of Ireland; the colour of the division, not the cause. This Emmett and M'Nevin, liberal, sagacious, and well-informed, have admitted; though the furious, the shallow, and bigoted deny it."

Our last remark is merely an appeal to those philosophers who are continually complaining of the mischievous though wellmeant interference of the higher ranks, with the view of ameliorating the condition of the poor, and who assert that the greatest boon which can be conferred upon them is, to let them alone to manage their affairs among themselves.

In the preceding pages we have presented these gentlemen with the faithful picture of a peasantry uninterfered with to their heart's content for centuries; and we entreat them for once to put their philosophy into their pockets, and to call up their philanthropy for its consideration. Or if they wish to make up their minds upon evidence better detailed, and more agreeably expressed, we can assure them, that they "winna be fashed," "neither will they be bothered" by too laborious an exertion, if they will condescend to give an attentive perusal to Mrs. Leadbeater's Cottage Dialogues, or " Mrs. Hamilton's admirable Cottagers of Glenburnie." But we are disposed to believe, that they would be both "bothered" "and fashed" exceedingly, if they should afterwards be desired to recur to their own writings, and then honestly to declare, whether in the 19th century there is not to be found in philosophy as applied to politics a degree of bigotry, as obstinate, inexorable, and inaccessible to the convictions of truth, as any that disgraced the religious feelings of Duke George of Saxony, or of Bishop Bonner in the sixteenth century.

ART. XX. A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of London. By John Lord Bishop of that Diocese, at his Primary Visitation in 1810. Published at the Request of the Clergy. London, 1810.

THE publication now before us purports to be a charge delivered to the assembled clergy of one of the most important dioceses in the kingdom, by a prelate no less eminent for his profound learning than for the station to which his acquirements have raised him. It is therefore with the utmost diffidence, and the most unfeigned reluctance, that we venture to make any observations upon a production deliberately issued from such a quarter. This reluctance however is much diminished by the striking difference to be observed between this charge, and the

eloquent and judicious appeals which we have been in the habit of reading from the other prelates of our church. In earnestly soliciting our readers' attention to the pastoral addresses of the late Bishop Porteus, of Bishops Barrington, Burges, Huntingford, and others, who are now the ornaments of the bench and the pillars of our church, we are not only furnishing the best antidote to the work before us, but a proof that it is not any wish to degrade the church in the person of one of its distinguished prelates, that has induced us to notice it with some degree of censure. Such an accusation against us would indeed be peculiarly hard; for we have already received some pretty intelligible hints from a part of the dissenters, respecting our intolerance to them in favour of the established church; and if ardent good wishes towards its excellent and venerable fabric, including its articles, liturgy, doctrines, forms and dignities; if a desire to see those doctrines disseminated, upheld, and secured by a more extended zeal among its members, and greater scope given to their exertions; and if an endeavour to produce a more pure and sober strain of religious doctrine among some of the dissenters themselves, be intolerance, we admit ourselves to be the most intolerant souls alive. But we assert that no real friend to the religious improvement of his countrymen, either by the exertions of churchmen or dissenters, can disapprove of these objects, or can hesitate in doing his utmost to promote them. He would blush after reading daily accounts of the devotion of every faculty, feeling, and affection to the furtherance of England's temporal glory, so conspicuous in our army and navy, if any view to his own paltry interests, or if a sober and well considered judgment could induce him to feel, or if called upon to do less for her temporal and eternal interests combined. We make this statement for the benefit of certain sagacious discoverers of the cloven foot in every piece of writing which does not accord either with their apathy on one hand, or their party feeling on the other; men who would brand every writer either with indiscretion or bad intention, who with a sincere regard to truth would rouse them from that indifference in which they would slumber under the crumbling establishments of their country. Nor let it be flippantly urged, "if you will let the church alone, it will do very well as it is." We cannot disguise our conviction that by a long and lamentable neglect on the part of the church and the legislature, the dissenters have prodigiously increased wherever an increase of population has occurred: that no check has yet been given to them, except where the extraordinary zeal of individual ministers of the establishment has excited them to more than ordinary exertion in the strict discharge of their

functions. We will boldly proclaim these truths which the dreaded imputations of cloven feet and imprudent zeal have too long kept in the back ground. And we will neither be so insincere to the church nor so unfair to the dissenters as not to state the fact as it really stands. It has already been triumphantly foretold by authority whose wishes make it eagle-eyed on this subject, that the church on its present footing will not endure another half century. Those who travel much about the country observe but too much cause to fear that without an altered system, and much liberal assistance from the legislature, there may be some danger; and it is not such publications as that before us that will tend to delay the catastrophe. It seems to have met with the approbation of those who heard it. But we have since found many of the established clergy bitterly lamenting its tone and spirit. As laymen, however, we are the last persons who would interfere with a bishop in any matter of discussion confined to himself and his clergy. But when these productions are published and sold in the shops to the people of large they evidently assume a very different character, and become (as we think) as necessary objects of criticism as any others, being then nothing more than pamphlets intended for the instruction of the public. They operate in this shape upon the religious opinions of other dioceses and other societies; and we will briefly state our reasons for thinking that presumption cannot be laid to our charge, if we attempt to counteract some of the mischief which we apprehend this pamphlet will produce. Its right reverend author, we believe, has passed the last twenty years principally within the walls of a college, or on the episcopal bench. In the latter situation though his way of thinking has been strongly marked and well understood, yet every one knows the difficulty with which disagreeable truths reach the ears of persons in exalted stations. We, on the contrary, are humble and obscure individuals, who run unnoticed about the town and the country, with our mental and corporeal eyes on the full stretch, to pick up something for the improvement of our countrymen in taste, morals, politics, or religion. We have lately had opportunities of making extensive observations on the state of the church in those parts of the kingdom where the population has most increased, and we are persuaded that the interests of the established religion will be seriously injured by the practical application of the reproaches contained in the charge. They will be far from conciliating those to whom they are justly applicable (if such strange reproaches from such a quarter can be really applicable any where), and they will afford to those who will be forward to consider this charge as breathing the general

