hopeless to argue the question with them. It is not want of intellect, or of worldly knowledge, but of something better than either, which has dictated this report. They would not suppose that they could at once create a race of learned lawyers, or physicians, or philosophers, or that, if they so arranged things that lawyers and physicians, or philosophers, or enlightened commissioners knew that to-day they and their brethren (for it is not a mere selfish fear or feeling) might be ordered to work, and next year struck off and sent away from their labours, this would work well. They would not suppose that if the nation wanted a race of men who would be good for nothing unless they had a liberal education, and had acquired habits of thought and reflection, and calm consideration of men and things, the nation could have such a race, if these men knew that they were to be slaves, and not free men, to be dealt with like tools, not like reasonable instruments for effecting great purposes. But what have Christianity and great purposes to do with one another? What cultivation of head and heart are wanted for teaching Christianity? That is a work which, no doubt, stands in the same predicament as plastering and bricklaying, and is to be regulated on the same statistical principles of supply and demand! Government has so many houses to be built, and therefore issues proposals for employing so many carpenters, bricklayers, and plasterers. It sets them to work, and pays them, and when the work is done, pays them off. And what difference is there in the commissioners' view between this and clergy work? There is so much of the kind of work called preaching, &c., &c., to be done because there are so many people to be preached to, so much demand, in short, which must be met by so much supply. When the work is slack, so many of the workmen must be turned off! It may be said that all this is exaggeration or ill nature. Not one sentence or word of it. The report means this or nothing. The commissioners must believe that they can have competent clergy on this plan, or they would not recommend it. Now what fruit would there be in arguing the question with persons capable of holding such views of the nature, ends, and mode of Christian teaching? What fruit in holding any discussion with persons who think that they can have right and good and competent Christian teachers, while they are dealt with on the lowest principles of the market, and looked at only in the light of mechanical labourers? In short, what fruit can there be in discussing religious matters with those who know nothing (for it would not be decent to say, care nothing) about religion, but treat the whole as an affair of statistics?

It is not to them, but to the country, that these remarks are addressed. If the country wishes to have competent religious teachers, let it remember what qualities of head and heart are required for that office, and let it ask itself whether those qualities can be expected from one whom you begin by making a slave and a tool, and by degrading him into a condition in which the well-informed and the respectable will not associate with him. Who will enter a profession in which it is forbidden him, in fact, to exert all the faculties of a mind which has prepared itself for God's service by years of thought and meditation and readingin which he knows, that is to say, that if he should exert them and be

sowing seed which may bear a full and plenteous harvest in time, the Commissioners of Public Instruction may report to the House that the number of protestants in the district has fallen just within the mark, and that so many of these useless teachers of truth must be dismissed? There will be, there can be, no free movements, no holy exertions from heads and hearts devoted to God, in a country where movements and exertions are to be regulated by the line and square, and settled, not on religious, but arithmetical, calculations.

As to this report itself, and the commissioners who called for the information contained in it, it and they are of very little consequence. But let the country mark the disposition shewn in so many branches and dependencies of the legislative body to treat religion, not with open disrespect, but on mere statistical and business-like grounds, entitled to just as much consideration, to be looked at in just the same way, and dealt with on the same principles as the clothing interest, or the colliery interest, or any other matter of the same kind!

This is the philosophy and the wisdom of the present race of politicians generally, because they cannot look higher, because they have not heads to see, or hearts to feel, anything beyond narrow and passing interests, because their height of imaginary glory is a clear view of that high, sublime, and abstruse matter, the currency question, a luminous argument for or against free trade, an admirable disquisition on the political and commercial principles of past times, or a searching and philosophical investigation of the legal and political principles of

eastern nations!

But, in one respect, it would be a sad thing that the commissioners' great exertions should be thrown away. Some information has been obtained, which, with an ingenuous candour and simplicity which cannot be too much admired, they have put forward. Admiring Prussia, as they do, and holding it forth as a model, are we to understand that all these regulations, so put forth and presented, are recommended to the notice of the House of Commons? Let us see a little. (1) Proselytism is prohibited by law; but it is not actually punished, except where discord in families is caused by it!"-p. 7.

(2) "Controversial sermons are forbidden by law, and punished by a fixed term of imprisonment !"—p. 7.

Hear this, Dr. Wiseman and Mr. O'Connell Hear this, Messrs. Binney and Co.

Some persons may perhaps think that the return only gives this statement because it was given by the Prussian Minister. The writer entirely differs from those who think so. He is quite persuaded that they who imagine themselves philosophical statesmen consider religious controversies and differences as things perfectly ludicrous and contemptible in themselves, and only worth taking notice of because, absurd as they are, they cause so much confusion. Here, again, democratic despotismwould be most useful, and aid good sense by utterly prohibiting all controversial sermons, and imprisoning the preachers who dare to create all this confusion for such despicable nonsense!

