was, through extreme poverty, on the point of selling his collection of books when the Restoration called him home. He had an enthusiastic reception at Peterborough, and on his own authority at once set up the Church Service in the cathedral, reading it himself for the first time. On the 2nd of December 1660 he was consecrated Bishop of Durham in Westminster Abbey. The next year he was appointed to the Savoy Conference to advise upon and review the Book of Common Prayer. This was a labour of love. He earnestly endeavoured to effect a reconciliation with the Presbyterians; his sound Protestantism and his generous spirit disarmed the suspicions of the dissenting congregations. In favour at Court, and trusted by the bulk of the Church party, we can imagine no one more likely to be asked to write a prayer for the Parliament than he who had been all his life a composer of prayers. prayers. He wrote the He wrote the prayer for the High Court of Parliament which is used during the session. Among his acknowledged collects is a thanksgiving for the restoration of the King. One can hardly in our time take gratitude for the restoration of a Stuart dynasty seriously; but to men like Cosin, who had been cast by the House of Commons into penniless exile from a position of dignity, comfort, and congenial activity, the Restoration was appreciated as a great blessing. It meant the end of a grinding tyranny. Moreover, did it not restore the worship of their beloved Church? In this prayer, intended for every time and subject, the address to the Deity is in the same terms as in the Parliamentary Prayer. At first I was inclined to think that the coincidence was accidental-the mere repetition of a common form; but this form is not common-I believe it to be unique. A copy of the two prayers is now given to facilitate comparison:

A Prayer and Thanksgiving for every true subject upon the anniversary of the King's reign, written by Cosin: 1

Lord by whom Kings do reign and Princes are set up to bear rule over their people and by whose gracious Providence Thy servant our dread sovereign King Charles was at this day placed on the royal throne of his Kingdom. Accept we beseech Thee the grateful commemoration which we now make before Heaven and before Thee of this Thy great goodness and blessing towards us that while we offer up our vows and sacrifices of thanksgiving to the praise of Thy glorious Name Thou mayest bless the King with Thy favours and crown him with continual honour, granting him a long prosperous and religious reign over his people, and granting us a true quiet humble and obedient subjection under him, that he ruling us prudently with all his power we may obey him loyally with all lowliness and cheerfulness of mind, and that both he and we evermore endeavouring to set forth the beauty of Thy Church militant › Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology. Cosin's Works, vol. ii. p. 328.

here on earth may be at last exalted to the glory of Thy Church triumphant in the heavens through Jesus Christ our Lord.-Amen.

Collect read daily in both Houses of Parliament since the Restoration:

Almighty God, by whom alone Kings reign, and Princes decree justice; and from whom alone cometh all counsel, wisdom, and understanding; We thine unworthy servants, here gathered together in thy Name, do most humbly beseech thee to send down thy Heavenly Wisdom from above, to direct and guide us in all our consultations: And grant that, we having thy fear always before our eyes, and laying aside all private interests, prejudices, and partial affections, the result of all our counsels may be to the glory of thy blessed Name, the maintenance of true Religion and Justice, the safety, honour, and happiness of the King, the publick wealth, peace, and tranquillity of the Realm, and the uniting and knitting together of the hearts of all persons and estates within the same, in true Christian Love and Charity one towards another, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour.--Amen.

The two collects are contemporary, animated by the same spirit and conception. If the Thanksgiving is inferior in style, the aspiration that each man in his own order should work for no private end, but for peace, unity, and concord, is common to both, and mark them as the work of a similar temper, if not of one mind. It is important to notice that the reference to the Church in the Thanksgiving is undenominational, and in the Parliamentary Prayer it is to true religion and Christian love and charity, and this was a great characteristic of Cosin's compositions at this time. By no exclusive word would he make it more difficult for any man to remain in or return to the Church. He composed at this time the Prayer for All Conditions of Men in which occurs the following expression: We pray for the good estate of the Catholick Church; that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth.' This is the attitude that Cosin took up, but he was practically alone in his desire not to press differences home.

The grand style was introduced from the English scriptures into the English Prayer Book in 1549, when the beautiful collects for the triumphal season of Advent, drawn from the language of the Epistle of the day, were first composed. In mid-Advent fell the Ember days, and the third Sunday was left with a short collect suited to a fast, which ran: Lord, we beseech Thee, give ear to our prayers, and by Thy gracious visitation lighten the darkness of our hearts by our Lord Jesus Christ.-Amen.' Cosin thought that the brightness of Advent should supersede the shadow of Ember fast, and from

the gospel of the day drew the present collect: 'O Lord Jesus Christ, who at Thy first coming did'st send Thy messenger to prepare Thy way before Thee, grant that the ministers and stewards of Thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready Thy way by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at Thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in Thy sight, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God world without end.Amen.'

Compare also the style of the following collects from the pen of Cosin, St. Stephen's Day, sixth Sunday after Epiphany, Easter Eve, and contrast them with the collects for the Sundays after Trinity, the majority of which were taken from the Sarum use. He had imbued himself with the grand style of 1549. He had an exquisite ear. When one reads the best of his acknowledged prayers, and that used in both Houses, one seems to be hearing another air on a familiar instrument. To the unity of style is added the unity of spirit. The gift of prayer-writing is not scattered broadcast. In the absence of direct evidence someone else may have written the Parliamentary Prayer; but is it likely?

