Church and State by those who are sworn to guard both. Nor does the extraordinary coalition suggest matter of alarm and prospective watchfulness: though we have daily evidence that however widely the united religious enemies of the Church may vary among themselves, though there be in the incongruous union Socinians denying the Divinity of Christ, Jews exulting in his Crucifixion, Infidels and Atheists, Calvinists, Armenians, and men who know not what they are, the one design of opposition to us generates a common feeling, overwhelms sectarian difficulties, and binds in a confederacy a stranger mass of men than ever Hogarth's satiric pencil could nave pourtrayed. What matters it to thepolitical speculator, provided they will join in this one object, if they shall hereafter cut each other's throats, like the armed men that sprang from the dragon's teeth, in the legend of the Golden Fleece ?-tools cannot be used for ever: what matters it, if they be broken up or put aside?

In this queer masquerade of Socinian, Jew, Papist, and Schismatic, all is really under the mask. None attempts to remove the disguise of the other, to see what he really is; it is sufficient that each contributes his utmost to the general object of anticipated amusement-the overthrow of the Church. The Legislature is either wilfully blind, or will not observe the suspicious fact, that Dissenters, who have dared to object Popery to the English ritual, hesitate not, for the sake of political ascendancy, to combine with the Papists themselves; that, whilst they rightly account Popery a system of idolatry, they scruple not to engulf their own religion in the vortex of worldly ambition, and become the actual confederates of the idolaters. The Papists, too, though it is their article of faith that heretical sovereigns may be deposed and murdered by their subjects, and that no faith should be kept with heretics, with whom an oath is as the chaff which the wind scattereth away, are encouraged, both openly and covertly; their enormities are either unnoticed or palliated; their institutions are supported and enriched; their places of worship are permitted every where to arise around us; and they are allowed to domineer in the Senate, as if their religion was that of the country. In exact proportion as the Church is curtailed of her rights, and injuriously treated in the exercise of her sacred vocation, is licentiousness, under the name of liberty of conscience, tolerated in her foes.

In a bill which is about to be brought before the consideration of Parliament, there is a Machiavelian clause authorising the arbitrary removal of the chaplains of prisons, who are clergy

men, and the substitution of men of schismatical persuasions. Thus, as if the governing Powers were determined to plunge us headlong into blood and anarchy, the very cells of the pri soners are opened to the inroads of those who would poison the public mind and demolish the Ecclesiastical Establishment, even to the schemes of those who desire a general scramble: to whom, though, as to the fox, the grapes may yet be sour, by them, nevertheless, the time of possession is anticipated, when they will be found sweet.

It is not astonishing that in such days of rebuke and violence the ass should kick the sick lion of the Church, and bray in concert with the tongue of the Apocalyptical beast (Rev. xiii. 5, 6,) which spake great things and blasphemies; nor that both should wage war with the saints of the Most High. But we know, from the word of God, that the period of this violence is predefined and limited, that the Church shall arise from the oppressions by which she is chastised, pure as gold which has been tried in the fire; and be hereafter presented blameless, not having spot, wrinkle, or any such thing, to her Father and her God.

We repeat a remark which we long ago made, that some of us have unfortunately contributed to this state of affairs by sinking the proper Ecclesiastical and Academical rank, and co-operating with Dissenters in certain societies: that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump, this combination has proved in a most melancholy way. The regret that such awkward associations should have taken place is the greater, since the Church, having had already within its own fold societies with objects identically the same as those which the odd compounds professed, there was no necessity for Churchmen co-operating with Schismatics. Common sense should have certified them that such co-operations must be attended with losses on their part; and fearful have those losses been. These beginnings of evil practice introduced other irregularities, which have injured the Church. Some time since we noticed the omission of parts of the Liturgy in some parishes in the west of England: the author of the Voice from the Font, whom we reviewed, made the same assertion; but neither he nor ourselves appear to have been believed. Dr. Rudge, however, we are informed, on good authority, has so fully proved the existence of this uncanonical practice in the April number of The Churchman, that our assertion is removed from all doubt. If, then, Churchmen be first found associating with Dissenters, in a manner recognizing their pseudo-ordination, then as nearly as possible accommodating the Church service to the custom of Dissenters, it is not at all

strange that Dissenters should attempt an advance from the conceded parity to superiority; but it is most strange that the Bishops of the Church should not have prevented these things.

Had not this laxity respecting our Liturgy been induced by these means, we doubt whether the Oxford Tracts would have been sent forth to the world: when mischief has once been commenced, those never are wanting who will try to complete it. Thus we have in the Church one party which mutilates the Liturgy, and another which, under the plea of pointing out defects, would bring it to the model of the Breviary; one which complains that it is too long, and another which would lengthen it most wearily, and make its character Papistical. Both these are subjects of internal government; and the remedy of both is within the still existing powers of the Episcopal Bench in the name of the Church, and of their ordination and consecration vows, the orthodox clergy should memoralize the respective Bishops to guard their dioceses against these first sprouts of Schism, to stop each innovation, the one that has taken place the other that is contemplated, and to exert that authority which has been confided to them without respect of persons. The Church should be as a city which is at unity with itself.

THE BALLOT.

