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to comprehend them, truths of which he yet has greater evidence, though not direct evidence, of their being truths, than he has of the contrary. Now, if we have had earthly 'fathers, and have given them reverence' after this fashion, and when we have become men have applauded our submission as appropriate to our condition of dependence, shall "we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?' If, then, the present be a scene of moral education and discipline, it seems fit in itself that the evidence of the truths we believe should be checkered with difficulties and liable to objections ;-not strong enough to force assent, nor so obscure as to elude sincere investigation. God, according to the memorable aphorism of Pascal already cited, has afforded sufficient light to those whose object is to see, and left sufficient obscurity to perplex those who have no such wish. All that seems necessary or reasonable to expect is, that as we are certainly not called upon to believe any thing without reason, nor without a preponderance of reason, so the evidence shall be such as our faculties are capable of dealing with; and that the objections shall be only such as equally baffle us upon any other hypothesis, or are insoluble only because they transcend altogether the limits of the human understanding; which last circumstance can be no valid reason, apart from other grounds, either for accepting or rejecting a given dogma. Now, we contend, that it is in this equitable way that God has dealt with us as moral agents, in relation to all the great truths which lie at the basis of religion and morals; and, we may add, in relation to the divine origin of Christianity. The evidence is all of such a nature as we are accustomed every day to deal with and to act upon; while the objections are either such as re-appear in every other theory, or turn on difficulties absolutely beyond the limits of the human faculties. Take, for example, the principal argument which proves the existence of God; the argument which infers from the traces of intelligent design in the universe, the existence of a wise and powerful author. In applying this principle, man only acts as he acts every day of his life in other cases. He acts on a principle which, if he were to doubt, or even affect to doubt, he would be laughed at by his fellow-men as a ridiculous pedant or a crazy metaphysician. Whether indications of design, countless as they are inimitable, with which the whole universe is inscribed, are likely to be the result of chance, is a question which turns on principles of evidence with which man is so familiar that he cannot adopt the affirmative without contradicting all his judgments in every other analogous, or similar, or conceivable case. On the other hand, the objections to the conclusion that there is

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some Eternal Being of illimitable power and wisdom are precisely of the nature we have mentioned. A man makes a difficulty, we will suppose, (as well he may,) of conceiving that which has existed from eternity; but, as something certainly exists now, the denial of the existence of such a Being does not relieve from that difficulty, unless the objector plunges into another equally great, that of supposing it possible for the universe to have sprung into existence without a cause at all. difficulty, then, is one which re-appears under any hypothesis. Again, we will suppose him to make a difficulty of the ideas of self-subsistence, of omnipresence without extension of partsof power which creates out of nothing, and which acts simply by volition, of a knowledge cognizant of each thing and of all its relations-actual and possible, past, present, and to cometo every other thing, at every point of illimitable space, and in every moment of endless duration. But then these are difficulties, the solution of which clearly transcends the limits of the human understanding; and to deny the doctrines which seem established by evidence which we can appreciate, because we cannot solve difficulties which lie altogether beyond our capacities, seems like resolving that nothing shall be true but what we can fully comprehend-a principle again which, in numberless other cases, we neither can nor pretend to act upon.

It is much the same with the evidences of Christianity. Whether a certain amount and complexity of testimony are likely to be false; whether it is likely that not one but a number of men would endure ignominy, persecution, and the last extremities of torture, in support of an unprofitable lie; whether such an original fiction as Christianity-if it be fiction-is likely to have been the production of Galilean peasants; whether any thing so sublime was to be expected from fools, or any thing so holy from knaves; whether illiterate fraud was likely to be equal to such a wonderful fabrication; whether infinite artifice may be expected from ignorance, or a perfectly natural and successful assumption of truth from imposture ;-these and a multitude of the like questions are precisely of the same nature, however they may be decided, with those with which the historian and the advocate, judges, and courts of law are every day required to deal. On the other hand, whether miracles have ever been, or are ever likely to be admitted in the administration of the universe, is a question on which it would demand a far more comprehensive knowledge of that administration than we can possibly possess to justify an a priori decision. That they are possible is all that is required; and that, no consistent theist can

deny. Other difficulties of Christianity, as Bishop Butler has so clearly shown, baffle us on every other hypothesis; they meet us as much in the constitution of nature,' as in the pages of revelation, and cannot consistently be pleaded against Christianity without being equally fatal to Theism.

