that the burial service should be read at the grave. The right being now admitted, this was required merely as a public testimony of it, and took place on Friday the 14th, at half-past twelve, in the presence of a considerable number of persons of all denominations, collected to witness so unusual an event.

S. HOLDEN.
Tenterden, Feb. 19, 1817.

P. S. The above has not been sent to the Monthly Repository with an invidious intention, but as applying to a subject of an evidently public nature, interesting to Unitarians, and to all Protestant Dis

senters.

On the 17th of December, at the advanced age of 81, J. MACE, Esq. of Tenterden, and one of the firm of the Tenterden Bank, after suffering for a long period from a cancer in his face. He was for many years in extensive practice as a surgeon and apothecary, and of high and deserved reputation in his profession; but had for some years retired from business. Active and ardent in his disposition, he ever tenderly felt for and sympathized with the afflicted; and impressed with a just sense of the importance of mental cultivation, be was ever prepared to give his support to every useful public institution. The general reading of our departed friend and brother was extensive, and his faith in the great leading principles of natural and revealed religion, established upon the firm basis of free, serious, and earnest inquiry, and full conviction. In the strict sense of the term an Unitarian, he took the greatest delight in those enlightening, consoling and animating sentiments which stand in connexion with, and flow from the unrivalled supremacy, and the unchangeable goodness, love and

mercy of the one only living and true God, equally believing in the Lord Jesus Christ as the divinely inspired messenger of his truth and grace. He bore the trials of his concluding days with great fortitude and patience, although often wishing for the period of his removal, and closed his eyes upon the world with every appearance of serenity and peace.

S. H.

Edward Longdon Mackmurdo, Esq.

In the Obituary of Mr. Mackmurdo, p. 58, there is an error in the name and another in the 'date. The name should have stood Edward LONGDON Mackmurdo, Esq.: he died Jan. 23d, in his 61st year, and was buried in his family vaultin Bunhill Fields.

DOMESTIC. RELIGIOUS.

The late Political Prayer. The Prince Regent was assailed with mud, gravel, potatoes and stones on his return from the Parliament House. One of the Lords of the Bed-chamber appears to have believed that an air-gun was fired at his Royal Highness. He is perhaps alone in this persuasion, but all sane persons are agreed that the conduct of the populace was outrageous and criminal, and that the individual rioters are deserving of punishment. A mob is ill-fitted to judge of measures of state, much more to deal out retributive justice to the state actors. The first magistrate of the country is always entitled to respect, and especially when he is engaged in the exercise of the highest constitutional functions. If the people disapprove of the measures of government, it is their right, it is even their duty, and a duty of the most solemn kind, to assemble in a legal manner, and to express their sentiments, to state their wrongs, and to demand their rights, in language becoming free-men, BORN FREE.

These are, we believe, the views of the greater part of the well-informed and moral people of the United Kingdom. His Royal Highness's ministers, however, have judged this a fit occasion for alarming the nation with a report of the attack upon the Regent being the result of treasonable plots: it remains to be seen whether any such plots have been formed, and whether if they have had an existence they were any thing more than the

inad schemes of a few half-witted or frantic and starving desperadoes, unconnected with any body of people

VOL. XII.

R

whatever. In the mean time, the cry of treason serves the purpose of bringing the pursuit of reform into discredit, and of frightening the rich and the timid and the dependents upon the government into declarations and addresses, which for the moment give life and strength to the system of misrule which has reduced the nation to a state of unparalleled distress.

As usual, the ministers of the Regent have enlisted the church into their service, and the following manifesto, in the form of a prayer, has been put out by authority, and ordered to be read in all churches, on fourteen successive days:

"Almighty and most Merciful God, who in compassion to a sinful nation, hast defeated the designs of desperate men, and hast protected from the base and barbarous assaults of a lawless multitude, the Regent of the United Kingdom, accept our praise and thanksgiving: continue, we implore thee, thy protection of his Royal person, Shield him from the arrow that flieth by day, and from the pestilence that walketh in darkness; from the secret designs of treason, and from

THE MADNESS OF THE PEOPLE.

