get upon the debateable ground of theology, all payments ought to be voluntary.

The final grievance' of the Dissenter is that of the State preferring one denomination of religionists before others.'

Here the writer goes to the root of the evil; and this allegation is followed by about five-and-twenty pages of clear and vigorous argument, showing that the predominant evil is that of UNIFORM, EXPRESSED, IMPLIED DEGRADATION.' We hope this masterly summary of the case will obtain the general attention which it deserves. It cannot be presented in an abridged form, being itself a brief condensation, though most clearly and ably put. We must content ourselves with a few extracts, partly as specimens of the writer's manner, and partly for the sake of the facts stated.

The distinction between religious and civil concerns.

In the complicated science of government, there certainly is no distinction clearer and broader than that existing between what is civil and what is religious; and one should suppose that no proposition could be more palpably just than that what is civil alone, falls within the province of civil government, and that what is religious is, from its very character, necessarily beyond its control. But it is confounding to find, that a truth which might be deemed self-evident, has not yet become a principle of government; and that, with all the disastrous evidence of an opposite course before them, no statesmen have been found wise enough to shun the evil and pursue the good. A state religion under Pagan governments, brought on the early Christians all their severe persecutions; yet the Christians no sooner obtained power, than they allied their religion with the civil establishment. A State religion brought on Europe all the curses of Popery; yet the reformers sought to elevate Protestantism in its stead. A State religion in our own land brought Charles to the scaffold, and spread massacre, martyrdom, and proscription over the empire; yet the pilgrim fathers" who fled from it for life to foreign shores, were scarcely weaned from this folly, and left much for their noble offspring to effect. A State religion, at this moment, is threatening us with convulsion at home; and abroad-in China, in India, in Spain, wherever it exists-with the greatest obstacle to Missionary labour we know; and still we cling to the luscious error. How hard is it for any man, however enlightened and wise, to deliver himself from the seductions of error, when it seeks to retain its possession of the mind by flattering his pride and enlarging the region of his power!'-pp. 43, 44, Voluntary contribution said to be inadequate.

66

'It will not work, it is said, so efficaciously. This, as a general assertion, is so strange and so directly in the teeth of evidence, that one is disposed to ask, can we and our opponents be agreed on the import of the term? If by not being so efficacious, is meant, that it will not so readily provide some 12, 20, or 30,000l. per annum, for the bishop or archbishop; that it will not provide for some 4000 clergy without cure of souls; that it will not supply some 300,000l. for sinecure allowances, then undoubtedly it is not so efficacious; but if it is meant that it will not so well provide the means of instruction and worship to the people,

then we wonder at the boldness which can commit any man to the declaration. The facts, my lord, are all on one side. In London and its adjacent boroughs we have 459 places of worship: of these, though London is the strong-hold of churches, 265 are dissenting and only 194 are established places. Dissent has spread over the country about 8000 chapels, besides school-houses and preaching-rooms; it has provided for the respectable education and sustenance of a ministry, commensurate with this demand; while it has done this, it has been made to contribute its proportion towards the support of an endowed Church; and yet it has, as if refreshed by its exertions, greatly surpassed that Church in its contributions of service and money to those great efforts of christian benevolence which are not of a sectarian but of a general character.

But it is urged, that the voluntary principle will not work uniformly; that though it should provide for the large towns, it could not carry the means of religion into our small villages and agricultural districts. There is something plausible in this argument, and it rests on many conscientious minds as a real difficulty. A simple question or two is sufficient, however, to rectify the judgment. If by preference, any parts of our country were selected as poor and thinly populated, they would be Cornwall and Wales. Who has carried religion over these unpromising districts, the endowed or the dissenting teacher? One more question: There are in England and Wales 3000 stations at which the curates who serve them have less than 100l. a year; these are certainly the smallest and poorest in the country; could the voluntary principle do less for them? is it not certain, if they deserved to hold their stations at all, that it would do much more for them?'-pp. 51, 52.

Example of America.

