It will scarcely be denied that the implication of this principle in the legal status which Mr. Bouverie's Bill, as it now stands, proposes to give to seceding clergymen is logical and clear. It may, however, be urged that it is on a small scale. It is so; parva metu primo. Would those who support it admit of an enactment hostile in principle to their convictions because the scale was small? The ship-money demanded from Hampden was on a small scale: how pitiful to question the payment of some twenty shillings! But that suit shook three diadems to the ground. The smallness of the scale is a reason for acquiescence only where it can be reasonably assumed that the movement will die, that the example will not be imitated, that the small scale will not grow into a large one. But this movement is in conformity with the views of all such Separatists as think that that which degrades a State-clergy must be good; of all such politicians as conceive spiritual power to be no better than an usurpation upon their domain; of all unbelievers to whom, as to Gibbon, the vices of the priesthood are less formidable than their virtues; and even of the inert multitude, who are averse to all change, and who, when it is inevitable, will keep it down to a minimum, and prefer to store up the elements of commotion and confusion for a future day, rather than at a sacrifice of the moment's ease to lay the foundations of such forms of law as present exigencies only suggest, but future ones will imperatively require. This movement will not die; this example will be imitated; nor can we refrain from remarking on the very ominous conjunction, that the mover of the Clergy Relief Bill is also the person who has proposed entirely to sweep away the Ecclesiastical Courts, and has not proposed to substitute in their place any machinery whatever for giving effect to the laws of the Church.

It is therefore for those, who are attached to the union of Church and State, but who believe that the first condition of its permanent maintenance is, that it shall be compatible with the moral dignity and purity of both parties to the alliance, to ask themselves, and to make themselves answer this question-Upon what imaginable argument, with what conceivable chance of success, if they now consent that in certain cases, by far the strongest of all, the title to religious rites shall remain entire and unaffected by a formalised legal Dissent hitherto unknown, and shall be totally disjoined from the consideration of religious belief, will they hope to resist the more comprehensive but really less outrageous application of that principle to other classes, to all classes, of Dissenters hereafter? An instance, although in itself of even Lilliputian minuteness, if its bearing be in harmony with a general movement, will be quoted as a precedent, and will grow into a rule.

This then is an occasion on which those who act for the Church should utter to those who represent the spirit of the age, not only sentiments of truth and soberness, but words of a description which they will understand. Say to them-You have before you a choice of alternatives: you may cashier the Church altogether; but for that your prudence is not yet prepared. Remaining in relation with it, you may have an obese and luxurious clergy; but it will be very costly, and will not do your work. You may then have a poor and servile clergy: it will fall into universal contempt. You may have a clergy poor indeed with reference to the ordinary standard of wealth in our opulent community, yet efficient and respected; but in that case it must not be servile. Only a clergy active and devoted can perform the task that the State wants to have performed; and no clergy, except one allowed to have a conscience, and protected in the reasonable use of it, can be devoted, or can be active.'

We are convinced that Mr. Bouverie, however he may have vacillated in the conduct of this measure, means honestly and well, and that he is cordially desirous to see the Church pure, useful, and respected: we are reluctant to charge even those who have no such wish, but whose main object is to dissolve the great Christian marriage of fifteen hundred years' duration between the temporal and the spiritual power, with being prepared to pursue that object by means so questionable as the presentation to churchmen of a choice only between separation and dishonour. But whatever be their view, they are a small though an active fraction of the community, and they will not succeed in giving any such disastrous turn to the ecclesiastical politics of the country, if the public mind can be awakened to the deep and far-reaching importance of these questions, and if it shall apply to them the dispassionate and vigorous good sense that is absolutely necessary for their right adjustment.

Let those who sympathise with the tenor of these remarks be persuaded that the union of Churchmen among themselves is alone needed in order to procure for them all that is essential to the purity and efficacy of their own ecclesiastical polity. The spirit of unbelief is strong-so is the spirit of the world-so is the spirit of sectarianism; and all these will of necessity combine to cry down, under the invidious names of intolerance and priestcraft, and probably also popery, any proposal which involves the recognition of the principle that the Church is a religious society, and cannot subsist without law and order, of which law and order the Faith she is commissioned to teach must be the rule. Against this principle every fallacy will be pleaded, every bugbear will be paraded, every intrigue will be devised, every menace will be

