into vigorous language by an evening paper then newly started, and soon attracted attention. Even the official Liberals began to think that there might be some something in it.' It was tentatively included in the programme for the conference at Birmingham last autumn, and was powerfully urged by Lord Compton, who has been for several years one of our most zealous comrades in all enterprises for social reform.

A definite though by no means exhaustive scheme of social legislation was (or seemed to be) accepted by at any rate two of our leaders. The elections for the London County Council were fought and won upon the cry of Social Reform. The course and the results of those elections seem to me by far the most hopeful sign of the times, and it looks as if a social enthusiasm might even quicken the dry bones of metropolitan Liberalism into beneficent activity. Who will lead this new crusade against misery and oppression? It is too much to expect that Mr. Gladstone, even with all his wonderful versatility, will unlearn at eighty the prepossessions of a lifetime, and will lead a movement which is bound to conflict with his theory of the functions of the State and the proper scope of legislative interference. Moreover, he has often told us that Home Rule must henceforth employ all his time and energies. Among younger men there is none whom we should more gladly welcome as our champion than Mr. John Morley. But he too is, I fear, out of the question; for is he not the bondslave of Political Economy? The dismal science has many irritating and unattractive features, but none more provoking than this—that, being pre-eminently a matter of theory and speculation, the subject of conflicting opinions, and the battle-ground of opposing schools, it gives itself the airs of an exact science, and demands for its dogmas the unquestioning acquiescence which we pay to mathematical demonstration. And whoever will lead the New Liberalism in its mission of Social Reform must be prepared to find his loyalty to the principle of unrestricted competition' rudely shaken. Of course, we do not breathe a word against Free Trade. But the question whether Parliament can properly interfere with the hours of labour, with the importation of foreign workmen, perhaps even with the rate of wages, will assuredly have to be faced in the not distant future, and in order to its right solution we shall have to consult quite another set of guides than Adam Smith and Mr. Mill, or even Professor and Mrs. Fawcett.

For my own part I confess that I do not see a heaven-born leader for the movement; but sometimes, Radical as I am, I fancy that he may be found in the House of Lords. Heaven knows that I detest the hereditary principle in legislation as cordially as ever; but, as long as the House of Lords exists, we may as well try to turn it to good account. And I would point out that a member of that body, if only his heart were right in the matter, would have certain special qualifi

cations for the leadership. The business of the House would make no exhaustive demand on his time. His social station would disarm the fears of the vulgar and the respectable; and his perfect freedom from the bondage of wire-pullers and caucus-mongers would enable him to do his duty without regard to electioneering consequences.

But wherever our leader may come from, I am confident that the movement will go on. Ça ira: malgré les mutins, tout réussira. The cause of Social Service awakes that moral enthusiasm which, as I said at the outset, cannot be bought and cannot be resisted, and carries in itself the pledge of victory. The terrible magnitude and urgency of the evils with which we have to cope were described by Father Barry in the August number of this Review with far greater eloquence and authority than mine. Those who set out to fight them will have to encounter great and manifold difficulties-ignorance, stupidity, prejudice, greed, cruelty, self-interest, instincts of class, cowardly distrust of popular movements, 'spiritual wickedness in high places.' And, in the face of these opposing forces, it is cheering to think that, after some years of what seemed like singlehanded striving, the good cause now has its workers everywhere. And to none does it make a more direct or a more imperious appeal than to us Liberal politicians. If we are worthy of the name, we must be in earnest about a cause which promises happiness, and health, and length of days to those who by their daily labour of hand and head principally maintain the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race. We must be impatient of a state of society in which healthy dwellings and unadulterated food and pure water and fresh air are made the monopolies of the rich. We must be eager to do our part towards abolishing filth and eradicating disease, and giving free scope to those beneficent laws of Nature, which, if only we will obey them, are so manifestly designed to promote the welfare and longevity of man. If we believe that every human being has equally and indefeasibly the right to be happy, we must find our chief interest and most satisfying occupation in Social Service. Our aim is first to lighten the load of existence for those thronging thousands of the human family whose experience of life is one long suffering, and then 'to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier.' The poor, the ignorant, the weak, the hungry, the overworked, all call for aid, and in ministering to their wants the adherent of the New Liberalism knows that he is fulfilling the best function of the character which he professes, and helping to enlarge the boundaries of the kingdom of God.

To compass for our people a wider diffusion of physical comfort, and thus a loftier standard of national morality, this,' says Mr. Atherley Jones, 'is the New Liberalism.' It is also, in my judgment, a noble and definite form of Christian effort.

GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL.

THE GRIEVANCES OF HIGH CHURCHMEN.

A LARGE amount of talk and disputation may very often be found representing no very strong convictions, but when men are willing to suffer personal loss and injury for their opinions the case is different. Then we know that, right or wrong, they at least hold their beliefs firmly, and as sacred principles which their consciences will not allow them to let go. Now it has been sufficiently shown by a considerable number of cases in which the High Church clergy have elected to suffer imprisonment rather than quit the position. which they had taken up, that they hold tenaciously to their views, and are ready to abide by them at any risk. Many will think this a foolish piece of quixotism; but few thoughtful persons will be inclined so completely to pooh-pooh the whole matter as not to think it worth while to ask what is the ground of this staunch resistance to the law. When the result of this resistance is to send some respectable men to prison for an indefinite period, and yet to be so little deterrent that a large number who share their views continue to parade them even ostentatiously, and thus apparently to court the same fate for themselves, the matter certainly challenges attention. Even simply on the ground of an investigation into the various phases of the religious thought of the day, it is worth while to inquire what it is that churchmen now-a-days want, and what is the ground of their determined opposition to the existing order of things. Have they any real grievances, and if so what are they? We propose to endeavour to indicate some of the matters held to be grievances from the churchman's point of view, as in many quarters they seem to be misunderstood. The notion that High Churchmen. have any claim to be heard will be instantly scouted by many, because it will be held that some idea of controlling the laity underlies the position they desire to take up. But this thought may be at once dismissed. If there is any shadowy aspiration in the minds. of any churchmen after the revival of this discipline, the theory is too impalpable and too far outside the region of the probable to be treated as having any real claim for consideration. What the High Church clergy desire to see mended are hardships strictly connected with their own position.