THERE has been a great deal of declamation thrown away by the Radicals on the hustings, and not a little unprofitable disquisition ventured by the journalists, who take a like one sided view of events, in crying up the Ballot as the proper corollary of Reform. These are the same people who insisted upon "the whole bill and nothing but the bill." "Sir Robert Peel prophesied truly that on the Tories would devolve the duty of defending the so called Magna Charta of Lord Grey; and accordingly we find that the loudest brawlers for Reform were the first to inveigh against their own measure. That its working has disappointed its authors we can very readily believe. It was intended to effect a party revolution, to make the freeholders of Great Britain one vast Whig constituency; but it has not operated so exclusively as was anticipated and desired. If we could convert the country into one wide religious community (an Utopian vision which seems not likely to be realized in our days), Universal Suffrage would be a most advisable and just expedient, and for the same cause every approach that the people make to goodness and intelligence renders more feasible and safe a greater extension of the franchise. But we must take the world as we

find it, and although we are persuaded that Englishmen (despite the dangerous "little knowledge" of a certain portion of the lower middle classes) may more safely be entrusted with political power than any other people in the universe, we are yet of opinion that a most unpardonable risk was run in admitting the tenpound borough householders to the elective franchise. The country may go forward, but she cannot retrace her policy, and the national movement towards a republic needed no fresh impulse. We should have felt our way more cautiously, and not taken such an important step in the dark. If we have escaped that danger, we owe no thanks to the foresight of our legislators. There would appear to be something in the English character inimical to legislative evil, a sort of chemical property, whereby those nostrums which threatened the destruction of the constitution are converted into healthful chyle and nutriment. The country seems to be taken kindly to the poisons of her political purveyors, and all things augur that when she shall have recovered from the first shock of their deleterious specific (which had been fatal to any other people) she will go on her way rejoicing as if her constitution had not been tampered with-as if she had not been brought to Death's door by the audacious experiments of unhesitating empirics. If we have escaped, it is by the mercy of Heaven; and should we be outraged by the infliction of the Ballot, it is our belief that the same Almighty hand, through the agency of the secondary cause we have just stated, will lead us safely through the ordeal. But there is no need for the nation to tempt Providence for the gratification of the Radicals, and we shall interpose the full extent of our ability to prevent the calamity of the Ballot overtaking the people of these kingdoms. Those political innovators who, overlooking its injurious working in the United States, clamour for the Ballot being brought into operation in Great Britain, invariably proceed upon the assumption of a general corruption. The Vote by Ballot implies a state of slavery, and can only be construed as symbolical of concealment and suspicion. It is a mysterious, illiberal institution, and, whatever our Radicals, judging from themselves, may fancy, alien to English habits, it can never produce the fruits that should be engendered in the lap of liberty. It includes a direct and explicit patronage of cowardice and double dealing. It is a libel upon our countrymen to say that they are of so feeble and irresolute a character that they require protection from intimidation and bribery. Do we recognize these traits as characteristic of Englishmen? They are the exception, and the Ballot is nothing else than a contrivance to scatter the seeds of the evil, where it happens to exist, over a wider surface. If there be this want of

constancy and public spirit in Great Britain, which we are far indeed from believing, the cure is to be sought in the inspiration of firmness, not in encouraging timidity-not in teaching free men to draw a veil of concealment over the performance of their proudest duty. Men should offer their votes in the face of day, and so would all virtuous citizens, even were elections taken according to the Radical device. Concealment could never after all be anything but permissive. Most wise and honourable men would notify to the public for whom they voted, because the great value of the franchise in the eyes of our countrymen is the opportunity it affords of declaring their sentiments, of testifying to the truth. The example thus set would be followed by persons of inferior standing, and their neighbours and acquaintance would almost always be able to tell by the general character of the parties whether they spoke truth or not. If they preserved silence, their silence would be commonly more significant than speech. For all purposes of good the Ballot would be a dead letter; but it would teach a bitter lesson while it said to the man on the eve of sacrificing to freedom at the hustings, which is her altar-" You are about to exercise your discretion wisely and patriotically, but make a mystery of your opinion, adopt the conduct which would suggest itself to you if you had perpetrated an atrocious crime." When Englishmen exchange their election saturnalia; their riots and their mobstheir squibs and their libels-the uncompromising language of opposing candidates face to face upon the hustings,-for such a dark, inquisitorial, morally degrading system as the Ballot, they ought at the same time to cease to arbitrate their quarrels with the fist, and take to the mask and the stiletto. It is a species of gagging act, and can never, any more than that of 1795, thank God, be naturalized in Great Britain. Let it thrive where it may, we will have nothing to do with such a loathsome political weed, the fruitful parent of simulation, ambiguities, equivocation, and falsities without number. But even granting the monstrous hypothesis of the Radicals to any extent-viz: cowardice and venality in electors-the exercise of wanton authority and the abuse of their legitimate moral influence in candidates,-we totally disbelieve that the flattering conclusion these scribes and spouters have come to would be found to have even the slightest foundation. We are firmly persuaded, on the contrary, that in the last election, for instance, ninety-nine of the county freeholders in every hundred voted as they did vote out of the deference and respect they owed to their legitimate patrons, who, they felt truly, were better capable than themselves of understanding the merits of the great political questions which divide