plest notions of a free government. What choice is left us, then, but to make them citizens in feeling as well as in name; to make them really as well as nominally members of our national society, that when they obtain political rights in that society, as in process of time they will and ought to do, they may exercise them in harmony with its spirit and institutions, to its benefit, not to its destruction.

The first thing required, as it seems to me, is to organize the population of the manufacturing districts with an organization that shall be legal and beneficial, instead of that organization of clubs and unions which is merely mischievous. For this object we require amidst so dense a population, that the divisions should in point of local extent be extremely small;-whereas unluckily the parishes and townships of the north of England, having been adapted originally to a population as thin and scattered as it is now for the most part dense and numerous, are much larger than those of the south. Again, many of the towns being of recent growth are not as yet incorporated; and have thus a less effective system of selfgovernment than many much smaller places in the southern part of the kingdom. It is desirable that the primary element in the civil and ecclesiastical divisions of the

manufacturing districts, whether in towns or in the country, should be extremely small;-for thus only where the population is so dense, is it possible to get that mutual knowledge of each other amongst the several inhabitants. of the same division, which is necessary in order to create a neighbourhood, a public opinion, and a common feeling of kindness, all of them essential points in the constitution of a true civil society.

Every such division should have a certain portion of common land unalienably attached to it,-to serve as a place for exercises and games, and partly it may be for public walks or gardens. Where the population is so great as to make that system of individual allotments which has been practised with such benefit in the agricul

tural districts, wholly impracticable, it is of the last importance that there should be township or parish allotments; -not only for the direct benefit and pleasure to be derived from them, but also because thus only can we give to the manufacturing workman the consciousness of possessing something of a property in land;-a feeling so salutary that it can scarcely be secured at too dear a price. And therefore this common land should belong to all the inhabitants of the division;-and they all should have a voice in the management of it, care being taken that they should neither be able to sell it, nor let it on a building lease, nor to let it at all except for the shortest possible term.

The importance of securing a portion of ground for games and exercises, in all thickly-peopled districts has been urged more than once in parliament, not less wisely than kindly, by Mr. Slaney, the excellent member for Shrewsbury. It is a delightful duty to honour the name of every public man who seeks to promote the innocent pleasure of the poor, and who by thus investing law with a character not of justice only, but of actual kindness, commends it to the affection of those whose worst degradation it is to regard it as their enemy.

ment.

The township or parish, thus possessing its common property, should also possess its own internal governThere is at present a wide gap in our system for the administration of justice between the justice of the peace and the constable. The first is too high, and belongs exclusively to the aristocracy, the latter is too humble and possesses an authority too entirely subordinate. -There might be some officer between these two extremes, something more resembling the juge de la paix of the French canton, or the syndic of the villages of Savoy. The object would be not merely one of police,— although that is far from unimportant,-but to train the people themselves to a sympathy with and a practical understanding of the administration of justice, and also to

introduce into a manufacturing population another element besides those of employer and employed. If the office were salaried, it would be on many accounts a great advantage; and where the object is so important as the raising in all points the condition of so large a portion of our fellow-subjects, the most economical government may well dare to be liberal.

I would rather hint generally at the sort of measures which appear to me to be needed, than venture to propose any thing in detail. I am sure, however, that we have much to learn as to the efficacy of government for something more than the mere purposes of police; for not protecting society merely from external injury, but for giving it inward life and energy, and for putting down that mischievous spirit of individual self-will, which, whether shown in its aristocratical form, as in Europe during the middle ages, or in its democratical, as now in parts of the United States, most truly deserves the name of Jacobinism. But on one point I may dwell with more confidence;—because I am sure of its efficacy, and because its practicability is only impeded by certain misapprehensions respecting it, very widely spread, and very deeply rooted. I speak of that great power of social improvement in the highest and most comprehensive sense of the word which is contained in the institution of the Christian Church.

And here it is necessary that I should a little unfold those views respecting Church Establishments which I stated briefly in my first letter, and which many, I fear, besides your correspondent " Augur," will consider either visionary or profane. With " Augur's" difficulties I can. entirely sympathize: he is not the first good and sensible man whom I have known to be perplexed by them; but that they are difficulties which may be removed by a full and large inquiry I feel as satisfied as I can be of any moral truth which has not the direct confirmation of God's Revelation. But I have already trespassed sufficiently on

H H

your columns; and the subject on which we are going to enter demands to be considered in a separate letter.

IX. THE STATE AND THE CHURCH.

[From the Paper dated January 12, 1839.]

SIR,-Before I enter upon the subject of this letter, I would assure your correspondent Augur, that however different the roads by which we may at present appear to be travelling, the point at which we are both aiming is I trust and believe one and the same. My views of the most perfect condition of the Church have no reference to mere worldly expediency; I love to entertain them, because the Church, as they represent her, appears to me best fitted to perform her appointed work, of bringing many souls to God.

Augur, as it seems to me, imagines that a Christian State and Church must differ from one another, because his notions of a State are too low, whilst the Church, such as he conceives it to be, is rather the Church perfected, than the Church as it ever has been, or as it ever can become, except, as I think, through that very system which in his judgment is so degrading to it.

Of course if the object of a State be merely, as Warburton represents it, the protection of men's bodies and goods, then the ideas of Church and State are necessarily distinct. And the same conclusion follows also, if we hold that the object of a Church, either solely or principally, is to perform certain external ceremonies or to teach certain abstract opinions.

But these are the notions of sensualism on the one hand and of priestcraft on the other, -not of true philosophy and Christianity. The State has a far nobler end than the care of men's bodies and goods: the Church

has a far nobler end than the performance of ritual services or the inculcating abstract dogmas-the end of both is the highest happiness of man; and this must be his moral happiness; but the difference between them has sometimes been, that the State when not Christian has pursued its object ignorantly: the Church has always known how to pursue it rightly, but it has not always acted according to its knowledge.

The true object of the State, which the old philosophers distinctly recognised and laboured to carry into effect, has been as we know continually lost sight of through the evil passions of men; insomuch that Government has come to be regarded as a mere necessary evil, an encroachment upon individual liberty not to be desired but endured; and of which the smallest possible dose, so to speak, is the most desirable. And the Church, through the same evil nature of man working in this instance by the system of priestcraft, has so fallen short of its true object, and so turned aside after a false one, that it too has been regarded as an enemy to man's happiness, and the most perfect school of all truth and goodness has been branded as the source of superstition and of folly.

If the object of the State and that of the Church be always in intention identical;-and if in a Christian State it is really identical;-that is, the Christian State and the Church have precisely the same notions of man's moral happiness; and if the State by virtue of its sovereign power can control men more effectually than any less sovereign society;-if again they have neither of them of necessity a distinct external form, which cannot be made to assimilate to that of the other;-then the two institutions may be identical;-and that common object which both pursue will then be pursued most effectually when they are identical;-i. e. when the State is Christian, or to express the same thing in other words, when the Church is sovereign.

A hundred fancied forms of evil will I know start up in