in a word, that they were garbled. Even as it was, I was under the necessity of making a number of long quotations; and I gladly embraced every opportunity, that I could conscientiously, of curtailing them.

NOTE B: p. 7.

In the discussion which took place in the House of Lords on this subject in February last, the Bishop of St David's, according to the Report in the Times, said, that "his right rev. friend (the Bishop of Exeter) had spoken, as if the power which had hitherto been exercised in substance by the Crown, had been an absolute and irresponsible power. His right rev. friend had forgotten this very important feature in the case, that, when the Crown exercised this power, it was strictly limited as to the object selected for nomination. It was not a power to nominate anybody whom the Crown might think proper: but it was a power limited to a certain known class of persons, who in the eyes of the law were equally well qualified to be the object of nomination. His right rev. friend—had made much too great a distinction between the inferior and superior orders in the Church: he appeared at the moment to have forgotten that there was no ulterior qualification required for the functions of a Bishop, which was not equally required for the functions of a Presbyter. The qualifications required for the Presbyter, and which fitted the Presbyter for the after functions of a Bishop, were the main qualifications: all others were secondary, and comparatively immaterial.”

This is an important observation, and quite conclusive as an answer to a case suggested by some alarmists, that, if the power of the Crown were to be exercised without any sort of check, it might nominate a Jew or a Mahometan. Still there is no absolute warrant in the previous ordination, that every person who is ordained Priest will be qualified for the Priesthood. Even with the utmost vigilance on the part of the ordaining Bishops, unworthy candidates may gain admission. Moreover, during the long period

which mostly intervenes before a Priest is raised to the Episcopate, disqualifications, unknown at the time of his ordination, may have become notorious. His life may have been openly immoral; or his opinions, as we have seen happen in so many lamentable instances of late, though previously in unison with the doctrines of our Church, may have diverged from them, whether toward Romanism, or toward Rationalism and Socinianism. Now surely it is not unreasonable to demand, that the Church should have some legal security that a person thus disqualified shall not be placed among her rulers. Nay, the need of such a security is greatly hightened, now that the Prime Minister will no longer be necessarily a member of her body, but may be a Dissenter, a Unitarian, a Romanist, or perchance, ere long, a Jew. This security would be afforded by those very forms, which have just been proved to be nullities, if they were but allowed to become realities. That they were originally intended to be so, is plain, without our entering into a historical demonstration to prove it for no forms are ever set up in the first instance with the purpose of being empty and powerless. They were meant to have force, however they may have lost it. Nor would the revivifying of those forms invest the Archbishop, as has been contended, with a veto on the appointments of the Crown. For the nominee of the Crown would only be rejected in a case where there was decisive legal evidence of his unfitness. The Archbishop would not act discretionally, but judicially, somewhat in the same manner in which a Bishop at present may refuse to institute a priest to a living, when he can shew valid cause for his refusal. But in fact the very existence of such a security would almost ensure its never being called into activity, by preventing the Minister of the Crown from nominating a person whose nomination could be called in question. Vexatious objections, such as were offered in one at least of the recent cases, might be dismist summarily.

:

NOTE C: p. 10.

The great importance of having regular forms for Trust-deeds, to prevent the evils which would result from carelessness in the mode of drawing them up, is forcibly urged by Mr Henry Wilberforce, in his Letter to Sir R. Inglis; though the purpose of that Letter is to impugn the Clauses proposed by the Privy Council. After saying that hitherto the working of our schools "has not in most instances been very materially affected" by the provisions in the Trust-deeds, he adds: "But it were most imprudent to assume that this state of things will be permanent. Daily experience assures us that few legal deeds are operative until after many years. Deeds of marriage settlement are now as general as the marriage of those who have any property; and how few of them are ever consulted, as long as the lives and mutual harmony of the married pair continue !—But should discord and separation arise, or should one or both die, it is changed at once from a dead letter, a mere form, to a living and active law. Need I add, that, if such a deed contains any inconvenient or unjust provisions, any obscurities or defects,many years will usually elapse before their existence is suspected? It is when change of circumstances makes a deed important, that its practical tendency is for the first time tested.-Now the Trust-deeds of our schools are strictly their deeds of settlement. We have not yet seen how they will work, whenever circumtances shall arise which shall call them into practical operation. And that such circumstances will arise, and perhaps very speedily, I hold to be unquestionable. It is not merely that, as the original managers pass away, we must look to the Deed to settle by whom they shall be succeeded; but already much has happened to involve the question. Popular education has hitherto been a neglected subject; at this moment all parties are exerting themselves to wipe off this reproach. I heartily rejoice at the movement: may it continue and extend! Still we must not reckon upon the advantages which result from this increast attention, together with the quietness of neglect. Alexander

