ship, that the Church of England is the Church of the English people. The great differences between Wales and Ireland are, that the Nonconformists are recent separatists in the one case, and the claimants of an old Catholicity in the other. The great difference between London and Ireland is, that the Nonconformists to the Established Church are a combined and a bigoted mass in the latter, and in the former a very heterogeneous mass, with a vast element of open infidelity.

The arguments used by the Times have throughout been more prophetic than rational. The word.' doomed' has been a satisfactory answer to all arguments, rendering any further reply a mere waste of time. No examination of the practical results, or rather of the possibility of disentangling Church and State, has ever been attempted. All that is left to the solution of future events. There is a recklessness in the line adopted by this paper, which suggests the prompting of political objects and aims, in the narrowest sense of the phrase, rather than of any deep-laid resolutions about Church matters; it goes in for the popular rush on the subject, and is content with the simple, easy, but woful cry of the angry Sybil. But the British public itself, and the Times as its voice, are very easily made penitent; there is little obstinacy in their war-cries, as soon as in the first place they get tired of them, and in the second when it is quietly shown, after the heat of the struggle has subsided, that they have been talking nonsense; when it is obvious that the national habits and constitutions of a country, founded on the interest people unfortunately will take in their own affairs, do not all turn and twist like the arguments and fancies of a daily paper prompted by immediate political aims. The Pall Mall Gazette has more cunning, for it has aims more immediately connected with religion and the Church than its daily contemporary. It is very marked, almost pathetic, in its love for England's National Church, as contrasted with her troubled sister in Ireland, the immediate object of criticism; but in the arguments incidentally and on general grounds brought forward, there is a depressing and a grinding down of the Church as having any claims to an independent existence, that forebodes an evil day for ourselves, if ever such arguments gain strength by success in Ireland.

The bearings of the present question on the general rights of property are a subject which it is not our duty primarily to discuss, for we are accustomed very justly to imagine that property, in a private sense of the word, will take care of itself. Still, as a moral question, the wholesale confiscation of property proposed by Mr. Gladstone is a very novel inroad into the sanctity hitherto preserved on the subject. It is a mere fiction

to say that the Roman Catholic Church has any claim on that property. Since the Reformation, the whole character and value of it is so entirely altered, such large additions in money, land, and buildings have been made to it, that but slender identity can be preserved between the ill-formed rights which existed among the half-savage people of Ireland more than 300 years ago, and the definite legal property now belonging to that Church. It is not, however, proposed to hand the property over to the Romish priests, and it is only a few of that party who have the boldness to claim it as their rightful inheritance. But what is to be done with it? Confiscation is a very significant word, and a very dangerous one. To disestablish a Church is a very indefinite expression, admitting of many shades and degrees of meaning; in fact, if you disestablish a Church on one footing you will have to establish it on another, for it is wholly impossible at once to eradicate the connecting ties which centuries have created. With confiscation it is different: Parliament can pass an Act which will cause certain definite possessions to be sold by auction. The proceeds can be deposited in the hands of Commissioners, and Commissioners, as experience shows, can spend a great deal of it and keep the rest locked up a very long time, till it is almost forgotten. Let us imagine this to be the case. These Commissioners will be holding money, not knowing what to do with it, when it has been ruthlessly taken from an organized Church system, that will be seen then to want it-all of it; that has had the State's guarantee for its preservation; that has no rival claimants with a shadow of right on their side; and that will present every aspect of having been deliberately and dishonestly robbed of its property. Parliament may redistribute Church property in Ireland, reform its conditions, in the same manner it has done in England; but confiscation, pure and simple, is an experiment which has not been attempted since the Reformation, and which, in the present state of the law, will be a great shock to property in every shape, private as well as public. It is very easy to prove that private individuals have too much money, or that they abuse their responsibilities connected with property, then why suffer such evils to go unreformed? The present security for private property is, in fact, far more artificial than is commonly imagined. History, in the long run, has more to do with the violent destruction of private rights than with their creation or growth. Again, is there any absolute fixed line between public and private property? The one shades off into the other through a long vista of corporate bodies and trusteeships. Interference with the rights of property is a question also in itself wholly incapable

of being defined as to its rights and powers. A hard and fast" line can never be laid down, either between the property that may or may not be interfered with, or to mark the extent of interference in any particular case; but, viewing the subject calmly and unimpassionately, as it bears upon the Irish Church, we cannot but discern in Mr. Gladstone's proposals a very bold stride which, as a precedent, will be taken by Communists and Socialists as an advance towards their own theories on the subject of property. It must be remembered that if property is confiscated, somebody must receive what others lose. Now, as a moral question, it is, perhaps, easier to judge of the rights of a case by looking to the receiver than the loser. And for this reason it is no sin to be robbed, the misfortune of it is the prominent feature of the transaction as viewed from that side; but when the purse which has been taken out of one man's pocket is seen in the hands of another, then it is a moral question, viz. the sin of robbing, that rises up in the mind. To judge of the present case by the same rule; imagine any person or persons holding the property of the Irish Church: and according to existing prejudices, if we cannot call them abstract rights, would not such possession appear to be a very questionable holding? These things have a warning in them which it is well all parties should consider for their own interests as well as for the interests of the Church.

