taken care to make more plainly appear, all and singular which things, according to the Statutes of this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in that behalf provided, were duly had and made, as we have signified to our said Sovereign Lord the King by other Letters certificatory of the day of the date of these Presents, sealed with our Common Seal.

"The same like by these our Letters, sealed with our Common Seal, we do signify to you, and we earnestly desire you to give your assent and consent to such election so made of you as aforesaid. "In testimony whereof, &c."

Such are the processes gone through by every Dean and Chapter at every election: "prayers to Almighty God are before all things humbly offered up;" they then proceed "maturely and seriously to consider between themselves concerning a fit person to be elected," and "at length," "according to the ecclesiastical laws," "canonically proceed to election." And yet, if they exercise any discretion in this most weighty matter, if they require time, i. e. exceeding twenty days, to enquire into the character and opinions of the person nominated, who may be wholly a stranger to them, or if they hesitate to accept one who is known to them, and that most unfavourably, they are forthwith outlawed, all their goods forfeited, and themselves imprisoned till they consent to violate their conscience.

I shall not dwell on the enormity of this perse

cuting law-to state it most nakedly is to expose it most forcibly. Surely it is not unreasonable to call on our dissenting countrymen to join in effecting the speedy removal of a grievance such as this, so much severer than any which themselves have experienced. This is no question for party jealousy; it involves no doctrinal nicety, no principle of politics; it turns not on the peculiarities of sect or faction; Presbyterian, Quaker, Independent, Socinian, all must agree on it, all, in short, whose creed obliges them to uprightness and fair dealing, who profess to act on the broad principles of common sense and common honesty.

§ 6. State Interference and State Protection1.

We are very naturally jealous of the attempts that are making to disunite, as it is called, Church and State; which in fact means neither more nor less, in the mouths of those who clamour for it, than a general confiscation of Church property, and a repeal of the few remaining laws which make the true Church the Church of England.

This is what Dissenters mean by disuniting Church and State; and we are all naturally anxious to avert a step at once so unjust towards men and sacrilegious towards GOD.

Let us not imagine, however, that every one who apparently joins with us in this anxiety must necessarily have the welfare of the Church at heart.

1

1 [This Section forms No. 59 of the Tracts for the Times

VOL. I.

Many people seem to join us at this crisis, and protest loudly in favour of the Union of Church and State, who nevertheless mean by this, something very different from what Dissenters mean, and from what we mean when we are opposing Dissenters. The "Union of Church and State," which many persons so call, and are so anxious to preserve, is in some points almost as great an evil, as it is confessedly, in other points, a good: and there are almost as many persons who support it for its bad points, as there are who hate it for its good.

To make this plain, I shall endeavour to explain what it is that the Union of Church and State consists in, as now enforced by the law of the land.

It consists in two things, STATE PROTECTION and STATE INTERFERENCE; the former of which, Dissenters wish to overthrow; and the latter of which, governments, of whatever kind, are very naturally anxious to retain: while Churchmen have hitherto been contented to accept both conjointly, without perhaps very exactly calculating how little they gain on the one hand, and how much they sacrifice on the other. This subject is indeed one which, from the confidence hitherto placed by us in the integrity of government, has, perhaps, been much less investigated than any other of equal importBut recent changes in the constitution have now so entirely altered the mutual relations of the Church and the Legislature, that what has in past times been a becoming, though perhaps misplaced

ance.

But

reliance on authority, would at present be a disgraceful negligence about our most sacred interests. In the following pages, then, it will be my object to consider the gains and losses which we accept jointly, in the Union of Church and State, arranging them under the above-mentioned heads: STATE PROTECTION and STATE INTERFERENCE.

I. The PROTECTION which the Church receives from the State consists principally in four things. 1. In securing to us by Law some small portion of those ample endowments which the piety of our forefathers set apart for the maintenance of true religion in this country. Of these endowments far more than half are at this day in the hands of noble aristocrats, who may be of any religion or none, and do not consider themselves obliged to spend one farthing of it in the cause of GOD. But there is still a certain remnant in the hands of the clergy, who are thereby enabled to spread truth over the land, in the poorest and most remote districts; and to live in decency themselves, without being a burden to the poor people for whose good they are labouring. This remnant then the State has forborne to confiscate, as it has confiscated the rest; and in this consists the first kind of State Protection.

2. It further consists in enabling us to raise a tax on real property for the keeping our parish churches in tolerable and decent repair through the Country,—which tax, as estimated by those who put it at the highest, amounts to about as many

thousands a year as the other taxes amount to hundred thousands. This is the only existing law by which Englishmen, as such, are called on to assist in the maintenance of the Church of England.

3. It consists, farther, in allowing Thirty Bishops to sit and vote in the House of Lords, to which House all Bishops, and many other Church Dignitaries belonged, as a matter of right, at the signing of Magna Charta; and from which they never can be excluded without violating the very first article of Magna Charta, the basis of English liberty.

4. In the law De excommunicato capiendo, by which the State engages, that on receiving due notice of the excommunication of any given person, he shall be arrested, and put in prison until he is absolved.

Such are the four principal heads of STATE PROTECTION on reading them over, it will occur to every one, that the first is nothing more than common justice, and no greater favour than every other person in the country receives in being protected from thieves; that, as to the second, the most that one can infer from it is, that in the eye of the State the importance of the Church is to the importance of civil government as a thousand to a hundred thousand, or as one to a hundred; that to counterbalance the third, which admits some Bishops to the House of Lords, all clergymen whatever are excluded from the House of Commons; and