tial interests of a state are affected by the internal events taking place in a neighbouring state, but also when the rights of humanity are violated by the excesses of a cruel and barbarous government." The Porte refusing to grant an amnesty, the three powers at once recognised the belligerent rights of the Greeks. Similarly the belligerent rights of Belgium were recognised; and in this case England was not eventually drawn into any war with Holland. The insurrection of the Spanish colonies was recognised by England, the United States, and Sweden. We recognised the belligerent rights of the Southern Secessionists without even sufficient delay to show that they could hold their own against the government of Washington. Here then appears to be a distinct principle, that it is in the option of any power to recognise insurgents of any kind, and at any time during the struggle, as belligerents.

What, it may be said, would be gained by this? The immediate and immense gain would be the winter. During those very months when the Russians expect to draw their enemy, as in a net, the Polish combatants would emigrate into Austria, leaving perhaps a few of the best-seasoned bands to harass the enemy. The insurrection would become something impalpable and yet terribly near. It would buy its munitions of war at a fourth of their present price, and would recruit soldiers from every country in Europe. The men who are now imprisoned on suspicion by the Austrian police, and sent back over the frontier, would be allowed to traverse Gallicia at will, so long as they did not do it in regular companies. It is not too much to say that the whole labour of subjugation would have to be recommenced. Yet in one particular at least the war would have a tendency to be less bloody. It would be difficult for the Czar's government to persist in treating as brigands men whom the rest of Europe recognised as regular belligerents. We might fairly hope to hear of flags of truce between the two combatants and of mercy to the wounded.

It rests with Russia to prevent this recognition, and to reconcile herself with civilised Europe. She is still in a position, if she will only use it, to yield with dignity. The reconstruction of Congress Poland with a native parliament, under a Russian grand duke, and with international guarantees for the honest carrying out of the amnesty that has been so often talked about, would be nothing more than the Court of Peterhof is already pledged to by the Treaty of Vienna, and yet would suffice to satisfy public opinion. France and England have nothing to gain by the continuance of an internecine struggle, which occupies their diplomacy, produces constant fluctuations in the money-market, and keeps cabinets and press

in a wearisome state of tension. The fee-simple of Poland would not pay us for the disquietude of a year's European war. That the Poles would dislike such an accommodation as we have suggested is more than probable; but there is just sufficient equity about it to make it certain that they would forfeit the sympathies on which they now rely if they refused to entertain it. Besides, their faith in cabinets must by this time have undergone several disenchantments. As the scheme is in fact that which the Russian organs steadily represent as already contemplated, the only humiliation for the Emperor would be in admitting European intervention in the case of a province which he only holds in trust for Europe. The revolt of 1831 no more transferred Poland to the Russian empire than the revolt of 1848 in the Ionian Islands changed them from a trust into a dependency of the British empire. Sooner or later the Czar's government will discover that it is not wise to disregard public opinion and European treaties; and it may have occasion to learn before many months are over that there are other means of punishing bad faith than by drawing the sword.

ART. VI. THE ROYAL SUPREMACY, AND THE
HISTORY OF ITS INTRODUCTION.

State Papers of Henry VIII., published by Royal Commission.
Correspondence of Cromwell in the State-Paper Office.

THE anxiety of the episcopal bench to get rid of Bishop Colenso by some legitimate means brings us once more face to face with the Act of Supremacy and its authors. Hitherto, churchmen have upheld that statute with as much vehemence and tenacity as if the existence of the Church itself depended upon it. The greatest of English theologians, from the days of Hooker, have flourished it in the face of their enemies as a weapon of proof not less effective against Romanism than Dissent. To the old thick-and-thin supporter of "Church and State," the royal supremacy seemed a tower of strength. He was not ashamed to be told that he belonged to a church which owed its superiority solely to its political advantages. He would not have flinched from the assertion, that the Reformation was a political movement; that the state church was under greater obligations to the king than the bishops. He rather gloried in the fact. He saw in this alliance a pledge that the powers of the state should be employed in securing

for the church a supremacy above all other religious societies. However they might fluctuate and decay, he was perfectly secure. It was the business of the state, not his, to see that the church sustained no damage; to prevent any attack upon its outworks, and put down the promulgators of schism from within. It was a comfortable doctrine; it saved a world of thought, of labour, and of reading; better than all, it saved him from the necessity of forming a judgment on the difficult problems sometimes thrown in his way. It is pleasant to have others to think and provide for you; it is especially pleasant when thought and labour bring with them no other reward than "laborious days," and the imputation of singularity.

