belonging to the immediate executive: 100l. per annum to a Maltese, to enable him to keep a gilt carriage, will satisfy him, where an Englishman must have 2000l.

CAMBRIDGE PETITION TO ADMIT DISSENTERS.

THERE are, to my grief, the names of some men to the Cambridge petition for admission of the Dissenters to the University, whose cheeks, I think, must have burned with shame at the degrading patronage and befouling eulogies of the democratic press, and at seeing themselves used as the tools of the open and rancorous enemies of the church. How miserable to be held up for the purpose of inflicting insult upon men, whose worth and ability and sincerity you well know,—and this by a faction banded together like obscene dogs and cats and serpents, against a church which you profoundly revere ! The time-the time-the occasion and the motive ought to have been argument enough, that, even if the measure were right or harmless in itself, not now, nor with such as these, was it to be effected!

May 3, 1834.

CORN LAWS.

THOSE Who argue that England may safely depend upon a supply of foreign corn, if it grow none or an insufficient quantity of its own, forget that they are subjugating the necessaries of life itself to the mere luxuries or comforts of society. Is it not certain that the price of corn abroad will be raised upon us as soon as it is once known that we must buy?—and when that fact is known, in what sort of a situation shall we be? Besides this, the argument supposes that agriculture is not a positive good to the nation, taken in and by itself, as a mode of existence for the people, which supposition is false and pernicious; and if we are to become a great horde of manufacturers, shall we not, even more than at present, excite the ill-will of all the manufacturers of other nations? It has been already shown, in evidence which is before all the world, that some of our manufacturers have acted upon the accursed principle of deliberately injuring foreign manufacturers, if they can, even to the ultimate disgrace of the country and loss to themselves.

May 19, 1834.

CHRISTIAN SABBATH.

How grossly misunderstood the genuine character of the Christian sabbath, or Lord's day, seems to be even by the church! To confound it with the Jewish sabbath, or to rest its observance upon the fourth commandment, is, in my judgment, heretical, and would so have been considered in the primitive church. That cessation from labour on the Lord's day could not have been absolutely incumbent on Christians for two centuries after Christ, is apparent; because during that period the greater part of the Christians were either slaves or in official situations under Pagan masters or superiors, and had duties to perform for those who did not recognize the day. And we know that St. Paul sent back Onesimus to his master, and told every Christian slave, that, being a Christian, he was free in his mind indeed, but still must serve his earthly master, although he might laudably seek for his personal freedom also. If the early Christians had refused to work on the Lord's day, rebellion and civil war must have been the immediate consequences. is no intimation of any such cessation.

But there

The Jewish sabbath was commemorative of the termination of the great act of creation; it was to record that the world had not been from eternity, nor had arisen as a dream by itself, but that God had created it by distinct acts of power, and that he had hallowed the day or season in which he rested or desisted from his work. When our Lord arose from the dead, the old creation was, as it were, superseded, and the new creation then began; and therefore the first day and not the last day, the commencement and not the end, of the work of God was solemnized.

Luther, in speaking of the good by itself, and the good for its expediency alone, instances the observance of the Christian day of rest,—a day of repose from manual labour, and of activity in spiritual labour,-a day of joy and co-operation in the work of Christ's creation. "" 'Keep it holy"-says he-" for its use' sake, both to body and soul! But if any where the day is made holy for the mere day's sake,-if any where any one sets up its observance upon a Jewish foundation, then I order you to work on it, to ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it-to do any thing that shall reprove this encroachment on the Christian spirit and liberty."

The early church distinguished the day of Christian rest so strongly from a fast, that it was unlawful for a man to bewail even his own sins, as such only, on that day. He was to bewail the sins of all, and to pray as one of the whole of Christ's body.

And the English Reformers evidently took the same view of the day as Luther and the early church. But, unhappily, our church, in the reigns of James and Charles the First, was so identified with the undue advancement of the royal prerogative, that the puritanical Judaizing of the Presbyterians was but too well seconded by the patriots of the nation, in resisting the wise efforts of the church to prevent the incipient alteration in the character of the day of rest. After the Restoration, the bishops and clergy in general adopted the view taken and enforced by their enemies.

By the by, it is curious to observe, in this semi-infidel and Malthusian Parliament, how the Sabbatarian spirit unites itself with a rancarous hostility to that one institution, which alone, according to reason and experience, can insure the continuance of any general religion at all in the nation at large. Some of these gentlemen, who are for not letting a poor labouring man have a dish of baked potatoes on a Sunday, religionis gratia - (God forgive that audacious blasphemy!)—are foremost among those who seem to live but in vilifying, weakening, and impoverishing the national church. I own my indignation boils over against such contemptible fellows.

