scious, and the political annihilation, which they well know would be the consequence of their ejection from power, are the stimulants which drive them to those desperate expedients to which no sane men could have recourse but under the influence of a despairing and an almost phrenetic exasperation. Let the nation, therefore, be prepared to see all the resources of the monarchy employed for its own undoing. England is, this moment, without any efficient government. Those who occupy the places of a ministry, are incapable either of advancing the public weal, or of carrying those legislative measures by which it might be seriously endangered. They are, in fact, wholly intent upon the means of securing themselves in power, and they care not to what expedients they may have recourse, for the purpose of increasing and multiplying the number of their adherents; and desperate and apparently hopeless as is the condition to which they have been reduced, it will cost them a hard struggle, with the means still at their disposal, before they gratify the wishes of the nation by retiring from the public councils. Let, therefore, the nation be up and doing in the great contest which is now going on, and in which is involved neither more nor less than national ruin, or national safety. Let the registries be diligently attended to. Let nothing be left undone which may enable the public to form a just appreciation of their present rulers, and afford them an insight into the probable consequences of suffering them any longer to hold the reins of power. Let sound principle be disseminated, by which plain and honest men may be instructed in their public duties, and made to feel the heavy responsibility which rests upon them, as the depositories of political power. Let this be done wisely and sedulously, and we will answer for the result. The country will be taken out of its difficulties. Tranquillity and prosperity will visit us again. Let these precautionary meaBures be neglected, and not all the contempt and execration with which her majesty's ministers are at present regarded, can prevent them working our signal ruin.

We have said that the present contest is between the finalists and the anti-finalists; but it would be wrong so to define the parties who are at this moment at issue respecting all that we hold most dear. The real parties

are, the religious and the irreligious, or the anti-religious, portions of the people. Our readers will bear us witness, that when the revolution of '32 was accomplished, we did not even then despair of the fortunes of the country; and they will also hold in mind that our hopes of ultimate deliverance from democratic tyranny were founded upon our conviction of the beneficial effects which must have been produced upon the characters of Englishmen by being a Bible-reading and a Gospel-hearing people for three hundred years. This it was which constituted the specific difference between them and the people of France, from which we argued that there would be a restraining and modifying principle at work in the one case, which was not to be found in the other; and the absence of which it was that caused almost all the crime and all the misery of the French revolution. Nor have we been disappointed. Nobly, already, have the religious people of England manifested their worthiness of free institutions, by discriminating between the liberty and the licentiousness of the people; and on the late occasion, when a disposition betrayed itself on the part of the constituted authorities to pollute, by a latitudinarian education grant, the wellspring of the nation's moral life, the project has been met by a burst of execration by which any but the present desperate men would have been daunted.

We repeat, therefore, that the heart of the nation is sound. The spirit of Christianity has arrested the progress of revolution. It is, however, right to add, that if we would be finally saved, much must be done to increase and to multiply the means of spiritual instruction, that the people may not be left without an internal preservative against the contagion of those pestilent doctrines which are disseminated with such malevolent eagerness by the archpropagators of infidelity and sedition. What is the sum which would be necessary to put the church into a state of efficiency which might enable it to act upon the whole of our population, compared with the blessed effects, even humanly considered, of which such an expenditure must be productive? The state has sinned too long in neglecting this its bounden duty; and the consequence has been a spread of profligacy and infidelity which it is frightful to contemplate: especially in the vici

nity of the large manufacturing districts, which furnish audiences for the pestilent agitators, who have their own ends to serve in availing themselves of popular ignorance and discontent, to disturb the settled relations of society, and cause the overthrow of the most ancient and venerable of our institutions. Let an inquiry be made into the number of church-going men who belong to the Chartists, by whom Bir mingham, within the last few days, has been reduced to a condition worse than that of any city which the Duke of Wellington ever saw taken by storm, and it will be found how very small the proportion is to the whole mass; nor is it possible to avoid the conclusion, that if the church had been well and wisely administered, and enabled to keep pace with the growing population, an influence for good would have gone forth by which all the efforts of the emissaries of sedition would have been counteracted.

But that is just the course which it would not suit the purposes of the present ministers to pursue. The good and the wise are against them; and it would not, therefore, answer their purpose to strengthen the hands of the good and the wise. No. They must by all means ratify their alliance with the political dissenters, (by whom alone, in conjunction with O'Connell and the Irish priests, they have hitherto been enabled to defy the moral indignation of the people of England,) by lending themselves to a project which, while it cripples and disparages the church, introduces a taint of latitudinarianism and infidelity into the education of the people.

We have before us a tract, entitled "An Address and Remonstrance to her Majesty the Queen, on the imminent danger and perilous consequences of her Majesty's late measures, particularly that of having committed, and continuing to commit, the government of the empire to a ministry who avow that they have lost the confidence of the public;" and we can truly say that we have perused it with deep satisfaction. It is obviously the production of a most able man, of well-stored mind and mature experience, and may be most advantageously studied by any one who desires fully to understand the present most anomalous position of the British empire. The writer handles his topics with the fearless spirit of one to whom truth is paramount to all other

considerations, and uses towards his royal mistress a tone of bold and honest expostulation, which, were it permitted to reach her ear, could scarcely fail to awaken her to her own and her country's danger.

to

"It is in this hope only that I commit paper the few following observations on matters which it most nearly concerns your Majesty to make the daily and nightly occupation of your thoughts. They may not be so pleasant to you as the chuckling mirth of your First Lord of the Treasury, or the fawning frivolity of the Irish ex-Viceroy; but be assured they will, if they reach you, and be suffered to produce their intended and natural effect, afford more substantial "comfort" to your coming years than the gossip, the intrigue, or the slanders on Tory statesmen, administered by any or all of the accomplished corps of bedchamber."

your

The new education project is that against which the writer chiefly directs his attack; and he shows, to our minds, with great force and clearness, that the coronation oath should have interposed an insurmountable barrier to the introduction of a scheme, which, under the pretext of liberality, is neither more nor less than a covert attack upon the national religion.

