ably beget a suspicion that there is something wrong in the inner nature of Whiggism and of Nonconformity to see that the "civil and religious liberty," which is their common watchword, is no part of the practice of either one or the other. No politician is so exclusive and domineering as a Whig: no religionist so intolerant as a Nonconformist. HIGGISM in politics and Nonconform ity in religion are natural allies. The nature of the things is the same: the But these are only outside and surface indicasubject-matter is not different, except so far as a tions of a great fact. Let us look a little deeper. part is different from the whole. In one aspect Now it is true that, however natural the alliance the religious life includes the political life: in an- between Whiggism and Nonconformity, they are other, the political life includes the religious life. not at all times, and cannot be, the best of friends. There is no proper severance between Whiggism There are disturbing causes. It is not always conand Nonconformity. Their root is the same; their venient for the one to give what the other wants; inevitably downward tendencies are the same: their and so there is, not uncommonly, a mutual suspifinal issue is the same. It follows that if Whiggism cion and a bitterness of denunciation in these nabe wrong, Nonconformity is wrong; and if Non- tural allies which is certainly not exceeded in the conformity be wrong, Whiggism is wrong. Now most avowed enemies. In one thing, however, we have undertaken not to say ill-natured things they agree in council and in act. They are not for of Nonconformists or of Whigs; and we hope to Church and State. They are against Church and keep our pledge in letter and in spirit. But we State. They make it their joint business to pare have not undertaken, and do not mean to under-away and circumscribe the position of the National take, not to tell the truth about Whiggism and Nonconformity. For we have a creed, religious and political; and it is our business to set it out to the best advantage, both by way of exposition and of contrast. Church, till it shall be only one of many sects or denominations: the Whig says-with the accident of connection with the State-because it does not suit the Whig to give this up. The Nonconformist says-without any such accident at all. This is one The connection and resemblance between Whig- of those little discrepancies which serve, better even gism and Nonconformity is on the surface: the than exact agreement, to show how close and intiinstances are historical. Both Whiggism and Non-mate is the alliance between the two. -conformity have their root in a principle which is a fault of our nature, and a primary fault. They are the particular political and religious development of that principle in England, where there has always been a special bond between them, over and above their general affinity, arising out of their common relation to the national life in Church and State. For political hostility to English institutions, in its successive phases of depreciation and assault, has, from the first, sprung out of and found its chief nourishment and support in religious dissent. The principle of which we speak is the rejection of all authority external to themselves, coupled with the stringent and unsparing exercise of their own. This is the root and the application both of Whiggism and of Nonconformity. We are not saying at all that the rejection has not been provoked. Tyranny and priestcraft have much to answer for. But we are dealing with the things as they are in their proper nature, not as they may admit of palliation or excuse; and it may reason There is Well, says the Whig, here is a pretty piece of thanklessness. Is this the way the Church of England is advised to treat her best friends? Was it not Whiggism that came to the rescue in 1688, and as then, so ever since, has it not steadily maintained the National Church alike against Roman Catholicism and Nonconformity? Now all this may have been plausible enough to urge and to predict, and people might be excused for believing it all a century and a-half ago, shallow though it were; but it is a little too much now. no fact in English history better ascertained, and few so well, as that it was not the Whigs-much less the Nonconformists-but the Bishops and Clergy of the Church of England who brought about the Revolution of 1688. But we waive this point, and we ask, what did Whiggism take under its protection in 1688? What has Whiggism taken under its protection ever since, till, in its naturally downward course, it has come to clamour for the inclusion of the specific things C which in 1688 it most laboured to exclude? It was not the Church of England at all, qua the Church of England, that Whiggism patronized so warmly in 1688. It was the right of private judgment. Whiggism patronized the Church in 1688 not at all because the Church, being primitive and apostolic, had, in its appreciation, rightful authority in controversies of faith, but because it was at that time, in Whiggism's view of the matter, the chief and most powerful representative and exponent of the right of private judgment as