that while the invader knows his own plans and chooses his own time, his opponents can know neither. A third immense advantage would be found in the different system under which the two navies are constituted-the French a professional, our own a House of Commons navy. With all these advantages does any one doubt that the First Napoleon would have managed to embark his 160,000 men of the army of England,' and throw them on our shores? It would be child's play compared with the task he actually proposed to himself in 1805. True, Nature is sparing of such abnormal genius as his, and no ordinary commander would inspire the same confidence. Still, so far as the mere transit is concerned, the chances seem greatly in its favour. If we suppose the passage, say to Pevensey Bay, safely accomplished, we may assume the disembarkation of the troops effected also, as of course that most important and vulnerable point is practically defenceless, and resistance to a landing there would be impossible.14

Here, however, the real difficulty, or rather inevitable delay, would occur, and that in no imaginary obstacle. Though the immense and concentrated wealth of England in supplies and provisions of all kinds would enable an invading army to reduce its impedimenta to a minimum, still the indispensable amount could hardly be landed in forty-eight hours, or only by the greatest exertions. A feeble commander might find it impossible, but it would be one of those impossibilities,' which genius turns to opportunities. However that may be, the soldiers at least, with sufficient ammunition and provisions for two or three days, would be landed very rapidly, detachments occupying Hastings on one flank, and Eastbourne on the other. The village of Pevensey with its old ruined castle rising above the marshes would afford a strong position for its centre and cover the landing of the military stores. The rich towns already mentioned, with the adjacent villages, would supply the army with draught horses, carts, and rations, and a considerable district might be securely held before any British force could muster. The disembarkation effected, the invaders' policy would be to burn the bridge behind them,' certain that if London were ever reached it would be unnecessary. So far then as theSilver Streak' was concerned, the problem would have been solved, and it is beyond the purpose of this paper to prosecute the subject further. Whether the invaders would reach London, striking a mortal blow at the heart of the Empire, who shall say? This indeed we may The news that our inviolate shores had been reached and occupied-that our navy, asserted by authority to be equal to all emer gencies, had proved the contrary-would kindle such blind rage among

assume.

14 The little obsolete martello towers,' mounting a very small and unserviceable gun each, could not be used at all in modern warfare. The shingle with which they are surrounded would, when struck by an enemy's shot, cover the towers with such showers of stones as would overwhelm the defenders.

the masses, and lead to such riots and insubordination, as would greatly assist the enemy. The Admiralty would naturally be the first object of popular vengeance, and the First Lord of the day, possibly an exceptionally good one, would probably be the first victim. Of all the positions in which a statesman could find himself, his would be the most pitiable if he escaped with his life, for on his head would fall the very natural maledictions of the people. But the mob would most likely hang the First Lord and burn the Admiralty, following up that outrage, after the manner of excited mobs, by attacking the Horse Guards. If the then Commander-in-Chief and War Minister did not anticipate the action of the mob, they would probably be its next victims. But all this would not improve matters or contribute to the national defence. A new First Lord, a landsman of course, and a new War Minister, perhaps a lawyer, would have to be found, and meanwhile the enemy is advancing. The march from Pevensey to London, sixty-five miles, traverses no defiles like the Kyber or Bolan passes, no mountain ranges, gloomy forests, broad rivers, or sandy plains. London once sighted by an enemy is taken, or would be after one shell had hurtled through the air, or one rocket had roared through its murky canopy. Unconditional capitulation would be a necessity, and the idle fancy that the retreat of the occupying army might be cut off' is sufficiently answered by 'J'y suis, j'y reste.' To buy out the enemy, to furnish him with any number of golden bridges, would be our task, but he could neither be fought out nor starved out of the world's wealthiest market. The enemy might perhaps be bribed by the cession of our navy, our Indian and our colonial Empire, and a war indemnity of some 500,000,000l., with free transport for the army, to relinquish our shores; but what would he leave behind? The democracy, justly incensed by the proved incapacity of the governing classes to discharge the first duty of a government, would depose them from power. The complex framework of English society would fall to pieces. Industry would be paralysed and public credit destroyed. 'L'Angleterre aura vécu :' the one country in Europe that had for eight centuries been free from invasion would have felt the conqueror's heel. A land whose monarchy had been the expression, whose sovereigns the loved guardians, of the popular liberty, would have owned a foreign master, and the fiction of the 'Silver Streak' have been dispelled by the realities of an iron age.

DUNSANY.

PEACE IN THE CHURCH.

I.

THE PUBLIC WORSHIP REGULATION ACT.

WHEN I had first agreed to consider the policy of the Public Worship Regulation Act, I felt some misgivings at my temerity. But in the interval all apprehensions have quite disappeared, and I can now buckle to, not, I hope, with a light heart, but in a trustful spirit. The truth is, that meanwhile the question has been raised, and virtually settled, in a sense corresponding with my own conclusions, not by any casual layman, but by the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury and his comProvincials in sacred Synod assembled, as well as by the House of Lords.

When a householder sends for the slater, or the plumber, or the carpenter in a hurry, the reasonable inference is that he suspects something amiss about his dwelling. But when carpenter, plumber, and slater are all commanded to meet over the condition, not of that one mansion only, but of the whole row in which it stands, then, indeed, it may be concluded that extensive repairs are called for to restore the buildings to tenantable condition. The Archbishop of Canterbury's proposal, accepted by the Ministry and House of Lords, for a Royal Commission upon Ecclesiastical Judicature, is more than an excuse for a plain-spoken retrospect of the origin and policy of the Public Worship Regulation Act.

