the terms of union," by an "interpretation declared by the Committee of that Society to be inadmissible." Clearly, then, it was the new dogma which gave my lords the occasion for those further restrictions on Church schools of which we are all complaining.

The unexpected difficulty sent the Colchester Committee to the National Society's Office for an explanation, and Mr. Lonsdale's reply introduced a new modification of the gloss. At its first appearance its restriction was laid upon founders, on pretence of maintaining the discretion of managers. But at Colchester the managers were themselves the parties imposing the regulation, and it became necessary to transfer their "discretion" to another quarter. The subscribers were agreed with the managers, so the clergyman was fixed upon; but the clergyman was of the same mind with the managers and the subscribers; hence it was resolved that the terms of union-those elastic terms again! -"enable the same clergyman or successive clergymen of the same parish to make alterations in the practice of the same school." (Letter V., Dec. 1860.) Then, with the Committee's usual tour de force, the enabling clause was converted into a disabling one. The clergyman in esse was postponed to the clergyman in posse, and the new dogma came out complete, that "to require, by the trust-deed, that the parochial clergyman shall give definite religious instruction to every child is to deprive him of that authority in the teaching of his people with which he is entrusted by the law of the Church (!), and which was intended to be preserved to him by the terms of union."

This then, and this alone, is the point now in dispute. The Committee are unscrupulous enough to declare, in their last Minute, that the object of Mr. Mayow's amendment was to impose restrictions on the discretion of the clergyman. Mr. Lonsdale, in yet bolder and more extravagant terms, asserts it is “that and nothing else;" its promoters are seeking, by a side wind, to alter the terms of union." He well knows that this is exactly what his own Committee is doing, and what it is our object to prevent. We ask for no clause or interpretation whatever; we only desire to withdraw the new dogma volunteered by the Committee, and leave the terms of union to the unfettered discretion of the proper authorities.

The interference of the London Committee is itself a gross violation of the terms of union. They provide that "in case any difference shall arise between the parochial clergy and the managers of the schools, with reference to the preceding rules respecting the religious instruction of scholars, or any regulation connected therewith, an appeal is to be made to the bishop of the diocese, whose decision is to be final."

Till a difficulty arises the clergy and managers are free to act as they think proper. When they disagree the bishop is to decide. In no case has the London Committee any authority whatever over the internal regulations of any national school. We need not say they have no authority to expound the laws of the Church. Yet this they have taken upon themselves to do; and their dogma is enforced by the Committee of Council as an

"authoritative exposition,"-in short, a new term of union overruling all the rest. This is the true state of the case, and Mr. Lonsdale's balderdash about the age of the children and their capacity to learn the Catechism is simply a poor attempt to throw dust in our eyes. Nothing of the kind has ever. come into discussion.

The subscribers must not think that the new dogma, bad as it is, is all they have to apprehend. It appears, by a correspondence printed in the annual Report just issued, that a further innovation is already in contemplation. The Committee of Council are not satisfied with the victory they have won. Another of those dangerous interviews with the Lord President was held on the 5th of April last, at which it was complained that though the discretion of school founders had been taken away, and that of managers abridged, "there was still nothing to FORBID a regulation" (where all parties, we suppose, are determined upon it) to enforce the Church Catechism. The screw must receive another turn, and a member of the deputation, the RIGHT HON. H. S. WALPOLE, promptly offered the "judicious suggestion that some rule should be devised to prevent these cases of injustice!!" This little incident was characteristically omitted from Mr. Lonsdale's "record" of the interview, and from the Committee's Report read at the public meeting; but it will be found duly chronicled and pressed upon "the serious consideration" of the National Society's Committee in Mr. Lingen's Letter of the 16th of April, printed in the Appendix to the Report, page xxxiv. And now, if the subscribers do not open their eyes in time and insist on the withdrawal of the new dogma, and the abandonment of all attempts on the part of their Committee to tamper with the terms of union in any direction, it will not be for want of being. warned of the treason in progress. Mr. Lonsdaleagrees with Mr. Trevor that the question is "fundamental." He writes to Mr. Boothby that "it is better the Society should cease to exist" than maintain its terms of union as universally interpreted up to the 23rd of July, 1860. We accept his expression, and deliberately record our conviction that the Society had far better be dissolved, and leave our schools to maintain their own case with the Government, than exist only to cut away the ground from under our feet by successive surrenders of reason and principle to the demands of the Council Office.

Church Schools, the "Conscience Clause," and the Charity Commissioners.

HE following statement will help to illustrate the present legal position of the schools of the Church of England in relation to the department of Government which dispenses the "Education Grant," and to the "Charity Commissioners."