launched

launched by these opposing powers; but the spirit of religion in the country and the love of the Church will be too strong for them all, if only we can resolve to see with our own eyes, to discountenance alarmists, and to vindicate not for the clergy alone, but for the Church, the fair play which is all that she demands. The question between clerical power and lay power is one; that between Church power and State power is another. The former is a question that in this age and country can be attended with little serious difficulty on the side of clerical domination; and we perceive with cordial satisfaction that everywhere the clergy express the desire to see more scope and more power given to the laity, the true laity, of the Church. And the real weakness of their case, in regard to such measures as the Clergy Relief Bill, we take to lie not in the argument upon the merits, but in these three causes: first, that we are still too much given to be sticklers for advantages often unreal, and at best external and secondary, and that we thereby break the force of any appeal made to Parliament on grounds of conscience and religion; secondly, that mutual suspicions hold us back from adopting the generous resolution to act for the Church as a whole, and to trust to her own laws, her own spirit, her own tendencies as a whole for the solution of internal difficulties and the healing and composing of divisions; thirdly, that the judicial system of the Church is unsatisfactory and wants reform, while its legislative system is in abeyance, and is perhaps also unfit to be drawn out of it for accomplishing what the Church requires. Might we presume upon advising those who wage the public strife on her behalf, we should say-Contend only for what is worth contending for; estimate what is worth contending for as, a generation hence, it will be wished that it had now been estimated; seek points of contact with such persons as misapprehension only keeps in the attitude of adversaries; apply first to brother churchmen the rule often and justly recommended for a wider application, of looking more to points of agreement and less to points of difference; give mutual encouragement to mutual trust; and above all, study the means of uniting with the clergy in the bonds of systematic and powerful order the already vast and rapidly growing body of intelligent laymen, now a mere fluctuating multitude, but then to be glorious as an army with banners. When this shall have been done, then, and not till then, will the Church of England fulfil her better destiny, and achieve great acts, not for herself alone, but for the country and for Christendom.

ART.

ART. III.-1. Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society. Vol. IX., Art. XI., On the Failure of Deep Draining,' &c. By Wm. Bullock Webster. London, 1848,

2. Mechi's Experience in Drainage, &c. Third Edition. London, 1848.

3. Essays on the Philosophy and Art of Land Drainage. By Josiah Parkes, C.E. London, 1848.

PINDAR bequeathed to us the maxim 4 Αριστον μεν ύδως, το

which the Portuguese have added the equally pithy proverb, 'Water is wealth.' The present state, the early history, and the ancient remains of eastern and southern countries concur in informing us, that the first and most successful efforts of agriculture were directed to an artificial supply of water to the various objects of cultivation. The special promise made to the Israelites was, 'The land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: but the land whither thou goest is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven.' And so our northern and sea-girt isle drinketh the rain of heaven to repletion; 'immensum cœlo ruit agmen aquarum.' We do not span our valleys with aqueducts, and rib the sides of our hills with superficial courses, to convey adventitious water to our agriculture. On the contrary, we invoke ingenuity to devise, and science and labour to execute, subterranean conduits to relieve our cultivated lands from the excess of water which they receive from the skies. When the agricultural interest congregates for the purpose of mutual condolence or congratulation, their pattern men never fail to declare that draining is the foundation of agricultural improvement-and that, if there be salvation for them, it is to be found in draining. Every here and there a booby exists who says, How can you expect grass to grow if you take the water away from it? How in a dry summer?' But he is overwhelmed at once by the rush of the agricultural mind in an opposite direction. Through the length and breadth of the land a crusade has been preached against water. Pipes and collars are the devices of this national movement. This is 'the piping time of peace.' We have put our necks into the collar, have taken suit and service, and have sworn allegiance to this cause. We find ourselves associated with a very motley crew, who are brought together indeed by some unity of object, which they not only seek to attain by various and incongruous means, but carry on a fierce internal controversy, in which every disputant accuses the plan of his opponent of failure, and boasts largely of his own success. We will endeavour to impart to our

readers

readers the conclusions on which, after some experience, a close observation of the works of those who claim to be authorities in this matter, and a painful and ill-requited attention to the literary and oratorical war which is raging around us, we have determined to base our own practice.

But before we take a prospective view of our craft, we must glance at its early history, and at the various steps and stages by which it has arrived at its present position. Though the ancients for the most part courted water as an ally to their agriculture, they did not hesitate in many cases to encounter it with great energy perseverance as its enemy. They were not slow to perceive the extraordinary vegetative capacity of those amphibious lands, which are deposited by large rivers within the debateable margin of two elements, of which their agricultural poet says, 'Huc summis liquuntur rupibus amnes

and

Felicemque trahunt limum.'

Any person disposed to acquire, at a small expense of time and trouble, a general knowledge of the war which men of old carried on with the marsh and the fen, may consult the first two-andthirty columns of the great work entitled, The History of Embanking and Drayning of divers Fens and Marshes, both in Foreign Parts and in this Kingdom; extracted from Records, Manuscripts, and other authentic testimonies by William Dugdale, Esq., Norroy King of Arms.' This indefatigable man, though a very voluminous writer, scorns any superfluous exordium, and commences his book and the history of antediluvian draining by the following sentence :-That works of draining are most ancient and of divine institution we have the testimony of Holy Scripture.' After a passing notice of the draining of the earth on the subsidence of the Deluge, he proceeds to say, That those nations which be of greatest antiquity, and of chief renown for arts and civility, are also famous for their works of this nature, is evident from the practice of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Græcians, the Romans, and several others of which I shall give instance.' In pursuance of this purpose our author furnishes us with a detail of various works of draining, embankments, and outfalls commenced in Egypt shortly after the Flood, and carried on to the Christian era. Among the illustrious promoters of the art he names Mysis, Sesostris, Sabacon, Psammeticus, Necos, Psanimis, Bocchoris, Darius, Amasis, Alexander, the Ptolemies, Cleopatra, and Augustus Cæsar. He takes a somewhat discursive view of a navigable channel from the Nile to the Red Sea, which was commenced by Sesostris before the Trojan war, and, after several futile attempts by succeeding princes, was completed by a Ptolemy. The various routes by which the traffic of Europe passed

to