tation Act, the harbinger of deep injury to the Church Establishment. The old ditty says, "I am well, so I'll keep ;" but the farmer's song, set to his landlord's tune, reversed the sober moral of the maxim, foolishly vociferating, "I am well, so I'll kick" and kicked at last he has with a vengeance.

We might here ask why the Secretary of State appoints two, and the Archbishop of Canterbury only one, of these Commissioners. We know the great difference of political, and indeed of religious, sentiment probably in these opposite parties, and we know to what it leads; that it urges one on to the salvation, and the other to the destruction, of the Church; for no attack upon its revenues can have any other effect, or even design, than its ruin.

This disparity in the appointment of these Commissioners is the more remarkable, when we recollect that the opinion of our late lamented Sovereign WILLIAM IV. was known to be so favourable to the Established Church, that he did not consider it as needing any 66 very material reform;" that he thought the rulers of that church abundantly “able and willing" to introduce such reform; and that these opinions were so solemnly recorded, in language now, alas! rendered doubly mournful and doubly dear to us. "I cannot expect that I shall be very long in this world.* It is under this impression that I tell you, that while I know that the law of the land considers it impossible that I should do wrong that while I know that there is no earthly

* See the Declaration of his late most gracious Majesty, on the 28th of May, 1834, to the Prelates of the United Church of England and Ireland. See and ponder upon it; and remember how these wretched ministers are acting upon so invaluable a document; how they are prophaning that church, her clergy, and her revenues, which it was his Majesty's first and last wish to revere.

power which can call me to account-this only makes me the more deeply sensible of the responsibility under which I stand to the Almighty Being, before whom we must all one day appear. When

that day shall come, you will know whether I am sincere in the declaration which I now make of firm attachment to the Church and resolution to maintain it."

Had our Whig Government, alive but to place and power-place which they have constantly degraded, and power which they have generally abused-had they been more observant of these generous feelings of their Sovereign, we should never have been contaminated by such a sacrilegious Act as this, nor would that Sovereign have been compelled to sanction a measure which, in his heart-judging from the tenor of this noble and christian address he must sincerely have abhorred; a measure that will be found to make good hardly one of its professions for "an adequate compensation for tithes," or for the amendment, in any shape, of the Old Law, which, neither caring about its origin, nor understanding its operation, nor adverting to its mercy, it has thus, with true whig effrontery, at once ventured to abolish.

CLAUSE IV.

Power to appoint and remove Assistant Commissioners, Secretary, Assistant Secretary, Clerks, and other Officers.

From this, and from what I can see in the following Clauses, it seems likely that nearly the whole of the practical part of this sorry business will be conducted by these assistant commissioners, and thus the church and her clergy be altogether in the hands of a whig conclave; and as two out of the

three of these primary commissioners may be presumed to be of the true liberal spirit of our intellectual times, they will of course take care to select their associates from the same genuine bed of patriotism, We may therefore easily divine what sort of treatment, with a majority of two to one, we are likely to receive from these admirers of the new School of

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Reform-these peculiarly sincere friends of the

establishment."

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And, to make this majority properly available, these assistant commissioners, secretaries, clerks, &c. may be removed from their employment at pleasure; thus nipping in the bud the manifestation of any undue disposition to conservative tampering. The selection of a counter Commissioner by the Archbishop, is, I think, reduced nearly to a nullity; for this whig majority, overmastering every reason and carrying every question, gives the exact footing of Archimedes with the power to move the world. is, in fact, no other than a mockery of justice, thus to delude the public with the mere external form of it, while they will never probably let go the reins for one moment, but, in spite of opposition, confine all its internal movements to themselves. Where is the difference, for efficient purposes, between having one conservative commissioner and none at all? That he may produce stronger reasons for any particular mode of conduct, and far stronger; that he may even convict his opponents of real weakness in their arguments, real injustice in their proceedings, I can readily believe; but what will they care for stronger reasons with a majority too powerful for all the reasons in the world? See we not daily the insane measures they carry in our Republican House of Commons in the very teeth of the most tremendously crushing arguments brought against them?

CLAUSE X.

Commissioners or Assistant Commissioners may summon and examine witnesses-and call for returns, books, &c. --no person required to travel more than ten miles.

These Commissioners, whose power in certain respects is very great, are a sort of middle men, standing between the Whig Legislators and our insulted Church; something like breakers to receive the first shock of the waves. Their constrained conduct, however, under their instructions, must be kept distinct from their honourable bearing in private life. That this power they are invested with is in subservience to the will of their whig lords and masters is no comfort to us. An appeal from the fox to the wolf would be anything but an appeal of common sense.

These Commissioners, it seems, may demand our books, deeds, writings, &c. To this, as Clergymen, we cannot object, if they be as severely called for from, and as faithfully produced by, the opposite party. To be sure, it is rather a new thing to compel us to furnish the rope by which, whether land or tithe owners, we may chance to be strangled; to bid them produce the ground of a modus that probably never had an inch of ground since the reign of RICHARD I.-Still, if the production of these documents be mutually faithful, and our whig land owners have as right good a will to "go the whole hog" in honesty as in other politic contrivances, I see not why such production should not be mutually beneficial.

Of this, however, I have, I confess, a lingering doubt or so; for something like a hole appears to be left, through which, with a little management, a pure minded whig landlord may very comfortably creep out, and with no stain upon his honour. For as I understand the instructions,they seem to run thus:

A witness may be summoned before these Commissioners to give important evidence, and to produce his valuable records, clearing up every difficulty, dispelling every doubt, and thus serving the noble cause of truth and justice, provided he live within ten miles of the spot. But if he happen, unluckily, to be eleven miles removed from the scene of action, he may quietly keep at home and produce never a document in the world, however lustily, in the feelings of their integrity, they may be, one and all, crying out for it. This is my poor conjecture, but I surely never can be correct in it, for, if I am, degrades justice into a very scare-crow, and reduces whig legislation to mere paper and pack-thread. If to get at the real value of the tithe had been their aim, why did not the Act make the production of these documents imperative? why did it not pay the expences of these eleven-mile men out of the consolidated fund; out of the fund which reimburses services not a fiftieth part so creditable or so necessary?

CLAUSE XVI.

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Agent may be appointed by power of Attorney to carry Provisions of Act into execution-Principal bound by acts of such Agents-Form of Power.

It were to be wished that these enactments were made so plain and simple that "he who runs might read" them; but they are generally incumbered with such a profusion of technicalities, that I am afraid we must have a lawyer at our elbow to enable us to decipher them. It is indeed too probable that much of our business must now come into their hands. Hitherto we have, many of us, found our comfort in avoiding all appeals to this formidable tribunal, and, as far as possible, all connection with it. We have been able to transact our own business tolerably well, and far more to our mind than any solicitor,

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