In the year 1837, a large landed proprietor, since deceased, gave a plot of ground, in the district of Moulsham, in trust to the Rector and Churchwardens of Chelmsford (the mother parish) for the

purpose-as stated in the trust-deed-of erecting school buildings" in order to promote the education of poor children in the principles of true religion and useful knowledge."

The site immediately adjoined that of the district church of Moulsham, erected in the same year, 1837, and was occupied, until the autumn of 1860, by an infant schoolroom in connection with the Chelmsford Church Schools, erected by and under the superintendence of the clergyman. This building was then pulled down in order to make room for more commodious church schools, and three large rooms were finished and opened in July 1861. At the proper time application for a grant in aid of the Building Fund had been made to the Committee of Privy Council for Education. The question of the admission of the Conscience Clause into the trust-deed was at first raised by that Committee, but was waived on being answered by a decided negative.

As, however, the site was part of a charity estate, the Committee of Council required the sanction of the Charity Commissioners to a new deed of trust, and this the Commissioners positively refused unless the Conscience Clause was inserted. They grounded their decision upon the vagueness of the original deed, and refused to admit any evidence as to the intentions of the donor, laying down as an invariable principle that, "according to a cardinal rule of legal construction, the objects of a trust must be collected solely from the terms of the instrument itself."

Feeling that, in acceding to this requirement, they would be acting plainly contrary to the wishes and intentions of the donor of the site, as well as to the purposes for which the building funds were subscribed, the promoters of the schools took the only course which was open to them, and appealed to the Court of Chancery. Vice-Chancellor Kindersley decided that the religious opinion of the founder could be given in evidence in order to explain the object of the trust (Attorney General v. Calvert 23, Beavan 248), and as that conclusively showed the intentions of the donor, he rejected the Conscience Clause.

Our Indian empire is one of the brilliant miscalculations which figure in history. When our traders first landed in India the Great Mogul was at the very pinnacle of his splendour, power, and renown. The England of that time would have been matched, both in wealth and in resources, by a single province of his empire. We never dreamt of contending with such a potentate. We petitioned him for some commercial favours, and were humbly grateful for the few that we received. And yet, in due time, we overthrew that potentate, and now reign over an empire greater and more consolidated than ever before was seen between the Himalayas and the sea. Had any one, a hundred years ago, on receiving tidings of the battle of Plassy, predicted that our success would involve us in a ceaseless advance, and ceaseless wars, and that in truth, for good or for evil, we had now embarked in an enterprise in which, if success was doubtful, retreat at least was impracticable, he would have been an object of great ridicule. Not so now. The public has become so familiarised with great exploits, so penetrated with a conviction of the immense superiority of Europeans, and especially the British, to all other races on the face of the earth, that enterprises from which our ancestors would have shrunk appalled are now-a-days deemed as good as won from the outset. We will dare anything: from Arctic voyages, Alpine climbing, and scientific balloon ascents, to the facing and quelling of a Sepoy revolt, Englishmen have shown that all that men may dare they will dare. And if we consult the general public-the of woλaoí who rejoice in a merely commercial education--we shall probably find that their ideas of what England can do in foreign parts are at least as large as they are hazy. Walking down Fleet Street in the autumn of '59, when the news of our naval disaster at the mouth of the Peiho came home, we heard two city men, who preceded us in that crowded thoroughfare, discussing the matter; till the one said, "And what must we do with China now?" "Oh, we'll annex it, of course," said the other. The reply might have been excellent, if ironical; but the individuals who stopped our way evidently piqued themselves upon their business-like appreciation of the "posi

tion."

Annex China! Take four hundred millions of

people—at least one-third of the whole human race-into our keeping! Certainly, as the Yankees things too great even for us. say, we are a great nation; but there may be some There are only thirty millions of us altogether, and not to speak of the vast geographical area over which our rule extends, our Indian empire alone makes us masters of nearly two-hundred millions of a perfect alien race. Our statesmen feel that we have already got fully more on our hands than we can well manage; and the last desire of any sensible man of our day would be to wish to see new countries and more alien races subjected to our sway. But were there not sensible men a hundred years ago who thought as the sensible men do now?-and yet from that day to this the history of England has been a narrative of ceaseless growth and expansion -an overflowing into other countries, an overlaying of other and inferior races. And, it may be said,

