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and predestination, that they seem (unless very closely investigated and minutely discriminated) to favour the one and the other. May I therefore request you to read what the author of the enclosed discourse has so pertinently and happily expressed on this subject at page 18. The whole discourse is worthy perusal as a composition, and almost rivals Dr. Johnson for its compression of matter and its nervous style. I add my name because you may perhaps recall me as a fellow collegian at Christchurch, and that my address to you may not be included in the numberless anonymous impertinences with which you are plagued. I witnessed the dawning of your talents, and have in my retirement noticed and admired the progress and reward of them.

You are now a main pillar of the most magnificent political structure that the wisdom of man ever raised, and if by any suggestion of mine I can assist to clear your ideas on a nice and intricate point in our Church Articles, and thereby give consistency and stability to our inseparable civil and religious establishments through so powerful an agent as you are, and may be, I shall feel that I am not an idle and an unworthy spectator of the increasing prosperity of our country, and may convince you that every corner of this kingdom furnishes characters who can think and feel deeply and write pertinently like Mr. Williams, and who can catch, and feel anxious to communicate, such clear conceptions, like the real admirer of your talents,

J. S. SAWBRIDGE.

Had Archdeacon Paley seen, as Mr. Williams does, that our Articles become bonds of union, not by compromising scriptural truth, but by going to the utmost boundary and only apparently treading on the confines of error, he would, like Mr. Williams, have added the same qualification, and thus prevented the host of adversaries he raised, and the endless controversies to which his work has given rise. A clear and complete idea is not at once the lot even of first-rate talents. This I have lived to see, and your higher and vaster range must have exhibited it more frequently. I find the whole of Mr. Williams' sermon too heavy for a frank; I therefore send only that part of the discourse which bears upon the subject, to which, with all deference, I am

anxious to call your attention. Excuse my adding that I hear 1825 the want of correctness in that part of your argument much canvassed, as deviating from long established truisms. The Reformation of our Church is, as the Bishop of Limerick styled it, a substantive religion and stands distinct from Luther's system, nor does his doctrine of consubstantiation bear upon our doctrine of the real Spiritual Presence in the Sacrament as received in our Church. The Roman Catholic doctrine of Absolution, accompanied as it always is with private confession and some outward act of penance as the atonement, cannot be brought to bear on the qualified language of the Absolution in the Visitation of the Sick, compared with the doctrine of Absolution as stated in the other formularies of our Church.

F. O.: June 3, 1825.

Reverend Sir,-A letter like yours of April 25 deserved an earlier acknowledgment.

But great part of the time which has elapsed since I received it, has been passed by me in the sufferings of the gout; and my occupations since my recovery have been multiplied by that temporary secession from the business of my office.

I am really obliged to you for the pains which you are so good as to take to set me right on points on which you imagined me to be under a misapprehension. It is plain, however, that on one of those points you have been misled by reading an incorrect version of my speech. I know that in two or three newspapers (the 'Courier,' one of them, and the New Times' another) I was most unaccountably represented as speaking of Consubstantiation as a doctrine of the Church of England. I did no such thing. My argument (good or bad) was that the difference between Transubstantiation and Consubstantiation, whatever it might be in a religious point of view, was not such in a political point of view as to make the holders of the former necessarily traitors, while those of the latter were safely admitted

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to share the full franchises of the State with the members of the Church of England.

With respect to Absolution, my argument was (again setting aside the religious question) that an enemy of the Church of England might select a sentence from the Visitation of the Sick, which, separating it from what preceded and what followed it, would admit no other interpretation than one which would bring our doctrine very near to that imputed to the Church of Rome; from which I inferred not that the two doctrines are therefore the same, but that we ought to allow to others a right of explanation and qualification which we must necessarily claim for ourselves.

I repeat, that I am very sensible of your attention and good-will; and I have the honour to be, Dear Sir, Your obedient and faithful servant,

GEO. CANNING.

[Canning having been recently reported to have confused in a public speech theological doctrines known as 'Transubstantiation' and Consubstantiation,' respectively, and not distinguished accurately between the doctrine of Absolution' from sin as taught by the Church of England, and as taught by the Church of Rome, Mr. Sawbridge sends a portion of a sermon preached by a Rev. Mr. Williams, elucidating the two points in question.

Mr. Sawbridge's letter commends itself by his earnestness, and good show of justification for troubling Canning in the matter; it consequently obtained the honour of a detailed reply, explaining precisely what Canning meant to say on the two topics referred to, which will be found not without interest for those to whom such topics are matters of real importance; though it must be pointed out that Canning's answer excluded all theological question, and limited itself entirely to political considerations.]

