endeavouring, as your Lordship too well knows, to fasten its destructive fangs upon every mind in the community which is at all released from the fetters of ignorance, and to render its sweetened poison acceptable wherever education has communicated even the least relish for literary employment. It thus, my Lord, seems to watch, with vigilant malignity, the whole progress of mental improvement amongst us, and to rise in mischievous energy, in proportion as the field of its action is extended. An unprincipled press and injudicious or irregular education are, in this manner, working together in the cause of religious and social disorganisation; the one preparing the soil, which the other renders fertile in every noxious produce.

Much of these results, my Lord, might, perhaps, have been foreseen, as likely to proceed from this union of powers in a country circumstanced as ours is; and therefore, certainly, it must the more excite our regret, or rather our surprise, that an effective legislative provision, for sound national instruction, was withheld at the time when first the public feeling was strongly excited on the general subject, and when it would readily, and even with enthusiasm, have turned to the support of such a measure. But, although the disease of perverted intellect may have begun extensively to infect the community, there is every reason to believe, that it is not yet advanced beyond the control of that treatment which, originally applied, might have acted as its prevention. The formidable engine of evil, of which I am speaking, (a very solecism in all well-regulated governments,) has, indeed, already received a salutary check from recent legislative enactments, which will greatly facilitate this restoration of the popular mind. The benefits of our regular national instruction will, undoubtedly, under their healing operation, be less liable than they have been to forfeiture and abuse; whilst dissenting education of every kind, and education more intellectual than religious, will be deprived, to a certain extent, of a most dangerous ally, which has long delighted in irritating all its disorderly tendencies, and in adding strength to all its capacities of mischief. It would be blindness, however, my Lord, to expect that these preventive restraints, however well designed and faithfully applied, will be all-powerful in their results. In this free country, under its present circumstances, there is a spirit of disturbance and restlessness abroad, which all the enchantments of the wisest Statesman, working, as they ever must do, within the pale of the Constitution, will never be able perhaps, entirely to lay by coercive means. It must, therefore, when the power of the law can no longer reach it, be encountered by a spirit of equal subtilty, ubiquity, and energy with itself. The public mind must be carefully reared under pure national discipline; the principle of contagion must be

thus destroyed; the unsound temperament, which is its food, must be thus rectified; and then, my Lord, under the blessing of God, the liberty of the press may again become the honorable distinction of this country, by ministering effectually to the support of practical religion, intelligent morality, and jealous, but well-regulated freedom.

With regard to the lax notions, relative to the necessity of inculcating, at schools, the great distinctive principles of an orthodox religious education, to which I have referred, as another peculiarity of the times, requiring the counteraction of a pure national establishment, your Lordship must, in observing the great operative variations of the public mind, and the controversial discussions which these excite, have sufficiently satisfied yourself of their unfortunate prevalence and tendency. I will not, therefore, dwell here, at any length, upon a trite review of errors, however important, which have been already often exposed, and in the correction of which, especially, the great learning and acumen of one of the brightest ornaments' of our Episcopal Bench, are well known to have been effectually exerted. It had its origin, however, I may be allowed to observe, in that first blind, but praiseworthy enthusiasm in favor of the new system of education, to which I have already alluded, and has extensively affected, and, I cannot help thinking, my Lord, has extensively deteriorated, the grandest of our modern efforts of religious civilisation. It is equally the offspring of irregular feelings, and supported by fallacious reasoning. It sacrifices to a weak fondness for schemes of impracticable harmony much, at least, of outward respect for the wide, and, in many cases, eternal distinctions of conscientious belief. It loves, therefore, to draw together, under the same roof of instruction, creeds and opinions of the most opposite tendencies and character, vainly imagining, that, whilst distinctive principles will be sufficiently inculcated by domestic care, under the warmth of such an amicable contact, the spirit of sectarian rivalry will wither away. Its followers act thus too, my Lord, forgetting that deep-seated attachment to peculiar religious professions is inseparably linked to an honest spirit of charitable rivalry, (if I may so call it,) which, therefore, cannot be extinguished, either within the Church or without it, unaccompanied by the almost simultaneous extinction of much of that valuable, and otherwise highly-allied, respect for the. truth of individual belief. And what is still more to be lamented, they act thus, forgetting that, as in the philanthropic affections a genuine love of fellow-creature cannot exist in any breast in which the fire of domestic love does not brightly burn, so in the religious, and the same may be said of the inferior political affections,

The Bishop of Peterborough..

true sense of religion must be weakly possessed by every heart which is not jealously alive to the maintenance and the mild diffusion of that faith, in the belief of which it is conscientiously settled. Thus, my Lord, this very unthinking laxity of opinion, by treating with equal respect, and co-operating upon equal terms, in the work of infant education, with truth and heresy of every stamp, tends at once effectually to impair the life, and to erase the great landmarks of orthodoxy, and of genuine earnestness in religion, erroneously grounding charity upon the union of errors, instead of the unity of truth. Thus also it is, unconsciously, perhaps, striking at the very root of that same charity; for, to whatever extent a seeming present harmony may be produced, by policy on the one side, and misguided philanthropy on the other, the uncemented alliance must end in inflicting a serious injury upon Christian unity; and, consequently, when present fashionable weaknesses shall have disappeared, in emboldening the pretensions, and adding to the acrimonies of schism.

