nothing of any particular authority belonging to the Bishop of Rome as St. Peter's successor.'

The Catholic faith is that a General Council cannot be convoked without the authority of the Pope, nor can its decrees and canons become the dogmas and laws of the Church until they have been approved and confirmed by the Sovereign Pontiff.

Now the 28th canon of Chalcedon was at the time of the Council protested against by the Papal Legates; it was inserted among the canons in defiance of their protest. Pope Leo approved all the dogmatic decrees of this Council, and repudiated the 28th canon, which concerned discipline and not faith, and which provided that 'New Rome, the honoured seat of Empire, and the residence of the Senate, should possess equal privileges in ecclesiastical matters with ancient. Rome and should be second in rank.'

That the Pope did not approve, but rejected this canon, is to the Catholic mind an end of all controversy on the subject. The canon neither is nor ever was a part of Church law, and cannot, therefore, be urged as a reason for doubt in the Church of Rome. This answer is sufficient for a Catholic; but the conclusion drawn by Lord Redesdale requires some additional reply.

The Council of Chalcedon from which this canon was taken was convened by Pope Leo. His four Legates presided over it. At the very opening session the legate Paschasinus announced that he had a command from the most holy and apostolic Bishop of Rome, which is the head of all the Churches. The Legates demanded that Dioscorus should not be allowed to sit as one of the Fathers or to vote, inasmuch as he had dared to hold a Synod without the authority of the Apostolic See, which never had been done, nor ought to be done. For this and other matters he was, at the request of the assembled Fathers, condemned by the Papal Legates. In the preamble to their sentence, they speak of the Apostolic Throne having pardoned certain of the Bishops of the Robber Synod, and proceed in these words:-Leo, the most blessed Archbishop of Rome, declares by us, and by this most Holy Synod, and being in union with the Blessed Apostle Peter, who is the rock and the support of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Faith, that Dioscorus is deprived of his bishopric and of all ecclesiastical dignity. In the preceding session the famed dogmatic letter of Pope Leo to Flavian was read, and the Fathers exclaimed, 'This is the Faith of the Fathers!... Anathema to those who believe otherwise! Peter has spoken by Leo.' The sessions of the Council concluded, the Fathers addressed a Synodal letter to Leo, entreating His Holiness to approve and confirm its decrees. The Pope pointed out that to accept the 28th canon of Chalcedon was to deny the 6th canon of Nice, and His Holiness put in its true light the Apostolic origin of the Church. Before his time, St. Cyprian had said, 'Rome is the principal Church, the centre of unity, whence sacerdotal unity has

arisen because she is the Cathedra Petri.' The Council of Sardica had said, 'hoc enim optimum et valde congruentissimum esse videbitur si ad caput, id est ad Petri sedem, de singulis quibusque provinciis Domini referant sacerdotes.'

The most cursory study of the acts of the Council of Chalcedon shows that, although the greater number of the bishops assembled were Greek, and naturally wished to confer on Constantinople special privileges, they acknowledged without protest the supremacy of the authority of St. Peter's successor.

In fact, it is hard to understand how Lord Redesdale can assert that the Church in the fifth century knew nothing of any particular authority belonging to the Church of Rome.' To produce evidence from the Fathers anterior to this period would be to trespass too far on the pages of the Nineteenth Century, but we may refer its readers to the Cathedra Petri of Mr. Allnatt, who has collected their testimony in a small volume (Burns and Oates).

Acting on Lord Redesdale's admirable suggestion as to the value of brevity in an article of this nature, we have tried to show that the Catholic is saved from doubt by the knowledge that the Church is the Pillar and Foundation of Faith, that she has a divine and therefore an infallible teaching authority, and that she has a head in the constant and indefectible line of the successors of St. Peter, to whom, in the words of the Preamble of the Decree on Papal Infallibility, 'the Holy Spirit was not promised that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith delivered through the Apostles.'

T. J. CAPEL.

FREE TRADE, RAILWAYS, AND THE
GROWTH OF COMMERCE;

OR,

An Attempt to estimate the Comparative Effects of (1) Liberation of Intercourse and (2) Improvement of Locomotion upon the Trade and Wealth of the United Kingdom during the last Half-Century.

Ir is now nearly forty years since the war against Protective legislation, so miscalled, was carried over from the study of the economist, and the platform of the Anti-Corn-Law League, to the arena of Parliament, and began to take the form of serious and trenchant legislation. During more than five-and-twenty of those years, the British agriculturist has been exposed to a competition with the rest of the world almost absolutely free: and the ruin predicted for him by his friends took this peculiar form, not only that he survived, but that for a full quarter of a century there never was once raised that cry of agricultural distress which, under the system of Protection, invariably pierced the ears of Parliament at intervals of a few short years. The growth of general trade has notoriously, during the entire period from 1842, been enormous.

