CRITICISMS, NOTES, AND REVIEWS.

THE HOME-RULE REBUFF.

By the defeat of the Home Rule Bill on its second reading the cause of Irish self-government is taken from the hands of a Parliament which was elected on different and varied issues, and referred to the source of political power, the people of the United Kingdom. By them ultimately the question must have been settled, and that they are called to its solution a few months earlier than the friends of Mr. Gladstone hoped cannot be considered a cause for regret to the friends of Ireland.

The weeks of agitation which ended in apparent defeat for Home Rule have really developed a number of elements essential to its final success. Chiefest among them is the open avowal of a great party through its leader that Ireland has the right to govern herself. The whole Nationalist movement received abundant justification when the most conspicuous figure in British politics declared in the closing moments of the great debate: "Go into the length and breadth of the world, ransack the literature of all countries, and find if you can a single voice, a single book, find, I would almost say, as much as a single newspaper article in which the conduct of England toward Ireland is anywhere treated except with profound and bitter condemnation." A few minutes later this terrible indictment of his country by Mr. Gladstone was virtually approved by the votes of 311 Members of Parliament. There is only one atonement for so great a wrong, publicly confessed, and that is to right it.

On the other hand, this agitation which ended in a seeming defeat has also produced a clear statement of what the Irish consider full reparation for the wrong. "I say," fervidly declared Mr. Parnell, "that as far as the Irish people can accept this bill they have accepted it without any reserve as a measure which may be considered the final settlement of this great question." This declaration by Mr. Parnell, on behalf of the Irish people, was accompanied with the assurances that his party understood perfectly well that the "Imperial Parliament has ultimate supremacy and ultimate sovereignty;" that they would not "cease from the work of conciliating" the fears of Ulster Protestants; that denominational education would undoubtedly be established in Ireland, and that the Parnellites would not claim the right of protecting Irish manufactures. The whole question of the retention of Irish Members at Westminster is left open by Mr. Parnell as not vital.

The issue is, therefore, clearly before the people of the United Kingdom, and on it alone will the electoral campaign be fought. In estimating the bable result it must be remembered that these things are in Mr. Gladstone's favor; the Irish vote in England and Scotland, which in the last campaign was cast against the Liberals will now be on their side; the troublesome question of disestablishment which was then evaded by Mr. Gladstone and denounced by Lord Hartington is now removed to the "end of a long vista," and the socialistic schemes of Mr. Chamberlain can no longer embarrass the party from which he has cut adrift.

Against Mr. Gladstone and Home Rule will be arrayed position and wealth, tradition and prejudice, religious bigotry and Radical arrogance. Ninety-four (94) of the 334 members of his own party in the House have openly declared against him, and will be an aggressive element in the campaign.

The most uncertain factors in the contest are the 2,000,000 new voters who saved Mr. Gladstone from absolute defeat in last December, and the sympathy of Scotland, the great Liberal stronghold, with the Presbyterians of Ulster. Is it not a reasonable supposition that the new electors, who are not burdened with political traditions, will vote for Irish liberty, and that the Scotch people will not depart from their record as the friends of progress to deny to others the rights which they themselves have long enjoyed?

From

And greater than all factions is that transcendent leader of men who hails the demand of Ireland for "a blessed oblivion of the past." him and his cause the victory cannot be far removed.

EDUCATION BILLS BEFORE CONGRESS.

IT is a significant fact that two different bills should have been pending in Congress at the same time, independent in origin and intent, which nevertheless coincided in indicating a common tendency which threatens at once the integrity of our Federal Constitution, and the purity and supremacy of our inherited Christianity. The first of these was the bill introduced by Senator Blair, of New Hampshire, and passed by the Senate, which provided for taxing the people of the United States $77,000,000 for the support of common schools in the States and Territories to be distributed in proportion to the illiteracy of their inhabitants. This would necessarily lead directly to the control of the schools thus supported by officers resident in Washington, and ultimately to the centralization of the entire public school system of the nation.

The second bill, introduced by Senator Ingalls of Kansas, provides for the founding of a great commanding National University, whose degrees, conferred only upon rigid examination, would become the standard by which literary and scientific eminence would be measured throughout the nation. Such a university, if successful, would become the seat of supreme academic

influence, giving character to the curriculum, standard, and aims of all State, local, and independent universities in the land.

The inevitable practical as well as logical issue to such schemes if carried into effect must be the genesis of a universal system of national education under an absolutely centralized governmental control. This would comprehend, as the proposed scheme for the National University explicitly does, faculties of philosophy, jurisprudence, political and social science, history, and the whole circle of human learning. It would comprehend every grade of school, common schools, graded, normal, gymnasia, provincial universities, crowned and practically governed by the National University proposed. This would necessarily imply a uniform administration of every part from the national centre, regulating on common principles the studies, the textbooks, the selection of teachers, and the methods of instruction in every school within the system.

The former bill was ably controverted in the daily press and recent periodicals on the ground of its conflict with the reserved rights of the several States, and of its conferring upon the central government powers not granted by the Constitution. Sympathizing heartily with those who oppose these bills on this constitutional ground, and agreeing with them as to the gravity of the evil consequences to be apprehended if this centralizing policy should prevail, we prefer in this note to give expression to our objections to this scheme of national education on religious grounds. We need only to establish in connection two positions.

