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Yet the new scheme of the Representative Church Council seems, no less decidedly than that of the Archbishops' Committee, to forbid the Church Assembly to issue any statement purporting to define the doctrine of the Church of England on any question of theology.' Is this a surrender to the contention of many clergymen and some laymen, that doctrine is the sole concern of the clergy? They actually contend that, even if the Houses of Bishops and Clergy agree in a new formula, it will be rendered unholy by the concurrent approval of a House of Laymen! The bulk of sensible Englishmen, who regard that view as absurd, may hope that the prohibition is merely a formal concession to Church tradition. For, since leave is given to the Assembly to debate and formulate its judgment by resolution upon any matter concerning the Church of England, or otherwise of religious or public interest,' we may conjecture that, when the resolution purports to define the doctrine of the Church of England,' the right to issue the decision may be reserved, in deference to ancient custom, for the Bishops, who will act as the mouthpiece of the Assembly. If that be so, it ought to be stated clearly; for the passing of the Bill may turn upon this very point.

What is the attitude of the Life and Liberty Movement to this important question? The sentence quoted above, 'It must be one of the first tasks of a selfgoverning Church to state more clearly its interpretation of the Creeds in relation to modern thought,' is understood by some of the leaders in the sense which we have suggested that is, the Church Assembly is to formulate and the Bishops to pronounce. But the committee as such has avowedly never discussed the subject. They would do well to discuss and to make a clear pronouncement. If they palter with the question-still more, if they advocate a return to the medieval autocracy of the episcopate-they will alienate many supporters.

There is another question of great importance, as to which their attitude appears to many to be disquietingly indefinite. In the first enthusiasm of the movement some of the speakers proclaimed that, if the desired 'liberty' could not be obtained by means of the Enabling Bill, they were prepared to purchase it at the cost of disestablishment. Such words made a deep impression

because it was known that among the supporters of the movement were some who desired disestablishment for its own sake. It was hard for outsiders to distinguish between those who regarded disestablishment as a prize to be won, and those who braced themselves for it as a sacrifice which might have to be made. Such as believed the National Church to be one of the main hopes for the future held back from a movement which seemed to threaten it. Whether because they were warned of the danger of losing support, or because reflexion convinced them that their first utterances were rash, the speakers and writers of the movement soon ceased to refer to disestablishment, even as a possibility. The impression, however, remains in many minds that some of the leaders ' are heading for disestablishment.'

Is it so, or is it not? A clear declaration of policy is urgently required. For here is no mere difference as to the use to which liberty shall be put when it has been obtained. There are two incompatible views of the relation of religion to national life; and a choice must be made between them. No real co-operation is possible between men who believe that the National Church, with all its faults, is of inestimable value both to the nation and to religion, and men who would be more or less content as members of an Anglican Sect. If, as we believe, the overwhelming majority of the Fellowship belong to the former category, the fact should be published, and the movement thereby strengthened.

Possibly, in the early stages, a professed willingness to suffer disestablishment may have seemed a useful weapon for Parliamentary debate. Reflexion must convince us that it is a double-edged weapon; for, if it be a proof of earnestness, it is also a challenge such as Parliaments very readily take up. A great national assembly is not to be cajoled or threatened. It will be moved, if moved at all, by a frank appeal to its sense of justice and of the national advantage.

An attempt has been made to state the evidence impartially, so that readers may form their own judgment upon the merits and prospects of the Life and Liberty Movement. If the writer were called upon to state his own conclusions, he would summarise them as

follows. It is inconceivable that, under existing conditions, even the most necessary measures of Church Reform should be passed through Parliament. The Enabling Bill proposed by the Archbishops' Committee, when amended in some particulars, will secure at once Parliamentary Control and an adequate measure of selfgovernment; and therefore it deserves the support of all who have the best interests of the Church at heart. Though it does not stand alone, the 'Life and Liberty Movement' is the most active and influential organisation for promoting this Bill. The reasons which its leaders, in print and in their speeches, have given for demanding the Bill are for the most part unexceptionable; and they are gradually adopting the amendments which are desirable in the schedule of the Bill. They appear to have made two mistakes. Their last pamphlet opens a vision of the future which is gratuitous and which, right or wrong, has little to do with the Bill; and they have as yet failed plainly to retract the hints about disestablishment which were rashly uttered at first. The former mistake, which is no more than an irrelevance, need not deter earnest Churchmen, whatever their views about social reform, from joining the Fellowship. The latter is more serious, for silence is being taken to mean adherence to a programme of disestablishment. But, if the Fellowship as a whole is really averse from that disastrous policy, the committee may be expected to issue a frank disavowal. If they do this, they will deserve the united support of Churchmen, and will have a fair prospect of success.

