out having the slightest chance of returning its own candidates.

Not only has its policy vanished, but its constituent elements have also largely disappeared. In Gladstone's day, Liberalism relied chiefly upon two things—first the Labour vote, and secondly Nonconformity, which was political and aggressive. Labour supplied the rank and file which has now left Liberalism and votes Socialist. The writer used to be well acquainted with a certain industrial constituency, four-fifths of the voters of which belonged to the working class. The parties there were very evenly divided, Conservative and Liberal getting in almost alternately by small majorities. No Liberal candidate ever puts up there now; he would not have a ghost of a chance if he did. The Liberal rank and file has almost all gone over to the Socialists and a straight and close fight takes place at every election between a Conservative and a Labour candidate. This is typical of what has occurred in most industrial constituencies, where the Liberal Party may be compared with the Peruvian army, which is said to have contained nobody beneath the rank of corporal. As to Nonconformity, it has ceased to be the tremendous political force it was. This is partly due to the present unfortunate indifference to religion manifested by all classes, which has tended to bring the leaders of Nonconformity into closer union with the leaders of the Church, thus eradicating the old political sting. It is still more due to the fact that the Labour Party as such is essentially non-religious. We do not say irreligious, since it contains among its leaders many truly religious men, but as a party it has no concern whatever with religious ideals. Like Gallio, it cares for none of these things. It is interested in wages, hours of labour, nationalisation of trade and abolition of capitalism,' the success or failure of Moscow, and a hundred other things, and in no way in religion. A remarkable instance of this is to be found in Wales. The Liberal Party, which was essentially a chapel party, was for many years the strongest party in the Principality, in fact, at one time it enjoyed a practical monopoly of Welsh representation in Parliament: now it is the weakest party in Wales. Conservatism has made strides in the North and in Central Wales; while

the South Wales coalfield, where half the population resides, votes solidly for Labour. The great days of Welsh Liberalism have gone beyond recall.

The political fight of the future lies between Conservatism and Socialist Labour. The former party confronted with Socialism proceeds by the method of regulating industrial conditions, while leaving industry in private hands; the latter aims at nationalisiug industry, and, by abolishing private profit, would destroy all incentive to enterprise. The Labour-Socialists care little for foreign politics, except in so far as they can be made to serve the interests of a sort of international proletariat; and though the more sensible of their leaders are aware of the complete failure of Soviet rule in Russia, Moscow exercises a fatal fascination over them. To the majority of them-though not to certain of their leaders, such as Mr MacDonald and Mr Thomasthe existence of the British Empire is an evil as interfering with internationalism; while their one idea of improving trade at home is to raise wages and shorten hours, putting on the dole those who cannot find work at such rates that many of them will never want to work again. Beyond all things their sovereign remedy for every ill is to abolish capitalism' by nationalising industry. In this policy some go further than others; there are endless shades of opinion in the ranks of the Labour Party, but to abolish capitalism' is generally the supreme end.

As between these two conflicting views of government there is no middle course, no room for the Liberal Party. Mr Lloyd George's policies are really milkand-water nationalisation. Those people who favour nationalisation will naturally look for the real thing in the policy of the Labour Party, those who object to nationalisation will look to the Conservative Party to resist it. The Liberal Party in its present organisation and existence is a pretence and a sham. Like all shams it must perish.

A PRIVY COUNCILLOR.

Art. 11.-THE REGISTER OF ARCHBISHOP PARKER.

1. Registrum Matthei Parker, partes I-VI. Canterbury and York Society. London: various dates. And in manuscript at Lambeth Palace.

2. A History of the Church of England from 1558 to 1624. By W. H. Frere. Macmillan, 1904.

3. Bishop Barlow and Anglican Orders. By Arthur Stapylton Barnes. Longmans, 1922.

4. Bishop Barlow's Consecration and Archbishop Parker's Register, with some new Documents. By Claude Jenkins. Journal of Theological Studies, October 1922. Milford.

5. Archbishop Parker. By W. M. Kennedy. Pitman, 1908.

6. Visitation Articles of the Period of the Reformation. Vols. 1 and 3. Edited by Walter Howard Frere. Longmans, 1910.

And other works.