THE RECORD.

It is simply necessary to mention to those who have read the two preceding numbers in which this paper has been noticed, its present proceeding. It pronounces the John Bull newspaper to be a desecrator of the Sabbath. The British Magazine has, it seems, never, in any way, noticed the John Bull newspaper, either for praise or blame. THEREFORE (admirable logic and true justice!) the British Magazine is an ally, and encourager of Sabbath desecrators, and all other evils! And this is a reply to a charge against the Record, which has not the remotest connexion, direct or indirect, with any other newspaper, or with Sabbath desecration-viz., the charge of calumniating, in very improper language, the great mass of the clergy! It is, in short, a mere attempt to take revenge and do injury, which defeats its malice by its folly.

The extremes of such an unhappy temper as that displayed in the Record indeed often leads to these sad exhibitions, which neither deserve nor require comment. All this is accompanied with the usual attempts to gain importance for a paper of a small circulation, by accounts of the predictions and the secret information given to the Record, months ago, of the attack to be made on it, and the conspiracy against it, &c. &c. That there is a very evil combination to destroy its character for good sense and Christian feeling is true enough; but that dangerous conspiracy does not extend beyond its own office. No one else would take any trouble about it. It may be left in peace to its holy works-to abuse the mass of the clergy as "deplorably ignorant and false at the heart," and combine with the Pope's Pastoral, the Edinburgh Review, and Co., in casting ridicule on the apostolical succession.

ON IRISH DISTURBANCES BY G. C. LEWIS, ESQ.

"HOBBES long ago said, that when reason is against a man, he is against reason. It is equally natural that when the Bible is against a man, he should be against the Bible."-G. C. LEWIS, p. 367, note.

THE situation of that part of the united church of England and Ireland whose sphere of duty lies in Ireland, and which, for the sake of brevity, shall here be called the Irish church, is one which presses most deeply on the consideration of every thoughtful man. It has been subjected to a fiery trial upon its own soil; the passions of an ignorant population have been stimulated to acts of violence against it; and the protection of the laws has often been all but withdrawn from the church by those who, as legislators, professed that it was their wish and their determination to maintain it. This is an anomalous state of things; but it is not the only posture in the Irish church question which we have to deplore. There have been fearful experiments in legislation, but the evils which have arisen from them, instead of sobering our views, and strengthening our resolution, appear to have whetted the appetite for experiment.

There is no work in which this love of experiment is more displayed than in Mr. G. C. Lewis's tract on the Irish church question, reprinted from the London Review, and appended to his work on Irish disturbances; and, as the writer has met with no fuller development of the views of mere worldly politicians, and no more plausible statement of them, he thinks that, to throw VOL. IX.-June, 1836.

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his remarks into the shape of observations on this book will be a fair mode of grappling with the Irish church question in general. Mr. Lewis is too well known to need any introduction to the reader, and we may therefore enter at once on the discussion. Mr. Lewis's book is written to support, the proposition of endowing the Roman-catholic priesthood in Ireland at the expense of the Protestant church;* and when we are seriously, and under the much-abused names of justice, liberality, and wisdom, called upon to make so stupendous a change in all our religious and social relations, we are bound to scrutinize the grounds on which it is proposed with the most scrupulous accuracy. There is one remark which it is impossible to avoid making, on the very first cursory perusal of this article, and that is, the extremely hypothetical nature of the reasons on which much of it rests :-e. g. it is requisite, for Mr. Lewis's argument to shew that the favour of the state to one party is the cause of disunion and dissension. We have then a whole page containing conflicting probabilities-affirming, first, that, even under a system of perfect equality, there would be subjects of dispute between Roman catholics and Protestants about the introduction of the Bible into schools, &c.; and afterwards diluting this admission, by half a dozen hypothetical sentences upon the origin of internal dissensions and persecutions. I. It is very questionable whether simple theological hatred, without temporal and worldly motives, 'ever prompts men to the active measures' which are taken in other countries where the state interferes. One might answer, “very questionable !” and leave the matter in exactly the same state of certainty as before; but another consideration immediately presents itself. Would there be no "temporal and worldly motives," were they paid according to the number of their flock, at so much per head? Again, in the next sentence, we find, “It may be doubted," as the fundamental ground of the argument, and to the end of the paragraph, the alternation of probabilities continuing, like a see-saw, till one is tempted to believe that the writer has been studying the Jesuit Laymann, or Escobar, and been persuaded by them, that, of two probabilities, it is lawful to follow the least probable. (Layman. Tract I. c. v., s. 2, p. 6, Theol. Moral.) See Mr. Lewis, p. 366-368. But this, however it may incline us to distrust our guide in legislating for Ireland, is entirely a minor matter in comparison with many of the principles maintained in this book, and many of the methods by which they are attempted to be supported. The principles themselves, indeed, under a solemn protest against their hatefulness, shall be for a moment admitted, to shew that the author himself does not abide by them in their legitimate extent; but, at present, our business lies with the mode of reasoning by which they are maintained. Before we leave the question of probabilities, it may be well to remark, that Mr. Lewis sometimes throws out an insinuation which a statement of facts would be likely to remove. In p. 354 we have an instance of this kind: "It is probable that there may be some foundation for the opinion of those who think that the number of Protestants in Ireland has been diminished by the remissness of the clergy of the established church." Is it necessary to remind the people of England, that, since the Union, 697 resident and actually working clergy have been added to the church, 618 new churches built, and 99 others enlarged? (See Newland's Apology for the Church in Ireland, pp. 136 and 162.) Now, this will be a convenient introduction to the next head of complaint against Mr. Lewis, which may be styled his false positions. No intention is imputed