against the Church of Rome. Now Whiggism was right to oppose the Church of Rome, and it might be wished that it did not play into its hands so much now; but it was not right to pretend that, because it did so, it cared for the Church of England except in a political and parliamentary sense. What it cared for then, and has cared for ever since, is a very different thing indeed. What Whiggism meant then by the right of private judgment-as it means by it now-was very plain at the time to all thoughtful minds; and it has been so well and clearly illustrated since by all the history of this particular development of the man political, that it has become plain to most minds without much thinking about it. Whiggism meant, and means, Whiggism meant, and means, by the right of private judgment-as Nonconformity does the right of every man to choose and to make his own religion for himself: a thing which has no existence in the world because of man's nature, and the circumstances of man's nature, birth, education, position; and which, if it were possible, which it is not, as none show that they understand better than the Nonconformists themselves, proceeds upon an assumption fatal to all religion-that all religions are of equal value. Whiggism being in truth a very superficial thing, and having no proper soundness about it, has, from the first, confused between the right of private judgment and the duty of private judgment. There is then an inherent viciousness and unhealthfulness lying at the root of Whiggism, just as there is of Nonconformity. From Nonconformity Whiggism cannot separate itself, however it may from time to time feel the union to be very unpleasant as it does just now-and injurious to the respectability it is so anxious to maintain. But the exigencies of the case are too much for Whiggism with all its grand traditions, and fine names, and great families. There never was in any history a creature so pretentious as a Whig, or one who, from his friendships and alliances, lives in more continual dread of exposure. He has never been more than half in earnest, if indeed so much: but his friends and allies are quite in earnest, and care little or nothing about many things which it is no part of Whig policy, if it can help it, either to abandon or to compromise. There are a good many Whigs, for example, who have all along voted for abolition of Church-rate just because they know it can never become law. Now this is dangerous ground and damaging to the Whig. It is not in our time as it was a hundred years ago. Government in England, Whig or Tory, was a different thing then. Now, your Whig is obliged to say a great many things, and to do some things which look very like revolution to keep his Non conformist friends from breaking up the confederacy, and setting to work to destroy Church and State on their own account. It would not at all suit the Whig politically to break up Church and State, but he is getting every day deeper into the mud. It is the inherent viciousness of Whiggism—a viciousness which has made it ever since it was born to be in a perpetual flux, causing decline and portending death-which is the true account of a good many startling things in the historical character of Whig statesmen. Of Whig statesmen Earl Russell is the present type. Lord Palmerston does not come into competition. He is no Whig certainly; and whether he be reducible under any political category we do not know. Now what is the historical character of Earl Russell? Here is a son of a great Whig house-a man of illustrious name, good private repute, and great parliamentary and official experience: of respectable abilities; no great genius; not very learned or literary; no diplomatist, and no orator; but, notwithstanding these little matters, chief among the Whigs, Primus inter pares. Earl Russell has no political character left. He has played ducks-and-drakes with it to such an almost incredible extent that it is irrecoverably dissipated and gone; and the author of a very able and powerfully written book just published, called, The Present Position of the "Liberal” Party, merging "Whig," as he has a fair right to do, in the wider term "Liberal," as it is popularly employed, finds in Lord Russell's reckless political career the principal cause of the present hopeless condition of the "Liberals." It is our belief that what is here assigned as a cause is more properly an effect. No doubt political profligacy in a leader of a party damages the party not a little. The man and the party act and react. But no amount of political profligacy in a leader of Liberalism can sufficiently account for the wide and prevailing ruin of "Liberal" hopes. We conceive the truth of the case to be rather what we have indicated above. Whiggism is inherently vicious, and carries within it that which poisons its own life. Earl Russell was born in a Whig palace, cradled in a Whig cradle, fed with Whig pap out of a Whig spoon. Of the training of his boyhood we do not know much, except that it was of course pure Whig. In his youth he had small chance of imbibing sound principles; specially had he small chance of arriving at a knowledge, with which, to