"And whilst we pray for thy mercy and protection, give us grace, O God, to perceive and know what things we ought to do, lest impatient of evils, and unmindful of thy manifold goodness, we seek relief where relief cannot be found, and abandon those never-failing sources of national prosperity and happiness-obedience to thy commandments, and the fear of thy holy name.

"These prayers and praises we humbly offer to thy Divine Majesty, in the name and through the mediation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen."

The people is a large phrase, and it is not quite consistent with decorum or gratitude or truth that the ministers

either of state or of religion should charge them with madness. If any of them be mad, the governors of church and state would do well to inquire what has made them so?

This part of the prayer has excited universal disgust and resentment. Mr. Brougham and Sir Francis Burdett have denounced it in the House of Commons as an insult on the people, and a solemn mockery of devotion.

In the second branch of the prayer there is a tacit acknowledgment that the governors and governed ought to do something what the latter ought to do and what they ought not to do we have before stated, they ought not to run into violence, but they ought to use the means which the Constitution has put into their hands, of asserting and recovering their rights: what the former ought to do and ought not to do, is not difficult to conceive, though not very pleasant to them to state; perhaps, we might best express ourselves in sacred language, and there fore we refer the reader to Daniel iy. 27.

The compilers of the prayer deprecate impatience of evils, having probably in their memory the language of the ruling statesman of the day who has charged the people, the mad people, with an ignorant impatience of taxation. In spite of the gay lord and the ministers at the altar, it is to be feared that the multitude who are an hungered will still complain; and it might be a profitable speculation in the Cabinet Council, and in the meetings of ecclesiastics whether the diseased body politic might not be cured of impatíence by being relieved from suffering. Undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free; and if the people then complain, they may be justly accused of madness, and may be abandoned to the lash of the Noble Lord's eloquence, and to the prayers of the priests.

Another evil which the prayer points out is the seeking of relief where relief cannot be found. This ground of supplication, is, we hope not solid, and we are sure not respectful either to Parliament or to the Throne: for WHERE do the people seek relief, but from the Prince Regent and the Two Houses? And to say that relief cannot be found here, is to throw a most unseemly suspicion upon the constiLuted authorities. If we may oppose

our opinion to that of the Archbishop of Canterbury's chaplain, to whom, probably, we are indebted for this strange piece of piety, we will venture to assert that the nation may find relief in the crown and the legislature, and that if they continue their constitutional exertions the relief is at no great distance.

On a future occasion we trust that the Bible will be searched for a precedent of prayer in time of national distress; there is a passage, Nehemiah ix. 32-37, which we would recommend as a pattern.

Christian Tract Society.

The eighth Anniversary of this Society, was holden on Monday the 17th of February, at the Old London Tavern, Bishopsgate Street. In the meeting for business the chair was occupied by the Treasurer, James Esdaile, Esq. The Report of the It commenced by repeating the declaration Committee was read by the Secretary. of the preceding Committee, that from the organized state into which the Society had now been brought, much of novelty was not to be expected in the detail of its proceedings and successes; but added that though the past year had been marked by no event of a very striking character, either favourable or unfavourable, and though the channels of distribution were nearly the same as in preceding years, the number of tracts which had been sent into circulation had exceeded that of any former period of the same length. The Report farther expressed the regret of the Committee that owing to the want the Society they had been able to publish of manuscripts adapted to the objects of during the last year only two new tracts, one from the pen of their old and valuable contributor, Mrs. Mary Hughes, the other by a gentleman who from its first institution had entered warmly into the design of the Society, and in many ways entitled himself to its best thanks. Of each of these tracts, forming Nos. 30 and 31 of the series, it was stated that 2000 copies had been printed, and it was added that owing to the continued and increasing demands for the Society's publications, the Committee has been obliged to reprint no less than ten of the earlier tracts, to the number of 17,500 copies-making, with the 4000 new tracts, the whole number

printed in the course of the last year 21,500, being 11,500 more than were printed in the year preceding. The Report stated in reference to the past labours of the Society, that since its institution in 1809 it had printed in all 230,000 tracts, that of this number there bad