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all my days, the glad tidings of salvation amidst similar opposition.' He was a noble-minded and earnest man, and his memory should be had in everlasting remembrance. His faith was a reality, which gave him peace and hope in his dying hours. As he had lived for the good of others, he died in the sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection to everlasting life.' This event occurred on the morning of February 6th, and his murderers forbad his widow to follow his remains to the grave. Woman's devotion, however, was not to be foiled. Prevented from following the corpse of her husband, Mrs. Smith, with her noble-hearted friend, Mrs. Elliott, determined to meet it at the grave. They left the jail at half-past three o'clock in the morning, dark as it was, accompanied only by a free black man, with a lanthorn, and proceeded to the burialplace, where they beheld the mournful spectacle of a beloved husband and a dear friend committed to the silent grave. The funeral service was read by the Rev. W. S. Austin, who incurred general odium in the colony, because he dared to vindicate the character of a man whom he believed to be perfectly innocent of the crimes laid to his charge.'

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Thus terminated the earthly career of the Martyr of Demerara. The guilt of his murder-for such it really was-lies as heavily on his persecutors, as if they had consummated their crime by dragging him forth to a public and ignominious death. It was in their hearts to do so, and nothing but fear deterred them. They knew the infirm state of his health, were admonished by his medical attendant of the inevitable result of his incarceration in so damp a room, heard from day to day of his growing weakness, and denied him, so far as was in their power, the solace which the dying receive from the kind offices of attendant friendship. But the righteous hath hope in his death.' No malice could deprive the dying saint of the inward consciousness of having discharged his duty, or shut out from his soul those ineffable joys, which spring from intimate communion with the Father of spirits. These he possessed in a large measure, and they give a beautiful finish and completeness to a life, whose memoirs we commend to the early perusal of our readers. We thank Mr. Wallbridge and Mr. Barrett for the service they have rendered, and cannot too strongly express our conviction of the importance of such memorials being deeply pondered by the British people.

ART. VIII.—The English Review. No. xix. September, 1848. London: Rivingtons.

We have placed the title of the last number of the English Review' at the head of our present article, on account of a paper it contains on the British Anti-State-Church Association. It is our intention to examine the principal statements and arguments of this paper, and we proceed to do so under the pursuasion that we shall thus furnish ourselves with means of defending the movement they are designed to impugn. A good cause gains as much by the objections of its enemies, as it does by the recommendations of its friends.

It is, perhaps, necessary for us to inform our readers, that 'The English Review' is a quarterly publication, devoted to the interests of the High Church party. It has set itself unceasingly to sing a cuckoo song about the unity, catholicity, and authority, of what it calls Anglicanism. This system it holds in the most exclusive form possible, and it is therefore engaged in a constant warfare, not only with Roman Catholicism and Protestant Dissent, but with all the parties, except its own, into which the Church of England is divided. The effect of this is somewhat curious. Loftier pretensions and more extensive aims than are here asserted and developed, it would be difficult to find; and yet the great characteristic of the ground on which these proud hopes are built is its extreme narrowness. The views both of doctrine and polity entertained are eminently little; their bigotry is of the smallest kind; and a total want of sympathy with anything beyond the very confined limits they embrace, is one of their most striking features. As we have perused the pages of this Review, we have been led to suppose that the air of superiority assumed in it, arises as much from an unconscious attempt to hide the contracted character of what it has to support, as it does from a strong feeling of hostility to what it has to oppose. Whether this be the case or not, there is an evident contrast between the claims advanced and the foundations on which they are made to rest.

The paper on the British Anti-State- Church Association, to which we desire to direct particular attention, has some appearance of fairness on the face of it. When we first read it, we were inclined to think well of the moral principles under the guidance of which it was drawn up; but a second reading shook our faith in its honesty, and every reference we have since made to it, has confirmed the unfavourable opinion we then adopted. One thing we have been especially impressed with, and that is the employment of objections, in the principles of which the

reviewer himself cannot concur. This manifestation of insincerity we shall have occasion to notice in more than one instance, but we think it our duty to point to it here, as distinctive of the course of observation adopted to a greater degree than our examples will indicate.

What mainly gives the show of fairness to this production, is the evident fact that, its author has fully acquainted himself with the publications of the society on whose proceedings he animadverts, and exercised much diligence in estimating the influence which that society has exerted. He has thus done his best to obtain a competent knowledge of the subject about which he has written. When, however, we proceed to inquire as to the use he has made of this knowledge, we discover a sad falling off from integrity. Instead of meeting, or attempting to meet the principal points in the publications he has studied, he has merely picked out for observation those paragraphs which he thought would best answer his purpose of opposition, falsely representing them, as containing the essential matter of the question he professed to discuss. The substantial difficulties of that question, as stated by those with whom he chose to contend, he has invariably passed over, in favour of minor considerations, which served the immediate effect he wished to produce.

