amply satisfy them, and that, on the other hand, an increased strength would be given to the Empire by concerting the necessary measures for the purpose of common defence. I have endeavoured to offer my humble solution of the enigma to which the Marquis of Salisbury referred. I may say that I have done so with diffidence. I make these suggestions with an open mind, prepared to abandon my own views if any better means of attaining the same object can be suggested. I shall give my hearty support to any proposal by which the great and important objects of the Imperial Federation League can be realised.

CHARLES TUPPER.

THE

QUESTION OF DISESTABLISHMENT

No one who knows what the village church is to English life as well as to English landscape can wish to see Disestablishment made a party question. A party question, however, it is evidently about to be made. It seems likely to take the place of the now nearly defunct Home Rule. Nor, with the present suffrage, can the end, apparently, be very doubtful. The Nonconformists, the Roman Catholics, and the section of Radicals which wants no religion, are together a large vote. I was surprised to hear when I was last in England, on what I thought good authority, that while the Church, through the increased activity of the clergy, had gained ground in the cities, she had not gained ground in the country, where, my informants said, the peasantry, from causes not easily defined, were apt to have a social feeling against the parson. But, apart from the political forces actually in the field, Disestablishment appears to have in its favour the general drift of things.

I think it obvious (says Mr. Gladstone) that so wide a question cannot become practical until it shall have grown familiar to the public mind by thorough discussion, with the further condition that the proposal, when thoroughly discussed, shall be approved. Neither, I think, can such a change arise, in a country such as ours, except with a large observance of the principles of equity and liberality, as well as with the general consent of the nation. We can hardly, however, be surprised if those who observe that a current, almost throughout the civilised world, slowly sets in that direction, should desire, or fear, that among ourselves, too, it shall be found necessary to operate.

'These observations,' says Lord Selborne in his earnest and powerful defence of the Church of England against Disestablishment, 'afford much scope for reflection.' They afford to the friends of the Establishment the same sort of scope for reflection which is afforded to an Irish family by the shriek of its Banshee. Translated into common language they seem to mean, 'My reason for not declaring at once in favour of Disestablishment is that I am not sure that as yet it has, what it presently will have, the majority of votes upon its side.' Even the caveat in favour of equity and liberality is exposed,

as the history of the Irish Land Bills shows, to unforeseen and incalculable interpretation.

Lord Selborne denies the reality of the current which Mr. Gladstone descries, slowly setting towards Disestablishment throughout the civilised world, and tells us not to be scared by a phantom. In every monarchical country of Europe, he bids us observe, the Church is still established and endowed; in some, as in Austria and in Russia, it is still in a high degree established and endowed, even monasteries with their estates there remaining undisturbed. Everywhere there are Ministries of Public Worship. Even republican France has her Established Church, subsidised by the State. This is true, and it is true that even in republican Switzerland there is still a Cantonal, though not a Federal, connection of the State with the Church. But on what sort of footing is the Church in the more advanced countries now established and endowed, compared with the footing on which she was established and endowed in the old Catholic days? No longer half mistress of the realm, or forming a great estate of it, she has sunk into a pensioner, and a not very beloved or honoured pensioner, of the Government. In France, once the realm of her eldest son, where a century and a half ago she could put men to death for offences against her, she now shares her dole, not only with heretics but with Jews, while in the French province of Algeria she shares it with Mussulmans. In the land of Philip the Second, though almost the whole population still professes his creed, her position is hardly higher or more secure than in the land of Louis the Fourteenth. There, too, instead of dominating, she is a creature of the Government, her enormous property has been secularised, and she has become a paid servant of the State. Education, the key of social character and influence, has been generally wrested out of her hands. Marriage, also, has been transferred from her exclusive dominion to that of the magistrate. To take an instance from the Protestant side, how great is the change in the relation of the Church in general to the State since the days in which Calvin was dictator! If in Austria and Russia the process is not so far advanced, it is because they are behind the other nations in the general race. The Republics are the last birth of Time, they are the leading shoots of political growth, and in them the connection between Church and State is weakest. All the footprints point the same way. The only apparent exception is the restoration of the Established Church of France by Napoleon. The violence of the extreme revolutionary party had for the time outrun popular conviction, and thus a reactionary despot was enabled to take a step backward, and by his fiat reinstate an institution of the past. But how altered was that institution in its estate and in its relation to the Government from the Established Church of the Bourbons!

