nical policy of our present rulers. But while the education of the clergy is united with the University there is an insuperable impediment which they never can get over, however lightly they might dispose of the objections; and this impediment it is that the Archbishop and Dr. Elrington are most obligingly taking out of the way.

But, to our minds, even this is a secondary consideration; and even if it were altogether out of the question, our objections to the new college would be as strong as they are now. We certainly protest against the transfer of the education of the clergy, because it paves the way for Mr. Shiel's bill, but we would also protest against Mr. Shiel's bill, were it only because it created a necessity for that transfer. Either of these measures would be in itself an evil; and though, perhaps, that evil in each is aggravated from the connected relation in which they stand, yet either, if considered separately, should be strenuously and uncompromisingly resisted. And this brings us to another part of our subject a part which we have reserved for the last, not because we considered it as of least importance-a part upon which we would willingly say much, but upon which our space will now permit us to say but little-involving topics upon which we would the more gladly dwell, because while every other argument against the Archbishop, drawn from the particular circumstances of the present case, has been already put forward, this alone, although founded on the general principles of abstract policy, appears to be unaccountably forgotten or overlooked. We protest against any institution for the education of our clergy which is to be exclusively an ecclesiastical establish

ment.

This objection, coming from the quarters that it does, may appear strange to those who have never accustomed themselves to look beyond the surface of political principles, and who therefore cannot distinguish between the free and generous support of a mild and tolerant church, and the base and ignoble submission to every dominant and haughty hierarchy. But while we admire and love the principle of a church establishment, as necessary to keep alive religion in the state, we

yet know the natural tendency of a priesthood to arrogate power to themselves, and we therefore feel it to be of importance that the establishment should, as far as possible, be blended, and so to speak amalgamated with the state-that it should, in fact, be a part of the civil polity of the country, and not an independent power, an imperium in imperio a distinct order ever ready to employ the concession of spiritual authority as a ground for the assumption of temporal sway. This is that union of church and state, which ignorant fanatics have condemned as unholy, and stupid demagogues have declaimed against as an invasion of the liberties of the people; the one not perceiving that it made the "state religious though not the church political," and the other not remembering that it provided an effectual barrier against the assumption of all independent domination on the part of the clergy. In that glorious constitution of which this union is an essential part; the ever to be revered constitution of Britain, the church is taken into such complete partnership with the state, that while she is left all that distinctiveness, which is necessary for the discharge of her high and holy duties, she is not left any that could permit of her members having interests different from those of the nation. The clergyman is made to know that his duty is to watch over the interests of the people committed to his charge, and not to seek the aggrandisement of his order, and the danger is removed of the minister of religion degenerating into the ecclesiastic. And while the clergy never can act as a united body in a distinct capacity; their influence is yet diffused through all ranks from the highest to the lowest, spreading the soul ennobling doctrines, and the soul purifying principles of Christianity throughout the land. To this wise and prudent policy of the state, the church on the other hand, has adapted herself; by the very terms of the union she renounces for ever all right and capability of exercising a distinct and a dangerous force in the social system. And thus she, unlike the Church of Rome, imposes on her ministers no vows of duty to herself, unless as she stands as the representative of their country. She does not teach them

that they are divested of their character as citizens, and have acquired by their relation to her, new duties and new feelings. Her setting apart at ordination is not a separation from the mass of the people and an attachment to herself; but a consecration to God of the energies and talents of some among the people. The narrow and selfish spirit which is the very genius of popery which binds together the priests of that church in a unity of which slavery of heart and conscience is the symbol and the pledge-and which renders the Romish clergy the dangerous enemies of all government in countries where they are not established; and the certain oppressors of the rights and duties of every country where they are--this narrow and selfish spirit which divests the clergyman of all of the attributes of the citizen, to convert him into the instrument of ecclesiastical tyranny and ecclesiastical aggression-she utterly and totally repudiates. Precluded from all attempts, at temporal dominion, she is content with her proper duty and office as the disseminator of truth, and thus she seeks in her ministers, not serfs, and devotees, but simply teachers of that truth. And in no respect does she more manifest this spirit than in the mode in which she educates her clergy. She does not detach the candidates for her orders from the laity among whom they are to minister, and prescribe to them a separate and rigid course of preparatory discipline; but she leaves them to the care of the same Universities and to the pursuit of the same studies, with those whom she even in her services teaches them to consider as their brethren; and while by thus placing them on an equality with mankind and not setting them up above them as demigods, she loses the veneration of slavish superstition, she gains in its stead the affection of confiding attachment. Her clergy are the companions and teachers, not the masters anp tyrants of their flocks. And by this union in our University of the clergy and laity, both are reciprocally benefitted. The attention of the great body of the students is excited to the concerns of their eternal state by constant communion with those whose thoughts and feelings are all directed

