him not to lend a credulous ear to those by whom it is so confidently asserted. By so doing, he may, no doubt, gratify strong whig prejudices; but he must, proportionably, weaken the hands of the friends of social order, and indispose as well as disable a large and a respectable portion of the community from affording him, and those who are circumstanced like him, either assistance or sympathy when their proceedings and their admissions are made use of against themselves.

If, however, it be maintained, that the arbitrary confiscation of one portion of Church property vitiates the title of the rest, why should the same doctrine not be applicable to property of every other kind? Is there any species of property that has not, at one period or another, been subjected to violence? And, if we are entitled to infer, that, because Church property was, in several instances, seized upon without any regard to justice, and disposed of without any reference to religion, the Church, as a body, is incapable of holding any property properly so called, it will require more of ambi-dexterity in the use of words than Lord Russell or any of his associates have, as yet, condescended to show, that the same inference does not apply, precisely to the same extent, to all the other property in the kingdom.

While we write, the ministry has been dissolved! A breathing time, at least, is afforded to the country. But, we confess, matters have progressed so far in the wrong direction, that our fears predominate over our hopes. It will require an uprousing of the spirit, and an awakening of the intelligence of the great body of the people of England, such as has not yet taken place, before the helm of affairs can be resumed, by any conservative statesmen, with any prospect of permanent advantage to the country. It would not do to go into office merely to prove that "the spirit of the age" is against them. That would assuredly only make bad worse. It would be construed into a hankering after power, which would compromise their integrity and independence. And we, therefore, feel confident that our friends will abstain, with a loftiness of purpose, by which, as compared with their adversaries, they have been ever characterized, from every act

from which any ambitious yearnings might be conjectured. No. The propertied class in the country have not as yet felt sufficiently what it is they are to expect from "the spirit of the age," to render them alive to the value of conservative men, and the necessity for conservative measures; and, until that is the case, any attempt to protect them against the inroads of the democratic and the agrarian principles, to which fatal circumstances have given so great an ascendancy, would not only be indiscreet and fruitless, but might seriously retard that return of the national reason which could alone guarantee to them such a measure of support as might arrest the triumph of anarchy and revolution. Let them, therefore, maintain their present ground steadily and boldly. Let them stand unflinchingly to their guns. Even though the power and influence which have dropped from the hands of their political opponents lay at their feet, let them not stoop to pick them up. For we are well convinced that until both the king and the people are made sensible of the calamities that are upon their march, and until the voice of the country drowns the clamours of the anarchists, and calls aloud upon men of sense and virtue to save us from surrounding perils, any position in the government of the country which might be attained in the struggle of factions, would be short-lived and precarious, and must be relinquished speedily and with dishonour.

It is, however, worthy of remark, that the dissolution of the Grey, or, as it will be called by the future annalist, "the thimble-rig," administration, has not been caused by any peculiar pressure upon them by the Tories; neither by any collision with the Lords, but by fatal differences amongst themselves-differences which did not manifest themselves until their intentions respecting the Irish Church were made public, and which disclosed to an astonished coun try the monstrous alliance that was in progress of formation with the worst enemies of social order-differences which, in fact, have turned against each other the same spirit of rancorous hostility which threatened the institutions of the country with so much danger. All this would seem something like a leading of Providence to another and a better state of things than could, until of late,

be hoped for. Our enemies are in a great strait. The desertion of Stanley filled them with dismay; the disclosures of Littleton covered them with confusion. All who are sound-hearted and right-minded in the country cannot view the occurrences which have recently transpired, without feeling as if another Guy Faux were detected in disposing the combustibles, and laying the train, by which an explosion must have been caused which would bury the constitution in ruins. This cannot but have caused an accession of strength to the Conservative party such as must render them much more formidable than they have as yet proved, and which, if they only husband it and improve it as they may, will make them finally irresistible. But, we repeat it, all is in vain, if this first step of the destructives against the property of the Irish Church be not effectually resisted.

What can mean the unhallowed measure for numbering the people? Has not Protestantism been already sufficiently proscribed? Is it necessary to encourage by a bribe the inhuman barbarians by whom its meek pastors have been murdered? Gracious God! what delusion has come upon our rulers? Whither has fled the ancient spirit of the people of England? Outrages against person and property, such as would have formerly provoked the most indignant animadversions of the law, are not merely endured, are countenanced by the government, and may be considered almost part of the ways and means of our modern statesmen! "Go, number the people! report how many belong to the established church, that an excuse may be afforded for seizing upon its revenues! Report also how many are in the open profession of the popish religion, that the liberality of the legislature may be evinced in extending to it a larger measure of parliamentary support!" Can the men who countenance such a proceeding be designated otherwise than as the enemies of all righteousness? Do they not literally proscribe the truth of God, and make, what should be a motive for promoting, an excuse for limiting the spread of true religion. Do they not say, as plainly as language can speak, to an infuriate and sanguinary peasantry, "It is your own faults if you do not now take effectual means to rid yourselves

of the heretics? You know how completely they are in your hands; and we have resolved to make their prosperty depend upon their numbers." We ask those who know the state of the country at the present moment, could any more effectual expedient be devised for making our peasantry say amongst themselves, "This is the heir; come, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours!" And yet such is the precious expedient to which our rulers have recourse for promoting the peace and the prosperity of Ireland.