There are two things, we will venture to say, at which the philosophers of some future age will stand equally astonished; the one is, that any man should have been called upon to believe any mystery, whether of philosopy or religion, without a preponderance of evidence of a nature which he can grasp, or on the mere ipse dixit of a fallible creature like himself; the other, that where there is such evidence, man should reject a mystery, merely because it is one. This last, perhaps, will be regarded as the more astonishing of the two. That man, who lives in a dwelling of clay, and looks out upon the illimitable universe through such tiny windows-who stands, as Pascal sublimely says, between two infinitudes'-who is absolutely surrounded by mysteries, which he overlooks, only because he is so familiar with them; should doubt a proposition (otherwise well sustained) from its intrinsic difficulty, does not seem very reasonable. But when we further reflect that that very mind which erects itself into a standard of all things, is, of all things, the most ignorant of that which it ought to know best-itself, and finds there the most inscrutable of all mysteries;-when we reflect that when asked to declare what itself is, it is obliged to confess that it knows nothing about the matter-nothing either of its own essence or its mode of operation—that it is sometimes inclined to think itself material, and sometimes immaterial—that it cannot quite come to a conclusion whether the body really exists or is a phantom, or in what way (if the body really exist) the intimate union between the two is maintained; -when we see it perplexed beyond expression, even to conceive how these phenomena can be reconciled,-proclaiming it to be an almost equal contradiction to suppose that Matter ean think, or the Soul be material, or a connexion maintained between two totally different substances, and yet admitting that one of these must be true, though it cannot satisfactorily determine which ;-when we reflect on all this, surely we cannot but feel that the spectacle of so ignorant a being refusing to believe a proposition merely because it is above its comprehension, is of all paradoxes the most paradoxical, and of all absurdities the most ludicrous.

ART. VIII.-1. De la Centralisation. Par TIMON (M. DE CORMENIN.) 8vo. Paris: 1842.

2. Etudes Administratives. Par M. VIVIEN. 8vo. Paris: 1845. 3. De la Liberté du Travail. Par CHARLES DUNOYER. 8vo Paris: 1845.

4. Notes of a Traveller on the Social and Political State of France, Prussia, &c. By SAMUEL LAING, Esq. 8vo. London:

1842.

BY Y the books which we have taken for a text, and by various books and essays which we have not specified, our attention has been drawn to a subject of great and growing importancethe tendencies of that form of Government, or rather, that form of Administration, which we must designate, for want of a better title, by the barbarous, though received name, of Centralization. Novel as it is, the word has acquired already a good and a bad sense; and, like all other words subject to this ambiguity, it has begotten a crowd of mistakes concerning the thing which it signifies, with a crowd of intentional or unintentional fallacies. For example, the word is often put forward by ostensible advocates of the thing, as a cover for vexatious restraints laid by governments on the governed. On the other hand, the word is frequently employed (in a sense which imports blame), as if it were synonymous with over-governing ;-that is, an over-meddling by governments with the interests and concerns of their subjects. This confusion of two things which have no natural connexion has armed objectors to improvements with a telling and dangerous fallacy. Any interference by a government with the interests and concerns of its subjects, however expedient that interference may be, is reproached by those who would raise a prejudice against it, with a tendency to centralization; and by this brandishing of a word, (which, as being imperfectly understood, is full of mysterious terrors,) they can work on the practical convictions of their hearers or readers, with an effect which they could not produce by a perspicuous statement of their reasons. To obviate the prevalent mistakes concerning Centralization, and to obviate the obstacles to improvement, which they have raised and are likely to raise, is the purpose of the present article. A complete accomplishment of the purpose would surpass our limited space, although it did not surpass our limited powers; but we hope that such of our readers as may care to

investigate the subject, will be helped to adequate conceptions of it by the suggestions which we shall offer to their notice.

Of the many misconceptions of centralization which have fallen under our observation, the following, we think, are the most prevalent and important:-1. It is confounded with overgoverning. 2. It is thought incompatible with the spirit, if not with the forms, of free or popular government. 3. It is thought incompatible with local governments of local and popular origin. 4. In France, Prussia, and other continental countries, the governments of localities, with the lower branches of the general administration, are controlled to excess by the heads of the latter; and this abuse of centralization is supposed to be of its essence. To clear the subject of the obscurity which they have cast upon it, we shall examine these misconceptions as fully as our limits will permit. We shall append to our examination of the last a few remarks on a subject which is closely connected with it ;the expediency of the sovereign authority delegating its functions, so far as such delegation consists with the preservation of its power. To our examination of these misconceptions we shall prefix a general outline of centralization itself. In this preliminary outline, we shall endeavour to determine the notion of centralization; we shall endeavour to indicate the conditions upon which it depends; and we shall notice its tendencies to promote or defeat the objects which governments ought to pursue.

A perfect definition of centralization would involve a definition of sovereignty and independent political society; but since a definition of these fundamental notions would not consist with our limited purposes, we confine ourselves to the following assumptions:-That every political society is subject to a person or persons who may be styled the sovereign: That the political powers, active or passive, of this individual or body, are not limitable by positive law; since all the positive laws in force in the given society owe their legal validity to the expressed will of the sovereign or to its tacit sanction: That the other political authorities in the given society are subordinate to the sovereign or supreme one; deriving their political powers from its express or tacit delegation, and holding those powers at its pleasure. The omnipotence of the sovereign authority, as meaning its absolute freedom from legal restraints, is (we conceive) indisputable; being involved in the notion of sovereignty, as the properties of a circle are implied by the definition of the figure. If the sovereignty resides in a single person, the sovereign government is properly a monarchy; if it resides in a body of persons, the government may be styled a republic, (in the wider meaning of the term.) But with this division of governments