AMONG the materials which exist in manuscript and have not yet been fully utilised by students of English history few, if any, are more valuable than the episcopal registers. And gradually these are being explored and edited. While scholars who combine a knowledge of jurisprudence with that of economics, such as the late Sir Paul Vinogradoff, Prof. Stenton, and Sir William Ashley -not to mention the clarum nomen of F. W. Maitland, who was in some directions of these subjects a pioneerhave brought us face to face with forgotten facts in law and social conditions upon which alone new and sound conclusions can be based, scholars have been writing with assiduity in a less known field. In the neglected by-paths of our Ecclesiastical History a Society which is even now not nearly so well known as it deserves to be has been working with patience and success. It is now more than twenty-one years since the Canterbury and York Society was founded for the purpose of printing Bishops' registers and other ecclesiastical records. Its Presidents are the two Primates, and of its founders not a few scholars still survive. Its members include many who do not belong to the Church of England; Cardinal Gasquet, for example, who was one of its original sup

porters, is a Vice-President. Beside him are several judges and bishops. Its treasurer is the Bursar of Winchester College, and its general editor that energetic and capable historian, Miss Rose Graham. The work that it has done in the last few years, with too little public recognition, is really remarkable. The episcopal registers of the See of Hereford from 1275 to 1539, most ably edited, have been published, with the exception, it appears, of the later years of Bishop John Gilbert, i.e. from 1379 to 1389, and those of Bishops Edmund Hardley and Hadrian de Castello, 1492 to 1504. Of the Lincoln registers, those of Hugh de Wells, Robert Grosseteste, and Richard Gravesend; of Winchester, those of John of Pontoise, and John White; of Carlisle, those of John Halton; and of London, those of Baldock, Segrave, Newport, and Gravesend (1304-1338), have been some time in print; while work of extreme value has been done by Prof. Hamilton Thompson on the Visitations of Religious Houses 1420-1449, the Lincoln Episcopal Records 1571-85 by Canon Wilmer Foster, and on the chapters of the Augustinian Canons by the Rev. H. E. Salter. Among material which is announced to be in preparation but is not mentioned in the 1925 list of the Society's publications as ready, will be found the most important registers of Peckham and Winchelsey, of Wolsey and Gardiner. But in some ways most important of all is the Register of Archbishop Parker, of which (though strangely this does not appear in the list dated 1925) six parts are already in the hands of the public. Further publication is, alas, suspended for lack of funds. The name of the editor is not given on the cover of these issues; but the list already referred to shows, in a note of what is 'in preparation,' that they are the work of the present Bishop of Truro. Dr Frere's history of the English Church in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I proves that he possesses the highest gifts of a historian, a sound judgment and a candid mind; but in addition to that work there are his less known but at least equally valuable labours on the Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the period of the Reformation. One may be quite sure that any historical work produced by Dr Frere will be an important contribution to sound learning.

Matthew Parker, the wise choice of Elizabeth's ministers, and perhaps of the Queen herself, is well worth minute study. Retiring though he was, and modest in character, he was an outstanding personage in a time most critical in English history. His register might well be presumed to illustrate his personal character, as the Bishop of Worcester has recently most admirably shown can be done in the case of one of his own predecessors. Parker's character has already been sketched by Dr Frere in his history, by Prof. W. M. Kennedy in an excellent biography, and, more recently, by Dr Pearce, Master of the Archbishop's old College, in a delightful commemorative lecture delivered last year at the celebration of his memory at Cambridge. But episcopal registers should, of course, be studied not only as illustrating personal character. They may be made, in the long series of a single diocese, to explain the nature of ecclesiastical and social changes throughout the ages, to exemplify local differences, and to tell not a little of varying customs, in tales even of passion, of piety, and of public service. It might be supposed that episcopal registers would give insight into ecclesiastical scandals, and so, to some extent, they do. But Bishops do not tell of clerical disputes or offences for the sake of telling them. It is perhaps true that clerics are even more fond of revealing the faults of clergymen than they are of denouncing those of the laity, whereas laymen are more fond of telling the peccadilloes of the clergy than of recording their own. But though in the making of episcopal registers both bishops and lawyers are concerned, the books are no chroniques scandaleuses. In Archbishop Parker's register no one need expect to find scandal about Queen Elizabeth, or, indeed, about anybody else. Those who read the register will only rarely be amused or excited; but they will continually come across new and interesting matter to illustrate the religious, social, and sometimes the political history of England. Let us take, then, the work of Queen Elizabeth's first primate as an example of this class of document, and incidentally of the work done by the Canterbury and York Society.

The register, which is one of the treasures of the Archbishop's library at Lambeth, is bound in two