Ist. It is impossible to doubt that such a system of national education administered by the Federal Government would be peremptorily dissociated from all positive religious teaching. The administration would be necessarily controlled by politicians, and political instinct would infallibly coincide with the prevalent views as to social justice, in recognizing the validity of the protest of every element of the community against the support of the common government of any religious opinions opposed to their own. Theists and atheists, believers, infidels and heathen, Christians and Jews, Catholics and Protestants would each protest against the teaching of opinions contrary to their own. It is demonstrable that the necessary result of such a process would be that all positive opinions must be sacrificed to their corresponding negations. The only possible basis of compromise in such a situation would be absolute silence on religious questions. This is abundantly illustrated in the history of the public shools and of universities under State control even in their hitherto undeveloped state. Hence has come to be received as an axiom even by some ministers of the gospel otherwise respectable, the monstrous and ignorant proposition: The State and the Church have no connection, therefore the State can have no religion; but the State must educate in self-defence, therefore the secular education of the people must be absolutely divorced from religion.

2d. The second position we insist upon is equally demonstrable. It is that at least in the entire sphere of the higher education a negative position

as to religion cannot be maintained. Mere physical science when strictly confined to the succession of phenomena, like abstract logic, or pure mathematics, may of course be discussed independently of all religious conceptions. But the human mind, neither in learning nor in teaching, ever confines itself to pure science. Both the teacher and the scholar must be constantly conscious of its philosophical basis and connections; i. e. of questions as to efficient causes and ultimate ends. The universe must be conceived of either in a theistic or atheistic light. It must originate in and develop through intelligence or in atoms and force and chance. Teleology must be acknowledged everywhere or be denied everywhere. Philosophy, ethics, jurisprudence, political and social science, can be conceived of and treated only from a theistic or from an atheistic point of view. The proposal to treat them from a neutral point of view is ignorant and absurd. English common law is unintelligible if not read in the light of that religion in which it had its genesis. The English language cannot be sympathetically understood or taught by a mind blind to the everywhere present current of religious thought and life which expresses itself through its terms. The history of Christendom, especially the history of the English-speaking races, and the Philosophy of History in general will prove an utterly unsolvable riddle to all who attempt to read it in any non-theistic, religiously indifferent sense. All such interpretation will necessarily be direct misrepresentation, the inculcation of falsehood in the place of truth. It is certain that throughout the entire range of the higher education a position of religious indifferentism is an absolute impossibility, that along the entire line the relation of man and of the universe to the ever-present God, and the supreme Lord of the conscience and heart, the non-affirmation of the truth is entirely equivalent to the affirmation at every point of its opposite.

The prevalent superstition that a noble and reliable human character can be built up, and that all social and political interests can be secured merely by an education of a high intellectual standard generally diffused without reference to its relations to religion is as unphilosophical, and as unscientific, as it is irreligious. It deliberately leaves out of view the most essential and controlling elements of human character; that man is as constitutionally religious (loyally or disloyally) as he is rational: that morals are impossible when separated from the religious basis out of which they grow: that as a matter of fact human liberty and stable republican institutions, and every practically successful scheme of universal education, have originated in the active ministries of the Christian religion and in these alone. This miserable superstition rests upon no fact of experience, and is on the other hand maintained on purely theoretical grounds in opposition to all the lessons which the past history of our race furnish on the subject. It is no answer to say that the deficiency of the national system of education in this regard will be adequately supplemented by the activities of the Christian Church. No court would admit in excuse for the diffusion of poison the plea that the poisoner knew of another agent actively engaged in diffusing an anti

dote. Moreover, the Churches divided, and without national recognition, would be able at the utmost to counteract very inadequately the evil done by the State Schools armed with the prestige of national authority and of the very highest learning. But, more than all, atheism taught in the school cannot be counteracted by theism taught in the Church. Theism and atheism cannot coalesce to make anything. All truth in all spheres is organically one, and vitally inseparable. It is impossible for different agencies with absolute independence to discuss and inculcate the religious and the merely natural and rational sides of truth respectively. They cannot be separated; in some degree they must be taught together, as they are known and experienced in their natural relations.

In view of these facts, we are thoroughly convinced that such a comprehensive and centralized scheme of national education if once thoroughly realized would prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social, and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.

We are confident that under existing conditions the only course practically open to us, and at the same time consistent with the perpetuity of our religious traditions, and of our social and political institutions as founded upon them is, 1st, to confine the schools under State control to the lower grades of education; and 2d, to leave these schools individually under the control of local boards. In a purely common school education, the religious questions about which citizens differ although present are not so omnipresent nor so urgent. If each individual school is left to its independent choice of text-book and of teachers, and as to the recognition of religion, then every local community could have its own views as to the religious. education of its children carried out. In each case the local majority would govern, and our schools in different sections would differ in religious character precisely as the inhabitants of those sections themselves differ; and at these grades of age and of education the Sunday schools can more efficiently contribute to correct deficiencies. We may, on the other hand, surely leave the interests of the higher educatian to that intelligent and munificent private patronage which has in our infancy presented us with the wise constitutions and the competent endowments of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, etc., in which, in all conscience, antisectarianism has been sufficiently provided for.

BANCROFT'S PLEA FOR THE CONSTITUTION.*

ONE of the most troublesome questions with which our statesmen have been called on to deal is that of paper money. In pre-revolutionary times,

* A Plea for the Constitution of the United States of America Wounded in the House of its Guardians. By George Bancroft. New York: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, 1886. Pp. 95.