personal appreciation of the central truths of our faith. No man was more penetrated with the conviction that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation,' spiritual and moral, individual and social. He was never wearied of insisting on the supreme efficacy and importance of elementary Gospel truths, and of the utter insignificance, in comparison with them, of the controversies by which the Church was distracted. It is not a little striking and touching to notice how this principle permeated his whole life, and was, as it were, the bond which united all parts of it in complete unity. Thus the spirit of his work as Dean, as Bishop, and as Primate, was clearly embodied in the following passage at the conclusion of one of his farewell sermons at Rugby School (p. 319; edition of 1850):—

'The last twenty years have been for our Church a time of many controversies. Men have been contending very earnestly, each for his own peculiar view of scriptural truth: matters of very little importance have, not unnaturally, on all sides, been magnified into articles of Christian faith: and the Church has been divided into very keenly contending parties. I do not say that this has been simply an evil; it has been a necessary consequence of that outpouring of religious earnestness, for which we have to bless God's Spirit. But no one, I suppose, will doubt that it has been attended with great evils. Such controversies have even at times invaded our places of education; sometimes the noisy disputes, which ought for ever to be excluded from the hearing of the young, have been injudiciously pressed in schools; more frequently schools have become narrow seminaries for one or other of the Church's contending parties. Here, now, for twenty years, it has been endeavoured to bring up the young as Christians, without binding them to party; to make them love the Church of England, because in its forms and discipline is to be found the best mixture of pure scriptural truth, with comprehensive charity. And this work has not been without its fruit; men are becoming convinced in the world that there is a Christianity far wider and, as more loving, so more holy, than any which the spirit of party knows. They are becoming convinced that the Church of England best fulfils its mission in this great country, by that temperate upholding of the great Gospel doctrines in their simplicity, which draws a marked line between them and all human systems, however ancient or however valuable. It is only in this its wise comprehensiveness, that, in the days which are coming, the Church of England can hope to maintain its influence as the Church of a great and enlightened nation, and be very extensively blessed of God. I would have each young man who hears me to ponder well on this truth, which it has been the constant object of the instruction of this place, for many years practically to impress upon him. In the university-in the world-whether as a directly commissioned minister of Christ's Gospel, or ministering in some worldly calling-let him labour not to approve himself as of this or that theological school, but as a Christian; let him not waste his Vol. 155.-No. 309. religious

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religious power and energies on matters which have to do at the best only with the outward shell, or case of Christianity: but let him cling himself, and press on others, the pure and simple word of Christ, which is the essence of the Gospel. Parties in religion will all have disappeared when Christ comes: and those are His best disciples now who are occupied most with the great simple truths which shall last through eternity. The theoretical religious teaching of this school will have fulfilled its work, if it shall have trained a band to minister in the various ecclesiastical or secular offices of Christ's Church, as many, thank God, have been trained already and are now ministering, who are at once earnest in their belief and maintenance of Christ's real truth, and yet full of forbearing charity.'

To these convictions, and to this sense that he was worthily carrying into effect the spirit of Arnold's life, he recurred, as will be remembered, in his last words in Macmillan's Magazine.' There may always be some who will doubt whether he duly appreciated the importance of the Apostolic organization which the Church of England inherits, or the extent to which her just claims on the nation are founded upon it; and, like most men, he probably appreciated one side of truth more clearly than another. But there can be no question that in his description of what he deemed his leader's system he depicted a view of the work and teaching of the Church which appealed with unusual force to the convictions of his countrymen at large. To quote from that paper:

Men rejoiced to welcome a manly, straightforward, expansive, Christian system, which, holding as for dear life to the Divinity of Christ, and deeply imbued with the spirit of St. John's Gospel, had a marvellously attractive power. It troubled them not with the dry bones of departed controversies, but ever asked them with the voice of a trumpet, What are your own personal relations to the Father, and the Saviour, and the Holy Spirit? It pointed out to them how the Christian religion was no matter of forms and compromises, how it breathed the Saviour's love into the soul, and ever inculcated the following of His example; how it looked far beyond the individual, and the section of the Church to which the individual belonged, to the Commonwealth as part of God's workmanship, into whatever political form it might be moulded. He could not conceive of a State, doing perfectly its duty as a State, without the moving principle of religion. He spurned all theories of separating education from religion, or statecraft from that refining leaven which alone can enable a statesman to seek for his countrymen the highest objects of their existence.'

We believe the homage Archbishop Tait commanded was mainly due to the conviction he produced on his countrymen that these were the great objects on which his heart was set. They saw in him a man who was sensible, above all things, of the

momentous

momentous mission with which he and his Church were entrusted to their hearts and consciences, and who subordinated all personal, sectarian, and controversial considerations to these great ends. In this assurance they gave him hearty confidence and support in his work, and rendered him unstinted gratitude. We are passing, as he said, into a new period of the Church's life, and its rulers will have to adapt themselves to its peculiar emergencies. It may be given to the new Primate to bring into prominence some other aspect or element in the old truths; and our compensation for the loss of great men consists in the manner in which new minds bring out fresh sides of truth, and fresh possibilities in old institutions. But we cannot wish anything better for the Church of England than that her Primates may always appreciate the great principles which animated the life of Archbishop Tait, and that, in substance, they may make those principles their paramount rule in the discharge of the momentous duties of their office.