since that has been the case hitherto, why should the case not continue the same now? Is not our power increased a thousandfold? Do we not cover the seas with our ships, and cannot we transport an army to the antipodes as easily as in former times a single regiment? And has not our power in war, both actually and relatively, been augmented to an extraordinary degree in recent times? A century ago the troops of any single province of the Grand Mogul's empire were a match for the force which we could bring against them. But Time, who has been standing still in the East, has been achieving wonders in the West. We now march to Pekin as if it was a manœuvre of parade; we could land an army on the coast of China which could scatter the whole military forces of the enormous Celestial Empire like sheep; which could march through the country from end to end, from Canton to Pekin, without experiencing any formidable difficulty; while our gunboats for the greater part of the year could ascend the Yang-tse-kiang for six hundred miles, into the heart and through the garden-land of China. If, then, we could do all this-and if, too, as we believe, the world, despite Dr. Cumming, is likely to live a good while longer, what is preposterous in the idea that we may now be witnessing the first steps in a chain of events which in due time will involve us as deeply with China as we now are involved with India? If we begun to annex the empire of the Moguls a century ago, why may we not begin to annex the empire of

the Brother of the Sun and Moon now?

To the philosopher in his closet, pondering all things in a vague misty way, this idea may seem less absurd than assuredly it will do to practical men. In such matters it is a question not of power, but of cost, which determines the issue. Although, even were it a mere question of power, we opine that a statesman would not throw out of account the growing might of Russia in Eastern Asia, and the certainty that if ever the native dynasty of the Sun and Moon sets or suffers eclipse, the Muscovite Bear will assert his claim to no small portion of the spoil. Indeed, however opposite may be the case in India, we believe that the military power of Russia, and her means of influencing the native population, will ere long greatly excel ours in China. It would be a sad triumph of civilization if the chief result of its progress in the Celestial Empire were to bring into bloody conflict the Powers from whose peaceful and beneficent influence the vast population of China ought to profit so much. Surely the coming of Christianity and civilization into the vast empire of Eastern Asia ought to be attended by very different results.

Let us trust they will be-if not for religion's sake, at least from a due attendance to the dictates of self-interest. We have at present to bear an extraordinary load of taxation at home. The exigencies of the position in Europe are such that every State has from necessity to arm itself to the teeth: and unambitious as is our policy, and happily insulated as we are from the troubles of the Continent by geographical position, we have nevertheless found it indispensable to girdle the isle with fortifications, to expend enormous sums upon our fleet, and to supplement the numerical inadequacy of our

| army by appealing to the military patriotism of the people. Cheerfully as the nation bears the burden, it is so heavy that we have to take serious note of it. Unconsciously to ourselves, perhaps, it has begun to operate in a very marked manner in affecting our judgment in some of the most important questions of policy. Scrutinizing every item of the national expenditure, with a strong desire to force ends to meet with less difficulty than at present, we have begun to look with a severely jealous and grudging eye at the few hundred thousand pounds which we have yearly to pay to keep up our colonial empire: and, in our financial strait, we have begun to ask whether, after all, it is of any importance to us to have colonies or not? Colonies, however indirectly advantageous, necessitate a positive outlay; why, then, in these days of free trade, should we not cast them off altogether, to form what connections they please, and content ourselves with an empire no bigger than our own very small islands?

When we grudge the small cost of our colonies, we are not likely to be in a humour for prosecuting further annexations, or disbursing money for wars waged needlessly in the uttermost corners of the earth. "China wars" have already become the terror of every economist, and the opprobrium of every sensible politician. We have already had three China wars in less than twenty years; each of them has cost the country a deal of money; and if they have not each and all been immoral, this at least is certain, that there is not one of them to which we can look back with pride, or speak of in any language save that of apology. And not the least embarrassing thing of these China wars is that we slip into them so easily. The country seems to become involved in them whether we like or not. Indeed hostilities have generally commenced before the country knows anything about the matter.

We fear that England is getting into this embarrassment again. Our Government, which hitherto has been so eager to fight with the Imperial Government of China, now tries another tack; and, as if the "treachery and barbarism" of the Chinese Government had become a somewhat stale plea for hostilities, it now finds an excuse for further meddling in the still greater barbarism of the rebels. It is universally agreed that the shake which our former wars gave to the power and prestige of the Chinese Government was one of the prime causes or auxiliaries of the grand rebellion which now tortures and devastates the flowery land. Yet in this very rebellion we find a fresh excuse for further intervention. We now aid the Government, and attack the rebels. Our plea for hostilities, indeed, is plausible enough. In virtue of a treaty concluded with the Imperial Government we are entitled to trade at several ports on the coast of China; and one of these at least has been menaced by the rebel forces. This would explain our manning the ramparts of Shanghae, and giving any rebel force, which ventured to attack the city, a lesson in the efficiency of Enfield rifles and Armstrong guns. But a further explanation is necessary to understand why we should have abandoned the defensive, and marched inland to attack the rebels in conjunction with the Imperial army. It is a part, and a chief part, of the tactics