There did, indeed, happen times when the church ran off the accustomed rails, and this state-support became oppressive. The yoke, which bore equally on the necks of both animals in the straight furrow, fell in rougher ground with disproportioned weight on the shoulders of the smaller beast. It was hard for the nonjuring clergy in the reign of William III. to stand up and hold their own against the whole bench of bishops; still more hard when the whole weight and influence of the crown were thrown into the scale of the stronger. Then the clergy began, if not to disavow the royal supremacy, at least to question its true and legitimate limits. The same authority which seemed unfavourable to dissent when it pleaded for liberty of conscience, was equally unfavourable to the exercise of the same liberty on the part of the clergy. Their strength was to sit still. The moment they attempted to stir a hand's-breadth beyond the established formularies of the church, the moment they attempted to walk alone, without recognising the support of the state, that moment they received unmistakable warnings of their helplessness. The Church of England claims in its Articles the right of every individual church" to decree rites or ceremonies" as it shall think needful; and the state indorses that claim. It claims authority to determine what is right or wrong in "controversies of faith;" and the state, with equal complaisance, sanctions that authority. It denounces the man who is cut off from the unity of the church as "a heathen and a publican;" and the state has not a word to say against so wholesome and so charitable a doctrine. But the moment the church attempts to put these abstractions into practice, the state steps in with its Act of Supremacy; and woe to the unhappy churchmen, singly or collectively, who, deluded by these fair promises, should venture to act upon them. With authority to decree rites and ceremonies, rites and cereinonies have remained precisely as they were more than three centuries ago. The whole nation

has been torn with controversies of faith, almost without intermission, from the Reformation to the present hour; but the church has never ventured to interpose an authoritative voice in these matters. And as for denouncing a dissenter as "a heathen and a publican," we take it that a jury of twelve enlightened citizens would very soon show the denouncers how far such advice was allowable. In fact, the state-support is very much like Sancho Panza's state-physician in his island of Barataria. "He had hardly put one bit into his mouth, before the physician touched the dish with his wand, and then it was taken away by a page in an instant. Immediately another with meat was clapped in the place; but Sancho no sooner offered to taste it, than the doctor with the wand conjured it away as fast as the first." Any actual exercise of authority on the part of the church is neutralised by the state, whether it relates to doctrine or to ceremonies; and therefore, like Sancho Panza, compelled to solace his hunger, in the absence of more savoury and substantial dishes, "with a hunch of bread and some four pounds of raisins," the action of the church rises no higher than to a crusade against pew-rents or the recommendation of thanksgiving for a plentiful harvest.

Sooner or later the whole subject will provoke, as it has long since demanded, grave consideration. Not that, in the present distracted state of religious parties, we are anxious to see those restrictions removed from the independent action of the church, which would be inevitably turned to mischief, and end in its total ruin. But, as we have stated, we are brought face to face with the practical difficulties of the question by the case of Bishop Colenso. As the law now stands, the church can pronounce no judgment on the Bishop of Natal. It has no jurisdiction over him or any other bishop, heretical or orthodox. He may write and preach as much Hoadleyism or neologianism, or any other ism, as he pleases. The church is absolutely powerless. Long before the Reformation the right of punishing a bishop had been vested solely in the pope. The Act of Supremacy transferred this, with other ecclesiastical privileges, to the crown; and we might live to witness the anomaly of a bishop, ordained to drive away false doctrine, maintaining it in his own person, without any power in the church to restrain or to punish it. In fact, the time cannot be long distant when a much greater amount of freedom of opinion will be claimed both by bishops and clergy. In the rapid advance of art and science, it is impossible that theology alone can remain stagnant. It is equally impossible for the clergy of the Church of England, brought up at the universities, accustomed to the broader and profounder views which a philology unknown to the sixteenth century

has opened to mankind, to remain satisfied with the theological axioms of the Reformers, often based on a total misapprehension of the original language of the New Testament, and always more or less crippled by those narrow habits of thought in which they had been trained. Of the Fathers of the Reformation, as they are called, to whom we are indebted for the Articles and Homilies of the Church of England, who is there that would now be quoted as an authority in any great question of ecclesiastical history, of philology, of philosophy, or even of theology? It is impossible to turn over a single page of their writings and not be struck with the total absence of power and originality. Even in the most learned, such as Cranmer, the learning consists mainly in scraps and commonplaces from the Latin Fathers, or miserable translations of the Greek, valued solely for their apparent efficacy in the pending controversy against Catholic opponents, but indicating the smallest possible familiarity with the true spirit of antiquity. It is impossible that the clergy can be long content to walk in the theological gyves of the sixteenth century. And unwilling as the Church of England may be, and, in its present relations with the state, unable to grapple satisfactorily with the question, the time is not far distant when it must be prepared to reconsider its past decisions on many theological difficulties, and claim for itself and its adherents a greater liberty of expression and of action.

Of the history of that Act, which has produced such important consequences, and modified the whole existence of the Church of England, we should have been glad had Mr. Froude furnished us with a little more explicit information in his history of Henry VIII. To us it is far more interesting, and in itself infinitely more important, than Anne Boleyn's robes or the feuds of the Geraldines. Whose genius was it that upset the traditions of fifteen centuries, and devised an organisation without parallel in ancient or in modern times? Who first conceived the bold idea-not of a parity of power between the spiritual and temporal jurisdictions, not Warburton's figment of an imperium in imperio, not modern Anglicanism, watching to steal a feather out of the tail of the imperial eagle, -but a transfer of the whole authority of the church from a spiritual to a temporal ruler? Who was it that, with one stroke of the pen, to use the phrase of Bishop Andrews, substantiated Henry VIII. into the pope," and converted the church from an independent rival to a ready and submissive dependent on the state? With all the papers and documents before him needful for the satisfaction of such an inquiry, we should have been glad if Mr. Froude had availed himself of his precious opportunities; if he had told us by what steps

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