One of its small and new towns, for instance, as an ordinary sample, contains 6,000 persons; it has five churches; and half the population attends them. New York has 200,000 inhabitants; it has 101 churches; this will give, at an average attendance of 500 each, a fourth of the population as church-going, and that of London by the same estimate would give only one-seventh. It has 15,000 churches raised amongst a population of 12,000,000; and the average attendance cannot be taken at less than one in four, while that of Great Britain cannot be taken higher than one in five. And what is remarkable is, that it has achieved this with a population doubling itself in fourteen years; and instead of appealing to the principle of State endowment, as in an emergency, it has renounced it as inefficient where it did exist. Thus we have a land, under the greatest disadvantage, without any endowment for the purposes of religious worship, provided with more churches, with a more efficient ministry, and with a better average reward for ministration than we have in our own country, where every advantage has been possessed for ages, and where some three millions a-year are given to uphold an establishment.'-pp. 54, 55.

The Dissenters deny, and justly, that a majority has any moral right to support its own religion, by taxing the minority. Moreover, the assumption so often made that the Church is in a majority, is investigated.

If figures are demanded on this subject they are at hand; and they shall be supplied by the Churchman rather than the Dissenter. The

bishop of London, who is more enlightened on such matters than many, has stated several times in Parliament, that the Dissenters compose onefourth of the people; and the expectation has been that the mind would pass to the conclusion, that the remaining three-fourths were Churchmen. But such a conclusion is inadmissible. It appears by other evidence from the same quarter, that in the returns from one diocese, which may be taken as an average specimen, there were 110,000 persons composing the population; and that out of these only 19,069 were attendants at church, and only 4,134 attended the communion. This gives only about one-seventh as going to church, and about one in thirty-eight as using the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. This would give, then, for the nation at large, scarcely 350,000 persons as in communion with the Church; and taking the proportion of attendants not at one-seventh but at one-sixth, it would give, in a population of 12,000,000, only 2,000,000; while, by the bishop of London's low estimate, (which we are far from allowing,) the proportion of Dissenters is 3,000,000. But suppose it is insisted, that the gross numbers of the people must be made to tell on this question; then, my lord, I boldly affirm, if it were submitted to the sense of the whole nation, whether the Episcopal Church should stand on its own merits, or be supported by the present State endowments, that the large majority would determine against a civil establishment of religion. And if this would be the issue when an expenditure of some 5,000,000l. annually in the United Kingdom is silently employing its amazing influence in favour of an Establishment, what would be the size of the majority, if the nation were left to a disinterested and conscientious opinion?-pp. 57, 58.

The above assertion is, we have no doubt, not more bold than accurate. But then, what is to become of the State endowments,' as they are called, after the present recipients shall have died out? Is this magnificent INSTRUCTION FUND to be set up for a game at 'catch as catch can?' Simply to abolish tithe would be to endow the landed Aristocracy! To apply its proceeds to Government purposes, would chiefly have the effect of increasing Ministerial patronage, lightening only in a comparatively small proportion the burdens of the people. Besides, only the most urgent necessity could palliate such an appropriation. Its legitimate application is obvious. The public duty is plain. Universal and efficient instruction, for children and adults, is the great national want; and here is a great national provision, which is not only fairly applicable to that purpose, but which cannot rightly be applied to any other purpose. The plan marked out in our last number would involve the settlement of all just Dissenting claims in the most satisfactory manner. It would terminate the great sectarian conflict. And its adoption would tend to raise this country to such a pitch of civilization, as no nation upon earth has ever yet attained. Would that we could persuade the Dissenters to look further than to their own relative position as religious denominations. Why will they not merge the separate in the general question, the class right and interest in the national right and interest? Why will they not petition, at once,