hear him talk, you would think he was very conversant, but which he is, in truth, absolutely without, the knowledge of what is meant by "the Church." Thus, filled up to the throat with Whiggery, and with nothing else, he came early into Parliament. The name and the necessities of the party have done the rest. Now a man cannot be the slave and the tool of a vicious principle and not suffer harm and loss in his own nature. In this case Whiggism has been too much for the moral instincts of an otherwise respectable man, whose whole being from first to last has been made over to the purposes of its praise and propagation. The decline and fall of Whiggism is not then so much Earl Russell's work, though he has certainly lent it a helping hand, as its own work. In its fall it has dragged down with it the great Whig of our time. But the fall would have come without Lord Russell. It is only the natural issue of the birth and progress of the thing fallen. Here again Whiggism is on all-fours with Nonconformity, which always carries within it the principle of its own decay and death. No Nonconformist sect has ever remained long as it has begun. Its grounds of separation from the Church are scarcely asserted when they become confused and indistinct, and mixed up with those of other sects; and it is pretty much the case with sect after sect now that they have nothing very peculiar and distinguishing about them. They have a common hostility to the National Church, which was in the world before them, and will be in the world when they are all gone; and that is all. Much in the same way Whiggism, which began with something like a creed, has ended Sin having none which, for any practical purpose, can be distinguished from the general licence of what is called "Liberalism," but which is really nothing else than the spirit of revolution. In so far as Whigs of the present day are consistent, and mean what they say, they are Radicals. There is nothing left of Whiggism but the name. What has happened to Whiggism and the Whigs should serve as a warning to many who are not Whigs, but who coquet with Whiggism or "Liberalism" a great deal more than is either decent or safe. You cannot touch pitch and not be defiled. In the same proportion as Conservatism is inoculated with Whiggism it is an organized hypocrisy. Here again we may observe a counterpart in those members of the Church of England who play with Nonconformity till it turns round and bites them, as in the present silly business of the proposed "Bicentenary" commemoration. There are, we conceive, three classes of men who, for one reason or another, do about all the real injury that is ever done to Church and State, being all of them its very good friends. First, there is the class who, regarding it only in its political aspect, make merchandise of it without scruple for party purposes. Of this class Earl Russell is the type. Here is a statesman who tells you that if you allow a man to marry his deceased wife's sister, you cannot refuse him leave to marry any one of his relations he may desire; and then votes for the Bill to please the "Liberals." Here is a statesman who tells you that he is quite unable to understand how there can be an Established Church without Church-rate, and then votes for abolition pure et simple to bring back the Whigs. Another class is represented by Mr. Gladstone. These are men who, being in such sort the slaves of their intellect that even their conscience is powerless in its grasp, go about to contrive how they may, by some tortuous process, delude the "Liberals" into the notion that they are serving their interests at the Church's expense, but take care so to adjust the service that it has no result for the "Liberals," though in the process infinite damage be done to Church and State. A memorable instance of this may be seen in what was called Uni versity Reform. The old religious and distinctive character of Oxford University has been broken up and destroyed, for the purpose, as it was said, of opening a way into it to the Nonconformist body. The injury has been done. Oxford has no distinctively religious character remaining. But it is scarcely possible to suppose that it was not foreseen and intended by the promoters of the "Reform" that it should be done for nothing. The third class is that of men who do not appear to possess enough intellectual power to discriminate between a detail and a principle, and unconsciously betray the last, supposing it to be the first. Of this class Mr. Estcourt is the type. All the types have this in common. They are men of high private character, and they all say that they mean well to Church and State. It is just this good private repute which, with their perpetual professions, aggravates the mischief of their political licence, or their intellectual subtleties, or their incapacity. If a ship hoists the black flag you know what you have to expect, and you prepare yourself as well as you can. But if it bear down upon you under your own national colours, and then sweep your decks from stem to stern, it is no fair fight; and your defeat or capture is aggravated by the consciousness that you have been taken