spirit of our church, a notable argument in furtherance of their pernicious designs. We are anxious however to give the right reverend prelate full credit for the excellence of his intentions in its publication, for the general purity of his motives of action, and for the diligence and activity of his exertions in promoting what he believes to be the interests of his diocese. These are valuable qualities, and require only judgment to direct them; and we are persuaded, that no idea existed in his mind whither might lead the vague and undefined censures denounced upon men who are distinguished in the charge by the appellation of Gospel preachers," at the same time that it seems to confound them with Padobaptists, Antipædobaptists, Wesleyians, Whitfieldians, &c. &c. &c. page 16. Such, however, is the proneness of mankind in general to confound things very different from each other, in order to avoid the trouble of making distinctions, that too much caution cannot be taken accurately to ascertain the real question in debate, particularly when that question involves severe censure upon individuals.

Having paid this sincere tribute to the purity of his lordship's motives, as to the effect intended to be made on the mind of the reader, we are sorry not to be able to bestow the same applause upon the mode unfortunately adopted in order to produce it. On the contrary, it is necessary to premise, that both the reader and the critic of this charge have to contend with a fundamental difficulty of a very embarrassing nature. There is a natural confusion about the style, which renders it difficult to ascertain the exact meaning of any of the propositions. This difficulty has likewise received a considerable accession, from an unfortunate ambiguity of terms; which, while it seems to include in one sweeping censure persons and objects the most dissimilar, guards the assertions from close examination, by cautions and exceptions involved in ten-fold doubt and obscurity. For example, a long strain of invective is indulged in against the professors of certain sentiments and doctrines stated in the charge. The greater part appear upon the face of them to be tenets exclusively held by some of the lowest sects of the dissenters; but with these are occasionally and incidentally coupled other doctrines, concerning the relative importance of which the several ministers of our own church differ. The whole together is made a ground of accusation against certain individuals who preach the Gospel; but who these individuals are, is left to be inferred by the description of their doctrine and tenets. We of course concluded that the low sects of the dissenters were intended, inasmuch as the greater part of the description applied to thein. Satisfied with the justice, though lamenting the tone and the spirit

VOL. 1. NO. II.

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of the statement, we were disposed to admit the general correctness of this part of the bishop's reasoning, rejecting the more regular doctrines incidentally coupled with it as mere surplusage. Great then was our surprise, to find in a page (page 15) immediately subsequent, that these dissenters are expressly excluded from the accusation intended in the charge; which is now narrowed in its limits, to persons described as "halting between the church and dissention from it:" i. e. (as it appears to us) to certain ministers of the establishment who conscientiously differ in some points of mere moral practice from many of their brethren, but who hold precisely the same creed, who subscribe to the same articles, and are at least equally anxious to uphold the discipline of the church.

But it is evident that the greater part of the sentiments and doctrines originally stated as the ground of blame do not apply to these, or to any ministers connected with the establishment; although according to the letter of the accusation they stand charged with it to the extent in which any reader's prejudice, passion, or want of discrimination, may induce him to acquiesce in its literal meaning. To do justice, therefore, to these ministers, we are bound to reject the main parts of the charge as surplusage, and only to admit those immediately coupled with it, as questions for consideration. Now, the difficulty of doing this, by eliciting a plain statement from such a variety of contradictions, is obvious; as no statement can be made to which one part of the contradictions may not plausibly be objected in answer. The unfortunate ministers alluded to are thus left quite at a loss both as to the specific ground of complaint against them, and to the sort of defence and exculpation which would be thought satisfactory by their diocesan. Nor is this the whole.-The vague manner in which the censure is applied, has in many instances within our knowledge brought within its scope all serious religion. We have heard certain worldly persons exult very much in the dressing which the bishop has lately given to the Methodists and the evangelicals. And the worst of it is, that neither the charge itself, nor the understandings of these notable critics, are at all forward to define who these persons so worthy of reprobation are. The most common application of the terms which has occurred in our intercourse in this town is to those who are in the habit of attending the parish churches or chapels of the establishment, where due stress is laid from the pulpit upon the peculiar doctrines of Christianity. W refer to the quotations we are about to give for the truth of these observations.

In the mean time we submit with due humility, whether such a mode of "laying things to the consciences of men" is altoge