reigns past. He used to preside personally over the deliberations of the Privy Council; but since the first Georges, who did not know the English language, the monarch has not been present at all, except in that vague sense in which he is supposed by the law to be present in every court of justice.

In former times the taxes granted by Parliament were handed over to the king for civil and military services, besides which he had "Crown lands." By a statute of George III. the Crown lands were virtually restored to the public, and the king acquired the right which the AngloSaxon kings had exercised, of acquiring landed property by purchase, and of bequeathing it by will like a private person. All these incomes from taxes and lands are now merged in a consolidated fund, from which the interest on the National Debt is paid, the salaries of State Ministers, judges, and others; grants to members of the Royal family; and £385,000 to the Queen, which is appropriated in the following manner: -her Majesty's privy purse, £60,000; salaries of her Majesty's household and retired allowances, £131,000; household expenses, £172,500; Royal bounty and special services, £13,200; pensions, £1,200; and miscellaneous, £8,040. The Prince of Wales has also £40,000, and the Princess £10,000, to be increased to £30,000 in case of widowhood.

All the great officers of State, the bishops, judges, and military officers, are appointed by the Sovereign; but, as the Ministry is responsible for their fitness and conduct whilst in office, the selection is placed in their hands, and the Sovereign approves almost as a matter of course. In the far back times the great officers of State were personal servants of the monarch, called the king's dish-thegn, bower-thegn, horse-thegn, &c. The king is also the fountain of honours, all peerages and titles of distinction in the State proceeding from him.

The death of the Sovereign used to occasion the dissolution of Parliament. That being often inconvenient, it was provided that it should be prolonged for six months; but now the death of the Sovereign does not at all affect the continuance of the existing Parliament.

In former times, also, when a king died, he had no successor until one was actually chosen and ecclesiastically anointed; but when the hereditary notion became stronger, and the doctrine arose that "the king never dies," the moment the natural body dies, his mystical or political identity escapes into the natural body of his successor. It is in this ideal or mystical sense that the king is also said to be in every court of justice in the land.

Reference has been made to the idea in the Constitution that the king can do no wrong. Absurd as that may seem, there is a valuable element in it which lies at the foundation of ministerial and responsible government. The king is not supposed to do anything without the

advice of his councillors, and the blame, if any, is made to rest upon them, and they are held responsible.

The law that no action can be raised against the king is based on the theory that all law emanates from him, and therefore no court can have jurisdiction over him. A writer of the seventeenth century, whose unscrupulous ambition led him to seek the king's favour by false flattery of Royal powers, said, "The bonds of subjects to their king should always be wrought out of iron; the bonds of kings unto subjects but with cobwebs." (Raleigh.) Formerly, before Edward I., the king was subject to the ordinary course of law as a common person; but from the time of Henry III. the king has not been so subject. This prerogative would give absolute and irresponsible power over the lives and properties of his subjects, but for a qualifying provision that, if any one has a demand upon him in point of property, the plaintiff may obtain redress by petitioning him for it in his courts of chancery or exchequer; but the petitioner will be told that he receives justice from the king not on compulsion, but as a matter of grace, and he must pray for it and accept it on these terms. This mode of obtaining what is to all essential purposes a right, has been characterised as "nothing more than an unmeaning compliment to the legal fiction it disregards and eludes."

At the same time as this " legal fiction" was created the influence of the king in judicial courts became limited-indeed, his direct influence ceased. The earliest English councils did both judicial and legislative business, and were presided over by the king in person; and it was not till long after the Conquest that the monarchs ceased, occasionally at least, to take part in the proceedings of the law courts along with the appointed judges. Henry III. is said to have done so frequently. Edward III. sat in the king's bench three days together to see how his laws were executed, but seems to have taken no part in the proceedings. James I. also sat there, but was told by the judges that he could not deliver an opinion. It is now an established principle that if the king does attend a court of justice, he has no power to determine any point but by the judges, to whom his judicial authority has been entrusted. Final appeal used to be to the king in the court of his barons, but now it is neither to the king nor Parliament, but her Majesty's Court of Appeal.

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From what has now been stated some understanding may be gathered of terms used to describe the English form of government, as limited Monarchy," and "a Constitutional Government." In the strict sense a monarch is a "sole ruler," the word coming from Monos, alone, and arche, rule; and, as has been said, the empty fictions of lawyers do ascribe to the king even supernatural attributes, and absolute and irresponsible power. But, both by written statute and unwritten custom, the king's power is practically vested in the king's Ministers and Par

liament-the Ministers being responsible to the Parliament and the Parliament to the people, who at every general election assert their own supremacy over both forms and functionaries. Our earliest and our latest times declare and illustrate this grand truth: that kingship and all government exist for the good of the community, and can continue only so long as they secure the confidence of the community.

