would not apply to every other description of church property. The abolition of tithes must follow, unless we flatter ourselves that the invader, within sight of the goal, will stop short, like Hannibal. Their hearts may be turned, to be sure; though we had rather the Titan were chained than trust to his tender mercies. But that by the way.

Every householder knew beforehand of his having possibly to pay his share towards the repairs, &c. of parochial places of worship; and his rent or purchase-money was just so much the less because of that contingency. It is the land or rated habitation that is liable, not the dissenter. The demand on him determines with his lease. In truth, the whole of this opposition is based on dishonesty nay, there have been many robbers, who, upon a nice principle of honour, would have scorned to take from the hard earnings of the poor, "by any indirection." But these men, whose sensitive consciences bleed in sympathy with their purses-these super-conscientious abolitionists, who resist a charge, subject to which they took their property, strain every nerve-to do what? to bereave their forlorn and helpless fellowcitizens of their invaluable birthright-the comfort and benefit of church accommodation and free religious ordinances! "Is it time for you, O ye! to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lie waste? Now, therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways because of mine house that is waste." Haggai i.

And what is their rejoinder to the Lord of hosts? For the most part some pitiful individual plea, which, if even offered in good faith, cannot be suffered to stand in the way of the public safety.

A man may feel himself seriously annoyed at his estate having to be traversed by the line of a projected railroad, which not only will violate the sacredness of his retirement, but which he conceives must turn out a bad national speculation. Even here, however, his private feelings and particular opinions are obliged to defer to the national voice. Again, certain people, associated together on the allotment system of Robert Owen, might like to complete the arrondisement of their settlement by impropriating an inclosure of green, which had been kept in order as a public thoroughfare or common, from time immemorial. Would it avail them to exclaim against the inclosure as an eyesore; and insidiously hold out hopes that, when it came into their possession, they would adorn it with rare shrubs and exotics, to which they happened to have an especial liking, so that the plantation should become an ornament to the surrounding country? Would not the villagers laugh these interlopers and their promises to scorn; and tell them that if it were an eyesore to the new colony, it was a grateful sight to the hamlet-a spectacle associated with their earliest recollections-a lofty table-land, where rich and

poor met on terms of equality; that it was conducive to the well-being of the entire community? and they would add, that they were not so simple as to sacrifice the public health and convenience to the utilitarian schemes of self-interested individuals. Again, because the Quaker objects on abstract grounds to the keeping up a military force, does it follow that all England is to submit to insult and injury from foreign states? Because the fine arts be sensual in some people's estimation, shall the new structure in Trafalgar-square be set up to auction? Because certain local improvements can never be any personal convenience to many millions in the kingdom, are those millions to fancy themselves exempt from contributing towards their cost? Because they are not litigious, will they not pay the judges? Because they are for a republic, shall they refuse the king's taxes? Because they are churchmen, are they to stop short their poor's rates, since they go to relieve the dissenting pauper? In all these instances the good of the nation is to be consulted, not the whims and caprices, the self-interested views of faction, or of private individuals. It were too ridiculous to allow these people to throw dust in our eyes by pleading religious scruples. The accident of religion being mixed up with the question may aggravate their guilt, but can hardly excuse them.

If government were to give heed to the scruples of every fanatic, the forge of whose brain happened to be possessed of some special casuistry,-if he were to be necessarily absolved from the payment of his dues,-what were it but to put a premium upon all sorts of hair-splitting distinctions, begot of cunning ignorance and self-sufficiency? For instance, how many people are there who, at heart, believe in the doctrines of the Church of England; and yet would make no scruple of conscience to write themselves down Anythingarians, if by their apostasy they could retain in their pockets the trifle of their ecclesiastical impost! What can be more curiously_discriminated, than the divers fine shades of these ultra-Protestant consciences? They will wink hard at Lord John Russell's threat to augment the tribute to Maynooth; and will yet, despite their own annual receipt of the Regium Donum from the state, wince horridly at having to subscribe towards the free sittings for innumerable poor in the reformed parochial churches. What a nice and indivisible line is here! And what a microscopic eye must the tender consciences of these people be blessed with! But fine as their feelings are, there is an interjection, if we mistake not, and one to be found in the Vicar of Wakefield, which would just hit the case. To serve worldly ends, they join in league with the banned of the Apocalypse. They care not for public grants to the Romish church in Canada, or the temples of Juggernaut in India. They will swallow the camels out of number, without making wry faces; and find nothing on earth

to strain at until they come to the Established Church! Now, does not such barefaced particularity excite our suspicion, that nstead of being the promptings of conscience, they are the prickings of ambition; these thorns in the sides of Socinians, Independents, and Baptists, which will not suffer them to take rest, until, upon the ruins of the Anglican Church, they exalt their several establishments. The end and aim masked under the cloak of spiritual sensitiveness, are neither more nor less than the alliance of schism and state. Nor will "the adversary" be content, until, with impartial regard, the government acknowledges as national religious institutions, the Socinian church, and the Independent church, and all the other churches of nonconformity; and proceeds to endow them with the spoils of the Establishment. It is no use mincing the matter: this is the devastation that sectarians are driving at, and with nothing short of unconditional surrender will they ever be satisfied. One point after another have they gained at our expense, until the question is narrowed to the solitary issue of, whether Church Rates are to be put an end to, without being replaced by any equivalent from the national exchequer. If dissenters only contrive to weather this Scylla, (which God in his mercy forbid!) the sequel is all plain sailing.*