"The alleged object of the measure is to establish a plan of general education for youth of all religious persuasions, without reference or preference to any particular religious description. And this education is to be provided by the public purse.

"Now, there are some things upon which all parties agree upon which even your bedchamber ladies could give you safe counsel; without reference even to the learned Marchioness of Normanby!

"Ist. That all sound education implies or comprehends religious instruction.

"2d. That religious instruction is properly to be taught or given by the clergy of the church to which the pupil belongs.

"3d. That by the plan proposed, or in contemplation, religious instruction, as well as literary, shall be provided for the pupils to be educated by this ministerial measure.

"4th. That the religious instruction thus given by the clergy of each religious denomination, as well as the respective secular masters, shall be remunerated out of the public fund. If it were not so, the project as to education must fail in the

outset,

"It follows from these admitted facts,

that there must in effect be, under this novel project, as many religious establishments as there are creeds acknowledged by, or as there may be persons of different religious denominations educated in, the schools under this newly-devised mode of giving religious information; for, what is a religious establishment but the payment by the state of religious teachers for the public teaching of either the adults or the youth of such particular denomination? And here it is distinctly admitted that the clergy or teachers of all denominations in those projected schools must be paid for their services-their religious services! Under this system, therefore, no matter what the creed may be, or by whom the clergy may be chosen, if they be admitted to teach, and be paid by the public for teaching, in the necessary matter of religion, they are, ipso facto, on a religious establishment, pro tanto, of the empire. If the teaching clergy are not to be paid for religious instruction, then as to such religious instruction it is a bubble-a fallacy as undoubtedly no clergy will devote their time thus for nothing: if ever the maxim were true that no money, no paternoster,' this is that case.

"How many hundred denominations and sub-denominations may thus be led eventually to offer themselves, it is, a priori, impossible to say; but whoever they may be, this at least is indisputable, that this measure affords a premium-a stimulus to the interminable multiplication of sects! Among them must be reckoned, not merely the acknowledged and various respectable Dissenting congregations and Christian sects of every denomination, but even the ridiculously absurd and impious disciples of Mrs. Johanna Southcote herself, if they seek education, &c. &c. &c. Judaism too must or may be established; nay, synagogues prepared for that worship. Why not Pa ganism itself, under the restored dominion of the classical deities, whose thrones we were taught to believe had been everted by the religion of Christ! but which we have historical evidence to prove were reestablished by more than one or two of the Roman emperors, though they again fell-perhaps to be now again raised by your Majesty's liberal whig cabinet !

"Laying aside for the present the obvious mischief and incongruity of having Popery, Protestantism, and all religions equally taught and promoted in the same schools, and under the same establishment, can your Majesty overlook the danger of thus establishing Popery and its gross superstitions, its hatred to England, to its religion, and its liberties-none of which could, or ever can, subsist with the usurping, the

intolerant, the persecuting, and enslaving temper of the Popish priesthood and doctrines? Are we to have, not only Popery spreading, as it now does, so rapidly, by the agency of monks and friars of every name and hue; but are we to have an hot-bed for it, of orthodox temperature, in every parish-maintained at the public expense of the empire to cherish, and cultivate, and sublimate its deadly malice against the free institutions of Protestant England! to foment its inherent and never-dying treason against the Protestant people, who abhor its deceits, and against a Protestant sovereign, who is sworn to maintain the adverse Protestant faith!"

This is sound, constitutional language; and her Majesty will yet find (may she do so before it is too late,) that one such counsellor is more worthy of confidence than all her bedchamber advisers. Nor is this writer less plain, or less forcible, in the following strictures upon the cabinet juggle, by which the nation was tantalized by a prospect of good government, which ended so strangely in mockery and disappoint

ment.

"I begin by recalling your attention to that first constitutional maxim, viz. :That the sovereign of this free nation is placed in that high station, not that his particular interests, or his peculiar comforts or pleasures, should be promoted or secured, but those of the public;' and that, therefore, on the plainest principle of reason and common sense, the petty, personal, perhaps imaginary conveniences or comforts of the prince should never in the mind of an honest sovereign be purchased at the price of a great public evil to the community. Let me, then, compare this maxim with recent events, in which your Majesty has borne so very important a part, and one which, I am sorry to say, cannot upon recollection afford any pleasure either to your Majesty's friends or to yourself. Let me, therefore, but shortly abstract the incidents of the two unfortunate days in which your Majesty, either hastily of your own motion, or by the advice of your confidants, no friends to our country or to you, accepted the voluntary resignation of one set of ministers because they had lost, (and avowed it,) the confidence of your subjects—and called other statesmen to your confidence, empowering them to select a ministry for you, but whom afterwards, and within the course of one natural day, you dismissed, and immediately recalled to your councils the abdicating ministers of course to govern WITHOUT the confidence of your subjects!