Page:Church courts and church rates.djvu/29

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to practice as barristers in all Courts of Chancery and Common Law, and that the University of London be empowered to grant the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Law. Thus the Universities will resume their legitimate position in the commonwealth as schools of law. The opposition of the clergy to the study of English Common law first drove that study from the Universities to the Inns of Court. In these latter it has never been pursued in a scientific spirit, as is the case in the Universities of the Continent, or even of the United States. By the means which I propose the theory of our English law will stand a chance of being duly considered and a more liberal view of its study engrafted upon the minds of our advocates.

5. The abolition of Church Rates, which these propositions contemplate, together with the limitation of ecclesiastical jurisdiction to members of the Church of England, demand, as a just return to Churchmen, that those public parish assemblies called vestry meetings shall no longer be held of necessity in Churches, but that, in all parishes where there is no public hall or appropriate building, they may be held in the house of any parishioner, or in any other convenient place, and only in Churches or Dissenting Chapels with the express consent of their respective ministers, churchwardens, or chapel committees.

6. It follows as a further consequence of these reforms, that Churchwardens must cease to be