exertions of Lord Powys in the cause of the Church, were met by the late government-after the unworthy taunts thrown out, in the Upper House, by the Duke of Wellington, and the dogged determination evinced in the Lower, by Sir Robert Peel, to resist to the uttermost any enlargement of the English Episcopate-after his disgraceful abuse of Church Patronage in the latter part of his ministry-after the fierce opposition with which Lord John Manners's proposition for the modification of the Law of Mortmain was encountered by Sir James Graham and the AttorneyGeneral, we suppose that the most thorough-going establishmentarian, the highest and driest of the Church-and-State men, will have given up the Conservatives as hopeless, as the very worst enemies that the Church ever had to deal with. What is the avowed hostility of Radicals, Dissenters, or even Infidels, compared with the withering protection of such pretended friends to the Church? What can possibly be worse for the Church than to be given up to the tender mercies of a party which looks upon her only as an Establishment, as the most respectable of the sects, as a human invention, the creature of the state, set up, and so, if need be, to be pulled down by her, chiefly valuable for its patronage, by the judicious disposal of which popularity may gained or parliamentary support purchased? More especially when that party has had its fears aroused, its suspicions awakened. The manifestation of life within the Church, that marvellous movement which bids fair to be the most important of all those many changes which our age has witnessed and is witnessing, has come upon the Conservatives as a strange and alarming thing, and has filled them with trepidation and anxiety. The plastic image, which they deemed the work of their own hands, and complacently admired as such, has suddenly stirred with a life which they know is not from them-and they are terror-stricken. The fair form is grown monstrous in their eyes. They would fain stifle the life. If they cannot, they will wish to seize the form, and grind it to powder.

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Nothing is so frightful to politicians of this stamp as a force which they cannot understand, which they cannot control, which does not emanate from them. More especially, if this force assert a divine origin. Without faith in the divinity of their own mission, if they hear of a claim of power derived immediately from God, they tremble, and gasp for breath. Unable to endure a rival, how shall they tolerate a superior? They feel their own authority sink into insignificance by the side of autho

* In the course of a debate on Lord Powys's motion, to prevent the union of the two sees of St. Asaph and Bangor, the Duke remarked, 'It was not a time to moot the question of the introduction of fresh Bishops into their Lordships' house. There were persons, he must remind their Lordships, who thought the Bishops had no business in the House at all.'

rity so circumstanced; they know not what degree of submission may not be required of them; in imagination they see priest-craft rampant, and the State reduced to the mere tool and slave of the Church. Dreadful annihilation of their own importance and dignity! The mere instinct of self-preservation drives them to do battle with their foe, ere he attain his full strength. Fain would they slay Hercules in his cradle. Perhaps they will find that they have indeed to deal with a young Hercules.

Sir Robert Peel undoubtedly regards the Church as a mere Establishment. Look through all his speeches, and you will not find a single acknowledgment of any higher origin to the Church than Parliament, of any more ancient than the Reformation. The Church with him is always the Established Church, or the Church of England, never Christ's Church, never the Church in England, never the Catholic Church. His lips are guiltless of uttering the phrase Catholic Church,' except in Divine Service, when he repeats the Creeds. Elsewhere he doggedly and determinedly confines the term 'Catholic' to the Romanists. It cannot be that the struggles and labours of the last sixteen years to set all these matters before the public in their true light, have passed him by without attracting his regard. He is far too keensighted a man to neglect so notable a sign of the times as this Church movement has been. No one better acquainted than he with the whole tenor of the controversies maintained on these matters-no one better aware than he of the immense importance of the question whether the existing Church of England was set up by Henry VIII. and his Parliament, or is identical with the Church before the Reformation, the Church of Becket, and Edward the Confessor, and Augustine. Any power besides that of Parliament, independent of that of Parliament, in this land he is resolved he will not acknowledge; he will do his utmost to crush and lay low whatever makes pretension to be a power of this character. Hence the royal prerogative is a special object of his hostility; and he will not have the Queen appoint even a maid of honour, that he the Lord Paramount and representative of Parliament does not nominate. Hence the part that he takes on all privilege questions-the Judges of the land shall not run counter to the will of Parliament if he can hinder them. The liberty of the subject is a fine thing, but if that liberty proceeds to the length of taking any liberties with the proceedings or the character of Parliament, it must be overthrown and trampled on. So with the Church-a parliamentary Church is all very well-an excellent institution-bishopricks considered as peerages, with fair incomes attached to them, are very convenient -deaneries are not to be despised-crown livings even have their uses but a real spiritual Church-a Church set up by Christ and his Apostles-à Church possessing inherent powers

Bishops, the Apostles' successors and representatives, deriving their authority from them-all this is dangerous, monstrous, not to be endured in a Parliament-governed Commonwealth, to be 'put down,' somewhat in the Alderman Cute fashion, to be crushed by the silent proscription of all who hold such doctrines. Such has been Sir Robert Peel's line with regard to the Church. He has been thoroughly alarmed by the new ground taken by the Church, as well as by the new vigour manifested. He has set himself with all his might to counteract the movement; all his Church appointments had this aim, excepting one, perhaps, where her Majesty's wishes were allowed to prevail: and the course pursued by him in Parliament, with respect to every Church question that has been of late years brought before it, has been uniformly shaped with a view to this end. While all the world was becoming gradually convinced of the absolute necessity of a large increase in the English Episcopate, he remained stanch and firm; and decided not to allow of the creation of a single new bishoprick. While the Mortmain law was growing day by day more plainly injurious and absurd in its operation, he refused to sanction the slightest relaxation of it. Sir Robert Peel can brave public opinion boldly enough, and fly in the face of it, where he has an opinion of his own. His conduct with regard to the currency question is one evidence of thishis Church policy proves it no less plainly. Anything that seems calculated to strengthen the Church is sure to meet with his strenuous opposition. Public opinion may ebb or flow, he regards the Church with unchanging jealousy.