Selkirk would have been glad of neighbours; but he could no longer have said, I am monarch of all I survey. As population increast, he would have found the need of fences, fences moral as well as physical, of title-deeds as well as hedges. In this point of view, the new Minutes of Council have greatly increast the importance of the deeds by which the government of our Church schools must be regulated. To nominate a master to a school, in which he will hardly obtain daily bread by daily labour,—this cannot be esteemed an enviable act of patronage.-But the office of a master is to be raised. He is to be an educated person: he is to be placed above want: he is to enjoy the prospect of a retiring pension. Can it be doubted that, as soon as this change is effected, the appointment of the schoolmaster will be regarded as a desirable piece of patronage? The controll of the school will become an object of ambition. Men who delight to figure in parish vestries, will be no less rejoiced to see their names on school-committees.-Under these circumstances Trust-deeds will no longer be a dead letter. Men will enquire, in whom is legally vested the nomination of the Master, the control and visitation of the school. Our school-deeds will then be tried; we shall see whether they are valid or invalid, whether they secure anything at all, whether those, who, with great public benefit, and great personal sacrifice, now direct our schools, may or may not be excluded by others who desire personal importance or valuable patronage. I think it is certain that, before long, these deeds will become important documents" (pp. 15-17). In this conviction I fully participate; and for this very reason, it seems to me, we owe our thanks to the Committee of Council, for having taken the trouble to provide certain forms, whereby the mischievous effects of ill-constructed Trust-deeds may be precluded. This question is distinct from those which relate to the particular provisions of the proposed forms; and on this preliminary point, I trust, almost all persons who have considered the matter are now agreed.

It has been a great satisfaction to me to find that the view which I have taken through all our discussions on this point, is

confirmed by the excellent Bishop of Salisbury in his recent Charge, pp. 13-15. "On the best consideration,-I am bound to say that it does not appear to me either unreasonable that the State should require a certain constitution of management for schools as the condition of its grants, or injurious to the Church to acquiesce in such a condition, but rather the contrary. I am not now speaking of any specific management clauses, the character of which is a subsequent consideration, but of the general question, whether the imposition of any clauses at all should be resisted by the members of the Church. And as to this I am clearly of opinion, both that the State is entitled to the security thus given as to the manner of the application of its funds; and that the Church, far from sustaining any injury thereby, would, in fact, find in the settlement of such terms protection and security. The State has, I think, a right to expect that some terms of management should be defined; because, when considerable sums of money are to be applied from the public funds for the establishment and maintenance of schools, it is reasonable to require that the schools be constituted on such a basis as to give security for the permanence of their character as public institutions, not liable to be affected by the fluctuations of individual caprice. Those who refuse all recognition of this right, and who require that all parties should be allowed to claim a share in the public money, and at the same time to constitute their schools according to their individual fancies, appear to me to take up a ground incapable of being maintained in dispassionate argument, and which I hope the members of the Church generally will not be disposed to adopt. And this the rather, because the settlement of well-considered terms upon which grants shall be made, is, in fact, a security to the Church against that very aggression which is the subject of apprehension. If the constitution of the school is left in each individual case to be settled by discussion between its local promoters and the Committee of Council, it is easy to see how great a power would come to be exercised by this latter body, even though the right of compulsion were formally withheld. Should those who are