SIR RICHARD CLAYTON.

Montevilliers, Seine Inférieure: May 1, 1825.

Sir, I am fully sensible of my intrusion on your valuable time, but I cannot resist the personal gratification of enclosing

you an extract from one of the French papers, as it is so perfectly in unison with my own sentiments. In the public applause which is so pre-eminently your due, and which, without the spirit of prophecy, I can venture to predict will continually increase, on every principle of gratitude I shall most fervently rejoice.

Had Lord Granville's administration continued a few months longer, in all probability I should have been at this hour Minister at the Swiss Cantons, but αὖραι φέρουσι τὰς παλαιὰς

Tídas. In the sphere in which I am now to move through your kindness, my only regret will be that I may not have those opportunities of rendering you the services a more important station might have enabled [me] to do. Be assured, however, not a single one shall escape me of showing you how truly I am, sir, Your most devoted and grateful humble servant,

RICHARD CLAYTON.

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EXTRACT FROM A FRENCH NEWSPAPER.

'Les grands principes de liberté civile et religieuse qu'a proclamés M. Canning viennent d'obtenir un nouveau triomphe, la seconde lecture du bill sur l'émancipation des catholiques d'Irlande a passé à une majorité de 27 voix. Naguères les fanatiques, échos de la sainte-alliance et des jésuites, s'écriaient: L'Angleterre reconnaît l'indépendance de l'Amérique et elle viole la liberté de croyance dans ses propres sujets! c'est par l'Inde et par l'Irlande qu'elle est vulnérable; et déjà les fils d'Ignace, chassés par la Russie, passaient de toutes parts dans la malheureuse Irlande pour y allumer les feux de la haine et des discordes religieuses. A la fois philosophe et grand homme d'état, M. Canning a jugé le danger. Le ministère anglais se rallie toute une population prête à repousser de son sein quiconque voudrait troubler la joie de son affranchissement; elle cherchera surtout à prouver qu'elle en était digne. Ainsi l'Angleterre s'enrichit au-dehors par ses alliances et par la manifestation de ses principes, et elle se fortifie au-dedans par l'union de tous les intérêts et la tolérance de toutes les opinions. religieuses; elle complète l'union de l'Irlande à la GrandeBretagne, union qui, sous un régime insupportable d'exception, était toujours provisoire; elle enlève aux nations voisines un

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point d'attaque facile; elle ôte d'un seul coup plusieurs millions d'auxiliaires à ses ennemis déclarés et à ses ennemis secrets, et, appelée peut-être à défendre les libertés du Nouveau-Monde, elle n'est pas réduite à craindre toujours une guerre domestique pour la conservation de ses propres royaumes.

On dirait que pour arriver au plus haut degré de gloire, de liberté et de grandeur possible, l'Angleterre prend le contre-pied de la politique de notre ministère. M. Canning fait absolument le contraire de ce que fait M de Villèle; et, en effet, pour rendre un pays riche, puissant et paisible, il n'y a rien de mieux que de regarder aujourd'hui la France, et que de suivre une marche entièrement opposée à la sienne. Nous nous enfonçons de plus en plus dans le système des prohibitions, l'Angleterre s'en dégage; nous refusons de reconnaître Haïti, nous traitons de factieux les nouveaux gouvernemens de l'Amérique du sud, nous bloquons nous-mêmes notre commerce maritime dans nos ports, et l'Angleterre proclame l'indépendance des républiques, couvre les mers de son pavillon, exploite à son profit les richesses du monde; nous embrassons le système fatal de la réduction des intérêts, achetée par l'augmentation des capitaux, elle répudie ce mode ruineux pour les finances des nations; nous sacrifions chaque jour une nouvelle garantie de nos libertés, et chaque jour elle fortifie les siennes; nous chassons arbitrairement les étrangers, même propriétaires en France, l'Angleterre s'apprête à faire disparaître l'alien bill; nous altérons insensiblement l'institution du jury, elle le purifie en assurant plus que jamais son indépendance; chaque pas que nous faisons en arrière, elle le fait en avant.

[His note simply refers to private matters; but he encloses an extract from the Constitutionnel French newspaper, which is worth reproduction, as testifying to the reputation for Liberal opinions and policy enjoyed by Canning amongst the Continental nations; and, without mentioning in so many words the fact of his success, the French writer by implication accredits Canning not only with sound views, but with energy and skill sufficient to meet the despotic monarchies on their own ground, to neutralise their combinations, and to frustrate their designs.]