sermons replete with any absurdity, and indulge in the freedom of the pulpit, they cared nothing for that of the press, or altering the structure of government. When Charles II. was recalled by Monk, he had only to issue writs to the counties and boroughs which had returned the Long Parliament, to obtain the most thoroughly loyal commons that ever sat in England.

Although the change of government in 1688 is usually called "the Revolution," and although it certainly was a most decisive overthrow so far as the reigning family was concerned, yet it was by no means a revolution in the sense in which we now understand the word. It made no change in the basis of power in the state, though it altered the dynasty which sat on the throne, and for seventy years fixed the reign of power in the hands of the Whig party, who had been most instrumental in placing William and Mary on it. But the structure of government remained unchanged; or rather, it was changed only to be rendered more stable and powerful. We owe to the Revolution many of our greatest blessings; but not the least of these has been the removal of the causes of weakness which had so often before, in English history, proved fatal to the throne. It gave us a national debt, a standing army, and a stable foreign policy. The sum annually raised by William in taxes, within five years after he obtained the throne, was triple what had been so much the subject of complaint in the time of Charles I.; but the effect of this was to give us a firm government and steady policy. De Witt had said, in the disgraceful days of the alliance of Charles II. with France, that the changes of English policy had now become so frequent, that no man could rely on any system being continued steadily for two years together. The Continental interests and connexions of William, and subsequently of the Hanover family, gave us a durable system of foreign policy, and imprinted, for a hundred and forty years, that steadiness in our councils, without which neither individuals nor nations ever attained either lasting fame or greatness. Nor was it the least blessing consequent upon such a change of external policy, and of the wars which it necessarily induced, that it gave Government the lasting support of a standing army, and thus prevented that ruinous prostration

of the executive before the burst of popular passion, which had so often induced the most dreadful disorders in English history. After 1688, the standing army, though inconsiderable compared with what it has since become, was always respectable, and adequate, as the result of the rebellions in 1715 and 1745 demonstrated, to the defence of Government against the most serious domestic dangers. That of itself was an incalculable blessing, and cheaply purchased by the national debt and all the bloodshed of our foreign wars. Had Charles I. possessed five thousand guards, he would at once have crushed the Great Rebellion; and the woful oppression of the Long Parliament, which, during the eleven years that it sat, extorted £80,000,000, equal to £200,000,000 at this time, from an impoverished and bleeding nation, would have been prevented.

Englishmen are not accustomed to pride themselves upon the external successes and military triumphs of the eighteenth century; and they have been so eclipsed by those of the Revolutionary war, that they are now in a great measure thrown into the shade. Yet nothing is more certain than that it is in external success and warlike glory, that, during the seventy years which immediately succeeded the Revolution, we must look for the chief rewards and best vindication of that convulsion. England then took its appropriate place as the head of the Protestant faith, the bulwark of the liberties of Europe. The ambition of the house of Bourbon, which so nearly proved fatal to them in the person of Louis XIV., became the lasting object of their apprehension and resistance. The heroic steadiness of William, the consummate genius of Marlborough, the ardent spirit of Chatham, won for us the glories of the War of the Succession and of the Seven Years. Though deeply checkered, especially in the American war, with disaster, the eighteenth century was, upon the whole, one of external glory and national advancement. To their honour be it spoken, the Whigs at that period were the party who had the national glory and success at heart, and made the greatest efforts, both on the theatre of arms and of diplomacy, to promote it. The Tories were lukewarm or indifferent to national interests or honour, averse to foreign alliances, and often willing to purchase peace by the abandonment of the chief advantages which war

had purchased. During the Revolutionary war, the case was just the reverse-the parties mutually changed places. The Tories were the national and patriotic, the Whigs the grumbling and discontented party. Both parties, in both periods, were in reality actuated, perhaps unconsciously, by their party interests-the Whigs were patriotic and national, the Tories backward and lukewarm, when the Whigs were in power, and derived lustre from foreign success; the Tories were patriotic and national when they held the reins of government, and the opposite vices had passed over to their antagonists.