for the proper administration of this great public trust? Already the ministerial journals are paving the way for some petty sectarian compromise, by taking advantage of the numerical order of the topics in this pamphlet, and representing registration as the first and foremost claim of the Dissenters. Let them not submit to employ their great strength only in such a petty contest. Let them fight the people's battle for knowledge. Let the claim which they put foremost, be the common claim for common good. Then will they indeed occupy a proud position. And let not the rest of the community leave this vital question solely in their hands. Let them not dream that a few regulations about patronage and pluralities can make the ecclesiastical monopoly other than what it is, the most formidable barrier to freedom and improvement. Let them conceive the immense advantage to the people of the unexpensive establishment of such a system of universal education as that of Prussia. Let the prayer of all petitioners, whether Churchmen or Dissenters, or those who have enlisted under no sectarian banner, be, that from the beneficence of our ancestors the bread of mental life may be freely supplied to the present and all future generations. Justly does the author remind Government that the opportunity is equalled by the responsibility. Let the Dissenters, and the nation at large, heed the admonition.

THE STORY WITHOUT AN END.*

A REGULAR review of this beautiful book is beyond our power. We are fairly in love with it; and how then can one treat it syllogistically or mechanically? Did ever sculptor try to model with mathematical exactness the features of her he loved, and in the very gush of his affection stick the point of his compasses in her nose to measure the elevation of her forehead? A question not to be asked,' as Sir John says; and therefore there is no question as to our reviewing this book secundum artem, seeing that we can only speak of it con amore.

A child's book, indeed! We will see all the children in Christendom six feet high, and bearded, the male ones, at least, before we will give up our right and title in it. We would sooner throw it into chancery, where if, like other contested property, it remain to eternity, or be absorbed by the lawyers, all the better; the court will never be so well reformed by Lord Brougham and Vaux. Dearly as we love children, such a monopoly would rouse our gall. I can't see,' said Rowland Hill, why the devil should have all the pretty tunes;' and undevilish as they naturally are,

6

* Translated from the German, by Sarah Austin. Illustrated by W. Harvey, Esq.

Wilson 1834

no more can we see why the children should have all the pretty books; to themselves, that is; for we do not set up an exclusive privilege; we are for free trade, and universal sympathy. But we do protest against putting this volume into the category of children's books. Did not Bonaparte fall through ambition, and set the final seal to the proved impossibility of universal empire? Let children and their champions think upon that, and have some moderation. They have surely enough to content any Christian and charitable child. Is there not Tom Thumb? The mighty Thumb whose prowess astonished even our King Arthur? Have they not Jack the Giant Killer, the glorious John' of Lilliputian celebrity, who besides cutting off the heads of the big people, filled not only his belly but his bag with pudding? Have they not Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, whose black head one remembers feeling beneath one's foot? And are not theirs the Arabian Nights? Do they not see the beautiful lady come and touch the fishes with her wand, and make them speak? and is not the good Haroun Alraschid listening under the window while they are reading? Have they not- but we will not proceed. We have some tenderness for Oxford, notwithstanding its Toryism; we will not shame its libraries, though the doors be locked, and the keys lost, and the manuscripts mouldy; and the Dissenters making a dust. We will not proceed in our catalogue, nor show how in used and appreciated literary riches, the babies beat the Bodleian. We will consent to a compromise. There shall be a treaty of reciprocity. The Queen of Translators, who has planted our English banner on this lovely region, has dedicated it to her daughter; and it is not for us to be obstinate. We will be both just and generous in stating how the case stands.

The book is a good book for children. It is a beautiful and useful book for children. It is worth volumes of grammar, and geography, and history, and botany, and mineralogy, and geology, and chronology, and theology, and omniology. Never before have we seen such a picture of an Infant Soul living and loving in the bosom of nature. And what can be better for a child than that? If there must be an interpreter between childhood and the flowers, birds and insects, let the office be filled by this book. It expounds all their languages like a Bowring or an Adelung. The sweet silver tube that it is, through which infancy may listen to the ringing of the harebells. Come, come along, little ones! Don't think we ever meant to quarrel with you, especially about such a book as this. Come and let us all breakfast with the child, and make a feast, and then, we must away to other business.

'There was once a child who lived in a little hut, and in the hut there was nothing but a little bed and a looking-glass, which hung in a dark corner. Now, the child cared nothing at all about the looking-glass; but as soon as the first sunbeam glided softly though the casement and