Lord Selborne seems to overlook the greatest case of all. The

Papacy, once the supremely established and imperially endowed Church of Catholic Europe, has been both disestablished and disendowed. Its chief is now the prisoner of the Vatican,' subsisting on the alms of the faithful. It is true his spiritual power over the people has been increased by becoming purely spiritual, and by the concentration upon him of the allegiance of the Catholic Churches, which, having lost the support of the national Governments, now look to their ecclesiastical chief alone. This in itself is a fact suggestive, perhaps, of caution to the statesman, while it is reassuring to the churchman; but it does not contradict Mr. Gladstone's diagnosis of the situation.

In all the South American Republics, except Mexico, Lord Selborne reminds us there is still an Established Church. Mexico is a striking exception. So late as 1815 there was an auto de fé, where now no religious procession can take place. No priest even can appear publicly in his priestly garments. But in the other Republics the connection between Church and State, though it subsists, is greatly altered, and the position of the Church is far different, both in regard to establishment and in regard to endowment, from what it was in Spanish times. The priest has lost his political hold. In this case, therefore, again the tendency is no phantom. In all the countries there is likely to be a halt and a breathing-time after a great change. But the shadow will go back on the dial when the movement from religious privilege towards religious equality is reversed. What is the severance of the Church from the State, whereby the Government declares its entire impartiality in matters of opinion, but the ratification of that freedom of inquiry which, while the results of political revolutions are still doubtful, is the clear and inestimable gain of our modern civilisation?

In the communities of North America, Lord Selborne says, as there never was a connection between Church and State there can have been no tendency to its dissolution. But the truth is, in most of the colonies there formerly was a connection. In Massachusetts and in Connecticut it was close, as Quakers and other sectaries found to their cost; nor was it dissolved without a struggle. In Massachusetts the law provided for the maintenance of ministers as well as of schools, and for the punishment of religious offences, such as profanity and a disregard of the Sabbath. In Connecticut, Palfrey says, no church could be founded without permission from the General Court, and every citizen was obliged to pay in proportion to his means towards the support of the minister of the geographical parish of his residence. Ministers were exempt from taxation of every kind. The 'Blue Laws,' so far as they had any real existence, were of the nature of legislation against sin, which implies an identification of the civil with the ecclesiastical power. Nothing of the connection now remains except-the Sunday law, of which some agnostics com

plain as theocratic; restraints on blasphemous publications, which are as much dictated by regard for decency and for the public peace as by regard for religion; the exemption of churches from municipal taxation; and a very slight religious element in the teaching of the public schools, not so much enforced by the State as generally demanded by public feeling. The exemption of Church property from taxation extends to the property of all Churches alike, nor is it likely to continue long. The Congress of the United States is expressly forbidden by the first commandment of the Constitution to establish any religion. There are some who would like to insert into the Constitution a recognition of the Deity, but this proposal makes no way. The President of the United States annually proclaims a 'national thanksgiving day,' in compliance, however, with national sentiment, and without power of enforcement.

In French Canada, the Roman Catholic Church retains its revenues in virtue of an article in the treaty of cession, but it levies tithes only on its own members. The authority vested in the bishops for the regulation of parishes draws with it, though indirectly, a certain amount of legal power in municipal affairs. But the political influence which makes it more powerful in the province than any establishment could be, is entirely beyond the law.

In British Canada, the Church was originally established; reserves of land were set apart for its ministers, the university was confined to its members, and its bishop had a seat in the Council. But as soon as the colony obtained self-government, Disestablishment ensued; the clergy reserves were secularised, and the university was thrown open to students of all religions, while the high Anglicans seceded and founded a separate university of their own. A faint odour of departed privilege still clings to what was once the State Church, clergymen of which now and then allow it to be felt, that they regard the members of other Churches as Dissenters, while the bishops, unlike those in the United States, retain the title of 'lord.' Of the endowments, there remain about forty rectories which were carved out of the clergy reserves before secularisation. Otherwise there are no traces of the connection between Church and State in monarchical Canada, saving those which have their counterparts in the American Republic.

Not only does religious equality in all material respects prevail in the United States and in British Canada, but it is thoroughly accepted by everybody, and by the immense majority prized and lauded as an organic principle of New World civilisation. In British Canada, a few Anglicans may perhaps look back wistfully to the days of the clergy reserves. The Roman Catholic priest in the New World as well as in the Old World has in his pocket the encyclical which declares that his Church ought everywhere to be established, and that Government ought to use its power for her support. But, in the