The Press. — London, England, 1858-07-24 00:00:00

another public body in the metropolis competent to answer such a question. We feel, on such an o ccasion as this, the . want of municipal c3r porations in Westminster, Southwark, and 3larylebone. THE RELATION OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH TO THE CONSTITUTION. A CERTAIN set of men, made bold by apparent success in their anti-Church-rate agitation, begin to speak very plainly in regard to their ulterior and real designs. " The abolition of Church-rates," they say, "is not a final measure. It recognizes and embodies a principle of civil equality in re gard to religious matters which may be applied in a large variety of ways; and the nascent power of Liberalism is intent on so applying it, as op portunity occurs." The meaning . of this ob viously is, that they intend to agitate next for the separation of the Church from the State, in order to bring down the Established Church front the exalted position which it occupies, in its recognized union with the State, and to reduce it to the level of Dissent. This being the case, it may be well for us to point out what is the real nature and effect of the union of the Church with the State ; or, rather, what is the relation in which the Estab lished Church stands to the Constitution. It seems not to be considered by those who would separate the Church from the State, that the union of the Church with the State is essen tial to our free Constitution ; for the Established Church of this country contains exactly that degree of liberty, with exactly that degree of subjection, which fits a people for living under a limited Monarchy. Dissent is suited only to a Republican Government—from a Republican spirit it springs, and to Republicanism it tends. The liberties of England, it ought never to be for gotten, are coeval with the establishment, under its present form, of the Church of England. So identified, for this reason, has the Church become with the State in the minds of the Eng lish people that they scarcely ever mention the one without mentioning the other. Hence "Church and State" have become "household words" amongst us, conveying the idea of some thing as inseparable as man and wife. Their relation is, indeed, very much of the same cha racter as that of the marriage union; for by it the State is solemnly consecrated, and set apart as a sacred thing, to be kept free from all the cor ruptions of falsehood, fraud, deception, violence, injustice, tyranny, and every kind of unchristian oppression. Against all these the Church, by its incorporation with the State, bears a direct, though tacit, protest. And this consecration of the State, he it observed, by a State religious establishment, is necessary to act as a wholesome check upon the feelings, the passions, and the private interests of free citizens ; because, in order to their freedom, they must enjoy a certain portion of power, and, in order to their not abusing that power, they require to be put under the restraints of religion. " All persons pos " sensing any portion of power," as it has been remarked by a great writer, " ought to be " strongly and awfully impressed with an idea " that they act in trust, and that they are to " account for their conduct in that trust to the " one great Master, Author, and Founder of " society." In a free country, then, like ours, with a constitutional form of government, a Church connected with the State is even more necessary than in countries under a despotic government, where the people have no power, or in those under a pure Republic, where their power resolves itself into their own will. To say that Government has nothing to do with religion—that it is an engine constituted only for civil ends, and has no higher functions than imposing taxes and settling questions of revenue, &c., is to introduce quite a new doctrine, and one that will not bear examination for a moment. In the Old Testament Scriptures we find a national religion sanctioned and established, under the express authority of Deity—not certainly, for the purpose of making the Church political, but the State religious ; •and in the New Testament we find nothing to contravene this arrangement in regard to Christianity, when any ?Lotion or kingdom should conic to acknowledge it as the true religion. Men (rulers among the rest) are still the same, and require to be THE PRESS, JULY 24, 1858. reminded of the high principles on which they ought to act even in temporal matters ; and as none but those who have an authority recognized by the State can dothis, a State religious estab lishment is very properly provided to enforce con tinually upon all orders and degrees of men, and especially upon those in any office, the duty of acting in all things upon religious principles. For these reasons, so far from thinking it not lawful to have an Established Church, the more enlightened and unprejudiced portion of the people of England think it hardly lawful—cer tainly not safe—to be without one ; for religion is that which consecrates whatever it touches, and by being connected with the State, it conse crates the whole. It is not merely that they consider a Church Establishment expedient or desirable ; they regard it as essential to the State —a thing the State cannot do well without—a thing not heterogeneous and separable, but an integral element of vital force, without which it cannot exist, at least in healthful action. This is the view which determined the polity of our ancestors; this led them to incorporate the Church with the State. They made it, indeed, the foundation of the whole Constitution, with hich, and with every part of which, it holds an indissoluble union ; so that, to revert again to our illustration from marriage, besides the mutual protection and support which each is to yield to the other, the connection between them (there being no violation of good faith on the part of either) is to be as lasting as their joint life. With a view to the religious influence of the Church upon the State, and upon all who hold office in it, the Constitution has provided that all public solemn acts, such as the Coronation of the Sovereign and the sittings of Parliament, shall be inaugurated with prayer. With the same view, our Bishops have seats assigned them in the highest court of the Legislature, and the Church exalts her mitred head in Parliament. And thus it is that haughty potentates and lordly peers are reminded of their duties by the august presence of Religion ; while, by the Church's admirable parochial system (the joint offspring of the Church and