But if, from the external policy and foreign triumphs of the Whigs during the first sixty years of the eighteenth century, we turn to the domestic government which they established and the social ameliorations which they introduced, we shall see much less reason to congratulate ourselves on the benefits gained by the Revolution. It is here that the great moral and political lesson of the eighteenth century is to be found; this it is which it behoves our historians to tell; this it is which they have left untold. The long possession of power, after the accession of William and Mary, by the Whig party, which continued uninterrupted for seventy years, and the want of any philosophical history of the period since they were dispossessed of office, have prevented the truth from being boldly told, or even generally known in this country. It is much more generally appreciated, however, by Continental writers, and we may rest assured the eyes of future generations will be steadily fixed on it. The danger is, that it will throw discredit on the cause both of civil and religious freedom, in the eyes of future generations in the world. Let us, in the first instance, boldly, and without seeking to disguise the truth, examine what are the religious and civil evils which have attracted the attention of mankind in Great Britain during the eighteenth century; and then inquire whether they are the necessary result of the Reformation and the Revolution, or have arisen from causes foreign to that of religious and civil freedom-in a word, from the usual intermixture of human selfishness and iniquity with those great convulsions.

The two great evils which have disfigured the Reformed church in the British islands, since its final establishment at the Revolution, have been the endless multiplication and

unceasing rancour of sects, and the palpable outgrowth of the population beyond the possibility of their gratuitous instruction in religious truth by means of the national church.

The three great evils which have been felt in the political and social world in England, during the eighteenth century, are the prodigious, and in general irresistible, power of an oligarchy, the unbounded parliamentary and official corruption by which their influence has been upheld, and the unprecedented spread of pauperism through the working classes of society.

In these days the reality of those evils will probably not be disputed in any quarter, when we have seen the latter lead to the Reform Bill, and the great organic change of 1832, as well as keep the nation, and all serious thinkers in it, in a state of constant anxiety; and the former rend the national church in Scotland asunder, threaten the most serious religious divisions in England, and in both countries permit the growth of a huge body of practical heathens in the midst of a Christian land.

Were these evils the necessary and inevitable result of the Reformation and the Revolution, or have they arisen from causes foreign to these changes, and which, in future times, may be detached from them? The Roman Catholic writers on the Continent all maintain the former opinion, and consider them as the necessary effect and just punishment of the great schism from the Church; which, by a natural consequence, say they, ended in civil convulsion, public immorality, and social distress. The English writers have hitherto rather avoided than grappled with the subject; they have rather denied the existence of the evils than sought to account for them. Let us consider to what cause these unquestionable evils of the eighteenth century are really to be ascribed.

They know little of the human heart who expect that, in an age and country where religion is at all thought of, sects and religious differences will not prevail. As well might you expect that, in a free community, political parties are to be unknown. Truth, indeed, is one and the same in all ages; but so also is the light of the sun: yet in how many different hues, and under how many different appearances, does it manifest itself in the world! In the smoky city,

and on the clear mountain; on the sandy desert, and in the stagnant marsh; radiant with the warmth of July, or faintly piercing the gloom of December. So various are the capacities, feelings, emotions, and dispositions of men, that, on any subject which really interests them, diversity of opinion is as inevitable as difference in their countenances, stature, character, fortune, and state in the world. Hence it was that our Saviour said he came to bring not peace on earth but a sword; to divide the father from the son, to array the mother against the daughter. It will be so to the end of the world. Unity of opinion on political subjects seems to prevail under Asiatic despotism; in religious, under the European Papacy, but nowhere else. The conclusion to be drawn from the absence of all theological disputes in a community is, not that all think alike on religion, but that none think at all.

But although no rational man who knows the human heart will ever express a wish to see entire religious unity prevail in a state, or expect that this can be the case if any degree of freedom prevails, yet there can be no question that the prodigious multiplication of sects in Britain, which strikes foreigners with such astonishment, and also the immense mass of civilised heathenism which, through the whole of the eighteenth century, was growing up in the island, are mainly to be ascribed to the iniquitous confiscation of the property of the Church which took place at the Reformation. The proportion of the tithes of England which belongs to lay impropriators, is more considerable than that which is still in the hands of the Church; and if to them are added the abbey and monastery lands, they would by this time have amounted to a very large annual sum, probably not less than £6,000,000 or £7,000,000 a-year. In Scotland, it is well known, the Church lands at the Reformation were about a third of the whole landed property. They would now, therefore, have produced £1,700,000 a-year, as the entire rental is somewhat above £5,000,000. What a noble fund here existed, formed and set apart by the piety and charity of former ages, for the service of the altar and of the poor-two causes which God hath joined, and no man should put asunder! What incalculable good would it have done, if it had been preserved sacred for its proper