were dilapidated by the profuse expenditure of Henry VIII., and the rapacity of his favourites: and perhaps if his saintly son had attained to longer life, he might have found his best intentions frustrated by the opposition which they would have experienced from selfishness, cupidity, and contending parties. But unhappily while little was done, the easier work of undoing had proceeded with its natural rapidity. Such as the instruction of the Romish church is, it was amply provided by the Romish establishment: its outward and visible forms were always before the eyes of the people; the ceremonials were dexterously interwoven with the whole habits of their usual life; the practice of confession, baleful as it is, and liable to such perilous abuses, had yet the effect of bringing every individual under the knowledge of his spiritual teacher, while a faith, blind indeed, and grossly erroneous, was kept alive in the most ignorant of the populace by superstitious observances, the scaffolding and the trappings, the tools and the trinkets of popery. In addition to all these means, the country was filled with itinerant preachers, actively employed in co-operating with the secular clergy to one general end, (however opposed to them in individual interest,) and in supporting and strengthening the influence of the church establishment. Under that state of things, every person in the kingdom was instructed in as much of Christianity as his teacher, erring himself and ignorant of its true nature, thought necessary for salvation. He was well taught in certain legends, and knew perfectly the romance of his patron saint, and the fable of his favourite idol: he had a lively faith in purgatory, and had learnt when to kneel and when to cross himself at a mysterious and unintelligible service; and he could repeat certain prayers, with a full persuasion of their devoutness and of the utility of repeating them, though he did not understand the meaning of one syllable. Great superstition was inculcated, and implicit faith, and it has been wisely and charitably observed by John Wesley, that God makes allowance for invincible ignorance, and blesses the faith notwithstanding the superstition!"

This was the religious state of our common people before the Reformation; the point of instruction was reached at which their teachers aimed, and which their rulers thought necessary. And this is the condition of the common people in Catholic countries at this day, where they have not been infected by the pestilence of revolutionary impiety. Its effect in attaching them invincibly to the old institutions of their native land has been nobly exemplified in La Vendée, in Portugal, and in Spain. It is accompanied every where with a lamentable ignorance of the real nature of Christianity, and with a most adulterated system of morals as well as of faith: but if the same diligence had been used in these kingdoms for in

structing

structing every person in the pure faith and pure morals of the English church, can we doubt that it would have been equally successful?

We shall not surely be suspected of any disposition to favour the abuses of the Romish church; and therefore, without apprehending censure, we may express our regret, that, when those abuses were shaken off, it was either not found possible, or not thought convenient, to reform the regular clergy, instead of abolishing them altogether. Every person who has seen these orders in countries where they yet exist, must know with what scandal they are attended in their unreformed state, though the crimes imputed to them in England, as a pretext for the violent and iniquitous measure of their dissolution, were beyond all doubt grossly exaggerated. But here we have felt, and still feel, and perhaps shall one day feel yet more severely, the evil consequences of having disbanded the whole auxiliary force of the church; who did for it what the Methodists and other proselyting sectaries are now doing against it; and performed duties which the parochial clergy have never been numerous enough to discharge in all places, had the zeal in every case existed, and which, however zealous, it is not possible that they should discharge in populous places. Their institution, by rendering poverty a part of their religious profession, effected in their behalf the difficult point of making it perfectly compatible with general respect. These preachers were taken away, and at the same time the parochial clergy, who till then had lived in a certain and proper degree of affluence, were impoverished, the necessary effect of making them poor being to expose them to contempt.

The evil consequences to the clergy and to the church are frequently noticed by the writers of Elizabeth's and the succeeding reign: Politic men,' says one, begin apace already to withhold their children from schools and universities; any profession else better likes them, as knowing they may live well in whatsoever calling, save in the ministry.'-' They have taken away the unction and left us nothing but the alabaster box, the shreds, the sheards, the scrapings of our own. As for the ministers that have livings,' says Thomas Adams, (and his marginal note says leavings not livings, Thomas Adams being addicted to the sin of punning,) they are scarce live-ons, or enough to keep themselves and their families living; and for those that have none, they may make themselves merry with their learning, if they have no money, for they that bought the patronages must needs sell the presentations.

Vendere jure potest, emerat ille prius.

And then, if Balaam's ass hath but an audible voice and a soluble purse, he shall be preferred before his master, were he ten prophets. If this weather hold, Julian need not send learning into

exile, for no parent will be so irreligious as, with great expenses, to bring up his child at once to misery and sin.'