State's union), provision is made for the spiritual instruction of the great multi tude of the people, who are, for the most part, too poor to provide it for themselves, and who, therefore, without an Established Church, would be left to perish for lack of knowledge. It is no argument against this arrangement, that it sometimes fails of these intended effects, or that it does not produce all the good that might be expected. This is the fault of indivi duals rather than of the system. In every system where human beings are to be the agents, there will be imperfections and shortcomings. But if the State, as seen in the persons and acts of its high officers, presents many proofs of cor ruption and of a want of religious principle, even with an Established Church to check and con trol it, how much worse must the state of things become without an Established Church ! There are some persons, indeed, who would persuade us that the connection of the Church with the State only serves to corrupt religion, without in any degree improving the State; but such persons put presumptions in the place of proofs. When they talk about the great evils there are in the union of the Church with the State, they can know very little what they mean ; and, we suspect, would be very much at a loss, if questioned, to say what the particular evils were. It is true the State has a large share of the patronage of the Church; but what can that matter when she can bestow her patronag►e only on men who are already in the Church ? If they were not where she places them, they would be in some other places, as clergymen. And as to patronage being bestowed from political con siderations, as is sometimes urged,—that is so evenly balanced between the two great political parties who alternately exercise the power of the State, that the result is never felt, and things remain very much the same, on the whole, which ever party may be in power. So far, indeed, as political influence is concerned, preferment is be stowed, not to make men of particular political opi nions, but because they are of particular political opinions so that the influence of the State in this respect is simply nought. The State—and this is the most important consideration—in no way interferes with the clergy in the discharge of their essential duties: she only throws her sanc tion over them, and backs them up with her authority in addition to their own. 699 The influence of the State, then, upon the Church, and of the Church upon the State, must be admitted to be, on the whole, mutually bene ficial. Most certainly their union is not pro ductive of the evils which many imagine. That very position of independence which the clergy enjoy from the fixed nature of the Church's property, constitutes them the surest guardians of liberty ; because, being provided for, and secured in their incomes by law, they are under no temptation to make themselves the tools either of the people or of the Government. This is a consideration too much lost sight of by those who rail against the Church. For the people, indeed, to despoil her of her independence, would be to despoil themselves of their best protection. To overthrow her would be to overthrow the whole British Constitution, and to bury law, liberty, and social freedom under the ruins ; to make way for the establishment either of a reign of intolerable license, or of some relentless form of tyranny. It is a curious coincidence, showing how ex tremes meet, that the only two parties in the present day who wish for the separation of the Church from the State, are extreme lligh Churchmen on the one hand, who wish it because the State restricts their proud pretensions to do mination, and the extreme Dissenters on the other, who are jealous of' her exalted position. The latter would have all religious denominations to be treated alike, just that they might enjoy an envied equality with that which is now in the highest honour. But, as we have shown, the union of the Established Church with the State is of such a nature, that there are strong consti tutional as well as religious reasons why Church and State should never be divorced. PROGRESS OF "THE INSTITUTION." MORE PLUMAGE FOR THE TRANS ATLANTIC EAGLE. JUST when the " Young American Eagle " was indulging in the periodical scream of high pitched self-laudation in which that remarkable bird concentrates the exulting notes of a year's " Bunkum," news was brought to this country of a fresh step in that triumphant progress which Mr. DALLAS eulogized, and to which we subse quently did feeble homage. A fresh develop ment of "The Institution" in Old Virginny has been sanctioned by the highest judicial autho rity—a development worthy to be mentioned in the same page with the Nebraska Bill, the Alabama Resolutions, or even the assault on SUMNER. A testamentary clause, giving to the testator's slaves the option of liberty, has been set aside for no informality, but on the professed ground of public policy, or rather public opinion. This decision, though arrived at by a very narrow majority of the Bench, will doubtless be permanently recognized. Hence forth no citizen of Virginia can emancipate his slaves by will. Even at the cost of overriding all precedent and of interfering with the "rights of property," the Judges have resolved to pro tect the great slave-holding interest against the weakness of individuals. Well may the " bird of glory " aforesaid A form more terrible, an ampler plume. Well may it scream jubilant, and invite ap plausive echoes from all creation. What exploits of Filibusters or vigilance committees can com pare with a legal victory like this ? The Insti tution, long dominant over the living, has at length achieved a triumph over the dead ! We confess (let the strongminded South forgive our weakness) that we have always felt an in stinctive repugnance to dealing with a fellow creature either as a " chattel " or as " real estate." We remember to have read in a quaint old West Indian will (published in one of the islands where slaves were " real property") a devise of " my female slave SOPHONISBA to A for "life—remainder to B in tail male—remainder "to C in fee." An inevitable sense of the ludicrous accompanied, but could not repress, the blush of indignation called up by this tech nical degradation of humanity. It requires strong nerves to deal with a being created in Gov's image—one of those for whom CHRIST died—either as a brute animal or as a clod of the valley. But the system of regarding a slave as property was attended at least with one alleviat ing accident. It might be disposed of of only A