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

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

by deed, but by will. The late repentance of an
owner might restore to his slaves at his death the
priceless boon of which he had robbed them
during life. True, the power was but sparingly
exercised ; for testamentary manumission, even
when contemplated, was, like other acts of post-
humous justice among ourselves, too often
deferred too long. The daughters of JEFFERSON—
of the man who penned that memorable declara-
tion, " that all men are born free and equal "
were sold after his death ; beauty and accomplish-
ments, and the refinement acquired by conversing
at their father's table with the noblest of a land
then more truly noble than now, serving only to
raise their price in the market. Hut it might
have been otherwise had death waited for the
execution of a purpose which we will not doubt
that the great Virginian entertained. Freemen
then expounded their laws in favour of freedom,
and deathbed compunctions might issue in the
redress of wrong. But progress is a wondrous
and a fearful thing. Public opinion now con-
demns repentance, and law forbids restitution.
Henceforth, in Virginia, the cradle of indepen-
dence, the confines of freedom, a testator cannot
set his living property free, though it he his own
flesh and blood. Truly, if this were not the latest
Transatlantic " improvement," we might be
misled into regarding it as Satan's masterpiece.

We do not forget that in speaking of American
slavery we speak of an institution bequeathed by
the mother country to her Western offspring.
Were merely its existence in question, we should
be tongue-tied by our own original delinquency.
We have no right to call upon the slave-holding
South to emulate the sacrifices which we made in
the West Indies, under more favourable circum-
stances, yet with such questionable results. It is
the progressive character of the Institution, as
exhibited in the history of the United States,
that authorizes, nay calls on us to protest. We
have a deep interest in the prosperity of
America, and we see that prosperity imperilled
by the aggressive, unprincipled slave policy of
the South, and the culpable apathy or vacilla-
tion of the North. Since the first formation of
the Union upon the avowed principle of restrict-
ing slavery to a minimum, a ser►es of changes
have taken place, all, alas! in one direction.
The slave-holding States have successfully pur-
sued a system of encroachment, in spite of a de-
sultory, though occasionally vigorous, resistance
from the men of the North. To trace this
system through a development of so many years
would exceed the limits of a newspaper article.
On this head we would refer our readers to an
able summary (by an American writer) in the
Edinburgh Review for October, 1856. There
they will see the full record of those successive
inroads on the original constitution of the Union
which have gradually made the slave-interest
predominant in the Congress of the Great Re-
public—the annexation of Texas, the violation of
the Missouri compromise, the Fugitive Slave Law,
the Kansas outrages, all the wrongs against which
CRANNING, and STORY, and WEnsTEit, and more
recently SUMNER and PARKER, so eloquently yet
so vainly protested. Let them then reperuse the
Alabama Resolutions—to which we so lately drew
their notice—let them consider the avowed
designs of the South on Cuba, and ponder the
awful significance of the decision which has
prompted our present remarks. They will
then admit that we show no unfriendly spirit
towards America when we contrast the Vir-
ginia of 1789 with the Virginia of 1858, or
call on the free nations of the North to
resist the dictation of 200,000 slaveowners.
We are convinced that nothing but a deter-
mined and united resistance can check that long-
progressive evil, whose motto, thus far, has been
" Vestigia nulls retrorsum." The slave-holding
States must be made to feel their own intrinsic
weakness, or a conflict is inevitable, which will
end in the disruption of the Union. To tem-
porize is to lose ground. Better an immediate
struggle in Congress, however bitter, than a
gradual drifting into civil war. We wish we
could share the hope recently expressed in an
able article in the Daily Nears, that Virginia
will be found in such a struggle on the side of
freedom. It is quite true, as our contemporary
remarks, that slavery has not thriven, and can-
not thrive, in Virginia ; that, independent of her
glorious associations with great historic names—
names of men who could not think or sneak of
slavery but as a curse and a burden—she would
be more prosperous and more powerful as the