ART. II.-Progress and Poverty; an inquiry into the cause of Industrial Depression, and the increase of Want with increase of Wealth. The Remedy. By Henry George. London, 1882.

HERE has been a strong disposition among certain English critics to regard Mr. George as though he were nothing more than a charlatan, and to think, upon that ground, that a passing sneer will dispose of him. In both these views we consider them wholly wrong; but even were the first of them never so well founded, we should fail to see in it the least support for the second. Were Mr. George's subject mathematics or Biblical prophecy, then no doubt the case would be widely different. An ingenious writer, not many years ago, maintained that the earth was shaped like a Bath bun; and another, that Mr. Gladstone was the real beast of the Revelation; but had Dr. Tyndall lectured against the first theory in Albemarle Street, or had Canon Farrar denounced the second at Westminster, we should have thought the distinguished critics about as wise as the men they criticized. We do not find a 'Janus' crossing swords with the Jumpers, nor the Astronomer Royal refuting Zadkiel's Almanac. But though the Zadkiels and the Jumpers of abstract science and theology are for ever safe from any serious notice, and reach their highest honour when we sometimes condescend to smile at them, the moment they enter the domain of politics they become amenable to a new kind of tribunal.

Our meaning is not recondite. False theories, when they bear directly upon action, do not claim our attention in proportion to the talent they are supported by, but in proportion to the extent to which action is likely to be influenced by them; and since action in modern politics so largely depends on the people, the wildest errors are grave, if they are only sufficiently popular. How they strike the wise is a matter of small moment; the great question is, how they will strike the ignorant; and the modern politician, who disdains to discuss a doctrine merely because none but the very ignorant could be duped by it, acts much like a man who lets himself be knocked down by a burglar, because his honour will not permit him to fight any one but a gentleman. Thus it is easy to call Mr. George's proposals ridiculous, and to say that his fallacies have been again and again refuted; but nothing is gained by these facile and futile sarcasms. For practical purposes no proposals are ridiculous unless they are ridiculous to the mass of those who may act upon them; in any question in which the people are powerful, no fallacy is refuted if the people still believe in it; and were Mr. George's book even a lower class of production than it has ever been said to be by its most supercilious critics, we should not, for that reason, in the present condition of things, esteem it one jot less worthy of a full and candid analysis.

Let those who disagree with us consider the following facts. 'Progress and Poverty,' whatever its merits or its demerits, is remarkable first and foremost as containing one special proposal. This is a proposal, urged with the utmost plainness, for the wholesale and indiscriminate plunder of all landed proprietors. We say plunder, and we use the word advisedly; that, and that alone, will express Mr. George's meaning. Other writers have again and again suggested that it would be well if the class in question could be bought out by the State; but Mr. George's point is, that there shall be no buying in the matter. Let us not buy them out; let us simply use force and turn them out. 'That,' he says, 'is a much more direct and easy way; nor is it right,' he adds, 'that there should be any concern about them.' Now without pausing at present to comment on this teaching, let us ask simply what success it has met with. 'Progress and Poverty' has been published but for three years -for three years in America, and in England only one. In America its sale was so large and rapid, that it had already gone through a hundred editions there, before it was known by so much as its name here; and here, though its circulation has been most probably smaller, its reception in some ways has been even more significant. In America the author, so far as

we

we have been able to learn, has failed hitherto to make any practical converts. He has been more fortunate on this side of the Atlantic. One of the chiefs of the Irish Land League has become his enthusiastic disciple; and what was yesterday the mere aspiration of the thinker will probably to-morrow be the actual demand of the agitator. Nor is this all, or nearly all. Mr. George's London publishers have lately reissued his book in an ultra-popular form. It is at this moment selling by thousands in the alleys and back streets of England, and is being audibly welcomed there as a glorious gospel of justice. If we may credit a leading Radical journal, it is fast forming a new public opinion. The opinion we here allude to is no doubt that of the half-educated; but this makes the matter in some ways more serious. No classes are so dangerous, at once to themselves and to others, as those which have learnt to reason, but not to reason rightly. They are able to recognize the full importance of argument, but not to distinguish a false argument from a true one. Thus any theory that serves to flatter their passions will, if only put plausibly, find their minds at its mercy. They will fall victims to it, as though to an intellectual pestilence. Mr. George's book is full of this kind of contagion. A ploughman might snore, or a country -gentleman smile over it, but it is well calculated to turn the head of an artizan.

This alone would suffice to give it a grave importance; but half of the story yet remains to be told. It is not the poor, it is not the seditious only, who have been thus affected by Mr. George's doctrines. They have received a welcome, which is even more singular, amongst certain sections of the really instructed classes. They have been gravely listened to by a conclave of English clergymen. Scotch ministers and Nonconformist professors have done more than listen—they have received them with marked approval; they have even held meetings, and given lectures to disseminate them. Finally, certain trained economic thinkers, or men who pass for such in at least one of our Universities, are reported to have said that they see no means of refuting them, and that they probably mark the beginning of a new political epoch.

It is easy to think too much of the importance of facts like these; it is equally easy to think far too little of them. It is to this latter extreme, we fear, that the Conservative party inclines; we have therefore no hesitation in putting our case strongly. We say once more, and with even greater emphasis, that were Mr. George's arguments intrinsically never so worthless, were his knowledge never so slight, his character never so contemptible,