same task, and the vote of the one should not be allowed to override the expressed opinion of the other, especially as the York Synod is the more representative of the two in its constitution.

But with regard to the vote of the Southern Province, what has it shown except that the contention of the Ritualists is right? The Ornaments Rubric has been preserved in the most emphatic manner; and the explanations of it given by the Privy Council have been rejected.

If the amended Prayer Book were to become law by consent of Parliament, all other laws to the contrary notwithstanding, the ornaments of the Church and ministers used under authority of Parliament in the second year of Edward the Sixth would be pronounced legal until further order be taken by lawful authority, the minima of ornaments for the minister being a surplice, stole, and hood, with the alternative use of a black gown in preaching. These vestments being used, the other ones shall be retained and be in use, &c., unless a bishop gives a formal monition to the contrary, which monition is a legal document given in open court, and subject, like all other legal sentences, to be appealed against. But over and above all this there is the most important fact that the addition to the Ornaments Rubric only touches the ornaments to be used by the minister, and does not apparently touch the ornaments of the church. Consequently candles, crosses if not crucifixes, wafer bread, incense, banners, thuribles, water cruets for the mixed chalice, &c., are once more placed out of the reach of legal quibbles, having been enjoined by the Rubric beginning And here it is to be noted,' and ending repeal the 24th, 25th, and 58th of the Canons of 1604,' and ratified by the Act which shall enforce this amended book.

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III. The third question at issue between the Anglicans and the Ritualists is, Are the English clergy justified in re-establishing an order of Ritual, however legal, to which the bulk of the nation is opposed, and which exposes the Church to such a convulsion as she is now passing through? It is argued that the Ritualists themselves do not pretend to be able to bring forward any universal rule of Ritual which can be considered as binding on the Church, and, moreover, that the very character of our offices and their divergence from those of Rome have made a new plan of Ritual necessary. In answer to this, the Ritualists reply that modification is not innovation. The offices of the English Church are formed on the same framework as those of the rest of the Catholic Church, her Sacraments are the same, and the order of administering them is only a difference of detail between her and other Churches.

In regard to the main objection that the pressure of Ritual on the Church at the present crisis is subversive of her peace, its defenders answer that they have no choice as to their present duty, nor any doubt but that, in bearing the burden and heat of

the day, they are fulfilling their appointed task, and are doing their best for the Church of the next generation. Every thread of precedent binds the tighter, and makes freedom, or appeal to longlapsed rights, the more difficult. In following a policy of compromise, they deem that they would be binding a heavy burden on the shoulders of the coming generation who, trained by them, will assuredly demand a Ritual in accordance with their Catholic teaching; and that to postpone the contest would result, not in Reformation, but in Revolution.

In an able and interesting article on Ritualism" which appeared in this Review it was assumed that the English Church had ceased to be a branch of the Church Catholic, by reason of that supposititious break in the continuity of its succession which the Romans are never weary of asserting to have taken place. If this were so, if all Anglican and Ritualist alike--who are concerned in the battle which is now being fought to the bitter end, did not believe with an unshaken conviction that the English Church is, by virtue of her Orders and her Sacraments, as true a Branch of the Church of Christ as any other, there would not exist the bond of union, to which we have here appealed, between these two great parties. within the Church. Then indeed would Ritualism be what the Abbé Martin' imagines it to be, a mere vague yearning after communion with the true Church Catholic; then indeed would the position of this Catholicising party in this country be untenable in reason or logic, and the collapse, which the Abbé from his assumed ground predicts, imminent. It is strange that one who has so clearly seen and boldly testified to the extraordinary spiritual power of the Catholic movement in the English Church as to state emphatically that wherever in the heart of the English nation there is any remnant of religious sentiment, it is drawn towards Ritualism,' should not have gone the step further of inquiring whether such a revival, extending over a course of nearly fifty years, could be a moral possibility, were it based on a mere fallacy. However, it is not within the scope of this paper to deal with the Abbé Martin's side of the Ritualistic question; and we must pass on, thanking him for a charity which stands out brightly by the side of the temper manifested by many of his brethren in England.

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Finally, it is urged against the extreme party in the Church, that they are revolutionary in their theories if not in their avowed objects; and that they wish to bring about such an entire change in the government of the Church as this country is neither prepared for, nor desirous of. It may be that some of the prominent members of the party are doctrinaires in the matter of Reform. Assuredly there never was a reformation effected, or even attempted, since history

A Roman Catholic View of Ritualism.' By the Abbé Martin. Nineteenth Century, February 1878.

began, without doctrinairism; and it is often the most high-souled and self-sacrificing members of a party who, in the bitterness of repeated disappointment, commit themselves to unpractical and fatal theories. It must be admitted, however, we think, by candid people, that if, for instance, the disestablishment of the Church has been the object of the Ritualists, they have been, as a party, singularly silent and patient for a long term of years under a form of government which has pressed with a continuous and great weight on them, and almost on them only. But in fact, although the Ritualists are, from the position which they have chosen to occupy, the chief sufferers, the present state of Church legislation is one which all true churchmen must feel to be deplorable, and to be one so opposed to all the instincts of justice-loving Englishmen that, were not the prejudices of all sections arrayed against the Ritualists, reform must ere now have been effected. No churchman can regard without great apprehension the dispensation of power granted to secular judges, who need not necessarily be Churchmen or even Christians, to decide intricate questions of Church doctrine and practice.

