the opportunity with all the adroitness which has always characterised the political action of the Puritan party. We need not recapitulate the long vicissitudes of the Braintree case, or comment on the strange decision into which the anomalies of ecclesiastical law forced the House of Lords. Their judgment was dictated by no motives of hostility to the Church, and has been approved as sound law by many eminent authorities. But its effect was to give an enormous stimulus to the Church-rate agitation. It placed a lever in the hands of the Liberation Society which they had never possessed before. Heretofore they had been compelled to operate illegally; to stir up their dupes to defy the law, and make capital out of their consequent sufferings. But this was a troublesome and a slightly perilous strategy. Martyrs were not invariably to be found; and the grim mystery which always overhangs the law of conspiracy was an unpleasant subject of reflection. Their operations were therefore necessarily desultory and slow. But the decision of the House of Lords gave impunity, if not legality, to their agitation. They were no longer compelled to keep a town in an uproar for several days, as had been done at Liverpool and Sheffield, or to manufacture a martyr by daring the churchwardens till they sold up the shop fittings of some peculiarly aggravating Quaker. The Braintree victory reduced their operations within the safe limits of simple electioneering.

Accordingly they set to work with a will, and in a short time produced very respectable results. Parish after parish was induced to refuse its rate, and the result of each victorious contest was ostentatiously paraded. There was scarcely a populous parish in the kingdom into which their agitation did not penetrate; but yet, though their conflicts were numerous, the number of actual refusals was never very great. By a return obtained in 1856, it was found that about ninety-five per cent. of the parishes of England remained faithful to the obligation of providing for the worship of the Church. And even in spite of the disturbance which half-a-dozen semi-heathenised large towns would carry into such a calculation, it was found that the numerical majority of the population belonged to parishes in which Church-rates continued to be levied. But the successes of the Liberation Society, though few in number, were noisy enough to make an impression; and they materially aided its operations in another and more important direction. They gave an excuse to members of Parliament for yielding to the unscrupulous pressure which the organisation of the Society had brought to bear. A course of action which candidates perfectly understand,' as Mr. Samuel Morley delicately expresses

it, had organised the Dissenters of every constituency into a compact phalanx, who required complaisance upon the Churchrate question as an indispensable preliminary to the opening of any negotiation for their support. The temptation to candidates was very great. The Dissenters were united, and refused to abate an inch of their demand. The Churchmen were passive and helpless, without leaders and without union-more occupied in discovering that one brother Churchman was Romanising or another Calvinising, than in taking heed of the advance of the common enemy. The most accredited political seer had declared the Church-rate to be doomed. Surely it was Quixotic to lash one's self to a sinking cause, and to lose a party seat for the sake of an institution which no sacrifices could save.

Fortified by such arguments as these, an ever-widening stream of converts set in from one side to the other. Enlightened Tories, bidding high for a Radical alliance, Whigs who thought the cry of No Church-rates' a less unpalatable watchword than Reform, members of all sides and schools who were afflicted with unstable seats, swelled the noble army of judicious runaways. Its numbers grew with every session, as the panic spread through all ranks of the House of Commons. High and low, young and old, from the veteran intriguer who had served under a dozen different chiefs and had tried twice over every shade of political belief, down to the young county member fresh from the terrors of the hustings and scared by the bluster of the Liberation agent, all vied with each other in the shamelessness and the haste with which they threw down their colours and put on the Dissenting uniform. Last in the race of desertion, lagging far in the rear of all their supporters, with faltering steps and incoherent apologies, came the four great leaders of the Whigs. Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Sir George Grey, and Sir George Lewis had resisted the contagion very long. Pity, for their reputation's sake, they could not have endured a session longer! Lord John Russell had even declared (as we have seen) that the fall of the Church-rates tended to subvert the Established Church, the aristocracy, and the throne. His colleagues had not been so imprudent; but still their expressions of opinion had been very strong, and nothing new had happened to give them any pretext beyond the merest partisan self-interest for retracting the convictions they had so constantly avowed. The sacrifice of reputation which they made was very great, and was never duly appreciated by those whom it was intended to propitiate. Perhaps it would have come with more force if it had not been so comically mistimed. When they took

the

the resolution to strip off the convictions they had so often professed, and to don the livery of Dr. Foster, practised observers might well have been pardoned for concluding that the impost was doomed. The force by which it was supported had steadily and rapidly dwindled. The agitators by whom it was menaced had gained a strength which they had been unable to obtain even in the first flush of Reform enthusiasm. Mr. Hume's motion in favour of total abolition in 1834, two years after the passing of the Reform Bill, was negatived by a majority of 116. In 1859, when Lord Palmerston and his colleagues made up their minds to take the final plunge, this majority had been transformed through successive gradations to a majority of 74 the other way. The Committee of Laymen, with the energetic Mr. Knott at their head, had in vain for several years strained every nerve to rouse the clergy to a sense of the danger that was upon them. All efforts seemed in vain. The four Ministers concluded, on grounds apparently ample, that the moment had come for a judicious and decorous conversion. Never did fate so flout the calculations of politicians. Almost before their resolution could be carried into action the wind had shifted. The very division in which they finally sealed their change of faith was the first that gave an intimation of the reaction that was at hand. They had the satisfaction of seeing that they had changed too late, and yet too soon. If they had gone a little sooner, they might have induced the world to believe that their conduct was determined by something higher than the pliant docility of a Minister in distress. If they had waited a little longer, they might have avoided the inconvenience of linking themselves to a decaying cause. Which way the even balance that now divides the House of Commons will finally incline, it is, of course, difficult to predict with certainty. But it is quite within the range of political contingencies that opinion will declare itself as strongly for Church-rates as a few years ago it seemed to declare itself against them. In such a case, no doubt, the tide of conversions will turn. The course of action which candidates understand perfectly well' will begin again its mysterious operations on the parliamentary conscience. The polite regrets and wordy professions of devotion which have hitherto been reserved for the benefit of the Church will be brought out again for the solace of Dissenters. Sir James Graham will profess that he has been all his life a consistent friend of Nonconformity, and that it is with the deepest pain he finds himself compelled to admit that it is time to trim his sails to the changed wind. The procession of enlightened Tories, and Whigs in search of a political belief, and shaky representatives of every complexion, will form again,

