They reminded me that it was in the farmhouses of the New England States that a large number of the most eminent Americans -statesmen, theologians, orators, men of science—had received their early training; and that the sons of these plain and homely farmers had not only created the great manufacturing industries which are now established in the older parts of the country, but had been among the most adventurous and successful settlers in the West. An Englishman whom I met in New York the day after I landed, said that wherever I went I should find that the brains came from New England; my New England friends did not make quite so strong a claim as this, but they asserted that from the farm houses of the New England States had been derived a very large proportion of the intellectual and moral strength of the country. One of the most learned and accomplished men in America, who for some years bad preached to a congregation of New England farmers, assured me that they were generally men of strong shrewd sense and sound judgment, rather slow in their intellectual movements, but with a healthy appreciation for solid thinking. Many of them, he assured me, had a considerable number of excellent books and read them. On the other hand, I was told by a distinguished lawyer that the intellectual development of the farmers was seriously checked by the severity of their outdoor work. On the whole, however, the testimony which reached me from those who had the largest acquaintance with them supported very strongly the most favourable estimate both of their intelligence and their morals. What I heard about the farmers' wives and daughters was still more decisive. These ladies generally rise early and spend their morning in housework; but after an early dinner, which most of them cook with their own hands, they dress,' and are generally free to visit their friends or to occupy themselves with their books, their music, or their needle. They take a pride in cultivating the refinements of life. At dinner and supper the table-cloth is as white and the silver as brilliant as in the houses of wealthy merchants in Boston or New York. The farmhouses are planted so thickly over the country that evening entertainments are very numerous, and at many of these—80 I was assured—the conversation is very bright and intelligent. It is a common thing for a farmer to send at least one of his boys to college, and during the vacations the lads find in their mothers and sisters the keepest sympathy with their literary ambition. One lady, who had been surrounded from her childhood by the most cultivated society in New England, told me that she knew a large number of women living in farmhouses, that she constantly corresponded with some of them, and that among the farmers' wives and daughters there were some of the most attractive, most intelligent, and best informed women that she had ever met with.

About the effect of the New England agricultural system on the intellectual activity and refinement of the population there may be

differences of opinion ; but there can be no difference of opinion as to the effect it must produce on their political spirit and principles. A population of farmers owning the land they cultivate is certain to have strong conservative instincts. Nor is the conservative temper the special, or at least the exclusive, characteristic of New England. To an English Radical the conservatism of the people generally is very striking. If a couple of millions of American voters were suddenly transferred to English constituencies, the Conservative reaction would probably receive a great accession of vigour. Of course, the Church would be disestablished within a few months after the first general election; perhaps the House of Lords would be abolished; there would perhaps be an attempt to change the monarchy for a republic; but there might be a very vigorous Conservative spirit in England, as there is in America, in the absence of a throne, a House of Lords, and an ecclesiastical establishment. The respect for the rights of property, for instance, is positively superstitious. Some of the most liberal' of my American friends were astounded by Mr. Cross's Artisans' Dwellings Act. They were doubtful themselves about the policy and the justice of it; they were certain that no such act could be carried in America. The proceedings of the Endowed Schools Commission under the late Lord Lyttleton and of the present Charity Commissioners, appear to many Americans perfectly revolutionary. There are trusts in the United States which are utterly useless, because the conditions under which they were created have become obsolete; the money is lying idle or is being applied in ways which confer no benefit on the community, but to change the trusts seems like sacrilege or spoliation. A few men are plucking up courage to make the attempt, and are coming to the conclusion that the ghosts of the founders are not likely to appear if the trusts are modified, and that there is nothing in the Ten Commandments requiring us to confer upon any man the right to determine the uses of property for a thousand years after his death; and yet the boldest of them show a certain tremor and awe when they are drawn into a discussion of the question. They are like those pagans who, having discovered that their gods are wood and stone, want to displace them from their shrines, but approach the sacred places with a nervous dread lest, after all, they should be committing some terrible offence against mysterious powers.

This conservative instinct reveals itself in many directions. From what I know of Oxford and Cambridge, I am inclined to believe that in neither of them is the conservative temper so strong as at Yale. I mean that at Yale there is less disposition to try adventurous experiments, and to turn aside from the old paths; there is a more deeply rooted belief in the wisdom of our ancestors,' and a greater reverence for methods of education which are sanctioned by the example and authority of past generations. At Harvard, however, Vol. III.–No. 13.

II

there is far less reluctance to try new schemes, and I imagine that the changes which have been made there during the last few years would almost satisfy the most advanced Liberals in our own universities.

