Episcopate as it is in India. But in New Zealand there is nothing, and in Australia there is little, of the one-sidedness which has given the Church of South Africa a singular consistency and unity, but, if I am not mistaken, has somewhat impaired her present and future influence upon the fortunes of the country whose name she bears.

The Colonial Churches stand in supreme need of a good clergy. Nowhere is the opportunity of the Church greater. Nowhere is her task more arduous. It was a pleasure to me, therefore, to learn that the supply of candidates for Holy Orders was not diminishing, but, at least in some quarters, showed a tendency to increase. There are good theological colleges both in Australia and in New Zealand. It seemed to me that the Church in Australasia found not more difficulty, but rather less, than the Church at home in recruiting the ranks of her clergy from her own people. And this is as it should be; for not only will it be more difficult for the Mother Country, as the years pass, to supply clergy enough for the Church both at home and abroad, but clergymen coming out from home are often less well suited than clergymen born in the Colonies to appreciate the spirit and accept the conditions, and, it may be, to bear the hardships, such as they are, of Colonial life. Nor could any mistake be greater, in the interest of the Church at large, than to discourage foreign clerical service by filling up, habitually or generally, the higher offices of the Church abroad with clergymen sent out from home.

It is not improbable that, if gaps are left in the ranks of the clergy at home by the unwillingness of young men to take Holy Orders, they may in some degree be filled by men ordained abroad. For in any estimate of the number of men ordained, the ordinations held in the Colonies and in India must be taken into account. There are now more than a hundred Colonial bishops; and if each of them were to ordain three deacons annually, they would together make a sensible addition to the forces of the Church. I cannot help thinking then that it is a matter of great importance to relieve the Colonial Churches, as far as possible, and with as little delay as possible, from the disability put upon them by the Colonial Clergy Act. It must be recognised that Colonial and Indian ordination cannot be treated exactly as equal to ordination at home; no one will propose to demand of a Hindu or a Maori candidate for Holy Orders the same knowledge, both in nature and in amount, as of a candidate who has taken a degree at Oxford or Cambridge. But would it not be possible, without any prejudice to the liberty of local bishops in ordaining men for service in their own dioceses or province, to establish, on the authority of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, a standard of examination for Holy Orders, so that all priests in all parts of the world who prove themselves to have attained this standard, as tested by an officially appointed examiner, should be equally eligible for appointments and preferments throughout all parts of the British Empire?

There is need of a cultivated clergy in the great cities of Australasia, Cities like Sydney and Melbourne, Adelaide, Wellington, Christchurch, and Hobart (to mention only those which I have visited) are distinguished not in commerce or politics alone, but in various branches of science and learning. They are worthy of the highest intellectual and spiritual help which the Church can give them. The Episcopate of Bishop Moorhouse at Melbourne is a witness of Colonial admiration for noble gifts directed to a noble end.

The Church must send out her good men to the Colonies. But it is equally true that she must not send out her bad men. It was stated to me in Australasia, and I could hardly credit the statement, did not my experience in India bear it out, that, if a clergyman gets into trouble at home, he is often sent out-and sometimes even with a recommendation from his bishop, who, if he did not know the truth about him, ought to have known it-to begin life afresh in a Colonial diocese. One bishop told me during my travels that not long ago there were living in his diocese fifteen clergymen who had come out to him from England, and not one of them could he allow to officiate in his diocese, although he was in sore want of clergy.

It cannot be too strongly said of all classes of men, and especially of the clergy, that, if a man cannot live a good life at home, the worst possible course is to send him out to the Colonies. For in the Colonies the temptations are greater, the restraints are fewer. And there is nothing which a colony and the Church of a colony so bitterly resents as that the failures of the Old World should be dumped down there. The Church in Australasia needs not the worst, but the best, representatives of English Churchmanship. She justly complains if unworthy priests, sent out from England, do dishonour to the youthful days of her history. But if the Church at home owes it to the Colonial Churches to forbear sending out her moral failures, so those Churches in their turn owe it to the Church at home to be scrupulous about receiving such failures. For if it should happen that a clergyman who had been disgraced at home were, even without any proof of penitence or time for evincing it, not only permitted to officiate in a Colonial diocese, but honoured and rewarded there, and entrusted with solemn and delicate spiritual duties, such a diocese, and perhaps the province of which it forms part, would for many a long day deserve to lose the respect of earnest and devout Churchmen.