The condition of the inferior clergy, though it still requires improvement, has been greatly improved during the last century; but the effects of this long continued evil are still felt. For while the means of religious instruction were thought insufficient, the population has doubled upon those means, and the consequence has been that the populace in England are more ignorant of their religious duties than they are in any other Christian country. It would make any true Christian's heart bleed to think,' says Bishop Croft, how many thousand poor souls there are in this land that have no more knowledge of God than heathens; thousands of the mendicant condition never come to church, and are never looked after by any; likewise thousands of mean husbandry-men that do come to church, understand no more of the sermon than brutes. Perchance in their infancy some of them learnt a little of their Catechism, that is, they could, like parrots, say some broken pieces, but never understand the meaning of one line; but afterwards, as they grow up to be men, grow more babes in religion, so ignorant as scarce to know their Heavenly Father; and are admitted to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, before they are able to give account of the sacrament of baptism. Thus it is generally in the country, and in the city as bad; partly for the reason before specified, and partly by reason the number in many parishes is far greater than any one pastor can have a due care of; he cannot know half the names or faces of them, much less their faults and behaviour, which is requisite that he may both instruct and reprove when there is need.' At this day the case is worse than when the good Bishop of Hereford thus represented it; the increase of popula tion, were there no other cause, would unavoidably have made it worse. But we must also regard the growth of large towns during the last threescore years; the progress of manufactures, and the vices which unhappily both the one and the other generate, feed, and foster. Thus, even in the natural course of things, darkness has in this respect been gaining upon light, just as weeds and brambles spread themselves, where cultivation is neglected. And what is to be looked for, if, while we have been remiss in sowing good seed, the enemy has continued to sow tares, with that pestilent activity by which mischievous and malignant natures are distinguished, -what indeed but such an increase of pauperism, profligacy, and crimes of every kind, as that to which the poor-rates and the courts of law at this time bear frightful and formidable testimony!

It has been well argued by Stillingfleet, that God exercises a particular providence with respect to the condition of kingdoms and nations, making it better or worse according to the moral and

religious

religious condition of the people. For the moral order of the world is not less immutable than its physical laws. The seasons are not linked together in more inevitable sequence than human actions and their consequences; and trees do not more certainly bring forth fruit after their kind than good and evil are attendant upon virtue and vice. For individuals, indeed, the day of reckoning may not always be in this world-the greater their misery when it is deferred: but communities, existing only in time, cannot escape from their temporal account. There can be no permanent prosperity unless it be founded upon industry, virtue and religion; the public weal, as well as the welfare and happiness of individuals rests upon these, and rests upon them wholly; in proportion as the people become idle, immoral, and irreligious, the state becomes insecure, its base is undermined, and it is well observed by Mr. Walpole, that in policy, as in architecture, the ruin is greatest when it begins with the foundation.'

In the miserably misgoverned Turkish empire men are at this time retrograding from the settled to the nomadic state of life; the wandering population is continually increased by those who desert to it from the oppression which they endure; and thus the last remaining wrecks of civilization, in what was once the most civilized, the most intellectual and the most flourishing part of the whole habitable earth, would one day be destroyed, if it were not reasonable to believe that Providence will bring about a great and beneficial change in its own good time. Those who thus prefer the wilderness to the city, and the tent to the fixed habitation, are in some respects bettered by the exchange; they are less in danger of the plague, and if they leave none of their vices behind them, they acquire at least manly habits to which they were strangers before. The change which has been going on among us has none of these qualifying circumstances for the individual, while it tends to the direct and immediate detriment of the commonweal. With us, they who withdraw themselves from the service of society are enlisted instantly against it. As soon as they cease to support themselves by their own earnings, they begin to consume the property of others. Hobbes, in the frontispiece to his Leviathan, has delineated his commonwealth as a crowned and armed human image, whose body is composed of individuals; the magistrates form the breast, the military are its arms, and if the figure had been given at full length, the peasantry and mechanics would have been seen constituting the feet and legs. We have had occasion to notice elsewhere the apt similitude which he has found for the libellous and seditious members of the community. If he had contemplated the present effect of the Poor Laws, he might have devised one not less appropriate for the paupers of the state, and the body of his per

sonified

sonified Commonwealth would have appeared as much infested with extraneous and injurious life as that of a beetle with its annoying parasites, being of all creatures the one which is most tormented by such attendants.

The remedies for this great evil are what King Edward indicated, good education; the due administration of good laws; coercion for the idle, the profligate, and the wicked; encouragement for the well-disposed.

Much has, undoubtedly, been done for educating the children of the poor in these latter years, but it wants a firm and permanent foundation. The schools which have hitherto been established are supported wholly by voluntary subscriptions. It may be hoped that the liberality, which proceeds from a sense of duty towards God and man, will not abate, though it should no longer be provoked by the excitement of hostile views and interests: but it would be unreasonable to expect that the funds which are thus raised shall be considerably increased; and it is impossible that they should be commensurate with the necessity that exists. At this time it is stated, upon the best authority, that there are in London from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty thousand children, between the ages of six and sixteen, without the means of education; and that from two to four thousand of these are hired out to beggars and employed in thieving.

The prodigious increase of youthful criminals is an effect of the enormous increase of the metropolis, though so direct and obvious a cause seems to be overlooked by those who have written upon the subject. Great cities do not with more certainty generate foul air, and condense contagion, than they assist the propagation of moral diseases. And yet, under a good police, medical and moral, the means, both of prevention and remedy, may be applied with far greater celerity, and therefore with more likelihood of success, than in places where the population is scattered. Accordingly, in all Utopian romances, the perfect model of policy, according to the author's notion of this wide subject, is always exhibited in the capital of his ideal commonwealth; and in the only attempt which i has ever been made for exhibiting such schemes in practice, the people were all collected into inclosed towns. Here, it may be observed, that in all ideal schemes of government a greater superintendence is supposed on the part of the magistrates, and a greater interference with the actions of individuals and the occupations of private life, than has ever been exercised under the most despotic monarchies. And so surely is this passion for interference found in those persons who seat themselves in imagination, or in reality, in the seat of the lawgivers, without having any legal pretensions or natural qualification for the place, that both in our own history,

and