we not fall into the error of fancying that, because we have left on record the influence which one or two giant minds had, all the ministers were Howes, and all the congregations like those that listened to him. Shall we take the age of the Restoration-that blessed time? Was the reign of James marked by a general influence exercised by the pulpit of England on the people? Did the last century-frigid at the beginning, furious at the close, irreligious throughout-bear any deep traces of pulpit influence? We think that there is little sign of the former times having been better than now, and would not, therefore, speak of deterioration. We rather would indulge the hope, that all the noise recently made about failure and languor, will end in each man who stands in the position of a preacher of the gospel examining whether he has had the right idea of the extent of his work, of the nature of his instruments, of the character of his materials. If there be errors in these points, or a want of adaptation of the one to the other, what can we expect but inefficiency?

We look on such volumes as the present, as very useful auxiliaries to urging the importance of such inquiries on ministers. There can be no doubt, that its comparative immunity from critical notice has injured the pulpit. Sacred subjects have been thought to shelter the man who touched them from all criticism, excepting the irrational likes and dislikes of hearers, who proportioned their praise to the length and the orthodoxy of the discourse. Thus, secure from all remark but that of friends, or of enemies, who could only say, 'I did not think much of that,' a carelessness has been engendered, which has grown still more common from the notion, that to preach without study was a mark of genius, or a token of spiritualmindedness.

We are glad to see any signs of breaking up this notion, by the application of criticism to the pulpit. The process, no doubt, has been painful to some of the gentlemen who hastily strung together a few crudities, with the notion, That will do,' little dreaming, that in this hastily tacked together dishabille, they were to appear in 'Our Scottish Clergy.' But we hope that their mortification may lead to contrite forsaking of the fatal notion, that preaching is a thing independent of study. It is high time that this idea should cease to be operative on ministers, that baldness and insipidity should be deferentially received, because they are uttered on a Sabbath day, in a place of worship. We have mind in the pews; we must have mind from the pulpit. We have men of active life in the pews; give us no sluggard in the pulpit. We have men in the pews with hearts, who have a daily struggle; let the man in the pulpit show them that he, too, has struggled, and has lived.

700

ART. V.-What has Religion to do with Politics? The Question considered in Letters to his Son. By David R. Morier, Esq., late Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary in Switzerland. London: John Parker.

IN our September number we showed, in reviewing Mr. Mill's treatise, why political economy cannot help society; and we now propose briefly to examine the claims of religion and government to accomplish the same object. Discarding all theories, we set out from the admitted fact, that vast masses of poverty and suffering exist in society, which, it is the general, the almost universal opinion, ought not to exist, and ought to be, and can be lessened or removed. To that end, and no other, do men propose political reforms, or dare to commence revolutions. The conviction deeply felt, whether right or wrong, that social misery can be, and ought to be diminished, if not wholly got rid of, by proper regulations on the part of ment, is a goad to almost innumerable exertions, in the good and the wise, and the parent of even more schemes than exertions in the imaginative, to effect social improvement. We need scarcely remind our readers of the efforts made of late by the opulent classes, to promote education, to improve the public health, to provide better dwellings, baths and washhouses, for the poor; nor of the larger schemes of national education and of comprehensive emigration, that are continually forced on public attention; nor of the manner in which our literature, vividly reflecting public feelings and public wants, has become suffused with an eloquent advocacy of the interests of the masses. Both moral and pecuniary motives, both aspirations after good for its own sake, and an aversion to the cost of increasing poverty and increasing crime, testify to the enormity of the evils of society, and the general desire to remedy them by new contrivances. In other countries, the demand for social improvement, practically but mistakingly carried into effect, has given rise to violent revolutions, has paralyzed credit, suspended the enterprise, and deranged the industry which feed and sustain society. Our own country has, as yet, escaped with fierce threats and unripe attempts, but is not at ease, nor confident of safety. The point, therefore, to which we propose to confine ourselves, taking no notice of the influence which religion exercises on the hearts and understandings of individuals, and which may ultimately lead to the establishment of perfect social institutions, is 'what are the direct maxims or instructions religion supplies for the guidance of society in its corporate capacity?'

We want to bring distinctly under consideration the important question, how far, using Mr. Morier's language, the Christian law suggests or indicates 'positive laws of human institution,' and not rules of private conduct, that are capable of promoting the common good. Blackstone, as well as Mr. Morier, tells us, that human laws derive all their force and authority' 'from the law of nature,' of which 'revealed religion is a part; but he also assures us, that 'it is still necessary in each case of the application of the law of nature to have rɛcourse to reason,' in order to ascertain what institutions or laws nature prescribes. Nothing, in truth, seems further from the object of revelation, than to prescribe political institutions. It is adapted to human nature in all ages and countries; and that adaptation would have been lost, had it been in any way limited to, or connected with, the forms of government, the relations of property, or any of the positive human institutions that regulate any one society. At present, all the communities of Europe are involved in confusion, civilization seems breaking up into anarchy, mankind is threatened with a chaos; there is everywhere a loud and piercing cry for help; men want happiness or salvation on earth; they are conjured, by all the paid priesthoods of the world, and by all statesmen who endow churches, to rely mainly on them and their teaching, and we want men to inquire what hope have they of finding aid in their doctrines and precepts?

