a Committee to consider in what way the fullest coordination of administrative and executive action could be secured in regard to public assistance on account of sickness, unemployment, and destitution, and Mr Baldwin has assured us that any recommendations the Committee may make on this matter will receive careful consideration. We must await the publication of the report and the decision of the Government thereon before taking any further steps. Meanwhile, we may observe that, so far as economy and efficiency are concerned, it is not entirely a matter of the responsibility of the ratepayers and local administration. For instance, it seems doubtful whether the power to check excessive out-relief really rests in all cases with the ratepayers who have to bear the whole cost of it. For instance, in London, out-relief has to some extent been made a charge on the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund, with the result that the ratepayers of the contributing boroughs have to provide for out relief for boroughs in which they are not represented, and in which they have no power of checking excess. Moreover, as a recent enquiry has shown, in some cases two Unions run institutions jointly and one partner cannot control the extravagance of the other. Apart from Boards of Guardians, Exchequer grants have in other departments had the effect of stimulating local extravagance, for extravagance takes a different aspect when some one else has to pay for it. For the moment, therefore, reformers must concentrate on the fact that the public has the right to a strict up-to-date account being given in an accessible form of all expenditure, central and local, on direct public assistance; for it is only by the publication of such an account that the country can obtain an accurate idea of the vast and ever-increasing cost of legislation on these matters and the urgent need of some check on that cost. It is the bankruptcy of the central and local government that is to be avoided. I have not left myself space to deal at length with the fact that the present lavish expenditure of public money is demoralising alike to the recipient and to the * * A complete article might be written on the overlapping of various forms of relief, and in particular on the frauds connected with the dole, poorer ratepayers and taxpayers. There are still many independent persons of small means who refuse to barter their independence and who are in a worse position than some persons who draw their subsistence entirely from public funds. There is a still larger class always on the verge of pauperism, and to them the temptation of competing with their neighbours for relief appeals very strongly. The most lamentable fact is the extension of the disease of pauperism to the young, as well as to the adult and aged poor. Indeed, recent enquiries in the East End and in the provinces have shown that unemployed doles are having disastrous moral results on young people of both sexes. As a last resort, however, the responsibility, as I suggested to the Denison House Committee in December 1917, falls on the public at large; and in this view I am supported by no less a person than the present Prime Minister, who made, when Secretary to the Treasury, the following statement in the House of Commons: 'If the Government was extravagant no Chancellor of the Exchequer and no Treasury could prevent it. The Government was dependent on the House, and if the House did not attempt to hold the Government in check, that Government would go on spending money. The House, however, was dependent on the people, and the ultimate arbiter of expenditure was the voter.' * Reform, it appears, is eventually certain owing to the inexorable pressure of financial necessity, and the longer it takes the harder it will be in every sense for all concerned. But one must not expect too much from a Government which is faced by the imperious urgency of pressing imperial and foreign questions, as well as domestic problems, like those connected with Rent Restriction. It took nineteen years to convince the country, after Waterloo, of the vital character of the reform they are now needing, and those of us who have set our hands to this task have now been at work for over ten years. Perhaps another nine years of equally arduous work are before us. We have at any rate solid ground for hope in the fact that, as the Petition recently and its use for drink, betting, char-à-banc rides, as an income in lieu of work, and an income on which to marry. Hansard, March 6, 1919. 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, 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. .. 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 a 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 |