presented to the Prime Minister shows, we have an immense amount of influential support in the country. We have a good sound case which, when generally made known, will, we believe, appeal to all self-respecting Englishmen, for the independence of the working classes and the solvency of the country are at stake.

To sum up, the case for the Petition rests on the impregnable position that the Government should render an accurate account of the public money annually spent and proposed to be spent on public assistance. It rests on the fact that an immense sum now spent from the rates and taxes could be saved and a proportionate fillip thereby given to trade and industry. It rests on the conviction that the country should be preserved from the vexatious, oppressive, and arbitrary regulations which a ring of officials (a mediæval baronage returned to power) are imposing on every class of the community. It rests on the fact that a very large number of the undeserving among the beneficiaries would soon be diminished by a proper system of deterrence, and absorbed, as in 1834, in the wage-earning population. It rests above all on the consideration due to those members of the working classes who are striving with untold fortitude to maintain themselves and their families without public relief.* We are fighting for the spirit of self-reliance and freedom from which, under Providence, our country draws its inspiration and its strength.

'Yet Freedom, yet, thy banner torn but flying,
Streams like the thunderstorm against the wind,
Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying,
The loudest still the tempest leaves behind.'

GEOFFREY DRAGE.

Their case was stated before the Commission of 1834 by an agricultural labourer, Mr Thomas Pearce of Govington, Sussex. Question: How have you managed to live without parish relief? Answer: By working hard. Question: What do the paupers say to you? Answer: They blame me for what I do. They say, 'If you didn't do it you would get the same as another man has, and would get your money for smoking your pipe and doing nothing.' It is a hard thing for a man like me. (First Report of Commissioners, p. 72.)

Art. 13.-THE CHURCH AND THE PRAYER-BOOK.

ONE of the hardest problems which have exercised the brains of constitutional lawyers, and vexed the hearts of religious enthusiasts, throughout the ages, has been that which sought to settle what part the Civil Power should play in regard to religious affairs. An extreme theory of State control has taken its title from the Hellenised name assumed by a Swiss theologian of the 16th century, whose almost forgotten writings, it would seem, scarcely warrant his identification with the theory in question. Be that as it may, the name has come into conventional use-whether as a term of respect or of opprobrium-to describe a doctrine which claims supreme authority for the State over the religious community.

The crudest and most brutal exposition of this socalled Erastian principle has been enunciated, once for all, by David Hume, with a force of pungent irony that is all his own. It is thus that he sets it forth, when treating of the ecclesiastical state of England under Henry VIII:

'Most of the arts and professions in a State are of such a nature, that, while they promote the interests of the Society, they are also useful or agreeable to some individuals; and in that case, the constant rule of the magistrate, except, perhaps on the first introduction of any art, is to leave the profession to itself, and trust its encouragement to those who reap the benefit of it. 1. Yet there are also some callings, which, though useful, and even necessary in a State, bring no particular advantage or pleasure to any individual; and the supreme power is obliged to alter its conduct with regard to the retainers of those professions. It must give them public encouragement, in order to their subsistence; and it must provide against that negligence, to which they will naturally be subject, either by annexing peculiar honours to the profession, by establishing a long subordination of ranks and a strict dependence, or by some other expedient. The persons employed in the finances, armies, fleets, and magistracy, are instances of this order of men.

'It may naturally be thought, at first sight, that the ecclesiastics belong to the first class, and that their encouragement, as well as that of lawyers and physicians, may safely be entrusted to the liberality of individuals who are attached to their doctrines, and who find benefit or consolation from Vol. 240.-No. 476.

their spiritual ministry and assistance. Their industry and vigilance will, no doubt, be whetted by such an additional motive; and their skill in their profession, as well as their address in governing the minds of the people, must receive daily increase from their increasing practice, study, and attention.

'But if we consider the matter more closely, we shall find that this interested diligence of the clergy is what every wise legislator will study to prevent; because in every religion, except the true, it is highly pernicious, and it has even a natural tendency to pervert the true, by infusing into it a strong mixture of superstition, folly, and delusion. Each ghostly practitioner, in order to render himself more precious and sacred in the eyes of his retainers, will inspire them with the most violent abhorrence of all other sects, and continually endeavour, by some novelty, to excite the languid devotion of his audience. No regard will be paid to truth, morals, or decency, in the doctrines inculcated. Every tenet will be adopted that best suits the disorderly affections of the human frame. Customers will be drawn to each conventicle by new industry and address, in practising on the passions and credulity of the populace. And, in the end, the civil magistrate will find, that he has paid dearly for his pretended frugality, in saving a fixed establishment for the priests and that, in reality, the most decent and advantageous composition which he can make with the spiritual guides, is to bribe their indolence, by assigning stated salaries to their profession, and rendering it superfluous for them to be further active, than merely to prevent their flock from straying in quest of new pastures. And in this manner ecclesiastical establishments, though commonly they arose at first from religious views, prove in the end advantageous to the political interests of Society.'

