opportunity to prepare a reply to it; and on October 14, after three months' correspondence and delay, the whole case, including a final letter from Mr. Maurice, in reply to Dr. Jelf, was laid before the Council of King's College. The Council, at an adjourned meeting, held October 28, "pronounced," to quote Mr. Maurice's own account, "the opinions expressed and the doubts indicated in the 'Essays,' and the correspondence respecting future punishments and the final issues of the day of judgment, to be of dangerous tendency, and likely to unsettle the minds of the theological students;" and decided, further, that his continuance as professor would be seriously detrimental to the interests of the college." From that day the professor's lectures, both on "Ecclesiastical History" and on "Divinity," came to an end.

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It will be observed, from the above account, that the decision of the Council was founded upon Mr. Maurice's opinions relating to only one point-and that, however momentous, not the most central or essential-of his theological opinions; a point, indeed, which was, in the original edition of the Essays, only brought in incidentally, or at least secondarily, in the latter part of his Essays on the "Trinity in Unity." It appears that this was the only point to which a certain "high authority" had called the principal's attention; and though, at first, as we gather from the printed correspondence, the principal very naturally resolved, and indeed engaged to Mr. Maurice, even suspected." And yet Dr. Jelf rested in ignorance as to the substance, tendency, and merits of the theological publications of his Professor of Divinity; one singular instance of which occurs in this very letter. Writing of the Articles of the Church of England, he says: "There are several other theological truths which are also omitted, because there was no occasion to speak of them. The compendium, for instance, contains no assertion-at least in direct terms eo nomine of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures; nor is there any allusion in the present text of the Articles to the general resurrection of all men, with their bodies, at Christ's coming: yet you would not call those open questions; you would not say that a theological professor who disputes either of those truths can be safely trusted to teach the students in the theological department of King's College." Now, a more curiously unfortunate argumentum ad hominem than this, as addressed to Mr. Maurice, it would be difficult to imagine; for, as to the inspiration of the Scriptures, it is manifest, not only from the "Essays," but from several of his previous works, to which he himself refers in a note to the Essays," (p. 323,) and one of which was published many years ago, that Mr. Maurice does not believe in this tenet in any other sense than that in which a Rationalist might profess to believe in it,—that is, he does not believe the inspiration of the sacred writers to differ, in any essential particular, from that teaching of the Spirit of which a pious peasant may be conscious, while reading those Scriptures; and as to the general resurrection of all men, with their bodies, and Christ's second coming, to judge the quick and the dead, these are tenets which, in the "Essays," Mr. Maurice boldly and altogether repudiates.

that he would carefully read the whole volume, in order the more safely and accurately to form his judgment upon the case, yet afterward it is evident that he judged it better to confine his attention to the particular Essay to which he had been originally pointed. On every account we think this is to be lamented; the controversy was thus not only narrowed, but distorted, and a doctrine was made primary and central which gave Mr. Maurice every advantage in the sight of mere secularists and half-believers, and which even the profound believer would always require to be viewed in its connexion with and dependence upon the truly central truths which form the very heart and essence of Christianity. Very possibly it might have been inconvenient to take up the grand doctrine of the atonement, with its associated doctrines of human depravity, justification, and regeneration, as the root of the whole matter. Perhaps on these doctrines some of Mr. Maurice's colleagues, and of the members of the Council, may have been divided in opinion; and it might probably be found even that views were held, as to more than one of them, by some of the most distinguished of those involved in the responsibility of this matter, which are far from agreeing with the evangelical orthodoxy of the Reformers.

There is another thing to be noted. The Bishop of London thought it his duty to direct the principal's attention to the professor's heterodoxy; but Mr. Maurice is still a fully accredited clergyman of the Church of England, within the diocese of the said bishop, and still holds the chaplaincy of Lincoln's Inn: so that the bishop is either powerless in this case, or shrinks from an invidious responsibility in his own person which, notwithstanding, he felt bound to lay on another; or he thinks that heterodoxy, though it may disqualify a clergyman for a professorship, does not disqualify him for the office of the public ministry. We believe the truth to be, that, as Mr. Maurice has subscribed to the Articles and formularies of the Church, and holds to them, (even to the Athanasian creed,) in a sense, the bishop is practically powerless. The Gorham case would be a very trifle to a leviathan affair like this of Mr. Maurice, embracing so many particulars of doctrine, and involving distinctions and reasonings so subtle and abstract.

To give our readers anything like an intelligible conspectus of the points included in this case will require a separate paper. Having, therefore, disposed in our present number of the history of the controversy, we shall devote a subsequent article to an examination of the subject-matter of the "Essays," out of which this controversy has arisen.

ART. III.-THE PRINCIPLE OF SOVEREIGNTY.

Histoire de la Souveraineté, ou Tableau des Institutions et des Doctrines Politiques Comparées. Par ALFRED SUDRE. 1 vol., 4to. Paris, 1854. New-York: Hector Bossange.

A DOUBLE advance upon the ordinary mode of treating politics is promised by the title of this work. It announces that the subject will not only be viewed historically, but that the history also will be viewed comparatively. The former of the improvements belongs to doctrine or philosophy; the other is methodical or logical. But both are quite concurrently and characteristically scientific.

In fact, it is the received character of science, in every subject, to employ the process commonly called "inductive." But this procedure is a consequence of the historical point of view. This point of view, or principle, attained but tardily in all phenomena, is compassed later in some than others, in proportion to complexity. The order of this succession demands a word of explanation.

