free in the Church as they are in the State-not serfs, not subjects, not underlings; but your companions, your fellows, your peersand, under God, a free and self-governed people." One very obvious consequence of the application of this assumption to civil government is, that ministers of the Gospel, in this country, are not politically free. They are denied what our reformers call "rational liberty." In what state in this great Republic are they represented, as a class, by ministers? Several of the states' constitutions exclude them, by express provision, from any office in the government. The Constitution of the state of Delaware may be given as an example. It contains the following: "No ordained clergyman or preacher of the Gospel, of any denomination, shall be capable of holding any office in this state, or of being a member of either branch of the legislature, while he continues in the exercise of the pastoral or clerical functions." The Constitution of the United States does not contain such a provision. Ministers of the Gospel may be elected to Congress; but then they must go there; not as ministers, or to represent the ministry, but merely as citizens to represent citizens. They are not sent by ministers. If one of the political parties considers a minister available as a candidate, and he is desirous or willing to go, he may be taken up and elected; but he must lay aside, for the time being, his clerical character. Ministers of the Gospel have no distinctive representation in Congress, or in any civil legislature in the country. Under the same conditions laymen may go to the General Conference. Let them lay aside the character of laymen, and become presbyters in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the way is open to them.

The relation of the clergymen of this country to the civil government attracted the attention of that acute observer De Tocqueville. He remarks:

"This led me to examine more attentively than I had hitherto done the station which the American clergy occupy in political society. I learned, with surprise, that they filled no public appointments; not one of them is to be met with in the administration, and they are not represented in the legislative assemblies. In several states the law excludes them from political life; public opinion in all."

The truth of the latter remark has been recently exemplified in Pennsylvania. A Lutheran minister was elected to Congress, and was consequently required by the Synod of the Church to resign his ecclesiastical position.

Should it be said, in reply to this argument, that ministers of the Gospel have political freedom because they have the right to vote in the election of civil rulers, we rejoin, this would be a relinquish

ment of the position that a distinct class representation is essential to freedom. A new ground would be assumed; and, by a parity of reasoning, if to be denied the right to vote in the election of representatives in the councils of the Church is to be deprived of ecclesiastical freedom, to be denied the right of voting for representatives in the councils of the State is to be deprived of political freedom. The consequence is that the majority of the subjects of our civil government are denied the right of freedom. They are in bondage. They are serfs, underlings, slaves. A further consequence is, that the great body of the members of the Presbyterian Church are not free any more than the Methodists. They do not vote for representatives in the presbyteries, the synods, or the general assemblies. The same follows in regard to the Methodist Protestant Church. Its constitution restricts the right of suffrage to free white males over twenty-one years of age. All the rest are in bondage. Besides, the right of voting does not carry with it necessarily a share in the sovereignty of the State. It may be accompanied by ineligibility to any office; and surely no one can be in possession of civil sovereignty who is declared by law ineligible to office in the government of his country.

It has been objected that in our Church there is an unequal apportionment of power, and that this inequality is greatly in favor of the ministry. Let us inquire into this matter. What is the power which, according to our belief, Christ has bestowed upon his ministers? It is the power of forming and governing religious communities called Churches. But this power is very limited in its range. We do not say that the ministry of our Church does not make laws that it has not the power to legislate. An attempt to distinguish between law-making and rule-making is attended with embarrassment. In spite of our explanations, protestations, and reasonings, the people will call rule-making legislation. We do so ourselves, and cannot avoid it. But there is an important distinction to be observed respecting Church legislation. The legislative power of the Church is exhausted in the enactment of a few administrative or secondary rules or laws for the enforcement of Christ's laws, which are supreme, and may be neither multiplied, nor modified, nor contravened by human authority. And what are the penalties by which Church rulers enforce the laws of the Church? Reproof, rebuke, suspension from some of the privileges of the Church, and, as the last resort, excision or expulsion from the Church. They cannot affect the property or the persons of offenders.

But what is the power of the State which belongs to the laity? They have the power of legislation in the highest form of making

primarily all the laws they deem necessary for the welfare of the community, and of enforcing them by whatever penalties they may deem the most effective. They make laws for ministers as well as themselves, and enforce them by fines, imprisonment, compulsory labor in the prisons, and death. And if ministers, in the enforcement of Church discipline, go beyond the law of the Church, and affect injuriously the reputation or the pecuniary interests of those upon whom they exercise discipline, they are liable to be arraigned before tribunals composed of lay judges, lay jurors, and lay attorneys; to be held in custody by lay sheriffs and constables, and punished as laymen may dictate. Laymen declare war or negotiate peace with other nations, annex or alienate territory, levy taxes or impose tariffs, without consulting ministers. And further, the ministry of our Church have deemed themselves justified by Scripture and expediency in conferring upon the laity a large share of subordinate ecclesiastical power. They have decided to admit none to the ministry or the membership of the Church, without the approval of the laity, so that laymen can close the door of admission to both. They have judged it best to expel no layman from the Church whose guilt has not been formally and judicially ascertained by laymen. They have invested laymen with the money-power of the Church, and the control, as trustees, of the Church property.