And what, in conclusion, is to be the result of all this? We are not great alarmists, and if we have traced the natural results of certain principles and of certain legislation with regard to the Irish Church, it has been partly on the principle of a reductio ad absurdum. The movement will draw or be drawn up before these consequences take place. In spite of open attacks on the Church, and her outward position; in spite of mistaken friends and theorists; in spite of those many threats which, though originating against the Irish Church, sound as if one truth at any rate was felt by their utterers, viz. the union between that Church and England; in spite of all these things, and, indeed, on account of their very number and comprehensiveness, we have great confidence in the future of this united Church. The growth, the increased activity of the Church both in England and Ireland, naturally point to the present time as one of attack from her enemies, but not of decay or collapse. The true principle of Church and State implies, from the independent position from which the one views the other, a perpetual readjusting of details; implies that seeming struggle, that ever arranging of terms, which is the best possible security for life and vigour, and for the greatest amount of peace and concord destined for us to enjoy. Life is

SO

a struggle in all things, and if one element of a constitution overpowers every other,-if the Church, for instance, with all its sacred independence, that teaches of a living influence from the spiritual world, is absorbed and swallowed into a department of State, there may be peace for a time, but the peace of death. A wholesome shaking together of various elements and opinions, both political and spiritual, pertaining to the Church, may be destined by Providence to be the issue of what seems alarming. The Establishment may be so far passed under review, even in this country, as to afford a favourable opportunity for the return of many separatist bodies; and property may be so far threatened, as to stimulate its holders to a sense of its responsibilities; but we do not see in the present growth of the Church's work, and the hold she is gaining by it over the minds and hearts of the people, any signs of approaching dissolution, or of a severance between Church and State. The bond which unites them is grounded on the solid and lasting witness to the cause of Christ given by a Christian people to the spiritual influence of Christ's Church on earth,

130

ART. VII.-Celebrated Sanctuaries of the Madonna. By Rev. J. SPENCER NORTHCOTE, D.D., President of S. Mary's College, Oscott. London: Longmans. 1868.

A MONOGRAPH is certainly one of the most useful kinds of publication common among us. It is generally the product of one who has thought much and long on a favourite subject; he is slightly enthusiastic upon it, and often he throws himself into it heart and soul. There is, no doubt, always a temptation to make too much of it, to give it an undue prominence, to put out of sight things that make for the other side, and might detract from its importance. It is much the same with a biographer, who, set to work to write the history of a personal friend, or of some public character whom he esteems a hero, unconsciously suppresses facts which make against his idol, and dwells principally on those which give him lustre. In fact, all warm-hearted men have their hobbies, which they are inclined to trot out in not the most judicious manner. This is the case with Dr. Northcote in the book before us; a convert to the Roman faith, he has very naturally imbibed an enthusiasm in the articles of his new creed, which he is particularly anxious to display, to revive a reverence in others such as he now feels in himself. He has seen in his own country once famous sanctuaries now in ruins, often horribly desecrated; the memories of their former glories faded out of mind; the very histories forgotten; and the faith, which, as it were, belonged to them despised and contemned. The enthusiastic champion stands up to assert their pre-eminence, and to challenge the unbelieving world in their defence. Rising above the petty prejudices of doubting minds, superior to the inductions of historical facts, he is prepared to assert his belief in all the legends of a less critical but more superstitious age, and to enforce, by his own chivalrous determination, the truth and reality of the many miracles and interventions of the Madonna in connexion with her sanctuaries, both in medieval and modern times. Such a spirit is worthy of admiration, but it hardly ensures implicit credence; we admire his courage, but we doubt his. judgment; we read his book, but we do not esteem it a history. In one sense it is history; it is a history of what men have believed, but such belief does not make the things believed in to be historical facts.

However, as a repertory of legends connected with certain churches and convents, the book is of value; and had it been nothing more, we should have been glad to have such legends gathered into a volume and given to us. It much increases the