It remains to be seen whether they will or will not be countenanced by the people of this great empire. Time was when the avowal of such a project would have provoked an expression of indignant feeling from one end of the country to the other. The hardiest or most unprincipled minister dared not venture upon it. Nor could the present ministers, we are persuaded, have, with safety to themselves, proposed it with reference to the English branch of the Established Church. But Ireland is a poor country, and it may be slighted; it is a distant country, and it may be neglected, it is a conquered country, and it may be contemned! The people are wretchedly ignorant and superstitious, and popery may be good enough for them! What can they want with a pure and enlightened church? Exchange is no robbery! We will give them, say our rulers aye, in abundance, that spiritual food which their souls long for, and take away from them that for which they have no relish, the bread of eternal life! If Popish mummeries will serve their turn, why keep up an expensive church, the rich revenues of which may thus be procured for public purposes, even as the most insignificant trifles which have some show of crafty workmanship, are found sufficient to purchase gold and silver from the American Indians!

All this may be very plausible; but, we tell our English brethren, the Irish demagogues, and those concerned with them in agrarian disturbances, know perfectly well both what they buy and what they sell. We tell our English brethren, with deep seriousness, that they are quite as much concerned as we are in the issue of the present contest. If the measure contemplated,

respecting the Irish Church, pass into a law, their doom is sealed, and nothing human can avert the subversion of their establishment, and the ruin of their order. Let them, therefore, bestir themselves in time. Their afflicted brethren cry aloud to them from Ireland. The crisis is at hand; and now or never the battle must be fought, which may determine, for centuries to come, the ascendency of the principle of good or the principle of evil. If they look quietly on while the Irish Church is victimized, they can excite but little concern when their own turn comes, and when infidels and radicals do for them what papists and demagogues are about to do for their unfortunate brethren in Ireland. For it cannot be too strongly impressed upon them that the whole of the principle involved in the question of a church establishment is now at stake. And if that he decided against us all is lost. The establishment no longer will subsist as of right. It will only stand by forbearance. And there are few so simple as to calculate to any great extent upon the tender mercies of its assailants.

Once more, then, we call upon them to shake off their indifference respecting our wrongs. The remedy is as yet in their own hands. If they only bestir themselves, and be but half as active in the support of what is right and good as their enemies are in the promotion of what is evil and destructive, we should soon have nothing to fear. The country would speedily, from one end to the other, be organized into a system of quiet, steady, constitutional

resistance to the measures in progress for its destruction, such as must ensure their defeat; and a combination of good men, knit together in a holy cause, would present such a phalanx of devoted loyalty as could not be resisted. But, if a spirit of division prevail amongst our brethern in England, if depression overpower them if, because they are not themselves actually menaced, they suffer a principle to be established in the case of the Irish Church, the adoption of which must be fatal to any national church whatsoever, we tell them, with a deep and mournful seriousness, all is lost.

And while the character of

the Irish Church will survive its property, and its name will yet be remembered with respect even by those who are now furious for its destruction, our English brethren will find, that their cold-hearted indifference to our dangers and our sufferings will not be imputed to them for righteousness, and that the temporary respite which they may have procured by what must be considered a kind of passive acquiescence in the measures of our assailants, will be followed by such a tempest of hostility as must lay their establishment even with the ground. When once we are no more, nothing human can avert the ruin that will impend over them; and they may rest perfectly assured that no miracle will be wrought for their safety, when they are not moved to take the ordinary means which are so abundantly in their power for the purpose of ensuring the safety and the well-being of their brethren in Ireland.

WELL! matters have now come to a pretty pass! Lord Grey can no longer carry on the government of the country, and has retired in disgust from a cabinet in which his authority was no longer sufficient to prevent the adoption of measures the most portentous that ever loured on the fortunes of England. The cabinet has been reconstructed. Out of the old materials a new administration, has been formed still more averse to the moderate views of the late premier than that which he has abandoned; and it remains to be seen how far they will be countenanced by the representatives of the people. We have too frequently expressed the opinion which we entertained of the reformed parliament, to render it necessary at present to say, that we fear much nothing can be proposed having for its object the continuance of power in the hands of our present rulers which will not meet with their heartyconcurrence. And, in any collision with the Lords, it is easy to foresee who must go to the wall. In fact, the present posture of affairs is an awful verification of all our predictions. The reform bill has done its deadly work. The influence of rank and property has been overthrown; and the populace have become predominant over the people! Our cotemporaries of the honest portion of the press exult in the recent changes, as presenting to the people of England a ministerial aspect so monstrous as to be calculated to excite nothing but disgust and indignation. They prophesy that it cannot last; that the good sense of the nation must rise up against it, and that, if it survives the present session, that is the very utmost that may be apprehended. We cannot agree with them. The people by whom the constitution was overthrown, and who returned the reformed parliament, are not, we fear, as yet sufficiently alive to the dangers which beset them to take the proper steps necessary for arresting them at the present crisis. All that is worthless and vile in the country, the infidels,

