or Spain, the stagnation is too general to allow matter for profitable consideration; Lombardy only is an exception in that portion of North Italy the effects of the wars of Napoleon have produced a distinct result in creating a testamentary division of land; but in the south of Italy the métayer system prevails; in case of tenancies payment in kind still continues, whilst throughout the kingdom all the processes of agriculture are still at a very low ebb. Of Greece, only a small part of the available area is utilised; out of a total of 5,600,000 acres of productive land, not more than 1,800,000 are under cultivation. In Portugal matters are scarcely better, for out of the total area of 9,000,000 hectares, it has been calculated by two eminent authorities at least, and on entirely independent data, that 2,000,000 hectares at the outside are cropped in any form whatever. The system of tenure is fourfold-small proprietors, tenants, métayers, and copyholders. The general condition of the peasantry is exceedingly impoverished, and the state of feeling between the tenants and proprietors is very unfriendly. The less important countries which we have last mentioned in the north and south of Europe differ largely from one another in physical peculiarities, yet they agree in the general stagnation of agricultural life and slow measure of improvement. This is more conspicuous in the south than in the north, but in all there is a marked contrast with the belt of earth that runs through the centre. In Poland, parts of Russia, Austria, Prussia, France, and Belgium, the whole agrarian condition of the populations is not only advancing rapidly, but the advance is of that character which tends to the furtherance of wide-spread social ameliorations and the sound consolidation of political life. one respect, in all the countries that have changed the old feudal tenure

In

so as to bring it into harmony with modern requirements, the result has been achieved, not only without injury to the great landowners, but, so far as pecuniary position is concerned, largely in their favour. In this respect the testimony from all the countries now referred to is in unison.

The various States of the Continent are more or less parts of one whole; the barrier that separates kingdom from kingdom may be a small stream, a hilly range, or a merely artificial line. The consequence is, that the thought which ripens in one land disperses its seeds over its neighbour; and the tendencies which most favour the growth of individual life at length overmaster all others. It was the recognition of this that gave force to Count Cavour's remark to a Russian diplomatist: The equal right you give your peasants to the soil is more dangerous to us Westerns than all your armies.'

England is as yet largely free from the influence of these disturbing forces. Those twenty miles of salt water that divide us from the shore at Calais also separate our people from that flux of thought that spreads over Belgium, grows up in Prussia, and is permeating the whole mass of European society. The idea of 'the land for the people and the people for the land' is only beginning to move among

us;

but it contains the germs of a far-spreading vitality. The rough facts imperfectly grasped, often inaccurately and vaguely stated, are yet so far powerful that they give point to the questions that are levelled against our own land tenure. All men will recognise that it is doomed to change, and none more vividly than those who are most intimately associated with it. The expressions that have fallen from members of the House of Peers sufficiently indicate the recognition that change is inevitable.

How far

it shall go, what form it will assume, or where it will end, no man can say. Every symptom indicates that the Land Tenure question lies before us in the immediate future, and as soon as modern ideas have permeated the mass of our people the demand will certainly arise for large alterations. As our great feudal system arose out of the earlier form of communal life, so surely will democratic agrarianism arise out of and dominate over the relics of feudal life. The evidences of this lie broadcast before us, and are

written in the history of every State in Europe. One after another each country has changed its land tenure, either quietly and with cool good sense, or in hurry and at the threat of convulsion. There is little doubt how the result will be achieved in our own land. So soon as circumstances indicate that the time has come for modification and change, so soon will the laws be moulded into harmony with our necessities; for our aristocracy have the rare wisdom of knowing how and when to yield.

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N our own day a new religion has been added to the many which diversify and illustrate the history of human development. Mormonism is a Church claiming to be inaugurated by a recent divine manifestation, founded by a ministry of apostles, revelators,' and prophets, and established among the most civilised nations of the world by a perpetual succession of signs, wonders, and attested miracles. According to its own assumptions, the Church of the Latter-day Saints is as necessary and important a development of Christianity as Christianity is of Judaism; its claims are allowed by multitudes of converts who have gathered into the fold, and the new Church has already won a significant place in history.

The marvel of this is increased, not diminished, by the patent fact that the originators and promulgators of this novel religion are a small company of illiterate, ill-living, insignificant men, remarkable, if for anything, for their powers of credulity, or of imposition on others, or possibly for both these characteristics of the typical religious fanatic, and for a great talent of unscrupulousness of action. By such men has the new religion been established. And, upon the face of it, the task they have accomplished is one that could not have seemed sible for any men, however gifted, with any conceivable advantages of position and influence.

pos

Mor

monism is a huge stride backward in the civilisation of the race. It is a system of priestly tyranny more oppressive than that of Rome. Its demands on the capacity of human credulity are extravagant in the extreme. It sets itself against the whole course of modern ideas. In an age of science, of scepticism,

and of religious tolerance, it renews the visions and miracles of primitive times, and dares to coerce allegiance, and punish apostasy, by the free use of force, and of violence to the death. In the territory of a democratic Republic which has carried the principle of individual liberty to the greatest extreme ever known, Mormonism flouts at the liberty of the subject, denies the equality of conditions,' and holds its adherents in abject subjection.