Taking no notice, therefore, of its influence over the conduct of individuals in private life, believing with Montesquieu, as quoted by Mr. Morier, that, La réligion Chretienne qui ne semble avoir d'objet que la félicité de l'autre vie fait encore notre bonheur dans celle-ci,' is perfectly true, we must at the same time assert, that the utmost happiness of individuals, and the utmost purity of heart in them, leave them ignorant of the means by which the sovereign power of a state, whether a single despot or a democracy, can promote the welfare of the community. Revelation teaches individuals how they may be good and happy, but there has been no revelation of the means by which politicians can frame constitutions and beneficially govern society. Mr. Morier justly and properly asks :

'Where is the guide able to lead us through the mighty maze? Does human wisdom pretend to furnish the clue to unravel all its intricacies? Consult the oracles of her high priests, the pagan sophist, or the modern sceptic. The self-styled systems of both are equally contradictory and incoherent, like the productions of a sickly fancyCujus velut ægri somnia, vana fingentur species.' Again, he says, The affairs of the world seem arrived at that pass, in which, as was observed of the Roman Commonwealth, mankind can no longer bear

either their vices or the remedies for them. There have not, indeed, been wanting doctors of all degrees (from Robespierre to the Pere Enfantin) to prescribe remedies in abundance; but the increasing prevalence of the disorder has furnished ample proof of their utter inefficiency, so that to each of them in their turn may be applied, in a certain sense, the ironical encomium of Tacitus on the Emperor Galba, Omnium consensu capax imperii nisi imperasset.''

But it will scarcely be denied, particularly here in England, where a state-church is maintained at great trouble and great expense, or in Ireland, where there is a similar church, and, to boot, one or two catholic priests in every parish, that what the state-priesthood call religion, has had for many years much more influence throughout Europe, over the regulations of society, than the 'pagan sophist or the modern sceptic;' and that those who have taught state-Christianity have, on the whole, been much more followed than either Robespierre or Enfantin. Nobody was ever wild enough to dream, that the patched-up, conquest-born, congress-made, time-collected jumbles of different races and people, under separate governments, called States, the sorry contrivances of man's wit and man's ambition, are to have an existence hereafter, like man himself, the work of the Almighty. For the conduct of states, then, Christianity lays down no rules, except those which it prescribes for the moral government of individuals. One or two leading examples will at once suggest the inadequacy of those rules to guide politicians, or help society in the present emergency.

Religion, for example, commands us to respect property, 'Thou shalt not steal,' but it does not define and describe property. That important duty is left to instinct or reason, and the wisdom of the civil magistrate. The command takes for granted, that the knowledge of what constitutes property is already in existence, that every one knows what belongs to himself and others. The right of property being the great basis of all social relations, as well as of the whole political structure, it will be at once seen that, by leaving it undefined, religion leaves us without any light whatever, to form, as instinct and reason direct us, or as custom dictates, the whole of our social and political relations.

Property in land, called real property, to distinguish it from subordinate property, the most important of all such rights, so far as concerns the political structure and the welfare of society, is settled by the sovereign authority. The crown claims the whole soil of the empire, and unless a right derived directly, or remotely, from it, be exhibited, no portion of the soil can be legally owned or used. At the present moment

there is a question of the ownership of the whole soil of Ireland, and that, it is well known, was on two or three occasions parcelled out amongst the followers of our Henrys or Edwards, or the successful soldiers of Cromwell. All existing rights to the land there, are generally derived from those appropriations. Ail over Europe the right to the soil rests on similar violent appropriations that have been, and are, sanctioned by custom. At the present time, the sovereign authority, acting through the Colonial Office, is settling the appropriation of large districts of land, future kingdoms, perhaps, in South Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. It is disposing of vast continents, and is about to confer, as a bonne bouche, the whole of Vancouver's Island on the Hudson's Bay Company.

On these momentous appropriations, the basis of property in future, the sources of weal and woe through centuries, religion gives no opinion; she does not inform us, pregnant as they are with the happiness or misery of nations, whether they be right or wrong. The Colonial Office assumes them to be right, and has assumed each one of the numerous changes it has made in the mode of appropriating waste land in the colonies to have been also right, while each of the modes it has adopted has, one after the other, been loudly condemned both in the colonies and at home. Neither there nor here was religion in any way appealed to as justifying or condemning the appropriation, or as capable of deciding the important dispute. Certainly, the former, somewhat similar appropriations of land in Ireland, now stand condemned by their consequences; but religion, like reason, only condemns them, because their consequences are evil, and her voice was silent, when the appropriations were made. Nay, she rather urged the first conquest of Ireland, and in her name was the soil subsequently confiscated, and appropriated to protestants. On the all-important point of the appropriation of the soil, involving in one state, primogeniture, and a feudal aristocracy, and in another, the growth of a poor, passionate, and uninformed democracy, with all their different consequences, the very pivot on which turn all political arrangements, religion supplies us with no rules; and, accordingly, men in making the appropriation, have been, and are, guided by their wants, their passions, and the ignorant devices of their own hearts.

Whatever knowledge may now be extant in the government of the United States and the government of England, and whatever provision may now be made by them as to the lands under their control, for a dense population in future, it is quite certain that no foreknowledge of the present condition of Europe presided over the appropriation of the soil at