Page:Church courts and church rates.djvu/32

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Wardens be empowered to raise a Cemetery rate for the purpose of forming new burial-grounds, or maintaining those already in existence. In small country parishes, where there are only a few Dissenters, I propose that the expenses of the Churchyard shall be defrayed out of a parish-rate, levied as part of the poor-rate, and entrusted jointly to the Overseers and Churchwardens, together with the Parish Warden, where such an officer is appointed, to be spent upon all necessary expenses, enlargements, or enclosure, of the church-yard. I say nothing about the power of Dissenters to compel the clergyman to use the Church Services, since that compulsory power depends upon the Canons of the Church herself, and these would no longer form part of the general law of the land. I think that in all parishes where there is no other cemetery, Dissenters should have a right to burial in the church-yard.

8. That provision of Dr. Phillimore's Bill which proposes the continuance of Church-rates in all parishes and districts where money has been borrowed, before their abolition, upon the security of these rates, until the money so borrowed shall have been repaid, must not be omitted from any such scheme of Church reform. It might possibly be better to assess the required sum as part of the poor's-rate, and entrust it to the Overseers or Parish Wardens, as being the public officers of the parish.

In proposing these remedies I have endeavoured