Heartless generation! And, as is perhaps always the case, despite your cunning, as shortsighted as ye are wicked! Is it radicalism and anarchy you long for as an end, or as a means to the tyranny of Rome? Do ye pride yourselves on your economy? You are miserably mistaken. In a moral point of view, the funds appropriated to the Church bring forth fruit to the nation, such as not all the millions upon millions annually expended on other objects can produce:-profits not to be reckoned up or repaid. There is not an individual with whom these abolitionists can come into contact, from his Majesty on his throne to the beggar in his hovel, who has not been in some mode or other morally advantaged by the Establishment. Is it a small thing that those persons, among whom the lot of dissenters is cast, have been taught their duty to God and their neighbour, so that, in place of an unprincipled and profligate race, they have in their vicinity a well-ordered population, imbued from their childhood with a regard, however defective, for public and social obligations? Would the voluntary principle, more especially in thinly populated districts, effectuate such good?-The voluntary principle !—It ended in

"Dissenters should put forth their whole strength on the occasion. The church rates gone, the Establishment will be an easy prey."—Christian Advocate.

the deluge! Indeed, so fine are often the motives which influence human character and conduct, so entangled their links-so complicated is the tissue web of society-so powerful is the bearing of early association and impression on the workings of the human mind, in determining the fortune of our after years, and the condition of our posterity-so subtle is inherited bias in the analysis of human feelings, that no man can be certain that he should not attribute the prosperity of his race, the security of his property, and the very fact of his health, his morals, or of his existence, to the spreading in the land of the word of God through many ages, and the prayers and preaching of that national Establishment which a thoughtless and perverse generation is leagued to overthrow. That the benefits pass all understanding which she has conferred on this country, if only as affording an important rallying point, a sanctuary wherein is enshrined sound doctrine, and the vouchers, to every sect and denomination of Christians, of the integrity of the sacred word,we are firmly convinced; and every individual who takes part in the unholy crusade of the Abolitionists, is doing his best to deprive his children and his children's children of those blessings, insensible perhaps, but not a whit the less real, of which he has himself partaken, and which are implied in the existence of our endowed Protestant Establishment. Thankless for the incalculable bequeathment handed down by our provident and pious forefathers, to which (perhaps exclusively) our superior wealth and well-being, religious and moral, are to be ascribed,-essentially worldly-minded and selfish, these people would, upon some pitiful score of perverted ambition or false economy, dissociate themselves from the community, and disconnect themselves from times of yore and from futurity. By their machinations, they would bereave the country of their birth of those christian virtues which, almost from the hour when Luther "shot orient beams" through the night of Romish superstition, the endowed clergy of Reformation have diffused through the length and breadth of England. They would consign this heretofore happy land to the desolating hurricane. "Darkness must again cover the earth, and gross darkness the people." The reign of error, superstition, and despotism, inseparable in the long run from the working of the voluntary system, will commence anew. The children of the poor will never be reclaimed to the pastures of the Lord; for them there will be no day-star from on high. Parochial prayer and instruction,-that cheap preventive police against crime, more valuable, in the wise statesman's eye, than the terrors of the law, or the coercion of armies, will be no more; for the sanctuaries at which their fathers worshipped will either be pulled down, or, desolate, dilapidated monuments of a renegade race, will be claimed as stray waifs of the church of

Rome; or, as in America, at dreary intervals echo to the rant of some itinerant illiterate preacher, who will have neither permanent connexion with nor sympathetic interest in his congregation. In the wearying want of religious ordinances, intelligence will depart. The holy Sabbath will be neglected and forgotten. Hope will bid the land farewell. Vice, infidelity, and misery, will be the order of the day, till down we go to the bottom of the abyss, and nothing short of Omnipotence can save us. The abolitionists repudiate such an object: they deny the charge, and would stand on their deliverance. Be it so. We tell them that the times will not admit of experiments; that the stake is tremendous; that the chances, however excellent the play, are against the good; for Ireland, which is a high card, is in every deal in the hands of our opponents. If our dissenting brethren be condemned in the judgment of one sensible and thoughtful man, (and thousands of their fellow subjects conscientiously hold very decided opinions of their indiscretion)-if a single individual of these thousands can lay his hand upon his heart and say, that he apprehends from their league with the audacious Radical and wily Romanist those awful results we have barely glanced at,-then the beings who care not for our verdict, may rest assured that they must not count upon acquittal, either at the bar of the next world or by posterity in this. Can they be Christians, and not tremble at the bare possibility of such a catastrophe! Will they not draw back at this eleventh hour, dismayed to reflect that they who are indeed the people of God, can have but one common interest, and that their zealotry MAY be the ignorance of mental inebriety; and if so, can only bring about that national ruin which, consequent on the loss of religion, is certainly within the judgment of Providence. "The Lord may cover the daughter of Sion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven upon earth the beauty of Israel."

We conclude by recalling to the minds of our dissenting brethren the opinion of the most learned and enlightened of their body, recently removed from the disquietudes of this to the peace of another world.

"A christian state has surely authority to exact this;-the christian religion is, and shall be, the religion of this land; and should not the laws provide for the permanence of this system? Whatever the reader may do, the writer thanks God for the religious Establishment of his country.”

* Clarke's Bible, note on 1 Kings v. 34.