The Colonial Churches then are wise in their insistence upon a high moral character in their clergy. For it is a feature of the life of the Church abroad, as compared with the life at home, that personality is a more important factor. It is a sufficiently important factor of the clerical life at home; but it is, I think, still more important in the Colonies. For the forces of habit and tradition and association are not so potent in a new as in an old country. Thus success and failure

in the clerical life are more rapid and striking than at home. In the Colonies a good man fills his church almost at once; an inefficient man empties it all at once. If a congregation does not like a clergyman, its members feel little scruple about leaving his church for another or for a non-Episcopalian place of worship, or about staying away from church altogether. And, what is worst, if they do not like him, or if they think him unequal to his work, they cease to support him by their money-in a word, they starve him out. The Colonial bishops experience few difficulties so great as that of providing for their deserving elderly clergy.

It is not impossible that in this difficulty the Church at home might afford some relief to the Church abroad.

The work of the clergy in the Colonies is often in some respects harder than any clerical life at home. I do not say it is harder in all respects; but it is in some. The Colonial clergy, and still more the Indian clergy, sometimes live in enervating and dangerous climates. They live in an isolation of which their brethren at home have no experience: I have known clergymen who did not, and could not, see another clergyman once in twelve months. And it often happens that their parishes, or the districts assigned to them, in extent and character are more like English counties, or even combinations of counties, than English villages. I shall be forgiven if I plead the cause of the clergy who labour abroad; I have known them so well; I sympathise with them so deeply. And what is true of the clergy is. equally or more than equally true of the bishops. From these considerations it seems to follow that the bishops and clergy who serve abroad should be young, and that when they grow old they should be brought home. It would, I believe, be an immense gain to many parochial clergymen at home to have seen something of the Church of the Empire. It would be fully as great a gain to the foreign clergy, when they have spent their best years abroad, to enjoy the peace of a quiet country parish at home.

At present there is much objection taken to any recognition of devoted service abroad. The Church has not yet learnt to think imperially. Not many years ago a missionary bishop who had administered a vast diocese in trying climates until he was an old man, and who had so long laboured at the hazard of his life among ruthless savages that in the estimate of a gallant admiral not particularly friendly to missions no man ever deserved the Victoria Cross better than he, was preferred to a modest dignity in one of the English cathedrals. His appointment was made the occasion for an outcry because he had not worked in the diocese in which his preferment lay. The Church has not yet learnt to think imperially. She still conceives herself as the Church of the nation, but not as the Church of the Empire. She will never rise to the greatness of her opportunity if she despises and neglects her sons who have led the forlorn

hopes of her mission, if she lets them starve in their old age or fall helpless at their posts and die forgotten.

In Australasia the Church has much to do. Before her spread unknown, unconquered fields. But a stranger who travels there, unless his feeling be wholly different from my own, will wonder more at all that has been accomplished in so short a time by the energy of her sons with little or no support from the State, than at all that still remains to be attempted. He will realise that she too, in the British dominions beyond the seas, has had her heroes, her saints, her martyrs. He will come home with many thoughts stirring in his soul-admiration for the bishops and clergy who have served her there, an abiding interest in her development, above all with an unassailable conviction of her high and sacred calling.

J. E. C. WELLDON.

'AN EX-PRISONER

ON PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS'

A REJOINDER

A SERMON preached from a perverted text may contain much that is worthy of attention. And a kindred remark applies to a Review article. If An Ex-Prisoner on Professional Criminals' had given the writer's experiences, and practical suggestions based on his experiences, the article in question would have been interesting, and possibly useful. But almost every part of it is founded on some misrepresentation of something written by me. This is discouraging to me, I confess. For the articles I have contributed to this Review have had a twofold aim. I have appealed to those who are in a position to control or influence legislation about criminals and crime; and I have sought to educate public opinion on the subject. My success in the one sphere has far surpassed my expectations; but if Mr. H. J. B. Montgomery is a fair representative of the man in the street,' I can have made no progress with the general public. But is he? What, for example, am I to think of such a statement as the following:

Some time ago Sir Robert Anderson wrote an article-I believe it appeared in this Review—on the subject of Crime and Criminals,' in which article he asserted that most, if not all, the burglaries committed in London were in reality organised by a cabinet of burglars, who sat round a table and directed all operations.

Of course I have never written anything which bears the remotest resemblance to what is here attributed to me. I have said that burglars are generally 'professional criminals'; and in one article I stated that the men who organise and finance crime in this country are not more numerous than the Cabinet Ministers, and that they are as well known to the police.

Again, on p. 282, Ex-Prisoner,' in criticising my statements, speaks of the professional or habitual criminal class.' Now, no one who has really read my articles can have failed to notice the distinction I have drawn between 'habitual criminals' and 'professional criminals.' A man may be an 'habitual criminal,' and yet