But, perhaps it may be thought that the true refuge for the Church under present circumstances is the Protectionist or Country party. We have striven to speak well of the said. Country party. We could not but feel a strong sympathy with them in the late session of Parliament, when they had to battle out a losing cause against the minister who had betrayed them; but, apart from those peculiar circumstances in which they were at that time placed, we confess that we can but speak of them with very qualified approval. Especially in the matter of the Church, we doubt their having any sounder or deeper views than the mere Conservatives. At least, if the general character of a party may be gathered from the individual character of those units which constitute it, the Church views of the Country party must be, to say the least, somewhat indistinct and hazy. Lord Stanley, when, as a member of the Peel government, he, in 1845, opposed the St. Asaph and Bangor Bill, spoke more decidedly against the increase of English Bishopricks than any other noble lord who took part in the debate. Lord George Bentinck has not, probably, as yet found time to turn his attention to a subject not very congenial, and apparently not very pressing. Mr. D'Israeli's church views may be described as

half Anglican, half Romanist, and half Jewish. And as for those very respectable country gentlemen who form the mass of the Protectionist party, and give it all its importance, whether in Parliament or in the country, sure we are that not one in ten of them has any other wish with regard to the Church than that things should be let alone that parsons should not be over pious-and that Puseyism should be put down. Speak to them of the Church's needs, tell them that five or six thousand more clergy are wanted for England and Wales only, that twenty or thirty new bishopricks are required, that five thousand new schools, and nearly an equal number of churches have to be built, that fresh laws are needed with respect to the matters of clerical supervision, and Church discipline, that the powers of the Diocesan courts should be revived; hint further, that something of liberty in regard to the election of Bishops, some real voice in the matter should be restored to the Chapters, and add that it is to be hoped Convocation will ere long be allowed to meet for the dispatch of business, and thenceforth sit regularly with every Parliament-and you will be at once set down for a Puseyite or a lunatic. These respectable gentlemen would hold up their hands in horror, at the bare mention of such a catalogue of reforms, and would look on the proposer of them as an ecclesiastical radical. Their notion is, that the Church should keep quiet,let well alone,' as they phrase it. They would have all remain as they knew it in their younger days,-jolly parsons, capital fellows after dinner, fair riders, good whist-players, excellent-hearted men-these are the sort of clergymen they would wish to see perpetuated, this is their beau ideal of what a clergyman should be. All stir in the Church they deprecate; they think it dangerous; they know not what may come of it. To expect them to aid in that regeneration of our Church which is at present in progress, to expect them to lend a helping hand to what they so little comprehend, and so far as they comprehend distrust, appears to us a very sanguine, not to say a silly notion. No! it may be that the Church is wholly beset by enemies, and has nothing to hope for from any existing political party,—it may be that the Whig policy will not correspond to our anticipations of it, and the Church will at last be thrown wholly upon herself and her own resources, all this is yet in the womb of time, and we pretend not to the gift of vaticination,—but of one thing, at least, we are sure, the Protectionists will be found by the Church but a bruised reed for her to lean on. Already is there rife among Protectionists a feeling of anger against the Clergy and the Church generally on account of their tacit acquiescence in the great event of the last session, the repeal of the duties. upon foreign grain. That neither University should have petitioned against the change, that the colleges should have remained

quiet, that the Chapters should have looked on in seeming indifference, that the Clergy should nowhere have made a stand, that a majority of the Bishops should have voted for the measurethese are so many crimes on the part of the Church, in the eyes of that party which has made protection its battle-cry, and holds all other points as of secondary importance. They are provoked, grievously provoked, at the quiescence of the Clergy, and their apparent contentedness under the new arrangement. They cannot understand how a class, whose incomes are the most threatened of any by the change, should so readily submit to it. They fail altogether to appreciate that noble and generous senti ment which has pervaded the clerical body, and induced the members of it to abstain from all interference with a legislation, which, while it may fall indeed somewhat heavily upon themselves, promises to increase the comforts, and ameliorate the condition of those for whom they are especially bound to care, the poor of Christ's flock. Instead of sympathising with such praiseworthy self-denial, they are wont to accuse the clergy of deserting them, and are not unfrequently heard to mutter threats of future retaliation.

Such is the position of the Church with respect to the Protectionist or Country party. Favourably as we are inclined to judge it, on account of the respect which we entertain for some of those individuals who have lent it their support, we cannot blind ourselves to the fact, that it is wanting in Church feeling,—we cannot recommend Churchmen to repose in it their confidence.

But are not the Whigs worse? Thousands of Churchmen who have agreed, in the main, with our views of both the Conservative and the Protectionist parties, will ask this question. Is there any reason for thinking that the Church will find in Lord John Russell a better Premier than she did in Sir Robert Peel, or would be likely to find in either Lord Stanley, or Lord George Bentinck? Are we not in the melancholy predicament of having to choose between parties all of which are more or less hostile to us?

We are not about to undertake the defence of the general policy of the Whigs, or even of their Church policy, during the period of their last tenure of office. We do not forget that 'heavy blow, and great discouragement" to the Church cause, of which they were the authors, the suppression of ten Irish Bishopricks. We cannot but feel that certain of their appointments were most unfortunate. Still, on taking a calm and dispassionate review of their whole reign, we certainly perceive in it little to justify that strong and avowed hostility towards them on the part of the Church which was one of the chief causes of their downfall in 1841. In regard to their worst appointments there was much to be urged in their excuse. If unorthodox