After serving on the Savoy Conference Cosin was nominated first of the committee of eight bishops appointed to revise the Prayer Book; but though accorded a predominating place he was, in fact, almost alone in his desire for comprehension.

The Order in Council of 1552, which enjoined kneeling at the Communion, had been removed by Queen Elizabeth. It was now replaced, and the words 'corporal presence' were substituted for real and essential presence. So that in the doctrinal statement the revived order was made an assertion of the doctrine of the Real Presence instead of a denial of it, contrary to the known conviction of Cosin. How could Baxter be expected to kneel at a sacrament so defined? But Convocation, though it would neither adopt Cosin's comprehensiveness nor his Protestantism, yet welcomed his beautiful prayers, and, at his suggestion, restored many effective sentences from the older liturgies to the soothing and edification of succeeding generations.

In conclusion, I should like to acknowledge the ready help I have received from Mr. Fowler, Keeper of Bishop Cosin's Library, Durham.

ARCHIBALD MILMAN.

I I

VOL. LI-No. 301

FAMINE AND CONTROVERSY

IN following the controversies that from time to time spring up over questions of Indian economics and finance, few can fail to be struck by the curious contrast between the unstimulating character of the materials and the violence of the conclusions which they are employed to educe. A reader who has followed Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, for instance, through an intricate, not to say unintelligible, disquisition on the effects of an enhancement in the value of the rupee, will find that it all leads up to an accusation that the Government of India is ruining the Indians, expressed in a tone that might be adequate to the circumstances if the Viceroy or Secretary of State had come under suspicion of making away with public money for his own benefit. No English economist setting himself out to analyse the dismal phenomena of London poverty would think of striving to connect the origin of the evil with the administration of Lord Salisbury, but the professional critics of the Government of India generally start, whatever the subject may be, with the prepossession foremost. And the obscurer or more complicated the facts of a case may be, the better for the person who only engages with them for the sake of bringing out some conclusion of his own. There could hardly be, in reality, a more intricate or difficult question to answer with certainty than the question whether a country with a miscellaneous population of 300 millions of people, in all stages of development, has advanced or gone back in prosperity between two fixed dates. Yet in the case of India the most transitory and accidental phenomena are constantly appealed to in evidence that the country is in a decline, always, of course, with the implication that the seat of decay is in British rule. About the mischiefs of the British connection, the Indian gentlemen who appear at such inquiries as Sir Henry Fowler's Committee on the currency and Lord Welby's Commission on the adjustment of the Home charges, seem to have as little doubt as the Irish Nationalists; but the Irish do not base their dissatisfaction on statistical refinements, and the Indians do.

It is very intelligible that a period of distress should bring criticism into activity. As a matter of fact, a single bad season in

India generally raises the question whether there is not something wrong with the Government; a coincidence of two or three seems to be taken as proof positive of maladministration. And the inquiries which are always held on the conclusion of a famine, with an eye to overhauling the administrative machinery and remedying any defects that may have been revealed before it is put away to wait the next emergency, give a sort of impression that the Government is on its defence. As regards the combating of famine, the Government of India in these latter days needs no apology, and on that score it has almost ceased to be assailed, but there seems to linger a feeling that it is somehow responsible for the seasons. But it is, of course, notorious that the good and bad years which Providence allows us do not follow each other in their due proportions, sandwich fashion. Over long periods of time the good or the bad weather may predominate with singular persistency, as, for instance, the good did during that forty years' spell of agricultural felicity that England enjoyed from 1720 onwards, or as did the bad during the lean years that led out the seventeenth century and those which brought the nineteenth century in. Every bad famine in history of which we have any definite knowledge has been the result of one of these combinations of unfavourable seasons. Nevertheless, as even in England there never comes a sequence of two or three hot summers or early winters without someone coming forward with an opinion that the climate is changing, it is not to be wondered at that in the midst of the stress and despondency engendered by a famine, people should quickly take up the idea that these visitations are becoming more frequent, and that they are also becoming more severe. For the first proposition there is no evidence at all, and we should require to have an accurate knowledge of the last five centuries at least of Indian agricultural history, instead of knowing one, before we could form any judgment on the matter. The second proposition is more arguable, and it is easy to understand how the belief that famines are becoming sorer comes to be widely held at the present moment, when the country has been through a long period of scarcity. One bad season necessarily leaves the country less able to resist another following quickly after, and India has sustained a singularly long run of ill luck. In the Central Provinces the bad times began with the spring of 1893; in Rajputana even earlier. A succession of ten, perhaps twelve, poor or bad rainy seasons had there preceded the failure of the monsoon in 1899. It is easy to understand that this last, which brought about the crowning calamity of a water famine, came to be looked upon as an unparalleled visitation of nature, when, if an equal failure of the monsoon had happened as an isolated phenomenon, it would have produced nothing more than inconvenience. There is even now considerable distress in India, and it seems possible that before the next monsoon the Government may have a million people