of which they will inevitably in the long run find themselves the dupes. The time will surely come when they will rue their illgotten spoils; when they will repent having added to their inheritance that which, like a moth fretting a garment, will secretly consume both.

"Turno tempus erit, magno cum optaverit emptum

Intactum Pallanta, et cum Spolia ista diemque

Oderit."

Let them, then, turn a deaf ear to the revolutionary Jezebel, and cease to hanker after Naboth's vineyard; and ere they offer "to give the worth of it in money," let them ponder on the issue of the first forcible commutation upon record.

"Thus saith the Lord, Hast thou killed and also taken possession? in the place, where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine."

It requires not the mantle of Elijah to enable us to strike the parable home. Let the landed interest rest assured, that this reasoning or that argument, which, like so many intellectual guns, are planted against the bulwark of the Church, is a batterie en écharpe to their cost, and will no sooner have forced a passage into the ecclesiastical strongholds, than the mask will be withdrawn, and the same artillery be turned in full play upon their intrenchments. But it may be said, the Church has suffered judgment to go against her by default. The readers of our REVIEW doubtless know better. Rather has she by implication declined the Commons' jurisdiction as a judge, and challenged the competence of her parliamentary foes to sit on the inquest of her quantum meruit. She might address the legislative tribunal in the language of Queen Katherine

"I do believe,

Induced by potent circumstances, that

You are mine enemy, and make my challenge.
You shall not be my judge."

And waiving the injustice, and consequently the impolicy as between the landlord and incumbent, we have yet to learn in what way the nation at large will reap benefit by weakening her Episcopal Establishment, which may be well termed the child and champion of religious freedom. The members of every other profession being amply remunerated, are held in commensurate respect, and the Church can ill afford to fall into that relative disrepute, which a state of poverty is sure to entail upon an individual, or any corporate body in Great Britain, and that without regard to their intrinsic worth.

In most countries in Europe it is, comparatively speaking, of little import to the helpfulness of the Clergy, and their holy embassage withal, how they happen to be paid. Merit and

virtue, intellectual qualifications, and those which, emanating from the heart, are of higher desert, are not on the continent invariably deferred to riches, or the appearance of riches. But in Great Britain, on the other hand, the influence of Mammon is paramount to every other consideration. Here every man's account is in his ledger, as if it were the book of Divine remembrance. Whatever his proper intelligence or virtues, to be known to abound in "the root of all evil," will assuredly constitute his strongest claim to estimation with the multitude.

"He that hath coin," saith Ben Jonson, "hath all perfection else." The noblest objects being of a more subtle and spiritual nature, like "fair Portia's Counterfeit," in the leaden casket, avoid the notice of our gross sense, and are passed by undiscerned. On the continent, where men cannot all be money dealers, if they would, the light of wisdom, like the judgment of Bassanio, will penetrate into the retirements of true excellency, and

"choose meagre lead,

Which rather threaten'st than dost promise aught."

Amongst us," to increase by little and little"-to scrape and scramble for useless pelf, until we prosper, is the sole criterion of merit; and the generality are somehow incapable of entertaining any other notion of success than that, which, albeit of the most sordid and sorry kind, is palpable enough. It is the consideration of this worldly-mindedness, entering as it does into every ramification of society, being at the same time a cause and a consequence, deeply indented in the habits, and we might almost say commercial instincts of the English people, which furnishes one of the strongest arguments, with us, against dispropertying the Ministers of the Church of England of a single shilling of their lawful incomes. On the continent such a step were, humanly speaking, a matter of indifference one way or the other; but in Great Britain it will be found to affect the true and best interests of the Clergy, by loosening their hold upon the reverence of the higher and middle classes of the community; and will so far militate against their efficiency in the pulpit and the reading desk, and weaken the authority of their unobtrusive example in private life. Stripped of their revenues, they lose cast, which signifies a derogation from their credit and respectability, whereby religion herself would become contemptible. Their ministry would turn out ineffectual, and parents would soon cease to put themselves to a great expense in qualifying their sons for a profession, which no longer commanded the regard of mankind, or was looked up to with sentiments of deference. The sequel, which forces itself upon our apprehension, were in more respects than one pregnant with evils. But this is a subject which we may hereafter embrace an opportunity to handle more at large. We would here rather take a philosophic view of the question, and draw the reader's attention to the "unrighteousness," as

Archbishop Tillotson would call it, of sponging out, what is verily and indeed a national debt, by withholding that kind of continual tribute, whereby we do acknowledge God's dominion; nay, if it were only on the score of what futurity asks at our hands, we should shrink from the idea of impoverishing the National Establishment. We are bound to evince our gratitude by our well-doing for the well-being handed down to us by our predecessors. We owe to them, as an act of piety, to throw forward the blessings we have inherited, on those who are to succeed us. Now, since we do not look for the end of the world in our time, what shall we profit, AS A NATION, in bereaving our posterity of the reversion of preferments, and allowing landowners to foreclose property, as the case heretofore stood, essentially circulative, and which, by the beneficent founders of our Church, was invested by the Almighty, and, once rescued from the ordinary course of descent, was meant to provide for the perpetuity of religion, and to be severed, to the end of time, from secular to eternal uses? *

It was the destined hire of the labourer in the Christian vineyard to the end of the world; in some sort the hereditary income of our children's children throughout all generations,... of our sons who may hereafter enter the Church, and of our daughters who might be wedded to gentlemen in holy orders. And what an admirable institution is the consecration of a tithe of the predial commodities of the country to holy uses!... the establishment in every direction of a nucleus of virtue, refinement, and religion! What a contemplation for the philanthropist,... for the man who believes in the gradual advancement, the progressive amelioration of our common humanity;...who looks forward to that diminution of evil in the world, which human wisdom and divine religion both authorize us to expect, is that of the ten thousand parish churches, wherein even the unlettered imbibe a faith in their immortality, and acquire a knowledge of the Great First Cause, beyond the reach of the most sanguine philosophy of Greece and Rome ... a trust and an assurance, which mocked the aspirations of Plato, and eluded the calm investigation of Tully.