To begin with, they believe in a Church; they hold that there is a divinely constituted society in the world, of which it is their glory to be members; that this society has certain divinely appointed officers to govern it, certain duties divinely assigned to it, certain privileges divinely granted to it. What churchmen want is that these privileges should not be interfered with, and one of these privileges they hold to be the right of this society to judge and decide by its officers all questions of the divine law, and all matters which may be properly described as spiritual or ecclesiastical. They look back over the ages and they find that this has been the custom of the best times of the Church. In the numberless synods which fill the annals of the Church, bishops have always been the deciding and legislating body. Bishops, or their deputed judges ecclesiastical, have always sat to try causes ecclesiastical. It is sometimes said that an exception to this is to be found in our own English history in Anglo-Saxon times. But this is probably not altogether the case. The ealdorman and the bishop sat indeed in the same court at the same time. But the one heard causes temporal, the other causes spiritual. Some confusion, however, undoubtedly did arise, and this it was the policy of William the Conqueror to rectify. In his ordinance he states:

Know ye and all my liege men in England that I have determined that the episcopal laws, which up to my time have not been right, nor according to the precepts of the sacred canons in the Kingdom of the English, should be mended. Wherefore I command and charge you by royal authority, that no bishop nor archdeacon do henceforth hold pleas in the hundred according to the laws episcopal, nor bring any case before the secular jurisdiction which concerns the regimen of souls. But whoever is impleaded by the laws episcopal for any cause or crime, let him come to the place which the bishop shall choose or name for this purpose, and there make answer concerning his cause and crime, and not according to the hundred, but according to the canons and laws episcopal let him do right to God and his bishop.

This was the foundation in England of ecclesiastical courts strictly speaking, and of exclusive spiritual jurisdiction. Presently it led to a great abuse. For Church officers, not content with being allowed to judge in causes spiritual, advanced a step further, and claimed the right to judge spiritual persons in all causes, whether spiritual or not. This was the great ground of quarrel between Henry the Second and Thomas Becket, and this was that which the Constitutions of Clarendon attempted to rectify. But these famous enactments did not propose to do away with spiritual jurisdiction altogether. They provided that clerks accused and charged with any matter, being summoned by the king's justice, shall come into his court to answer there concerning that which shall seem right to be answered there, and in the Church court concerning that which shall seem right to be answered there.' The well-known first clause of the Great Charter

provides that the Church of England shall be free, and have all its rights and liberties unimpaired,' and the struggles of the State were henceforth directed, not to take away the spiritual and judicial power of the Church of the land, but to oppose the intrusive Papal power which in fact swamped it, and, overriding it at all points, caused endless confusion and trouble. The protests against this intrusive power are all grounded on the principle that the Church of England has rights and powers of its own, and is able to exercise them. Thus in the time of John it was declared that the prelates in England were sufficiently furnished with a full provision of all learning, and had no need to go a begging to foreigners for justice and judgment;’ and in the fifteenth century, when the overbearing Pope Martin the Fifth tried to cause the repeal of the Anti-papal Statutes, the Commons petitioned the King to resist, on the ground that the liberties of the Church of England ought to be upheld. One of the most remarkable statutes in the Reformation period was the statute for the restraint of appeals, the preamble of which stated that

the body spiritual had power, when any cause of the law divine happened to come in question, or of spiritual leaning, to declare and interpret by that part of the body politic called the spiritualty, now being usually called the English Church, and there have always been in the spiritualty men of sufficiency and integrity to declare and determine all doubts within the Kingdom.

Queen Elizabeth was not altogether a nursing mother to the Church, but again and again she asserted in her masterful way the right of the clergy to judge and legislate in spiritual things, and reproved the Puritans who wanted to take this power out of their hands. Archbishop Laud is often regarded as the greatest stickler for ecclesiastical authority in the more modern times; and the High Church claim has not gained in popularity by its supposed connection with him. But, in fact, Laud's great fault was that he did not make use of the spiritual power sufficiently, but attempted to govern the Church autocratically through the Supremacy and the High Commission Court, which was due to a lay origin. The ecclesiastical courts remained unchanged by the Reformation. They were much complained of. Their procedure was very dilatory and often very oppressive, but no successful attempts were made to mend them. The great change made at the Reformation was in the provision for settling final appeals in spiritual suits. These could no longer go to Rome. They must be settled in the country. Now the clergy had recognised the King as the supreme head of the Church of England 'as far as is allowed by the law of Christ,' and by that had acknowledged that all jurisdiction must proceed from the Crown. In accordance with this it was enacted that in case of failure of justice in the court of the archbishop, there should lie an appeal to the King in his Court of Chancery, which should be heard by delegates