and

and will tramp back again with unabated docility across the political stage; and lagging in the rear, with faces doubly penitent and explanations doubly inexplicable, the four reconverted Ministers will doubtless close the train. We trust to live to see the day when, on the principle of bending to the popular breeze, they will return to an enthusiastic advocacy of Church-rates, and will find that, spite of their absence, nothing has been lost except their honour.

We ought not to venture to put this dream of the future in any form stronger than that of a wish; for the boldest political prophet will hardly venture, after past experience, to speculate on the future of this question. The shades of the recess have closed over an indecisive battle, and no man can foretell the issue of the morrow. But the interval may be profitably devoted to a consideration of the policy which the present condition of the question prescribes to the friends of the Church. Lord Derby has declared his hope that the recent division will lead to an equitable settlement of the dispute, and many Liberal members have expressed their desire for a compromise. It may be assumed, therefore, that a serious attempt will be made next session to elicit some satisfactory settlement out of the innumerable projects of compromise which the discussions on this question have engendered.

The friends of the Church have every reason to wish that this question should be settled. Whoever is chargeable with the guilt of making it a source of constant irritation, the fact remains the same. It has been for years a running sore in many of the largest parishes in the kingdom. There is scarcely a pastor of a populous district but knows by sad experience its virtue in breeding animosities and bringing upon his parish the plague of parochial faction fights. It supplies a dream of local distinction to the ambition of vestry politicians, a ready-made implement of annoyance to the busy-bodies of each small community, a convenient form for giving effect to every passing discontent which the clergyman or the Church of England may have aroused. As a matter of taste, it is not agreeable to a clergyman to be turned into a party leader, and to be forced, as part of his office, to stand the fire of personal attacks of which a party leader is considered to be the legitimate target. And it aggravates very seriously the difficulties of his position. Evil always results from any connection in men's minds between pastoral activity and worldly gain. To some extent the connection is inevitable; but the less it is obtruded upon the world's eye the better. To make a clergyman the head of an association for the levy of a parochial tax upon a minority to whom it is dis

tasteful,

tasteful, for purposes in which he is popularly, though most unjustly, held to be peculiarly interested, is to make a formidable addition to the obstacles against which he already struggles. His acts are viewed with suspicion, and are imputed to the money-getting, and not to the pastoral, moiety of his character. All the good he does or attempts is attributed to a desire to make his interest stronger in the parish. The spirit with which at election time all acts of kindness or usefulness are regarded, becomes the constant temper of a portion of the parishioners. If he is civil, or forgiving, or active, or eloquent, his good qualities are only counted as additional proofs of his efficiency as an electioneering agent. It is almost vain for him to preach the Gospel when it is looked upon only as a portion of the oratorical capital of an astute party chief. It is a bad thing for a clergyman to be at odds with any portion of his parish; it is a still worse thing if that difference should spring out of any dispute about money; but it is worst of all when that question of money is embroiled and perplexed by the prejudices and the acrimony of political hostility. All these evils the Church-rate, in its present condition, brings upon a considerable number of parishes. Many clergymen have been fain to lay this unquiet spirit even by the complete and absolute sacrifice of the rate. Such friends of the Church as Sir John Trelawny and Mr. Bright have been loud in their eulogies of this plan of pacification, and have been moved, as they tell us, by their general solicitude for the interests of the Church, to recommend it for general adoption. But the results of the experiment, where it has been tried, have not been encouraging. The voluntary principle has been appealed to in all confidence, and has lamentably broken down. It is found in practice to invest the clergyman with a character almost more odious, and to dig a gulf between him and his parishioners almost more impassable, than is done by the turmoil of a Churchrate contest; and it is both inadequate and precarious as a source of supply. The clergy are turned into an organised body of begging-letter writers, and their churches, in spite of it, fall into ruins. These facts were established from experience by the witnesses before the Lords' Committee. Birmingham is the classic land of Voluntaryism. It is the place where the agitation of this question originally commenced, and where, for a space of thirty years, the churches have been thrown upon their own resources. The inhabitants are wealthy, the clergy energetic, and the churches are well filled. But all these advantages do not supply the place of the discarded Church-rate. Some of the clergy gave their evidence before the Lords' Committee, and much of it is worth deep consideration. We have only room for

a few