It is possible for a nation with republican institutions to be intensely conservative, and it is possible for a nation with monarchical institutions to be earnestly liberal. I do not say that, on the whole, America is more conservative than England, but there is a strength of conservative sentiment in America which some English statesmen would be very glad to transfer to this country. But what I have to say about the political spirit and character of the American people must be reserved for another paper.

R. W. DALE.

SCOTCH DISESTABLISHMENT AND

*PAPAL AGGRESSION.'

No. I.

answer.

Is there anything to be said by a Scotch bishop in favour of maintaining the Established Church of Scotland ? This is a grave and serious question for those who hold, as all our bishops do, an historical position, interrupted indeed more than once under special circumstances and in troublous times, but substantially continued, with or without State support, from the earliest dawn of our Christian civilisation. To this question I shall endeavour to give an

In doing so, I shall have occasion to take a wide historical survey, to be followed up by reference to great principles which lie at the root of the welfare, public and private, of all Christian communities. That the Episcopal Church, in which I have the honour to hold office, would be an immediate gainer-very greatly a gainerin numbers and in influence, if the Church of Scotland as it now stands were to be disestablished, no one acquainted with the present circumstances of the country can have the slightest doubt; and the temptation, therefore, will be strongly felt by many of us to forward rather than to retard that catastrophe. But a larger and more comprehensive view may perhaps incline us to be patient, and in the mean time to seek for a way out of the present critical juncture of ecclesiastical affairs which may lead to a firmer and more secure basis, not only for both establishments, but for Christianity itself in the conflict which it has to wage, both at home and abroad, with infidelity and with heathenism.

My argument will be cast into an analytical rather than a synthetical form. I shall begin by assuming that Christ has laid down for His Church a law of unity so stringent that it admits of no violation ; in the words of St. Augustin, ' Fieri non potest ut aliqui habeant causam justam quâ communionem suam separent a communione orbis terrarum, eamque appellent Ecclesiam Christi' _ a proposition which I shall hope to establish in a second article. I shall begin, I say, by assuming this proposition; and going back to the time when this law, being carried into effect through the operation of the methods which Holy Scripture and the providence of God combined to recommend, was virtually adopted throughout Christendom, I shall proceed to show the results which the acceptance of those facts and principles legitimately involves. In all ordinary cases, Church Establishment, to be just and reasonable, supposes a preponderating unanimity of religious sentiments, founded demonstrably upon Scriptural truth. To such demonstration I shall appeal from first to last.

I. The adjustment of the law of Christian unity, without persecution, and with full toleration for non-conformity and dissent, under the varying circumstances and conditions of states and nations, is a problem which more perhaps than any other has taxed, and still continues to tax, the wisdom and the faith of Christian men. Infinitely elastic in itself, and capable of being applied on the largest or the smallest scale, the system of administration which this law requires bears witness to its Divine origin. Not to enter now into the Scriptural proof, which I have fully produced elsewhere, for an episcopal or threefold ministry, it is the unbiased testimony of the historian Gibbon that. Nulla ecclesia sine episcopo has been a fact as well as a maxim since the time of Tertullian and Irenæus,' two of the earliest Christian writers of the post-apostolic age. After we have passed the difficulties of the first century, we find the episcopal government universally established till it was interrupted,' we shall see hereafter under what circumstances, by the republican genius of the Swiss and German Reformers. 3 But more than this. Long before the Roman Empire became Christian by : profession, this outward form of ecclesiastical jurisdiction had begun to adapt itself to that of the civil polity. Hence arose the great metropolitan or provincial divisions, 118 in number, each including many dioceses (to use this word in its subsequent acceptation); and greater still the fourteen patriarchates, corresponding with the grand divisions of the Empire : among which five were distinguished as pre-eminent or Proto-Patriarchal; and among these again, as Rome was the capital of the entire Empire, so the Roman Bishop became not supreme over the rest, but the first in dignity and precedence among his brethren.

It is true that Rome was also the place in which St. Peter, after leaving Antioch, had exercised for a time his apostolic ministry, in conjunction, as we must conclude, with St. Paul; the one not improbably confining himself to the Jewish converts, while the other laboured among the Gentiles. But the question of Hosius, the presiding bishop, at the Council of Sardica (A.D. 347), “Doth it please you that we honour the memory of St. Peter ?'—this question would

• See Outlines of the Christian Ministry delineated and brought to the test of Reason, Holy Scripture, History, and Experience, with a rien to the reconcilation of rxisting differences concerning it, especially between Presbyterians and Episcopalians. 1872. London, Longmans : Edinburgh, Grant.

: Chap. xv., notes.