in, and that you ought to have known better. The National Society. HERE is every year, about this time, what is called the general meeting of the National Society. It is a thing sui generis, a curiosity, this general meeting of a body which is taken to be the authoritative exponent of the action of the Church of England in respect of the school teaching of the poor. In all years it might be expected to gather about it a good deal of interest; and this year, what with re-re-revised code, and resolutions and debates had in Parliament, and other resolutions and debates to be had next year in Parliament, and the crowding together of people in London, it is not surprising that a plain man, a friend of ours from the country, and a member of the Society, should have looked to the meeting with some interest and some anxiety as to a great and important gathering of Churchmen, Clergy and Laity; and should have expected that some definite principles of action, past and to come, would be submitted for general approval by the meeting. He judged the general meeting of the National Society by what he knew of the general meetings of other bodies; and having taken care to be in good time to secure a seat, found himself, at 3 p. m., on Thursday, June 5, upon a bench in the smaller room, in King Street, St. James's, with a good many feet to spare on either side. At first he did not know quite what to make of the aspect of the room, but as the meeting went on his surprise ceased. He found that there was no business. To receive a report is always dry work; but to receive a report upon the bringing up of which no amendment may be moved, and to listen to some three or four very discursive and desultory speeches in sup port of one or two empty and complimentary resolutions, is neither business nor amusement. He soon perceived that he might have laid out his afternoon more profitably and more agreeably. Now what is the key to all this? There are two keys. First, it has always been with the utmost difficulty that these meetings have been made to have anything of reality or of a business-like character about them. Those of us who were in any degree behind the scenes from 1847 to 1852, when the Management Clause battle was, not as Mr. Hubbard seemed to say at the meeting, fought and won, but fought and lost, by the National Society, will know very well what we mean. This year an attempt at something real was renewed from last year by Mr. Mayow. It was the only thing approaching to business, and accordingly was resisted by the Secretary on the ground of insufficient notice; although public attention had been called to the subject-matter of Mr. Mayow's amendment, and specially the attention of every member of the Committee, by the Archdeacon of Taunton, in the autumn of 1860, and Mr. Mayow had brought it under the notice of the general meeting of 1861. However, the resistance answered its purpose for one more year; and when every man upon the platform, except the Archbishop of York and the Secretary, had disappeared, and more than half the scanty number present in the body of the room had retired before the wearying unrealities of the afternoon, Mr. Mayow got a hearing, and made an excellent and unanswerable speech in moving an amendment to the second resolution. But it would have been absurd and useless under such circumstances to press the amendment to a division; the mover, therefore, contented himself with giving notice that, unless the Committee revise and amend the matter in complaint, he will be ready with his amendment, or substantive resolution, as it may be arranged, at the general meeting of 1863, when possibly the members of the Society may have arrived at some knowledge of what is at stake and may take the trouble to attend. It is in connection with Mr. Mayow's amendment that we are compelled to indicate key No. 2. The Committee of the National Society claim for themselves the exclusive management of the Society's interests; but the Committee of the National Society do not run true. There are grievances then, grievances of the conscience of members: but there is no redress. Not only is there no redress, but there are no facilities given, but the reverse, for open discussion. The general meetings are thus not only an absurdity, but a wrong; and so long as these things are so, men who have things to do in life think very justly that they are better away. The particular grievance to which Mr. Mayow addresses himself may be stated in a few words: There is a certain Memorandum of the Committee, bearing date July 23, 1860, out of which has arisen a state of things not only wholly new and strange, but such as the imagination of the good men who founded the Society in 1811, " for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church," could by no means have conceived to be possible. vide in the Trust Deed of a school "that every What No one can be surprised that the Committee of Council should not have been slow to avail themselves of the above declaration on the part of the Committee of the National Society. But what suits very well the Committee of Council does not necessarily suit the Church. It does not suit