§ Mr. Wilkssaid, he had to present a Petition against the grant of public money to the Scotch Church, from the committee appointed by the three denominations of Dissenters in London and its neighbourhood. He thought that after what the petitioners had done, and the Protestant Dissenters with whom they were connected, and whom they represented, to promote the cause of public worship and religious education, they could not be suspected of indifference to those objects. To promote religion and religious worship, and advance religious education, those Dissenters had expended hundreds of thousands of pounds, therefore he was quite satisfied that they could not be accused or suspected of indifference to the subject, nor suspected of resisting any contemplated grant on the ground of the amount. They resisted the proposed grant on principle. They had ever held that the preference of one sect over another was persecution, and they therefore now declared, when it was proposed to make a grant in favour of a peculiar body of professing Christians, that they must protest against any such grant of public money to any body of Christians. They deemed it right to oppose such grants—and they would exert all the power and influence they might possess—to resist any such grants, whether they were to the Presbyterians of Scot- 655 land, or any other body. In consequence of the grant to the Scotch Church having been on the one hand propounded, and on the other hand resisted, it had been proposed to issue a Commission, or to appoint a Select Committee to investigate the subject; but against any such appointment the petitioners begged leave to protest, because, by appointing a Commission or a Committee, they should consider that the principle of the right or propriety to make the grant, should it be found to be wanted, would be recognised. They would sanction no such recognition. It was a principle against which they had protested and struggled, and against which they must continue to protest and struggle, whenever it was directly or indirectly asserted. He regretted, in common with many other sincere friends of religion, that the question involved in the contemplated grant was mooted; but there was consolation in being obliged to resist it, derived from the fact that, though many Presbyterian Ministers might be favourable to it, there was an immense number of the people and Dissenters against it. And they again could not be considered indifferent to the subject—indifferent about the cause of religious education and worship, for they had, within the last century, built upwards of 700 places of worship out of their own funds raised by voluntary means. The petitioners further felt that as Church-rates were abolished in Ireland, and were avowedly to be the object of revision in England, there ought not to be this proceeding, which would in some degree continue as regarded Scotland what had ceased in Ireland and in England, or been much altered. The petition had his cordial concurrence.
§ To lie on the Table.