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We do not at all wonder at this, when we call to mind the avowed motive under whose impulse this writer undertook his work. He tells us, that certain causes now in operation, are unquestionably calculated to make the most sincere and devoted churchman feel that the connexion between the church and the state is productive of the most serious, not to say of intolerable evils; and that 'under such circumstances it is not surprising that numbers, guided by impulse rather than by mature judgment, by zeal, rather than by knowledge, rush to the conclusion, that the severance of the connexion between church and state is not only allowable, but would be a positive benefit to the church; that they should, as the report of the executive committee, for 1847, expresses it, 'turn their eyes to an alternative which practically will bring them alongside of the British Anti-State-Church Association.'-'English Review,' No. xix. p. 128. This strange state of things it was which stimulated him to favour the world with his ideas, on the subject he has taken in hand.

'It is something,' he says, 'to be clearly aware of the danger of thi alternative; and it is with a view to bring those who may be tempted into it, acquainted with the company into which their aspirations for a separation between church and state must lead them, rather than from any notion of the intrinsic importance of the Anti-State-Church Asso

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ciation, that we are induced to drag forth that body from its obscure notoriety, and to bring its constitution, its principles, and its action, under the cognizance of the members of the church.'- English Review,' No. xix. p. 120.

Now this confession we believe to be true. The whole cast of the paper which it is brought forward to justify, proves its truth. That paper is intended to frighten churchmen, not to answer the arguments of dissenters. It would have borne a different character, if the latter had been its object. But that was not its object. Its object was to dress up and paint a monster which would appear particularly terrific to Anglican eyes. This object is wrought out with considerable skill; and we suppose many of the 'sincere and devoted' are now trembling before the ghostly figure which has, with pious care, been stuffed for their benefit. With this part of the affair we have, however, nothing to do. We are simply concerned with the plan of action thus exposed, as accounting for the selection of topics for animadversion, which our author has made. To our minds it accounts for this selection most fully. The choice exercised in this matter is just such an one as would most naturally suggest itself to a person who had no desire to enter into the true merits of the case with which he pretended to deal, but who was anxious to avail himself of the prejudices on his own side of that case, which prevailed among those to whom his appeal was addressed. There is some excuse for this politic proceeding, the case being emphatically one of the kind in which,

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After making the statement we have quoted, relative to the motive by which he was led to compose this article, the reviewer proceeds to trace the history of the Association which forms its subject. He discovers its origin in the agitation which was occasioned by the proposal of Sir James Graham's Factory Education Bill. To the opponents of that bill, he most unjustifiably attributes the following sentiment, as descriptive of their opposition:

• Rather than run the risk of the additional influence which this Education Bill may give to the ministers of the hated state-church, let us doom thousands and tens of thousands of factory children to ignorance and to eternal ruin. Perish their souls! rather than that the church should flourish.'-Ib. p. 132.

This sentiment is rightly designated as 'ferocious;' but the ferocity belongs to the man who invented it, in order to bring a false accusation against his neighbours, and not to those in

whose mouths it is put. Has not the Church of England, in days gone by, strenuously opposed schemes for national education, which abstained from giving the additional influence' to its body, embraced by Sir James Graham's bill? It has. And would this slanderer think it just to accuse the members of the church, in these instances, of dooming thousands and tens of thousands of children to ignorance and eternal ruin?' The cases are parallel, as far as his argument is concerned, with this dif ference against his application of the argument, that the church opposition was purely sectarian in its character, while the opposition of dissenters was directed by a desire for equal liberty only. In the face of these facts, we are warranted in affirming, that the accusation under our notice is not honestly preferred, inasmuch as it would be repelled with indignation by its author, if brought to bear upon similar conduct to that which it reprobates, as practised by his friends. In the very number of the English Review' containing this slander, it is said :—

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'We are not satisfied with any system of national education, which votes a farthing for the direct support of heresy and schism. Nay, we consider such a measure to be diametrically opposed to the first principles of our constitution, in church and state."— English Review,' No. xix. p. 228.

This, under the circumstances, is a somewhat startling utterance but instead of retorting the charge about 'perish their souls,' and so forth, we will give our author the benefit of a defence devised for such characters as he, by a son of his own church :

'The saints may do the same things by

The spirit, in sincerity,

Which other men are tempted to,
And at the devil's instance do:

And yet the actions be contrary,

Just as the saints and wicked vary.'

Hudibras, Part ii. Canto 2.

We come now to notice the religious principles which this reviewer attributes to the conductors of the Anti-State-Church Association. He thus enters upon that part of his subject:

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We look in vain in their principles for anything beyond that of destruction in vain for any elements out of which another, even though it were an erroneous system of religion, might be built up, when they shall have succeeded in levelling the structure of ages with the ground. While the gospel serves as the pretext for their aggression upon the church, they are not themselves agreed what the gospel is; nay, it is evident that any positive form of belief, even if they were prepared to give their assent to it to-day, would not be admitted by them as a per

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