More Ritualistic Troubles.
The English papers, secular and religious, are engaged in discussing the Akenham burial libel suit, which is another of the many collisions between Churchmen and Dissenters. The action for libel was brought by the Rev. George Drury, rector of Claydon and Akenham, against the editor of the East Anglian Daily Times. Mr. Drury had been asked to bury the child of a laborer, but, ascertaining that it had not been baptized, refused, as the law of the State Church requires him to do. It has been the practice in the parish to bury unbaptized persons in the north side of the church-yard; the spot, whether correctly or incorrectly, is usually described as unconsecrated ground. A Dissenting minister, the Rev. Mr. Tozer, was asked to perform the burial service, which at the appointed time he undertook to do, in a meadow outside of the church premises. Here he was interrupted by Mr. Drury, and a violent altercation ensued between them in the presence of the child's parents. A highly colored account of these proceedings, published in the East Anglian Times, constituted the libel. Instead of £2,000, the jury gave Mr. Drury forty shillings damages. Public opinion has condemned his interruption of the religious services, held on a spot over which he had no control, as monstrous and inhuman. It came out in the trial that Mr. Drury derives over £250 from the living at Akenham, and seldom or never holds service there, the church being so dirty that no decent person can sit down in it. The people dislike Mr. Drury's ritualism, and refuse to attend the church.—Harper's Weekly.