This concession has made the doings of seven years ago ancient history, and justifies me for treating it in the free method appropriate to a retrospective inquiry.

I am apt to become suspicious if I find any writer who embarks upon an historical research too loudly boastful of his impartiality. Industry and accuracy are among the chiefest requisites for a trustworthy historian. But of these good qualities, assuming the honesty of the writer, there can be no more sure guarantee than the consciousness of some message to deliver, some mission to fulfil, some opinion to establish. The student who is indifferent as to the goal to which his researches may lead him lives under a perpetual temptation of preferring the easy, the picturesque, or the popular. Intending then to be scrupulously accurate in my statements, I do not claim the

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cold and negative merit of viewing the Public Worship Regulation Act from the neutral position of a disengaged bystander. My place is among the members of that old High Church party, the historical High Church party,' which has, for some years past, had abundant cause for astonishment at finding that in proportion as Ritualists and Ritualism are denounced for the capital offence of unpopularity, it is itself being constantly hurried to the edge of that dangerous abyss which, as we know, yawns for those of whom all men speak well.

Accepting for the moment the startling statement of the late Prime Minister, that the Public Worship Bill was brought in to put down Ritualism, I shall attempt to recall the light in which the measure, so explained, presented itself to the members of that historical High Church party of whom, in his subsequent sentence, Mr. Disraeli had nothing but good to say. To speak very plainly, I consider it to be one of the gravest misfortunes of that Public Worship legislation, that it has created a wholly fictitious eidolon of 'Ritualism, irrespective of the rites which may make it up;' and in providing special machinery of the 'urgency' class to suppress its own figment, it has cast a slur upon, and done an injury to principles, the disallowance of which would be the dissolution of the actual Church of England. It has embarked Puritanism in a sacred war against ceremonial en bloc, and it has often made it a point of honour with Ritualists to defend en bloc, as if they were inseparable, a variety of usages which might otherwise have been separately considered on their respective merits.

I am not a Ritualist. Long before Ritualism eo nomine was heard of, I had matured my ceremonial convictions, and taken my stand as an ecclesiologist upon certain principles of English Church worship, which I find in the Prayer Book of 1549, and also in that of 1552, and for ourselves most authoritatively in the actual statutable book of 1661, and which I recognise expounded, exemplified, and illustrated in the writings and in the doings of Andrewes, Wren, and Cosin, of Sparrow and Sancroft, and of Wilson and William Palmer. Secure in this position, I can look with equanimity upon that miscellaneous muster of phenomena which are ignorantly classed together as Ritualism.

While I find in that fluctuating array of actions and theories things which make me grave and sorry, I add with gratitude that I recognise much which lifts up my heart in thankfulness at toil, discomfort, and privation, faced and borne for the glory of God and the salvation of mankind.

To pass from Church to Forum, I am driven to conclude that any general definition of Ritualism, so framed as to be cognisable as an offence by Act of Parliament, is an absurdity, so long as the Prayer Book exists as a schedule to a statute. To create an indiscriminate

moral offence of Ritualism is equally absurd, when so many incidents which pass under that name are the inevitable and meritorious results of that great revival during the last half-century of holiness and zeal in the Church of England, in which-outside of the regulated oppositions of parties-every writer has found something to praise, with the eccentric exception of an historian who finds his way to the ear of cultured Englishmen by his exquisite style. 'Owing, as we do, to this revival,' in the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury's recent Charge, a more reverent appreciation of the value of the outward forms of religion,' we find, as must always be the case in payments in full of debts long contracted, that all the coin will not pass current at the bank. To say that a movement is rapid, popular, and unexpected, is to say that such must be the result, and the enemies of High Church ceremonial have no more right to be jubilant on the fact than its supporters have need to be downcast.

'Movement' is a noun of multitude, and when you have a number of men in movement, some of them must, from physical causes, always occupy an extreme position.

Such, as I venture to lay down with much fear of contradiction, but with no fear of refutation, is the truth about Ritualism.' But what was the theory about it which lay under, and invited that attempt to put it down with which we are concerned? I shall best make my explanation clear by borrowing an illustration from modern medical science. All who are familiar with contemporary therapeutics must be familiar with the great and increasing attention which is being paid to the phenomenon of blood-poisoning as the key to many maladies, the results of which had hitherto been so deadly because their origin was not appreciated.

Many a blood-poisoned patient has been cured by being treated for blood poisoning. But obstinately to assume that the man who has dislocated his shoulder is victim to the vicious condition of his circulation, and to substitute alkaloids for splints, may sometimes kill the patient. I should be sorry to think that there had ever been any risk of this calamity having been reached from riding hard the theory which appears to me to underlie the policy of the Public Worship Act, that Ritualism was the poison which had infected the life-blood of the English Church. Still, no other supposition can account for the peculiarities of the measure. Of course, if such was the case, the results which followed were the mishaps inevitably incident to all mistreatment, even by the ablest practitioners.

I may note in passing, that I have seen a statement by an authority which we are bound to respect, that the Public Worship Act was the natural growth of the recommendations of that Ritual Commission which sat from 1868 to 1872, and in particular of the recommendations of its first report, which called to life the 'aggrieved parishioners.' As a member of that Commission, and one who, in