But a season of pressure and distress, both for commercial and for agricultural producers, has at length arrived. There are a set of gentlemen who have ever believed and professed themselves to be the only, or the very best, allies of the farmer. With this belief and profession, they ought to have directed his mind by their advice to what was useful to him, and practicable in itself. But unhappily their plan of action has been to recommend to him what they ought to have known to be unattainable, and for the most part what, even if attainable, would have been mischievous alike to him and the community. They have thus been in fact, though not in design, his perpetual evil genius, his tempters, and his betrayers. On this new occasion, they have declared or hinted to him that he had better cry aloud for a revival of Protection. That remedy the farmer has had the good sense to eye askance. Yet some persons in Parliamentary, and even in official, positions appear still to do their best to mislead him; while, among particular sections of manufacturers and workmen, a desire has been exhibited to revive the reign of restriction, at least on their own behalf.

There is no evidence that our trading neo-protectionists are in general prepared to renew the restraints upon the importation of bread and meat for the people. But if the reign of impoverishment is to be newly proclaimed, let it run equably all round. Until something in the nature of a balanced plan, for an equable distribution of the poison, shall have been adjusted, neither decency nor policy will allow of any serious combination or effort. Still, the mere fact that the scattered elements of disturbance should exist, and exist under countenance from some of those who are marked out by position as the born guides and rulers of the land, is, if not a danger to the State, yet perhaps a scandal to the age. The fortress of commercial freedom is indeed strong against all open assault; but stealthy approaches, by mining and the like, are not out of the question. It is at any rate well to survey from time to time the bulwarks, and to realise for ourselves what we owe to those most conservative and most philanthropic changes, which were purchased at so heavy a cost in time, labour, discussion, and intrigue. It is well to hold fast in our memory the debt which we owe to Freedom of Trade; but we shall lodge it the more safely there, if we have first placed it clearly before our eyes in its true form and dimensions.

And here arises in our face the difficulty with which in this paper I propose to deal. We have the admitted fact of an enormous, an unexampled, material progress since the novus ordo sæclorum, and the emancipation of our industry, began. But, during the same period, other agencies, confessedly tending in the same direction, have been at work. To these other agencies, of which railways have been the most powerful and conspicuous, the whole result has often been ascribed by those among the opponents of Free Trade, who were usually the most courageous, honest, and obtuse. But even the heartiest and most sanguine Free Trader must admit that they have made a large contribution to the general upshot. Are there, then, any means by which we can divide the spoil, that is to say the honour and the credit, rendering to each set of influences its due?

I am of opinion that this cannot be done, by any means we now possess, with anything like precision; but that an approximation to the truth can be made, such as to be of great interest in itself, and of great value for practical purposes. The interest is that which necessarily attaches to every expedient available for measuring the material results of great legislative changes. The practical purpose is to shut the mouths of those who still maintain that Free Trade 'has had no share in producing the vast expansion of our commerce, which has marked the last forty years; or who are endeavouring to practise upon the selfishness of class, with revival of Protection as a motto on their flag: in some cases not without an apparent view to political ends. I shall seek first to lay firmly the ground from which we are to start by showing, in a summary way, how completely Protection

did its duty, and earned its character, as a scheme for retarding, if it could not altogether prevent, the growth of national wealth.

My next business will be to avail myself of the important fact, which principally enables me to construct my main thesis: this, namely, that before legislation turned energetically towards commercial freedom, the railway system was in operation, and for some few years in rather powerful operation.

Thirdly, my endeavour will be to set out as carefully as I can the effects of the great successive doses, or instalments, of Free Trade administered by legislation at certain principal epochs: there being this marked difference between railway extension and the abolition of restrictive laws, that the one may be practically assumed as a constant quantity, operating with a uniform increment from year to year, whereas the other has only marked certain sessions of Parliament, with periods of several years between them.

:

Fourthly I propose to take these intervening periods severally, as affording in each case a measure, sufficiently accurate for the purpose in view, of the effect produced upon commerce by the immediately preceding instalment of what is termed Free Trade legislation.

Fifthly as the legislation of 1860 very nearly completed the work of annihilating the Protective system in this country, we have to fix a term for the development of the measures of that particular year. I propose to assume that they had produced their full effect by the end of the year 1866. We then have a period of several years, during which, although some relief was given to the country by remission of taxes, nothing was done which directly illustrates the benefit of removing Protection. But through these years the railway system continued regularly to extend itself, and telegraphic communication was greatly extended. We therefore possess anew, for a period, part at least of the very same advantage which we had in 1832. We see railway extension and development continually at work without new legislative assistance, to any great extent, in liberating commerce from restraint.

I need not remind the reader conversant with algebra that a single equation, presenting to us two unknown quantities, cannot be solved without other aid. Such is the case of the progress we were achieving between 1842 and (say) 1866. But if we are furnished with another equation, exhibiting only one of the unknown quantities, we can then ascertain its value, and, substituting that value in the first equation for the symbol, we can then obtain the value of the second unknown quantity, that is to say, we can convert it into a known one. The period 1830-1842 offers us this single equation. Railways were then at work without Free Trade: and, observing what the one stimulant can effect without the other, we are more nearly in a condition to judge the amount of its efficacy where it is in operation together with the other.