And after our wise and pious ancestors have devoted through all time a portion of their property to such invaluable purposes, to the continuous agency of a Christian establishment... to the formation of an everlasting bulwark... a Torres Vedras, where the human soul can retire upon lines, impregnable to the assault of sin and Satan, shall we play booty against ourselves? Shall we "blot our names from books of memory," and rase, at the bidding of the enemy, those bastions, which were taken possession of, or

"We have given unto God, both for us and for our heirs for ever." -Mag. Char. c. 1.

erected for his amazement and overthrow? So far from aiding and abetting in such short-sighted sacrilege, it would show sense in the legislature to multiply the benefices throughout the British dominions, to emulate the piety of by-gone ages, to carry it out into full efficiency, and sanctify our mushroom prosperity, by going along with such benefactors of their race as the Dukes of Northumberland and Portland, and other charitable individuals whose names are registered in heaven. It would evince more wisdom, to build churches in every direction, not only in the metropolis, not only in the teeming manufacturing districts, but in the numerous godless destitute localities all over the kingdom, and to endow them for the inculcation of the truths of Christianity... for the redemption of childhood and of poverty... for the enlightenment of the hovel and the workshop: nay, if it were possible, without a crime, to wrest every acre in the empire from the gripe of the present proprietaries, who hold their estates under no obligation to further even the mundane welfare of their fellow-heirs of righteousness, leave alone that which centres in the brighter realities of heaven: ... If the whole territory could be apportioned and parcelled out in sacred, and moral, and learned, and scientific endowments, each indeed affording an emolument to the beneficiary, but which, so far from being a sinecure, should be so settled as to necessitate the performance of certain unfailing duties, would not the British character be exalted? Would not our fellow-subjects be humanized, and raised in the scale of civilization? Would not their immortal souls be instructed to salvation? And yet so wicked or so weak are individuals amongst us, that they seek to bring back to base and sabbathless uses the Deposita Pietatis,* even the attenuated patrimony, that for more than one thousand years has been set apart by the State, for the weal, not only temporal but eternal, of uncounted millions-and mainly for the reclamation of the peasantry and operatives all over the land; and so has been diverted from secular issues to the service of the Most High. We have morally, and righteously, and legally, in token of thankfulness for the great bounties that we at his hands receive, resigned all claim on certain endowments and commodities. God alone hath property in them. "While it was whole, it was wholly thine," said St. Peter; but that time has gone by. Non videntur rem amittere, quibus propria non fuit. The nation are left trustees, to see that ecclesiastical hereditaments be not put to any secular purposes whatsoever,-that God's mercies be not openly or indirectly requited with rapine and pillage. If, wanton with fulness of bread, this solemn trust be violated, and the bowels of the Church be ripped open for her golden eggs, a heavy load of guilt will be upon the nation, which, like the vices

* Tertul. Apologet. c. 30.

of an individual, will surely draw on at last, in necessary consequence, a judgment from on high. "Will a man spoil God?" asked the Prophet.* Will he not be warned what it is, voopioarta, "to keep back part of the price?"-(Acts v. 3.) νοσφίσασθαι, to clip that coin which hath on it his mark? The Jews were wont to name their tithes the HEDGE of their riches, Divitiarum sepes decima; and we are persuaded, that where we do not cheerlessly spill our gifts in the bringing,† it is the same in Christendom, even unto this day. "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing. Ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of Hosts." Mal. iii. 10, 12. Is this a delusion from the Almighty, or rather does it not square with the suggestions of our own hearts? Is not the perpetuity of the promise involved in its very enunciation? What if only a tithe of the product of the soil had been reserved for the rentage of the landlord; and the remainder, put out to usury for posterity, had been devised throughout all generations to spiritual purposes? Might not such a sanctification of the bounty of the Almighty have regenerated this lost and perverse people? The farmer, or cultivators in the case we imagine, would, in point of fact, pay their rent to the clergy; and if some bad feeling, incident to human infirmity, (quam humana parum cavit natura,) did betray itself at having to hand over a commutative subsistence to the lazy landlord, we could scarcely wonder at it. The farmer, notwithstanding the tithe being abated in the stipulation of his lease, would, doubtless, inveigh against the drone of a landlord for exacting a tenth part of the product of his farm, and thereby preventing him from working the poorer soils; necessitating a diminution, greater or less, in his outlay upon others, and in the event materially affecting his gains. In vain would the landlord attempt to show, that what the other alleged was nothing but an accident of the system, and, perhaps, offer henceforth to drop all claim to the additional surplus produce, which otherwise the preference of his demand might hinder being called into existence. The cultivator would still hold forth against the landlord, being of opinion that he did nothing whatsoever to deserve his gettings; and might not improbably close his complaint by instituting some illiberal comparison between the landlord and the parson. The former, he might say, holds his heritage by no obligation to contribute to the happiness, secular or spiritual, of his tenantry and vassals. He may be, and often is, the most uncharitable of beings, and a persecutor of those

*Malachi.

+ Nemo libenter dedit, quod non accepit, sed expressit.-Sen. de Benef. lib. i. c. 1.