And now we ask, What party has the most power? Is not the inequality in favor of the laity? And yet some of them are not satisfied with this division. The ministers have a little power to enable them to perform their special duties, and to sustain their special responsibilities, and the laity must have that also. Nothing will satisfy them but the sovereignty of the State and the sovereignty of the Church. They are the sovereign people; and if they cannot carry their measures they will, forsooth, impute to the ministry a love of power, and raise a hue and cry about clerical despotism. Cesar, not content with civil empire, must also grasp the scepter of Christ's kingdom. And yet these brethren, after accusing minis-, ters of a love of power, because they are not willing to surrender that for the use of which they are held responsible by the great Head of the Church, wipe their mouths, and meekly say: "We seek not fame, we seek not power." Certainly not; who ever heard of a layman desiring fame or power? That is a vice belonging exclusively to the Christian ministry.

The Philadelphia memorialists refer to the taunts with which Methodists are assailed, accusing our system of popery. They admit the justice of these taunts. We must bear them with what philosophy we can," say they, "for we cannot refute them." We

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have no doubt that some of these brethren have greatly underrated their abilities. They can easily refute those taunts; but if they cannot, it does not follow that no one can. If we have given them too much credit for ability they are surely unfit to be Methodist Church legislators. As to our Church government not being American, as is charged, the position has its origin in very superficial views of the subject. Somehow the American people give it the preference. It suits them. Nor is it in the least degree at variance with civil and religious freedom. It guards that sacred boon more effectually than any of those systems which have so boastfully assumed its special guardianship. It places civil and ecclesiastical supremacy in different hands, whereas those systems, offered to us. as models, place them in the same hands, a measure which constitutes the basis of all Church and State establishments. Under our present system it would be impossible to unite Church and State, though every man, woman, and child in the United States were a Methodist. The system furnishes a constitutional obstruction. The first step toward the removal of that obstruction is a lay delegation. Then the danger would commence. As a patriot and philanthropist I am opposed to it. It is thought to be very important to keep apart legislative, judicial, and executive powers, by vesting them in different persons; but there seems to be no just apprehension of the danger of uniting civil and ecclesiastical supremacy in the same persons, unless it be in the persons of ministers, as though to be constrained by the love of Christ to preach the Gospel transformed them into the most dangerous men. The separation of these jurisdictions is the great problem which Italian patriotism desires. to solve. God grant that they may be soon separated, not to be reunited in the persons of laymen, but to remain separate forever. If we could have things according to our own mind in this country, we would have no minister of the Gospel in Congress, or in any civil office, until he had given up his parchments as a presbyter in the • Church. Nor would we allow any layman to unite in his possession civil and ecclesiastical power by sitting in the civil legislature and in the supreme council of the Church. If any would have supreme ecclesiastical power he should disgorge the civil. And if he would have the civil he should relinquish the ecclesiastical. We would have no honorable senators, leaving their seats in the capitol to legislate in the synods, and general assemblies, and conferences, and conventions of the Church. We regard with almost equal aversion a lay-governed Church and a priest-governed State. They are both at variance with the genius of Christianity. Methodism is now immeasurably in advance of other systems. They must make rapid

progress to overtake her. We trust that she will not enter upon a course of retrogression for the sake of their company.

An attempt has been made to cause the impression that the exclusion of laymen from the highest councils of the Church rests upon a tacit imputation to them of inferiority to ministers in intelligence and piety. This is not the case. If other reasons quite sufficient cannot be given, we shall abandon the argument. Great talents and moral worth are demanded in the various departments of business and professional life. Besides, our laymen are entitled and expected to occupy posts of high honor and responsibility in civil government. We expect them to be our sheriffs, judges, senators, governors, generals; and if we have not a Methodist president of the Republic, it is not because we have not men of talents and virtue equal to the office. The ends of society would not be answered by crowding all the distinguished talent and virtue into the Christian ministry, if it were possible to do so. Is political sovereignty withheld from all females and male minors on the ground of a want of intelligence and trustworthiness? Is the naturalized foreigner, who cannot write his name, or read his naturalization papers, superior in these qualities to the great body of American students between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one? Is every brainless profligate over twenty-one years of age superior, in these respects, to the mothers, wives, and sisters of our eminent statesmen? It is not difficult to find other reasons. We conclude, not because the subject is exhausted. It is scarcely opened. But limits are assigned, and must be observed.

ART. IV.-LEIGH HUNT.

The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, with Reminiscences of Friends and Cotemporaries. Two volumes. New York: Harper & Brothers.

The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt. Two volumes. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. The Prose Works of Leigh Hunt. Four volumes. New York: Derby & Jackson.

In this country where every one, like the knight of La Mancha, professes to be son of his own deeds, there is much impatience with minute details of genealogy. This leads to the loss of many useful lessons. By some study of their ancestors, men may know more of themselves than by confining their observations to the small space and time in which they personally live. If they would read their own lives and characters with intelligent eye, they should collate the earlier editions of themselves which may be found by careful FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XII-16