the Church to be told that to found a school with a clause in the Trust Deed to the effect that the school shall be open to such children only as shall be taught the Catechism, Articles, and Liturgy, " is incompatible with Union" with "the National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church." Nor indeed can such a declaration be made to consist with the first term of Union itself, as this has been modified; for the whole extent to which such modification. goes, or can be pressed by any mental process, is to include the wider interpretation of the first term of Union; not to exclude the stricter, that is to say, the natural, interpretation. What we have come to then is this; and it is one of the most curious instances of "decline and * See Monthly Paper for September, 1860, p. 257. The first term of Union now stands thus, "The children are to be instructed in the Holy Scriptures, and in the Liturgy and Catechism of the Established Church." See Mr. Lingen's Letter to the Rev. H. A. Olivier, published in the Guardian of September 19, 1860. See also a subsequent Letter from the Committee of Council, dated September 27, and In that Memorandum it is laid down, that, to pro- published in the Guardian of October 10. fall" upon record. Here is a "Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church." The Committee insist upon a right to administer the resources of the Society subject only to their informing the general body of what they do after they have done it. Now one of the things they have done is this:-They have, since July 23, 1860, cast out of the pale of the Society every founder whose conscience does not allow him to provide for the admission into his school of any children other than such as are to be taught the Catechism, Articles, and Liturgy of the Church of England. All such founders they have put under a ban. No such constitution of a school, they say, is compatible with Union. If members of the Society are not cognizant of an act so monstrous on the part of the Committee, it is high time they should be. If they are cognizant of it, and permit it to stand, more shame to them. It would be amusing, if it were not distressing, to find the Committee of the Society, at the same time that they do this, blaming the Committee of Council for imposing "conscience clauses." It is in this as in all other like cases; if Churchmen will eat up their principles, not for the sake of nourishment, but to get rid of them, it is no wonder if the food turns to poison. It is impossible to invent a more comprehensive, a more unprincipled, and therefore a more damaging, "conscience clause," "conscience clause," than that which is embodied in the Memorandum of July 23, 1860. The Ballot. N Wednesday, July 2, Mr. Berkeley is to move the second reading of his Bill for taking of votes at Parliamentary Elections by Ballot. If in some respects a new journal has its advantages in coming fresh as it were to the consideration of many a hackneyed though not uninteresting subject, it occasionally finds them fully counterbalanced by the duty which its recency of origin imposes on it, of discussing proposals which those who have been longer in the field now pass over in contemptuous silence. Foremost among I such subjects every argument in its favour having been alike refuted by the à priori reasoning of common sense, and by the light of practical experience, is the Ballot. If anything was wanted to sink this once vaunted and indispensable point of the people's charter to a lower depth than that in which it was previously buried, it was fully supplied by the circumstances of its temporary triumph in May last. It will be in the recollection of our readers that, a hurried division, within five minutes of the time when its champion rose to advocate it, produced a majority for leave to introduce a Bill to provide for the future taking of votes by Ballot; anticipating Lord Palmerston, who was hurrying to his place to speak against the motion, and against time. Lest any one should fancy that this majority, however gained, is a sign that this question is making it is to be noted that fourteen years ago it had a similar apparently good fortune, obtaining a majority of five in a House of 170. Now nothing way, that has ever happened with respect to the question for But if every measure for taking votes by ballot is open to these fatal objections, Mr. Berkeley's present Bill is more liable to them than any other that has yet been brought forward. He no longer proposes to compel all votes to be thus taken, but merely to give any one who may wish to conceal his sentiments Can even the a right to deliver his vote in secret. most favourable construer of the actions and motives of others believe that Mr. Berkeley is serious in thinking that a single voter in the whole kingdom will avail himself of this permission? That one single man will be found so abject, so base, and at the same time so hardy and shameless, as to be at once afraid to express his political opinions, and to avow in an assembly of bolder and honester men that he is so afraid? That one individual with a single drop of British blood in his veins will be |