Upon a contemplation of the rise of this new superstition, we perceive that the world has not outgrown its credulous childhood. In the very partial culture of the masses of our population, if the amount of moral and intellectual training they possess removes them above the level of positive barbarism, we have no preservative, it is evident, against the rise of the most absurd social follies, and the most noxious religious fanaticisms. This Mormonism, a new and more absurd Mahometanism, has just commenced to run its course among the two most advanced peoples of the age. The world is not safe yet against the appearance of preposterous faiths that may outrival the follies of pagan times. Presumably the elements in this new faith which have commanded success against all obstacles must be worthy an attentive consideration. An adequate study of the rise of Mormonism, considered in relation to the condition of religion in America and England, and in illustration of the religious faculties of the human mind, could not fail to be interesting in the highest degree, should a writer with the necessary qualifications be attracted to the distasteful but serviceable investigation. I may confess that a principal reason for the

preparation of this paper is a hope that it may prove useful in suggesting the importance of an adequate scientific examination of the subject of which I treat.

No time should now be lost in preparing the materials for such a work. Many of the actors in the first scenes of this curious religious farce are still living. Never before in the history of the world has the opportunity occurred of examining critically the men, the motives, the means, concerned in the establishment of a new faith. In the interests of human knowledge the opportunity should not be suffered to pass. There are men like Sidney Rigdon, living in retirement, prominent actors in the establishment of a creed which they have abandoned, who could give the most important evidence on the method of the development of the new religion. To the vulgar the origin of Mormonism is already becoming dim, and in the same measure poetical, by a growth of myth and romance round the sordid facts; but for the information of the world at large these facts should be established beyond the reach of doubt.

To persons of the sensitive and conservative order of mind, it will afford little comfort to reflect that Mormonism already promises to become enshrined in the halo of mystery which gives beauty to the older religions. The founder of the faith has become a holy martyr, whom the people have not seen, but whom they honour with a love and devotion not second to that which they give to any being in the universe. A hundred thousand of our fellow-creatures mention the name of Joseph Smith with reverential hush of tone. The sufferings of the first Mormon communities have become invested in the popular mind with more pathos and romance than the persecutions of the early Christians. The wilderness march

·

of the despised Church, and its establishment in the top of the mountains,' in the true Zion, are already associated with miracles like those that signalised the wanderings of the children of Israel. Mormonism has in counterfeit its Moses and Aaron, its Gideon and Barak, its 'sons of Dan,' its Pauls and Peters, and perhaps its St. John.

We might now, if we chose, with the necessary pains, trace out the whole petty secret of the inception of the new faith, the blunders and disputes at its annunciation, the surprise of the adventurers at their success, and the rapid evolution of the thing into a conglomerate theocratic system. This grotesque faith may hereafter grow matured into a powerful religion with an origin dim in a splendour of miracles and martyrdomis, commanding while it lasts a reverence from the ignorant and superstitious equal to that which we pay to the great religions of our own time.

The originators of the Mormon scheme, and the first converts, were Americans of the New England States. The present leaders and most successful missionaries are Americans, Englishmen, and Scotchmen. The mass of the converts are from the sea-board States of the Union, from the cotton districts and southern counties of England, from the mines and rural districts of Wales, and from Sweden and Norway on the Continent. Everywhere the class reached is that of the indigent and the hopelessly ignorant. The apologists of Mormonism are not anxious to deny this. 'Unto the poor the Gospel is preached,' is their triumphant reply. Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the

things which are mighty; and are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are.' It is a noticeable fact that the converts are usually gathered from the inferior or secondary Protestant sects, from Campbellites, Grahamites, Millerites, and various splits off the Methodist, Baptist, and Independent Churches. In many instances, no doubt, the influential motive in joining the Latter-day Saints has been the anticipated improvement in the convert's material condition on his removal to the promised land of the Far West. But perhaps in the majority of cases religious motives have largely influenced the decision. From conversation with a considerable number of Mormons I should judge that the fanatically religious among them have been largely recruited from eccentric sections of Protestant sects which have separated from the main body on some question of the Second Advent, the Personal Millennial reign, or on matters connected with the purity of church order or membership.

A consideration of some of the main elements of strength in the appeal which Mormonism makes to the classes that it addresses will have the advantage also of exhibiting in some detail the general scope of that system.

First in order of importance in the list of the strong points of Mormonism I am inclined to place its direct appeal to the letter of the Holy Scriptures. To an extent little imagined by the outside public this new religion is based on a literal interpretation of the sacred books of the old. The people among whom Mormonism gathers its converts are animated by an ignorant and superstitious, but usually a very profound reverence for the very words of our Bible. They are prepared to listen anxiously to any

prophetic speculator, theologue, or heresiarch, who professes to derive his theory from Holy Writ. And the Mormon missionary cites chapter and verse for every statement he makes. No religious teacher gives more willing heed to the popular appeal, 'To the law and to the testimony.' The Mormon demands boldly that the sacred words be taken in their literal sense, and traffics little in subtleties and evasions. The Divine Being is literally the father of our spirits,' and procreated the children of men in a preceding stage of existence. The saints in their turn are to become 'heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,' and are to rule over creation. There is an absolute power of the keys on the earth for the remission or retaining of sins. Baptism by water, by divinely accredited agents, is essential to salvation. Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Miraculous powers are the unfailing marks of a true Church. and such signs were to follow 'those that believe.' The sick saint is to call for the elders of the Church, and be anointed with oil for his recovery, and for the removal of his sins. In the latter days evil men and seducers are to abound; a general falling away from the true faith is to take place; the corrupt churches, 'having itching ears,' are to heap to themselves teachers among whom no unity of doctrine can be found; the faithful are to forsake Babylon; the Lord's house is to be established in the top of the mountains,' and all nations are to flow unto it, and the saints at last are to rule the earth.

Such

The common people are astonished at these bold appeals to their own sacred Scriptures. A scheme of literal interpretation has a simplicity that commends it strongly to their understandings. They listen