M. G. GLAZEBROOK,

Art. 5.-THE EMPIRE OF SPAIN.

1. The Rise of the Spanish Empire in the Old World and the New. Two vols. By Prof. Roger Bigelow Merriman. New York: Macmillan, 1918.

2. Historia de España. Crevea.

Four vols.

Gill, 1909-1911.

By Prof. Rafael Altamira y Barcelona: Herederos de Juan

3. Isabel of Castile and the Making of the Spanish Nation. By Ierne L. Plunket. New York: Putnam, 1915.

SPAIN, when the European nations were dancing out the 15th century, appeared as Cinderella on the scene, not, indeed, a young and blooming maid but a middle-aged and somewhat tousled lady with some startling adventures and some ugly memories behind her. All the more credit to her, then, that she became a queen of the European salon, whose fashions even Paris was content to follow. It was the spirit of adventure, after all, which had once delayed but now produced this sudden début. Until the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella no nation, perhaps, since the days of the Normans, had been so given to adventure as that which inhabited the Iberian peninsula; and certainly none, not even the Germans, had been so lacking in a common discipline. The application of discipline to adventure was the work of Ferdinand and Isabella; they were indeed the fairy god-parents who equipped, Spain for her dazzling and triumphant apparition.

Prof. Merriman has chosen adventure, that is the rise of the Spanish Empire, for his book, of which the two first volumes have now appeared. His task will close with Philip II, for the rise ceased with the annexation of Portugal and her colonies, and the dismal downfall of the 17th century has no attractions for him. has done wisely in selecting a great theme, indeed the greatest within the area covered by Spanish history, instead of writing this history in all its fulness and complexity. His difficulty is that his main theme involves a secondary subject-the conflict, that is, between unity and particularism. Unity was the work of the monarchy, but it was hampered by the ineradicable

popular feeling for particularism, which was favoured by every distinctive element, racial, social or geographical, within the peninsula. Upon this the author has constantly to insist, and he can hardly explain it without entering into the origins of the several States which ultimately made up the Spanish monarchy. The racial divergences were rendered more permanent by the great variety of social and political institutions, the result of Roman, Visigothic, Frankish and Moorish law and custom. Hence he feels obliged to treat of the constitutional peculiarities of the several States, because they were obstacles to the centralisation which was necessarily the aim of the united crowns. If, for instance, Aragon had had common institutions with Castile, or even Catalonia with its associated yokefellow Aragon, or if Granada had had any homogeneity with Navarre, the centralising task of the Crown would have been far easier, and the Empire might have proved more solid. Mr Merriman points out that not even under Ferdinand and Isabella is it right to speak of a Spain in the modern sense; and it was long before historians ceased to use the phrase, the Spains.

From a literary point of view, the setting-out of these distinctions has its drawback both for author and reader, for the continuity of the Imperial story is broken by frequent divagations into constitutional history; and the marvellous tale of Ferdinand and Isabella's conquests must needs be abridged, because Mr Merriman, like the Catholic Kings, has to spend no small portion of his energy on the constitutional transfiguration of the Castilian State, which, indeed, made those conquests possible. Empire, in fact, did in great measure depend on the harmonising of constitutional independence and monarchical consolidation.

The long conflict between union and autonomy has its bearing on modern Spanish politics. Is any democratic movement within Spain likely to lead to separatism or at least federalism? In Catalonia this seems certain. In the revolt against John II the first idea was a republic

* These institutions are admirably treated by Prof. Altamira in his 'Historia de España,' which is devoted to the social and constitutional conditions of Spain rather than to its political history.

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