wise economy to restrict this practice by enacting and re-enacting the statutes of mortmain. Upon the other hand, the present disposition of the national endowments of religion in Scotland is commonly quoted as a model of economy; and it is certainly entitled to the praise of working great results from very limited means, with as little of evil motive or conduct mingling in their administration, as the infirmity of human nature will allow us under the most favourable circumstances to expect. And yet this most thriftilyordered system is not the result of any private economy, but of a statute of King Charles the First. Further; not only is this a religious system supported by the State, but it is one in which the government exercises directly a very considerable proportion of the patronage.

20. Upon the other hand, I think experience proves, that it has been reserved for some other than nation

ally-recognised systems of religion to demonstrate by experiment, upon what scanty supplies of the goods of this world the teachers of religion may be maintained. Independently however of the shame, the scandal, and the sin of refusing the decencies of life to those whom we acknowledge as ministers of the altar, I contend that this excessive fluctuation in the scales of private liberality is itself a most serious misfortune to religious interests; and that the religious action of governments has been beneficial, as upon other grounds so on this; that it has tended to reduce the wealth of the clerical estate in lavish times below exorbitant excess, and

that it now tends to sustain the provision for that body above the level of a miserable penury.*

21. I would further observe, that this opinion of the actual inability of the State to promote the pure designs of religion is one opposed not less to authority than to the results of general reasoning. Endowments of every kind, and of infinite variety in amount and form, have prevailed from the days of Abraham at least until our own, among Pagans and Christians, among members of establishments and dissenters, in sects and in the Church. They have been given by all; but by the best and wisest, more than by the weak and bad. They have been given under the direct sanction and ordinance of God: and it is difficult indeed to reconcile this recorded fact with the novel and extravagant supposition, that they intrinsically tend more to the depression and extinction of religion in the hands of its legitimate ministers, than to its maintenance and its propagation.

In Wilberforce's Correspondence, Mr. Crosse, a clergyman of Bradford, writes that the dissenters are gaining ground, and "must accomplish the downfall of the Establishment." One of the causes he assigns is the small expense at which they can supply them with ministers:-" Mr. H. here has not, I suppose, above 20l. per annum ; but then he teaches a school and keeps a shop." See the Correspondence of Dr. Doddridge (vol. i. pp. 217, 257, 296, &c.), who thought himself at Kibworth "passing rich," not "with forty pounds a year," but under it; the Autobiography of a Dissenting Minister; and the Account of the Distribution of the Parliamentary Grant to Protestant Dissenting Ministers, printed for the House of Commons, Sess. 1837, No. 127. It is painful to add, that perhaps the most wretchedly provided of all classes of ministers in the Christian world-at least until within the last three years, during which something has been done to mitigate the evil-were those of the Scottish Episcopal communion. (See Reports of the Scottish Episcopal Church Society.)

22. But further: this opinion is one that has all the marks of an impression received through inward bias and through an accommodation, unconscious I doubt not, but yet not the less real, to outward circumstances. Let us consider who are the parties that declare themselves to repudiate on principle the pecuniary aid of the State to religion. They are, so far as my knowledge goes, a few of the members of the Roman Communion in France, a large number of their fellow-religionists in Ireland, and the majority of the Scottish and English Dissenters. As respects the former, they are so few that they can hardly be termed a class; and the state of things in France is so thoroughly inconformable to nature, that they may have grounds for their opinion there which it would be ridiculous to apply to a more regularly organised society. As respects the two latter classes, we are at once struck by the fact, that the aid which they condemn is to them inaccessible; while it is given, under their very eyes, to schemes of religion which they consider spiritually, in some instances also fiscally, their rivals.* Further there are in the British Colonies members of the very same bodies. But in Canada, in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, and elsewhere, where the assistance of the State is not confined to the pale of a single establishment, these very classes, holding the same discipline and faith, show no repugnance to receive endowments from the State. Most remarkably has this case been illustrated during the year

Address of the Board of Scottish Dissenters, 1835, p. 9.

1840, when a Bill passed through Parliament, assigning certain proportions of the lands called Clergy Reserves, in the Canadas, for the use of the English and Scottish Church Establishments; and referring the remaining portion to the disposition of the Governor of the Colony for religious purposes, avowedly and notoriously in order that he might be at liberty to apply it, in obedience to the general desire of the people, to the endowment of Romanism and of Protestant Dissent in various forms; yet no voice was raised in Parliament, nor in any part of the United Kingdom, to avert this pollution. Am I not, then, justified in saying, when I find that this opinion does not among its own advocates stand the test of experience, that it has evidently been formed under the influence of a ruling though secret bias?

23. As it has now I trust been shown, that the State is able to contribute at least something to the extension of religion by pecuniary means, the only remaining question to complete its obligation to act is this: whether that something be required? or is the zeal of individuals at all times, is it in particular under the present circumstances of society, sufficient to secure that the ordinances of religion shall be brought within the reach of every member of the community, and shall fully address their solicitations to his conscience?

24. Now, of all the parts of this subject, probably none have been so thoroughly wrought out as the insufficiency of what is termed the voluntary principle.

It has been shown that, while a real want, under the circumstances of modern society, ordinarily produces a supply of most things necessary, advantageous, or agreeable to men, and while therefore it is needless to use adventitious means in order to provide any commodity or good for which there is a natural desire, in the case of religion the desire is least when the want is greatest, and those who are most indifferent upon the subject most require to be solicited by the public institutions of religion, not less for the welfare of the State than for the salvation of their own souls. It has also been unanswerably shown, that there are very large portions of the community whose temporal means are insufficient to enable them to bear the expense of religious establishments: and perhaps no one, who looks at the competition for employment in an old and thickly-peopled country, will be of any other opinion than that such inability is likely to continue. And those who are at first merely unable to pay will, if neglected, in no long course of time, add to inability a rooted and inveterate unwillingness.

25. The next step in the argument is, to point to the actual amount of voluntary exertion, and to require from the adversary, as we fairly may, the acknowledgment of its total insufficiency. On this subject no details need be adduced. It is admitted on all hands that the religious provision of our town population is lamentably scanty. The conclusion is yet more inevitable, if we observe the internal workings of all that sectarian machinery which depends upon the