towards the holy calling for which they are destined; and by intercourse with the world, religion, in the person of the clergy, is stripped of all that austerity which is so foreign to its nature, but wherewith ecclesiastical bigotry is so likely to invest it. But all this is now to be reversed. When once the education of the clergy and the laity are separated, the whole face of society is altered-the one, as far as education influences their minds, will be bigots, the other will be infidels. The divinity student, in the gloom of a monastic establishment, will unconsciously imbibe the exclusiveness of sectarianism, while he fancies that he is but kindling into the ardour of zeal; and his judgment, narrowed by the very confinement of his associations, will be unable to distinguish between prejudice and truth. The candidate for a secular profession will forget religion in an establishment where it is never thought of, and go into the world a Latitudinarian in principle, and most likely a profligate in habits. There will be no more of that mutual influence, that unseen alternation of sentiment and feeling, between the clergy and the laity, which, commencing in youth, retained its force throughout life, preventing the religion of the one from becoming morose, and the secularism of the other from being profane. On the character of the clergy the effect will be more certain, and perhaps more immediate. Christianity was intended by its author for man; man was designed by his creator for society; and even those feelings which Christianity infuses, like all our other feelings, when prevented from expanding into the virtues of society, will rankle in the breast, until the real character is lost, and their very sweets are turned into wormwood and gall. This always will be the case in an exclusively ecclesiastical establishment, and it never will be the case in any other. There is little danger of piety degenerating into ascetism so long as it is but the elevation and the purifying of philanthropyand the Christian is taught to honour his God in loving his image-man.

On these general grounds then, apart from all the particular considerations to which we have alluded, we

protest against the new college, and for the sake of the laity and the clergy, as opposed to the best interests of both, and utterly inconsistent with the spirit of our church. His Grace, the Archbishop may, and very probably will, persevere, but it is still in the power of the prelates of our church to prevent the mischief from coming into immediate operation;-this rests with themselves. We trust we have done our duty to the country, and we feel that we have done it to our own hearts. We have placed on record, a solemn protest of which, as Christians, we will not be ashamed in that day when the secrets of all breasts will be laid open. We only pray that all those connected with this matter may have as little reason to dread that awful scrutiny to which both we and they must yet submit. Our honest expression of opinions that we dare not compromise, and feelings that we dare not conceal, may give offence to many in these days of moderation. But we care not. God grant that this expression may be as successful as it is fearless and sincere, that either those who have formed this plan may retrace their steps before it is too late, or, that the sound feeling of the country may defeat their machinations, and honesty and Protestantism triumphantly assert their proud pre-eminence-shall we say, over Popery and fraud. But whatever may be the event we cannot

regret the part we have taken. Unalterable in the steady and uncompromising attachment to what we know to be right, we never have betrayed our principles, and we never will. Although the political prospects of Protestantism may be dark, and there is little in the prospect of the present times to tempt worldly-mindedness into the advocacy of her cause; yet, with Lord Winchelsea, we will "put our trust in God." Should it be His will that the frenzy of the people should pass away-that the banner of truth should once more float triumphant on the breeze when the fury of the whirlwind has swept by-for the sake of our country we will rejoice. But should his mysterious dispensations demand from his people, the Protestants, the last proof of attachment to his cause, the choice of Moses will be ours. We will go with Protestantism into exile, we will go with her to the scaffold, or the block, and we are more happy-far more happy-in the prospect than did we look forward yet to "raise our mitred heads in courts," while traitor was written on our brow; and, in faithless and unprincipled forgetfulness of all that could add real honour to rank, or confer true dignity upon station, bask in the smiles of those who have stabbed our constitution, and are now doing their best to stab our religion and our liberties to the heart.

The sane portion of the public have much reason to be obliged to Feargus O'Connor. He it was whose sturdy anti-anglicism forced forward the discussion about repeal; and by that discussion it is hoped by many, that the brains have been knocked out of the repealers. But much we fear, that a consummation so devoutly to be wish ed, is yet at a great distance. Repeal is a question which could only have originated with the wicked or the brainless; and those by whom it has been, for their own purposes, adopted, will scarcely be induced to abandon it by any exposure or any confutation. We must first be convinced that its promoters were honest men, before we can believe them accessible to honest convictions; and that its dupes were rational creatures, before we can admit that the triumphant reasonings of Spring Rice, and Tennent, and Peel, and Littleton can produce their proper effects upon their minds. Time was, we know, "when that the brain was out, the man would die;" but, to repealers, at all times, every portion of the organ of thought, except alone those which the phrenologists assign to combativeness and obstinacy, have been felt as an incumbrance and we cannot suppose that they will slacken in their favourite pursuit, merely because their advocates have been defeated in argument.