Fear and suspicion have been stirred up in the minds of many of our countrymen that attempts were being made by high officers of State to make the "legal fiction" of Royal prerogative a regal force. The third volume of the "Life of the Prince Consort" has shown that the reasons for these feelings date further back than the secret "AngloTurkish Treaty" of 1878. The volume and the treaty have together provoked a discussion, the style of which is unfamiliar and startling to most living men, and opens our eyes once more to the fact that the safety and liberty of our country are not guaranteed so long as it is simply an understanding, a moral sense amongst us, that the Royal prerogative shall be exercised only within narrow lines, or in constitutional forms. "A limited monarchy has become a monarchy which may soon need more explicit restraints. . . . . That the country has not been consulted is only part of the whole system of personal government which has lately been patched up partly after German, partly after French, partly after Oriental models." (Daily News, July 11, 1878.) One guarantee of our safety is in such prompt and unmistakable expressions of public opinion as turned the policy of the Government in the autumn of 1876; and in such noble defences of popular liberties as were made in the House of Commons in July and August, 1878, when Mr. Robert Lowe said, "All had been done that could be done to drag royalty into collision with its subjects." "What was the use of deliberating after the decision had been taken, with nothing left but either tamely to yield or be accused of factious opposition?" "Without blaming our ancestors, we had been too confiding, and too long believed that the thing was so improbable as not to differ sensibly from the impossible." And Mr. Gladstone said, "The treaty-making power of the Crown in this country was a great anomaly. It was one of those powers and prerogatives which were endured because used with moderation, and with regard to precedents, to the rights of Parliament, and to the sense and convictions of the people, but which when not so used was intolerable." Inattention to such words as these, and to the honestly-expressed suspicion of a people, is a crime against the State, and breeds revolutior. The oldest and strongest inclinations of a people are not too deeply rooted to be removed or altered; and the only ground on which any system can claim a continuation of existence is that it serves the national will and weal. D. HEATH.

GENERAL CONFERENCE ON MISSIONS.

IN 1860 a General Conference on Missions was held in Liverpool, at which the leading Missionary Societies were represented, and their work and agencies brought under review. For some time it has seemed desirable that another Conference of this kind should be held, as a means of making the Christian Church more fully acquainted with the geographical distribution of Missions, with their successes, prospects, and special needs; and about a year ago the Secretaries of the British Missionary Societies took steps which have resulted in the holding of a Conference in London, in which not only the Missionary Societies of this country, but also those of America and several Continental countries, were represented, the interest and usefulness of the Conference being increased by the presence of a number of Missionaries, either now or formerly working in the foreign field. The Methodist communities were well represented. The Conference was held in the large hall in Mildmay Park, Islington, beginning Monday, October 21st, and ending Friday, the 25th. A verbatim report is to be published, which will be exceedingly valuable and interesting.

In this article we can give only a very condensed account of the proceedings, confining ourselves chiefly to what specially arrested our own attention. A preliminary meeting was held on the Monday evening, but the actual business began on Tuesday morning at half-past ten, Lord Cavan presiding. His lordship read a portion of Acts i.; prayer was offered by the Rev. W. Boyden, President of the United Methodist Free Churches; and the list of delegates read by Dr. Mullens. In the programme of business the territorial arrangement was adopted, which brought the work in Africa first under review. This commenced with the reading of a paper by Dr. E. B. Underhill, Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society, on "Some of the Results of Slave Emancipation." It is now nearly fifty years since slavery was abolished in our West India possessions. The population of the islands at that period was 800,000. Under the frightful influences of slavery, the native population was rapidly passing away. It has now reached 1,039,000. The first settlers were members of the Church of England, and for very long almost nothing was done for the moral and spiritual elevation of the slave. In 1734, however, the Moravians made their first efforts, and were followed in 1778 by the Wesleyans, who commenced work in Antigua, and by the Baptist Missionary Society in Jamaica, in 1814. Freedom at length came, and at once new chapels were built, schools were opened, and strenuous efforts made for the welfare of the liberated slaves. Times of commercial depression followed, and emancipation could not at once eradicate the vices which slavery had fostered; but now the habits of the whole native population have been totally changed for

the better. At present there are in the West India Islands twelve colleges, 1,128 day schools, with 78,600 children, maintained at an actual cost of £38,000. At the places of worship there is an average regular attendance of 250,000 persons. The results are not all that could be desired, but they may surely be regarded with much thankfulness and hope for the future.

Sir T. F. Buxton followed with a paper on Discovery in Africa with regard to Missionary Enterprise." Henry M. Stanley, the finder of Dr. Livingstone, has within the last week been holding crowded audiences in St. James's Hall spell-bound by descriptions of his own recent explorations of the "dark continent." It must not be forgotten, however, that Missionaries-two Missionaries trying to work their way through Africa-gave the impetus to men of science, by means of which the whole continent has been unfolded to us. The old idea of Africa was, that it was little more than a vast desert, an idea which has been dissipated with wonderful rapidity. In giving an account of the work done, and new Missions being commenced on this continent, the writer of the paper specially condemned, in the name of Christianity, all needless collisions with the natives, as likely to make the timid ones hesitate in coming forward, and the bold ones hostile and obnoxious.

After the reading of the papers, speakers were limited to ten minutes, and afterwards to five. Nearly all the speakers were stopped by the inexorable bell, although for some of them it had to ring two or three times. Whilst the Rev. Thornley Smith was narrating his missionary experiences in South Africa, he was interrupted by the entrance of the veteran and venerable Dr. Moffat, whose appearance in the Conference was welcomed with great enthusiasm.

The Rev. Dr. Wanglemann, of Berlin, said by some one near me to be a relative of Prince Bismarck, a fine, benevolent-looking man, gave, in good English, a very interesting account of the work of the Berlin Missionary Society, of which he is Secretary. This Society has fortytwo stations, "covering South Africa," maintained at an annual cost of £12,000. In the last Kaffir war one large tribe was kept back from war against England by the influence of the German Missionaries. The three characteristics of their mission were poverty, caution, and disinterestedness.

The Rev. Dr. White, of the American Missionary Association, and Freedman's Aid Society, bore emphatic testimony to the capacity of the African races for even the higher branches of mental culture. Many of the emancipated slaves make splendid students. "If Africa is to be won for Christ, the black must do it." The agency of this class already trained by the Missionary Societies, is doing "a magnificent work in Western Africa. This people is going to wield, in song and oratory, a wonderful influence on that continent."