Nor again can an undignified spectacle, such as was seen a short time since, be regarded without pain, when a learned judge felt compelled to occupy a considerable portion of his judgments, by endeavouring to prove the authority of his court to be what three other learned judges had decided that it was not. And this too when, in the meantime, the unfortunate clergymen, who deem it to be their duty to refuse acknowledgment to the court in question on the very ground of its authority, may be suffering imprisonment or deprivation.

If indeed it be true that, in despair of justice or reform, the advanced party in the Church would, of two evils, prefer that the State should exercise its furthest limits of power, and deprive the Church of her inheritance, is it to be wondered at? Radical Reform is sometimes the only safeguard from revolution, and may become, under certain circumstances, the truest Conservatism. If the legitimate freedom of the Catholic Church in this land be indeed imperilled, and her foundations shaken by continued union with the State, the disaster of a final rupture of such union can only be postponed-it cannot be averted.

A. F. NORTHCOTE.

OUR EGYPTIAN PROTECTORATE.

THE more you get to know Egypt, the more, so it seems to me, you become impressed with the continuity of its history. After all, the Egypt of to-day is the Egypt of the Pharaohs, just as in their days it had changed but little from the Egypt of the Shepherd Kings. Dynasties may succeed each other: empires may rise and fall: one race of conquerors may be expelled by a new tide of invaders; but the Nile flows on for ever; and the flooded lands give forth their produce year by year, tilled by the same subject race toiling in the same fashion. What has been in the past will be in the future. Like causes must produce like results: and there is no reason one can see why scores of centuries hence, when our times have become as remote as those of Sesostris, Egypt should not still remain much as we know her now, a country whose history stretches back into the dim infancy of the world. Should this conception be realised, it is no fanciful assumption that in the far-away hereafter the Champollions of the future may out of obscure records, indited in forgotten languages, endeavour to reconstruct the history of Egypt during the era when the family of Mehemet Ali reigned over the valley of the Nile. Of the various problems as to the attributes, characteristics, and relations of the different Pharaonic dynasties which nowadays perplex the brains of Egyptologists, few, I think, are so difficult of solution as any attempt will prove on the part of their remote successors to define the status, nature, and reason of being of the Government established in Egypt upon the deposition of Ismail Pasha.

Very little light would be thrown upon the elucidation of this problem by the perusal of our Blue Books and State papers, even supposing them to be still accessible. Nor would any great information be obtained from contemporary writings. The new régime which has been established, or, to speak more correctly, is in the process of establishment, in Egypt, has excited very little attention abroad. Yet within the last few months a new chapter has been commenced in Egyptian history, a chapter whose subsequent pages must-unless the experience of Egypt should prove contrary to that of all other Oriental countries-record the ultimate establishment of European rule over the length and breadth of the country. We are, in fact, witnessing the inauguration of a direct European Protectorate over Egypt; and as

the part England has played in the establishment of the new system of administration is very important now, and is likely to be far more important in the future, it is worth while for Englishmen to understand what we have done and are doing in Egypt. To facilitate such an understanding is the object I have in view.

In order to make the present position of Egyptian affairs at all intelligible, it is necessary to revert to the period which preceded the deposition of the late Viceroy. When I last wrote on this subject in the pages of this Review, the downfall of the Wilson-De Blignières Ministry was imminent. No special foresight was required to prognosticate the coming collapse. The truth is, the corner-stone of the Anglo-French Ministry was knocked out with the dismissal of Nubar Pasha; and the two Governments practically consented to abandon the experiment when they agreed not to insist upon the reinstatement of the deposed Prime Minister. This consent no doubt was given under a misapprehension. Neither Lord Salisbury nor M. Waddington intended to surrender the control over the administration of Egypt afforded by the fact that the two chief posts in the Ministry were occupied by nominees of their respective Governments. They were, however, led to believe that the Khedive was willing to acquiesce cordially in the tutelage exercised by Mr. Wilson and M. de Blignières, if only he could be relieved from the presence of Nubar Pasha, who was obnoxious to him on personal grounds. In consequence, the two Powers contented themselves with placing formally on record the conditions on which they were prepared to allow the Khedive to exercise the right of dismissing his own Minister. official note addressed to the Khedive, England and France insisted that henceforward their representatives in the Ministry must have a distinct right of joint veto on any measures of which they might disapprove, and that the Khedive himself must not be permitted to be present at the Ministerial councils. It was impossible to lay down more clearly, in so far as phrases were concerned, the absolute ascendency over the administration of Egypt which England and France considered themselves entitled to claim. The Khedive acquiesced without a protest in the conditions imposed upon him, and shortsighted observers jumped to the conclusion that the attempt of Ismail Pasha to assert his independence by the dismissal of Nubar Pasha had ended in the virtual abdication of his authority into the hands of his English and French Ministers. This was the view taken by Mr. Vivian, our Consul-General in Egypt, and impressed by him upon our Foreign Office. Unfortunately, Orientals attach little value to words which are not accompanied by acts; and Ismail Pasha was in this respect a type of the Turkish official. The Khedive saw clearly that the Powers had shrunk from any practical step to vindicate their ascendency, which, as he was well aware, had been imperilled by the dismissal of Nubar Pasha, and had contented themselves with a verbal