I sincerely wish to preserve a decent quiet on Sunday. I would prohibit compulsory labour, and put down operas, theatres, &c., for this plain reason—that if the rich be allowed to play, the poor will be forced, or, what comes to the same thing, will be induced, to work. I am not for a Paris Sunday. But to stop coaches, and let the gentleman's carriage run, is monstrous.

May 25, 1834.

HIGH PRIZES AND REVENUES OF THE CHURCH.

YOUR argument against the high prizes in the church might be put strongly thus :-Admit that in the beginning it might have been fairly said, that some eminent rewards ought to be set apart for the purpose of stimulating and rewarding transcendent merit; what have you to say now, after centuries of experience to the contrary?-Have the high prizes been given to the highest genius, virtue, or learning? Is it not rather the truth, as Jortin said, that twelve votes in a contested election will do more to make a man a bishop than an admired commentary on the twelve minor prophets? -To all which and the like I say again, that you ought not to reason from the abuse, which may be rectified, against the inherent

uses of the thing. Appoint the most deserving—and the prize will answer its purpose. As to the bishops' incomes,-in the first place, the net receipts-that which the bishops may spend-have been confessedly exaggerated beyond measure; but, waiving that, and allowing the highest estimate to be correct, I should like to have the disposition of the episcopal revenue in any one year by the late or the present Bishop of Durham, or the present Bishops of London or Winchester, compared with that of the most benevolent nobleman in England of any party in politics. I firmly believe that the former give away in charity of one kind or another, public, official, or private, three times as much in proportion as the latter. You may have a hunks or two now and then; but so you would much more certainly, if you were to reduce the incomes to £2,000 per annum. As a body, in my opinion the clergy of England do in truth act as if their property were impressed with a trust to the utmost extent that can be demanded by those who affect, ignorantly or not, that lying legend of a tripartite or quadripartite division of the tithe by law.

May 31, 1834.

SIR C. WETHERELL'S SPEECH.-NATIONAL CHURCH.-DISSENTERS.

PAPACY.-UNIVERSITIES.

I THINK Sir Charles Wetherell's speech before the Privy Council very effective. I doubt if any other lawyer in Westminster Hall could have done the thing so well.

The National Church requires, and is required by, the Christian Church, for the perfection of each. For if there were no national Church, the mere spiritual Church would either become, like the Papacy, a dreadful tyranny over mind and body;—or else would fall abroad into a multitude of enthusiastic sects, as in England in the seventeenth century. It is my deep conviction that, in a country or any religion at all, liberty of conscience can only be permanently preserved by means and under the shadow of a national Church-a political establishment connected with, but distinct from, the spiritual Church.

I sometimes hope that the rabid insolence and undisguised despotism of temper of the Dissenters may at last awaken a jealousy in the laity of the Church of England. But the apathy and inertness are, I fear, too profound-too providential.

The

Whatever the Papacy may have been on the Continent, it was always an unqualified evil to this country. It destroyed what was rising of good, and introduced a thousand evils of its own. Papacy was and still is essentially extra-national;-it affects, temporally, to do that which the spiritual Church of Christ can alone do-to break down the natural distinctions of nations. Now, as the Roman Papacy is in itself local and peculiar, of course this attempt is nothing but a direct attack on the political independence of other nations.

The institution of Universities was the single check on the Papacy. The Pope always hated and maligned the Universities. The old cœnobitic establishments of England were convertedperverted, rather-into monasteries and other monking receptacles. You see it was at Oxford that Wicliffe alone found protection and encouragement.

June 2, 1834.

SCHILLER'S VERSIFICATION.-GERMAN BLANK Verse. SCHILLER'S blank verse is bad. He moves in it as a fly in a glue bottle. His thoughts have their connection and variety, it is true, but there is no sufficiently corresponding movement in the verse. How different from Shakspeare's endless rhythms!

There is a nimiety—a too-muchness-in all Germans. It is the national fault. Lessing had the best notion of blank verse. The trochaic termination of German words renders blank verse in that language almost impracticable. We have it in our dramatic hendecasyllable; but then we have a power of interweaving the iambic close ad libitum.

June 14, 1834.

ROMAN CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION.-DUKE of WellinGTON.—
CORONATION OATH.

THE Roman Catholic Emancipation Act-carried in the violent, and, in fact, unprincipled manner it was-was in effect a Surinam toad; and the Reform Bill, the Dissenters' admission to the Universities, and the attack on the Church, are so many toadlets, one after another detaching themselves from their parent brute.

If you say there is nothing in the Romish religion, sincerely felt,