which led to it and in this instance again the verdict of Philip drunk had to be reverst by Philip sober. May the Clergy at least learn from reiterated experience, if from nothing else, to beware of such precipitation! The most terrible feature about the cholera is its suddenness; and scarcely less pernicious are choleric decisions.

NOTE L: p. 26.

Are the Petitioners willing

On these grounds I cannot but deplore that a large body of Clergy, a number amounting, it is said, to seventeen hundred, and comprising a large proportion of the most zealous and devoted ministers in our Church,-should have signed a Petition calling upon the Legislature to pass some enactment equivalent to the Proviso spoken of in the last Note. Surely there is something very inconsiderate in such a Petition. to abide by whatsoever Parliament may choose to lay down concerning the doctrines of the Church? No, they will say: we merely want them to decide in this one case as we bid them. But they who call upon a tribunal to decide, thereby recognise the right of that tribunal to decide against them, as well as in their favour, and not in one instance merely, but in all similar ones; and they preclude themselves from urging any objection against its authority. It was through such inconsiderate invitations and appeals, that the Papacy gained a large part of its exorbitant power. In the present matter the Petition is rumoured to have been occasioned by a particular case in which episcopal authority is supposed to have been abused. But, even assuming the abuse to have been flagrant, we have regular courts for the settlement of such questions, where the sentence will be preceded by a long and careful examination into its legal grounds. It betokens a morbid impatience, to turn away from these regular tribunals, and to call for a new law, when things are not going just as we wish.

A like impatience, no less deplorable, it seems to me, has been manifested this year in the Petition to Government to send a Commission to our Universities with a view to reforming their constitution and practice. Not that these are perfect, any more

than other human institutions. There are several things in the practice of my own, the one I am best acquainted with, which I earnestly desire to see changed. But what assurance have I, that a Commission appointed by Government would recommend the changes I wish for? It is far more probable that many of their recommendations would be in an opposite direction, adding, for example, fresh stimulants to emulation, which already is one of our chief banes. Nay, even if I had the power of determining their recommendations, I should deem it incomparably better that the alterations should be made by the voluntary act of the Universities themselves, by those who will have to carry them into effect. For that which we do willingly and on conviction, will ever be better done than what we do on compulsion. The true way of reforming a body is to labour to produce that conviction in them which will lead them to reform themselves. The arm of the Legislature should not be called in, nisi dignus vindice nodus: but, like bad playwrights, we call it in at every petty difficulty. While we prate about the omnipotence of truth, and boast that the wheels of the world are now to advance selfmoved, like those in the prophetic vision, by in-dwelling intellect, not through the impulse of outward force, never has there been a year in which people have so perpetually called in force to effect what ought only to be effected, and can only be effected well, by intelligent conviction. In other words, every one wishes to impose his own will upon others; few place any trust in reason and right and truth.

There are several cases indeed in which the sanction of Parliament would be requisite, to give legal authority to changes in what is at present establisht by Act of Parliament. For instance, if any alterations were to be made in the Liturgy,—and there are some which almost everybody would admit to be exceedingly desirable, these alterations would demand the confirmation of the Legislature. Nor could that shameful clause in the Caroline Act of Uniformity, by which the Puritans were expelled from our Church, be modified, as it ought to be, without a like sanction. This obligation follows from our connexion with the

state.

The right course however for those who feel the need of any such changes, would be to petition for the summoning of a properly constituted Ecclesiastical Synod, which ought to be the chief agent in all measures affecting the constitution of the Church.

NOTE M: p. 30.