the profligates, the ruffians of every grade and colour, the "ambubaiarum collegiæ, pharmoparola" know well the importance of keeping those men in office who may serve as a skreen to their designs. Every one witnessed the consternation that prevailed amongst them when Lord Grey's cabinet was rent asunder by the intemperance of the Irish leader. Dan's passions blinded his judgment when he suffered his indignation against Littleton so far to prevail with him, as to compel disclosures such as in a sound state of the public feeling no cabinet could survive. But he will be more

wary for the future. Mr. Littleton is now, in his estimation, a frank and honourable man; and Dan will take especial care that the precious piece of patchwork, at present denominated the English government, shall not fall to pieces, until they have got every valuable institution of the country, which is not exactly to his mind, upon an inclined plane, when it will be easy for any one to reduce them to a level that will no longer offend his democratic predilections.

But what we will be told, will not the property of the country take alarm? Will not the gentry, and all who have anything to lose, arouse themselves, and combine in active exertions against the abettors of a system by the adoption of which everything valuable to them as men and as Christians must be destroyed? Alas! we see no symptom of it! Before revolution has made considerable may, nothing is so powerful, after it has done so, nothing is so helpless as property. By the reform bill our gentry have been converted into so many stranded whales! Many of them were actively engaged in forwarding the fatal measures which bound them to the chariot wheels of the demagogue. Many of them are still bent upon following up that measure by a confiscation of church property. Between these and professed radicals the utmost cordiality is known

to prevail. They have been excited and stimulated by success; and can always largely avail themselves of the credulity of their dupes, and the wickedness of their retainers. Only let them carry on the government of the country by means of the men at present in power, who must be their humble slaves, for six months longer, and such an initiative will have been given to measures for securing and extending the triumph of the democratic principle, that nothing can prevail against it, until a political chaos has been produced, in which

" every thing includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite: And appetite, an universal wolf, Doth make, perforce, an universal prey, And last eats up itself."

Such, and such alone, can be the consummation of radicalism, if no combination be, at present, formed against it. That such a combination might be formed we feel well assured. Our admirable countryman, the Rev. John Martin, has lately, in the pages of the Evening Mail, called the attention of the country to a plan, by the adoption of which, every desirable end might be answered. We know well that a strong prejudice prevails against a clergyman's taking an active part in politics. There are even those who say that no circumstances can render such conduct justifiable. We speak not now of the spoliators, whose delicate sense of religion is amazingly shocked when their clerical victims cry out and struggle in the act of being robbed or murdered. Oh, fie," they say, a clergyman make such a noise. Was ever anything so indecent ?" We speak not of the plundering hypocrites. But amongst the clergy themselves an opinion prevails that it is unbecoming in them to take any step by which they might be enabled to defeat the malice and wickedness of their enemies. And this, we are persuaded, has caused a degree of remissness amongst the Conservative part of the community, by which their adversaries have hitherto largely profited, and by which, if it should be persevered in, they must themselves be eventually destroyed. As we deeply respect this estimable class of men, we will bestow

a few words upon what we must be permitted to denominate this great delusion.

We fully agree with them in believing that religion should not be made subservient to politics; but, we trust, they will not dissent from us in considering that politics may be made subservient to religion. Those who believe that a state establishment is necessary for the due preservation, and the adequate diffusion, and the efficient ministration of divine truth, cannot be indifferent to the safety of that establishment, or neglect any of the legal and constitutional means by which its welfare may be provided for, without a fatal neglect of the most solemn obligations. And any such neglect, or any acquiescence in measures, having for their object, or involving in their immediate results, the destruction, or the injury of that establishment, upon the ground that the Christian must not strive or cry, or lift up his voice in the streets, or that, when smitten on one cheek, he should turn the other; or, that, to those who have taken away his cloak, he should give his coat also, is a miserable perversion of holy writ, or a paltry compromise with conscience. These texts were intended to regulate the conduct of the individual, where he alone was personally concerned; and never were, or never could be considered as applying to him in his civil or his political capacity, where his duty calls upon him, and his station or his circumstances enable him to perform important service to his church or his country. It is very easy for any of us to bear the calamities our friends. There is no great difficulty in evincing resignation, by merely retiring from a post of perilous exertion, when by so doing we may procure from the enemies of God's holy word profitable commendation. These are the occasions alone, upon which they can estimate the Christian virtues. And the simple or the cunning gentlemen who thus exhibit themselves righteous overmuch, are much more effectually playing the part of political partizans, and that too, for the most selfish purposes, than others, who have taken juster views of their civil and their religious duties, and who have much natural diffidence to overcome before they can enter into