Your

The mischiefs, then, which might result from a still more extensive application of this unsound doctrine to popular education, must be disastrous in the extreme. The precarious settlement of individual religious belief, (that worst of all deficiencies in education,) and the eventual removal of all national religious establishments, seem to spring from it as from their natural source. Lordship, however, well knows, that there do exist in the country, many large and well-patronised establishments for popular education, in which this unnatural mixture of truth and error is recognised as a master principle. Your Lordship knows also, that the spirit of the times is unfortunately favorable to its more general practical adoption. Nothing then, surely, can appear so well calculated to check the progress of such an evil as the permanent institution of national education upon an opposite principle; whilst, at the same time, it must be quite clear, that the parliamentary sanction of any system favorable to it, in any degree, might inflict an almost irremediable wound upon those pure distinctive attachments, which, though steady and uncompromising in themselves, are the only sure pledges of true Christian feelings towards all men, and are, and have long been, gratefully acknowledged, as the corner stones of our elevated national morality, and the best securities also of our boasted liberty, religious and civil.

But, my Lord, it will, doubtless, be objected to the course of proceeding which I am now taking the liberty to recommend, that, to compel Dissenters to contribute, in any way, to the support of education which they disapprove, would be a hardship inconsistent with their constitutional and inviolable rights. Plausible, however, as this objection may, at a first view, appear, it is untenable,

both in reason and in all constitutional analogy. No one, I presume, will be bold enough to deny, that it is a duty incumbent upon every man, and founded equally upon the law and conscience, to assist, proportionably to his means, in upholding the general safety and the religious and moral order of his country, by giving his share of the common support to those laws and institutions which may be established to maintain them. These legal establishments of all descriptions are entitled to such support, because they have been decided upon by the combined will of the nation, as the best means of securing its highest interests; and all persons do, in effect, acknowledge outward fealty and submission to them who live as citizens, enjoying the blessings of social protection in that community which they govern. Many individuals may, indeed, conscientiously believe, that they are not the best means that might have been adopted for the attainment of the great objects they have in view, and the open and peaceable profession of such dissent is a legitimate prerogative of civilised freedom; but deference to, and a covenanted support, (as far as the State requires it,) of these constitutional laws and safeguards, by which, in fact also, such prerogative is protected, are the indispensable conditions of its enjoyment.

Farther, my Lord, it is, I presume, a main object. of care, as it is a chief duty also, with the rulers of every State, to provide, as effectually as possible, for the preservation of that general safety, and that religious and moral order above mentioned, by strengthening and adding to, as occasion shall demand, the legal means of their security; and at all times also, to expect, and properly to enforce, that joint assistance from its subjects, in giving effect to such means, which they are under so paramount an obligation to afford. From whatever quarter, and in whatever point, therefore, the safety of the country, or, in other words, of its religion and laws, is assailed, against that quarter, and to that point, the common force must always be summoned. At one time, external hostility may threaten the national welfare; at another, internal disaffection, or immorality, or profaneness, may threaten civil disorder; but, whatever may be the danger, the means of defence must be adapted to it, both in character and power, whilst the obligation of common assistance, from all classes of the people, must ever remain the same.

Let these principles, my Lord, be applied to the present internal circumstances of this country, and the objection which I am combating will instantly vanish. It is considered, I will assume, by the Legislature, that irreligion, and vice, and opinions hostile to the fundamental institutions of the State, are alarmingly prevalent in the community, occasioned by much popular ignorance, on the

one hand, and a wrong education of the lower orders of the people, on the other. As the official and sworn guardians of all the great national interests, the Legislature, under these circumstances, wisely determine, that the right education of the people would be the best remedy for the growing evils; and they fix, of course, the established principles of Church and State, as the basis of that education, because, as I have already endeavoured to prove, they could not, as conscientious men, confiding in the excellent tendencies of their own belief, and as conscientious legislators, under exclusive institutions, give the smallest facility to the dissemination of other or anti-constitutional doctrines. They, accordingly, appropriate a portion of the general public revenue, or the produce of special local taxes, paid equally, in each case, by persons of all civil and religious persuasions, to the establishment and support of such a system of general instruction: What is there in this, my Lord, I venture to ask, bordering even upon hardship towards Dissenters? The legislature, by so acting, force not their instruction upon those who cannot conscientiously receive it; neither do they contract, in the smallest degree, the privilege of all persons to educate their children in their own way, and at their own expense. They only offer, in the strict discharge of their most momentous duties, without prejudice to any right, or necessary injury to any conscience, the means of gratuitous education to the people at large, in the ancient and recognised principles of their country; principles, which they know will make them, if sufficiently inculcated, good Christians, and good subjects.'

Let the justice of such an appropriation of the public revenue be denied; and where would the denial stop? Inevitable confusion in the community must be the consequence of the general admis sion of such a disorganising plea. It would at once put an end to all common provisions for the maintenance of established churches, and even for the maintenance of every established system of public law. There could not, in fact, exist under it any strictly national institutions. Every person's own opinion of their merits or de

I am aware that the parliamentary support of the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth, in Ireland, may seem like an abandonment of the principle for which I am contending. The very peculiar circumstances, however, of that case, make it one entirely "sui generis," and therefore an exception not in the least degree affecting the validity of the rule. Without at all considering the nature of the claims of the Irish Roman Catholics to such an accommodation, the policy of superseding the necessity of a foreign education for their priesthood, might alone be sufficient to place its defence successfully on its own merits. But, even in this case, the departure from the principle was deeply regretted, as a necessary evil, by its warmest advocates, and notwithstanding its tendency to prevent so many other serious evils, resisted strenuously by many of the most experienced and constitutional members of the Legislature.