Mr. Lewis does not, in so many words, propose this arrangement; but it comes to much the same thing. His plan is, take all the church property in Ireland, throw it into one fund under ecclesiastical commissioners, (by which offices might be found for gentlemen used to government commissions,) endow the Protestant episcopal and Presbyterian clergy out of this fund, paying them according to the number of their congregation, (leaving only four bishops,) and give the rest to schools. Then endow the Roman-catholic clergy by the state.-p. 391 et seq. and 430 et seq.

*

to Mr. Lewis of stating falsehoods as facts; the term is meant solely to apply to the positions which Mr. Lewis assumes in the course of his arguments, which involve points entirely denied by his opponents, or at variance with what may fairly be called the state of the case. One of these false positions is the notion that Mr. Lewis, or the legislature, is now called upon to make a state provision for the Irish church; and another is the opinion that the state has selected one sect as the object of its favour, to the exclusion of the rest. In reference to the first, Mr. Lewis, after giving the ecclesiastical statistics of Ireland, says that the general dispersion of the church Protestants "increases the difficulty of making a state provision for their worship." This would look as if they were asking a boon from the state, when the utmost they ask isnot to be plundered of that which is theirs by law, and to which their opponents have repeatedly acknowledged their claims.† Then, again, one must affirm that it is not the fair history of the established church to say that the state selected it among a variety of sects as the one object of its favour. (p. 351.) Nor again, to assert broadly that, at the Reformation, the tithes, bishops' lands, and all the revenues which had theretofore belonged to the established Roman-catholic church, became the property of the established Protestant church. (p. 349.) The lands which passed away from the church into the hands of the Russell family, and the families of other Protestant impropriators, tell a very different tale. Let those who would wish to know what impropriation has done for Ireland, read "Ryves's poor Vicar's Plea." Another position, which involves the same sort of fallacy, occurs in p. 385, where Mr. Lewis makes a Roman-catholic member of parliament argue thus :-" I believe my religion to be true, and your religion to be false; I cannot therefore understand why you are to make me swear that I will not subvert the protestant establishment, while, at the same time, you protest against being parties to any measure for the support of the Roman-catholic clergy. You have one rule for the protestant, and another for the [Roman] catholic part of the legislature." On this, the only remarks which need be made, are-1. To admit the fact that there are two rules, and to remind Mr. Lewis that the Roman-catholics repeatedly professed their cheerful acquiescence in the establishment of this difference; and that scarcely a single advocate of the measure miscalled emancipation would have daredto propose the admission of Roman catholics to Parliament, except under the express condition that the Protestant church should not be injured by it. The existence of this difference certainly violates Mr. Lewis's principle of government, which is against an establishment, and is founded on the dogma that "the state ought not to decide on forms of religious belief;" but, till that principle is satisfactorily proved or admitted by his opponents, there is nothing absurd or illogical in the position assigned to the Roman-catholic legislator, if he undertakes the office of legislating at all for a Protestant country. The absurdity of it arises only from a supposed admission of the principle of Mr. Lewis, which is, in fact, a kind of concealed petitio principii.

These are taken from the Parliamentary Returns of 1834. These must be abided by, as long as we are without better evidence, though not quite free from suspicion. See the debate of July 29, 1835, in which Mr. Walker, M. P. for Wexford, who sits in the House of Commons as a Protestant, is said to have been asked whether he had not returned himself as a Roman-catholic, and no answer was given. + See Section IX. of the Deelaration of the British Roman-catholic Prelates, which contains these words :-" We regard all the revenues and temporalities of the church establishment as the property of those on whom they are settled by the law of the land. We disclaim all right, title, or pretension, with regard to the same." See this document, and the other declarations in confirmation of it, collected by Mr. M'Donnell in his "Roman-catholic Oath considered," and his "Further considerations on ditto."

See Mr. M'Donnell's two pamphlets referred to before.