I have been grieved to meet with what I have here termed a sophism, and what, the more I examine it, only seems to me more palpably such, used by my dear and honoured friend, the Bishop of St David's. He is one of the persons with whom, as I have said in the Charge, it has been painful to me to find myself differing on this momentous subject. In former years, when we were living in an almost daily interchange of thoughts, and when my mind derived inestimable advantages from the fulness of his knowledge and the imperturbable calmness and clearness of his judgement, our opinions on this question, which was then brought forward by the late Sir Robert Grant, coincided; and I felt a greater confidence in the correctness of mine from its being confirmed by his. Of course there should be nothing surprising in a wise man's changing his views on sundry important points, more especially of practical policy, in a period of sixteen years. Rather would it be an indication of want of wisdom, if he did not. In his speech in the House of Lords, the Bishop appears to impute his former opinion to the influence of those prejudices which have ever been entertained against the Jews, more or less, in every branch of the Christian Church. But as I cannot trace mine to any such origin,—as on the contrary it seems to me integrally combined with the result of all my reflexions on history and political philosophy,—and as I cannot reconcile my recollection of my honoured friend's opinions on this or any other topic with the notion of their having sprung from prejudice, I feel constrained to stay behind, where we both were in 1832.

The passage I refer to in the Bishop's Speech, as publisht by himself, stands in pp. 21, 22. Having stated that "the old principle of the Constitution was one of absolute exclusiveness,"

and that this principle "has been gradually relaxt, and at length absolutely discarded," he proceeds: "It is therefore not consistent with the real state of the case to represent this measure as an innovation on the Constitution; on the contrary, if there is one thing which has been more clearly proved than another on this question, it is that the barrier which now happens to impede the admission of Jews into the Legislature is the mere creature of accident,—that it was not raised by the Legislature for that purpose, but for one totally different; and it now remains for your Lordships to decide whether it shall have an effect which it was never intended to produce. And therefore, if your Lordships should reject this measure, it will be you who will be making an innovation upon the Constitution, and introducing a principle which does not now exist in it. The principle of this measure is in perfect harmony with the most essential principle of the Constitution. It is an indication of that elastic vigour, flexibility, and expansiveness, which are its glory and its strength."

Now in this passage, as there are some rather startling paradoxes, so I seem to see several fallacies, proceeding in the main from the primary fallacy of assuming that the principle of the Constitution was something negative, instead of positive. Every positive principle does indeed involve a negation, by which it is limited and defined. The faith in One God involves the rejection of all gods but that One. The marriage to one woman involves the forsaking of all others. But if, in reasoning, we proceed from the negative, instead of the positive principle, we may easily lose our way. The principle of our Constitution can never have been "one of absolute exclusiveness," except secondarily and derivatively for the primary principle of whatever has life in it, must be something positive. The absolute exclusiveness only became a principle of our Constitution, so far as it was necessarily consequent upon the espousal of the nation to that which it regarded as the one Faith of Christ's Church. If we start from this point, we shall take that view of the progressive expansion of the Constitution, which I have attempted to sketch in the Charge, and according to which our Constitution has been gradually

becoming more comprehensive, not by rejecting its primary principle, whereby it was united to the Christian faith, but by adopting a larger conception, under the irresistible pressure of events, as to the necessary constituents of the Christian faith; until at length, in the eye of the Constitution, this became identified, so to say, with the reception of Baptism, and of the Apostles Creed. Looking at the matter in this light, we see that the principle of the Constitution has never yet been "absolutely discarded," as my honoured friend says, but has only been carried out more fully and completely. On the other hand it would be "absolutely discarded" by the admission of the Jews into the Legislature. For that would not be an expansion of the Christian principle of our Constitution, but the total abolition of that principle, and the substitution of its opposite, namely, that our Constitution is no way connected with any form of religion. Though this might not be directly exprest, it would be manifestly implied in that act; nor would it long continue latent, and merely implicit.

Thus we need not be disturbed by the ingenious paradoxes, that this measure is not " an innovation on the Constitution," and that its rejection would be the innovation, and the introduction of "a principle which does not now exist in it." I grant, it has been clearly shewn, that the words by which the Jews are now excluded from Parliament, were not enacted with a view to their exclusion. Nor did the Legislature ever think of setting up a barrier to keep them out, any more than it ever thought of setting up a barrier to keep out an army of icebergs. But surely the words prove, that, at the time when they were enacted, the profession of the Christian faith was deemed an indispensable qualification for a seat in the English Legislature. This was assumed, not as the result of argument, but as a recognised, irrefragable proposition. Nor was there ever a time, until recently, when this proposition would have been seriously controverted.