The defeat has, certainly, been signal; and, in almost any other case, we would say decisive. There was not a single topic upon which it had been their wont to descant, which, when brought to the test of reason, was not found to bear against them. O'Connell has not hesitated to dwell with emphasis upon considerations historical, financial, agricultural, commercial, for the purpose of fanning into a flame the passion for repeal, which, unhappily, he has been so mischievously successful in exciting in this country. Out of the house he could not be gainsaid. Any one who affected to doubt that, by the Union,

Ireland was impoverished and ruined, and who ventured to appeal to facts in confutation of the statements of the great agitator, would be but too fortunate if he was only laughed to scorn by his infuriated hearers, who would have it, that nothing but misery resulted from the union, and that nothing could be done for the country until it was repealed. The people were repeal mad. O'Connell had every thing his own way. The agitator felt that he possessed a giant's strength, and he scrupled not to use it like a giant. In this country opposition vanished before him, and the very government quailed under the ascendancy of the individual who wielded the physical democracy of Ireland. But Dan was quite another man as soon as he entered the walls of St. Stephens. The Irish oak did not bear removal; the miry soil, from which its roots had drawn their nutriment, was ill exchanged for the sterile and sandy region into which it had been transplanted. Unfortunately for him, history has not as yet, even in that quarter, become quite an old almanac. There are questions upon which its dicta are still revered; and the demagogue's breath came short and quick in the keen atmosphere which he now inhaled, when he felt that his assertions were regarded with a suspicion, and his statements examined with a scrutiny to which he was little accustomed amongst his Irish partizans, who, if on other occasions they "strain at a gnat," he has always found ready "to swallow a camel."

He

This made him very wary. eschewed parliamentary discussion, even as the highwayman eschews the rope. But not so Feargus the Fearless. He, we believe, had plunged, into repeal agitation, from genuine antiAnglican antipathies, which were not to be subdued or mitigated by all the plausible things that might be said in favour of British connexion; and he regarded Dan's shyness in bringing the question forward as a symptom of de

fection on the part of the leader, by which the cause which he had so much at heart might be eventually seriously endangered. This we believe to have been his real motive, and not, as we have heard it more than insinuated, any paltry desire to procure a share of "the rent." Feargus is no Gaberlunzie legislator; and even if he were, he knows his man too well to imagine that he could be either bullied or wheedled out of any portion of that national tribute with which his transcendant services have been so inadequately rewarded. No; Feargus had no such design in urging forward the repeal discussion, and compelling his leader "to screw his courage to the stickingplace," and become, in the British senate, the unblushing advocate of a measure which is only not the most mischievous, because it is the most absurd one that ever possessed the brain of any one pretending to the character of a statesman. Oh! how cordially Dan wished his mover and instigator to the If Feargus be a joint of the tail, he is, we believe, the last joint, and constitutes the scorpion sting which will one day lash the leader into madness. As yet he has only made him appear as a "pretty considerable" fool; but one or two more exhibitions such as have been already made, would have the effect of exalting Dan's folly into a species of sublimated phrenzy that would greatly exceed the present amount of qualification in that way for the members for St. Stephens, and render his temporary absence necessary for the reason that Hamlet was advised to travel out of Denmark. Such is the evil that must result when the head and the tail cannot agree! Indeed where is the use of a head when it must be guided by the tail! In our judgment Feargus has established a solid claim to a very considerable slice of the rent, for acting as a viceroy over the leader. As, in the celebrated contest for the shield, Ulysses claimed credit for the exploits of Achilles, inasmuch as he had induced him to take the field; so Feargus may claim credit for the services of Dan, inasmuch as he it was who compelled him "to come to the scratch;" and as the rent was collected for the leader, surely the man who led the leader should not be left

without his reward. But virtue is its own reward, and happy is it that it is so; for real merit is but rarely appreciated. We suppose if there be one individual in the world with] whom Dan would be less disposed to go snacks, in the affair of the rent, than with another, it is the aforesaid Feargus, whose chivalry, in his opinion, by no means compensates for his indiscretion in forcing on a battle upon the subject of repeal, and compelling his party to fight at a disadvantage.

But, as we have said above, if Dan has reason to be offended with him, not so ourselves. We are well pleased with the course which he pursued. And here we think it but justice to acquit him of the heavy charge of being moved or seduced by the anti-repealers to do the very thing which they desired. Feargus might have been indiscreet, but he was not treacherous. Inasmuch, however, as his indiscretion has been of as much service to the cause of sound conservative policy, as that cause has, on former occasions, suffered disservice from the over discretion of others, if it ever should happen that he should be reduced to the necessity of sending round the plate for Gaberlunzie contributions, we promise him that we shall not be wanting in raising for him a Protestant rent, which, if it does not equal in amount "the national tribute,” shall exceed it in the cheerfulness with which it will be accorded. Indeed upon that rent Dan himself might have a claim, if such a one could be put forward on his part for service unintentionally rendered to the anti-repealers. But we would remind him, that these services were rendered, as his own rent is paid-reluctantly and of necessity; and Feargus- honest, fearless, Feargus-is, we repeat it, entitled to a monopoly of the credit arising from the utter discomfiture of his party upon the recent discussion of the Repeal of the Union.

Dan's opening speech was a rich thing in its way. Ireland, it seems, never was conquered! Like the Irishman in the farce, it merely hired England to be its master, and would now dismiss it, not having any further need of its superintendence. agitator might well add, master of its own!

Indeed, the having got a He then pro