are fully satisfied that no Church can ever be formed or maintained on scriptural principles. Our view of those principles would lead us far beyond such separation; for when that shall have been effected, there will, in our judgment, be much in the Episcopal form of Church government, not only unwarranted by, but decidedly contrary to the apostolic practice, to which that form no less erroneously than boldly lays an exclusive pretension. With this, however, we meddle not now, deeming it the present duty of all ecclesiastical reformers to direct their attention to those abuses which tend to support a union inconsistent in principle, and mischievous in the whole extent of its operations.'

999

Do not the words in italics bespeak an object ulterior even to the separation of Church and State? I do not forget the protest of the Liberation Society to the contrary. I allow that it disclaims all wish to alter either the doctrine or worship of the Church of England; but who can accept that wish, even if it be sincere, as any guarantee? Who can stop the progress of innovations at his pleasure, and much more, who can set any limit to the revels of Democracy, when "lust hard by hate" once gets the mastery? The old story, then, will be repeated. The day of perfect equality for all religious sects will never dawn. The instant a balance is struck,

one scale will ascend, the other descend. If the Church of England be ever reduced to a sect, she will be reduced still lower. She will be again cast out and trampled under foot. The cycle of time will have brought back to her the days when her bishops and clergy were evicted; when her services were cut short by the interdicts of Protestant bulls; and her name and place were no where to be found. Whenever the Church of England be separated from the State, then will burst out anew the flames of persecution. That separation will proclaim, not perfect equality, but the savage domination of the sword, and fanaticism, and democracy, all blended together. As the Church's toleration is scoffed at and disparaged now, so those scoffers are the very persons to deny toleration to others, were they again exalted to the high places of the earth. The next turn in affairs I shall not speculate upon. Enough has been said to ascertain the Church's position, and its bearings, past, present, and future. The moral of my sketch I leave for the next and last chapter.

CHAPTER VI.

CONCLUSION-THE POSITION AND DUTIES OF CHURCHMEN AND CONSTITUTIONALISTS.

IN former chapters I have discussed the relative positions of the Whigs, Radicals, Protestant Democratic Dissenters, and Irish Romanists, during the last thirty years. What were the countervailing influences, and how wielded? When the first Reformed Parliament met in 1833, the surging tide of Democracy threatened to sweep away in one common wreck, all the original landmarks of the British Constitution an Established Church an Hereditary Peerage-a Limited Monarchy. Earl Grey himself bade the bishops set their houses in order. Church-rate agitation, engendered by the agitation for Reform and the Political Unions, convulsed the large towns and fanned the kindling sparks of political dissent into a flame. In fact, Church-rate agitation took its rise from Birmingham

and the Birmingham Political Union; but in its origin, and aim, and political associations, the Birmingham Church-rate agitation was but the model of other similar movements in Manchester, Rochdale, and elsewhere. For further information on which head, alike curious and valuable, I beg to refer the reader to a pamphlet* published in 1837, which has been courteously placed at my disposal by its author, the worthy Honorary Secretary of the Committee of Laymen, Mr. Knott.

One result of the agitation, the one with which I have to deal, was eminently satisfactory. Earl Grey's declaration led to a deputation from Birmingham to the then Archbishop, Doctor Howley, whose surprise at such a demonstration from such. a quarter, probably equalled or surpassed the pleasure he experienced. And the Churchmen of Birmingham, so far from succumbing to the motley league of Romanists, Dissenters, and Political Demagogues, ranged together under the banner of Church-rate Abolition, succeeded at last, not only in vindicating their superiority, but in suppressing the Political Union. Unhappily the law of Church Rates, miserably defective in what ought to constitute its strength, left to

Letter to William Stratford Dugdale, Esq., M.P., by a Birmingham Manufacturer, one of his Constituents.

the Churchmen of Birmingham, as it has left to many a successful assertor of parochial privileges since, nothing better than a barren victory. The first bright ray of hope, indeed, for the Church, broke forth from a quarter which appeared one dense opaque mass of clouds and darkness. In 1834, Lord Grey's Ministry was shaken to its fall by the resignation of four of its principal members. The stumbling-block, moreover, in their way was none other than the Irish Church. Let it not be forgotten, that the noble leader of the Conservative party has twice sacrificed place to principle, has twice foregone the most cherished aspirations of an honourable and noble ambition, rather than barter away for power or for court distinction, the convictions of reason and conscience. Once he paid the forfeit in 1834, and once again in 1845; but on the former occasion, it was to protect the Church, and more particularly that branch of it established in Ireland, from the hand of spoliation and sacrilege; from the confiscating bands of Irish Romanists and Protestant Dissenters, and Infidel Democrats, combined and supported by insidious Appropriation Clauses, woven and spun in the cabinet councils of the Whigs. From that event

from the resignation of Lord

Stanley, Sir James

Graham, the Duke of Richmond, and the Earl of