The sarcastic cynicism of Hume led him to propound & theory which, for all its apparent seriousness, is really nothing more than a witty paradox. It is probably true of no country and of no age, even although the politician may sometimes find it necessary to watch vigilantly for symptoms of that danger which Hume thinks likely to arise. It has certainly never been true as regards the attitude of the politician to the Church in this country. The Civil Government, with us, however drastic may have been its interference with ecclesiastical affairs, has never attempted to assume the attitude of lofty and

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contemptuous indifference, which regards the Church as an inferior agent, whose eccentricities must be controlled, and whose excess of energy must be curbed. When the Civil Power has intervened, in England, in ecclesiastical affairs, it has always been as the avowed adherent of one party in the Church, and as the champion of one type of religious thought. As soon as the State ceases to have a definite creed, and relapses into an attitude of indifference, it is apt to be ready to abandon its own magisterial control, and to welcome complete severance between Church and State. That is a course which involves quite as many dangers as the exercise of a dominant control under a trenchant system of Erastianism. We believe that to the vast majority of our countrymen that complete severance, which must lead to a creedless State, and to a Church uncontrolled by law, is just as unwelcome as would be the dominant Erastianism paradoxically described by Hume.

In this country we have never taken kindly to the undue exercise of magisterial control. But it is none the less true that the love of order and of seemly discipline has entered deeply into the religious life of England, and is one of its most permanent instincts. At first that instinct seemed to justify very drastic penalties upon breaches of the old order, and very ruthless methods of dealing with Dissenters. All that has passed away, and every remnant alike of penal action, and of refusal of civil equality, has long since been swept out of the Statute Book. But the old love and reverence remain. Those who disagree may hive off, and form new communities. But the nation has taken to its heart, its own Historic Church with all its traditions, and the seemliness of its ritual. It stands for something too deep and too sacred to mould itself to every breath of mood and fashion.

The national characteristic love of order has shown itself in very different shapes throughout our history. The Erastian principle probably never took a sterner form than in the Act of the 1st Year of Queen Elizabeth which stands first in our Prayer-books. It is no part of our purpose now to trace the steps in the development of our Church Establishment, and the evolution of our Liturgy. But that famous Act is a startling display of

the assertion by the Civil power of an authority over the Church which is absolutely without bounds. It is true that, in that Act, the Church is buttressed in its supremacy over any other creed. Every citizen is compelled to attend its ministrations, is subject to its discipline, and must breathe no whisper of dissent from its creeds. But what these creeds and tenets are, and what forms are to be observed in these ministrations, is prescribed by the Civil power with minute detail, and the prescription must be followed to the letter. The secular struggle between Church and State had at length culminated in a victory for the Civil power, which was asserted with ruthless severity; and the Act of Queen Elizabeth was really the pean of that victory. The note of dominancy was none the less clear and distinct from the fact that its assertion was made by the Civil power in close alliance with the adherents of the Reformed doctrine.

The Act of 1559 reflected all the fierceness of the struggle which it attempted to end. Its terms and its provisions naturally strike us, after nearly four centuries, as strangely out of harmony with that liberty which we claim as our inheritance. Yet it was drafted in the lifetime of many whose thoughts and ideas dominate us even at the present day; and it was accepted by them as a sound and salutary measure. The terms in which it was imposed were indeed imperious; but, for all that, it did much to shape the architecture, and to inspire the genius, of our Anglican Church.

But let us travel down another century of history, and come to the Uniformity Act of 1662. From that Act the note of domineering triumph on the part of the State has disappeared. The Act of Elizabeth had marked the decisive defeat of independent ecclesiastical authority. From the creeds and forms of that ecclesiastical authority no changes were to be made except those necessary to check its reassertion of independence. But, changed or unchanged, the creeds and forms were to derive their authority from the State and not from the Church.

The Act of 1662 was something very different. It came to heal the rents in the tabernacle, and to repair its altars. Its dominant note was one of peace and of com