In the phenomena of the simplest class, whose laws compose the mathematics, the attainment is the earliest, and was accordingly spontaneous; whence the prevalent illusion about those sciences as formed, exceptionally, by deduction or à priori, from "innate principles." It may be urged, indeed, that their subject-matter, which regards the statical phase of nature, must be consequently insusceptible of all historical consideration. Undoubtedly the alteration. in inert bodies is so slow and secular as to elude the observation and the experience of humanity, and to be safely disregarded in the constitution of special science. Yet positive knowledge, in even such bodies, implies a history, an evolution, but one restricted to the intellect itself. The mathematics are the result of a subjective induction.

To this procedure is superadded, on passing up into the natural sciences, the obligation of an objective induction, based on history proper. In fact, the objects in this organic and animate department exhibit obviously a rise, a progress, a revolution; in short, a history. It was accordingly this obviousness of the condition of mutability that brought the method of induction into predominance in modern times, and gave the corresponding section of the scale of science (through Bacon, also) the quite significant but vicious title of Natural History. On the other hand, the same direct accessibility to observation served to mitigate the augmentation of complexity. Yet to entirely overcome it, the simple method of induction had to FOURTH SERIES, VOL. VII.-3

assume a corresponding complication. This is the origin and character of the quite recent "Comparative Method," first applied by Cuvier to zoological anatomy; even as the corresponding doctrine of an historical development is scarce established, to the present day, in this extreme limit of the natural sciences.

There is thus, then, a distinct advancement in extending both the processes to the supreme and still more complicate domain of the social sciences. In fact, the laws of this department are in reality a combination of the objective and subjective phenomena of the two lower sections. Their character is then relational, and so, by excellence, comparative. They offer, also, in like preeminence, the character of history; offer it in such excess, indeed, as to become a disadvantage. The variation is so rapid in the social order of phenomena that they appear to be subordinated to no settled law at all. The difficulty of synthesis produces here the same illusion as the difficulty of analysis does in the laws of the mathematics. The very rapidity of the mutation, at one extremity of the scale of nature, comes to substantially the same effect as does its slowness at the other, in driving baffled investigation to imagine "innate" or mystic principles. Not the only case wherein the two extremes of motion meet, as is known popularly; and as do also, say some philosophers, the opposites indeed of all things; they mean, however, doubtless, in relation to the ken of man-himself a cumulative compromise between extremes. But the difficulty, the illusion will be one day vanquished, at both the ends, by the reciprocal elucidation of the mathematical and social sciences. This, however, is not the subject now before us. Our object in this brief explanation was to define the high import, both as a symptom of the "march of mind" and as a suggestion to future writers, of the titlepage of M. Sudre.

But does he realize the implied promise of his title in the work? We are forced to say decidedly that he does not. And, in passing proof, we can do no better than transcribe his programme in extenso, as programmes generally are not apt to be more modest than the performance.

Commencing duly with a definition of his main subject of Sovereignty as "the power in general that controls the state, or the collective powers by which its functions are exercised," he proceeds to add:

"Thus far the agreement is general. The difference is about the portion or the property of the society to be received as the constituent or the criterion of the sovereignty. Does the sovereignty belong to number or to intellect? To birth, to property, or to talent? To the nation, or to a king? To religion, or to reason? If to number, is it independently of all qualification of aptitude, morality, or stake in the public weal? If to property and birth, what

guarantees the weak against oppression? If to the king, what is his really legitimate title to the throne? If to talent or merit, who shall be judge? If to reason or religion, who is their organ? Again, are there governments of fact as well as of right? What is the characteristic of legitimacy in a government? Are force, fraud, and chance the sole principles in politics, or not rather justice and right? Is there a form of goverment perfect in itself, and which might be imposed with reason upon all communities alike? Or is the goodness of a government not, in its nature, relative to times, to localities, to manners? May nations, with impunity, in organizing their institutions, consult but the dictates of their wild will, or of some speculative theory? Or ought they not to consider their historical antecedents, the conditions of their territory, of their neighbours, &c.? Such are the principal questions which have been raised in the course of history in reference to the theory and applications of the sovereign power.”—P. 2.

To set forth questions and the systems they relate to, to compare them and to search for the peccant part in each,-such is the certainly imposing project of the author. It is pursued in the present volume only through the period of antiquity, from primal India to the Roman empire inclusive. But as the views of M. Sudre in political philosophy imply that the governments of the modern world are mere repetitions of the ancient, there can, to him at least, be no injustice in pronouncing thus far on the execution, while the materials are only too abundant and too important for a single article.

Now this conception of a repetition evinces well the imperfection with which he scizes the true historical philosophy and method. The insufficiency is shown more fully in the crowd of queries above recited, and which he places, with the common notion on the subject, in competition. A just idea of the bare principle of a perpetual variation, such as all history implies and all societies exhibit, would have suggested that there might be possibly no rivalry between the questions, but that the forms, the conditions, the criteria which they contrast, may all be right or quite the contrary, according to the circumstances. The relativity to circumstance he does however recognise, we see, in the alternative which he proposes for the chimera of a perfect government, or one which would be best for all communities alike. And yet not one of his other questions but is as absolute and as chimerical. It is, for instance, not more absurd to discuss the abstract preferability between two governmental forms, such as democracy and despotism, than between two principles of sovereignty, such as force and right, or two exponents of its legitimacy, such as religion and reason. As there are epochs of humanity when mere number must wield the sovereignty in the absence of broad distinctions of birth, property, or intellect, such as, for instance, among the Hurons of the Six Nations, so are there also times when force is a juster principle than right, the latter being as yet unfelt, and, of course, inapplicable; and when religion is a better