made i still more teen termanent impression in the mind. To support religion. hen, means waving money to ts mests. And what is this hit a confession that established eiigions are os nuit pon a Rock, nu upon a Bank

The Ecclesiastical Commission Fillas-come town from the House of Loris, and with it the government foes not seem exactly satisfied, though a manifestation of that isniessure in a manly way, of course, is to looked for. Very important statistical information may be geaned from the speeches in ecclesiastical subjects.

Our readers are aware that the uniesiastical Commission is composed of a najority of those parties to nquire to whose conquer and management the commnission was constituted, so hat in practice we have a commission. of the clergy to inquire into the naipractices of the mergy, and it requires 10 prophet to fivine the results at which such a bay we likely to arrive. Mr. Horsman, the erica musamito, noved an amendment that the come mittee be reduced to three persons. This of course was negatived. If a poor nan, or even an obnoxious ach man, isputes the mandates of the House of Commons, they generally manage by their arbitrary power to wreak on him their vengeance: mt in the course of this fiscussion it turns out that bishops are the charmers that can aun away the wrath of the House, however much they may be subnet. It appears that an anglication was made to the archbishops and shops to make a return of the value of their properties in houses, ands, tithes, &c. Out of twentysiz applied to, my sixteen gave the iesired information. One took no notice of the application, and nine reset a give any information. Exeter said, as it was an application from me house of parliament only, he should treat it as the assertion of a power mknown to the law Gloucester said, he should not permit the House of Commons to exercise such an inquisition; so that the great and mighty House may be snubbed, t is clear, under certain circumstances. Now, it turns out that all the mne reactory bishops have several sources of ecclesiastical revenues besides their histories; will any one believe, therefore, that the only reason or refusing the informacion was the one stated? Again, in the diocese of these nine meek wilowers of Jesus there are 4,387 non-resident clergy, and 987 of them absent without even the permission of the diocesan: yet these corrupt priests dare to refuse information to the people's (2) House, and are fuolish enough to dream their peccadilloes, nay, their villanies, will remain undiscovered. Exeter, culled the poorest bishop, has had in nineteen years over £129,000, yet when called on to pay assessed taxes for one of his palaces refused, on the ground that he did not live in it. Of course if a man has a legion of palaces he cannot very well live in them all; and the mean, contemptible, and litigious prelate bar to pay his taxes, with costs, but of course not before carrying the matter before the judges. These and fifty similar statements formed the staple of a valuable speech by Sir B. Hall, who, by his anxiety tu purge and purify

the church, evidences he is a true friend of real religion. With one more quotation from him we will dismiss the subject. It is a novel, yet a startling calculation. He exhibits in a forcible way the difference between a curate of Canterbury and an Archbishop of Canterbury. The present archbishop, he says, has received (and it is under the mark) £170,000 from ecclesiastical funds; but if a Canterbury curate had received his stipend annually from the year one of (supposed) Christian era, to the year 1851, he would still have received less by £45,000 than the archbishop. A money question again and this, alas! represents the ignorance as well as the misery of the people. It is a pile of human suffering, human despair, and human superstition.

Priestcraft, how much has it to answer for! and yet how simply might. mankind judge them were they but wise! If a priest, or any one else, says, To evidence that you are religious, be just, merciful, and kind, for that will make you and those connected with you happy here as well as hereafter, you may trust that man though he be a priest-minding not to what particular creed he happens to belong; but if he say, believe so and so and be saved, believe not and be damned, be sure he is an impostor, a hypocrite, or himself a deluded fanatic, for whom you should feel as much pity as your just contempt will allow you to exercise. Priestcraft is everywhere the same— its presence a curse. 'Stupid as a Cathedral town' has passed into a proverb. Commerce does not flourish, cities never advance, if the Church is dominant therein. When intellect and freedom exist and use their power, the town then emerges from its barbarism. Until then the Church (whose obligation and whose most taking profession is imitation of their founder in humility and poverty) in practice fattens and aggrandises itself upon the firstfruits of the labour of mankind. A town, therefore, under Church domination must be, like Church States, poor, depressed, and ignorant-and until they are wise enough to know, to feel, and to insist upon the fact that God never has and never can reveal more to a priest than a peasant, and that he never designed any one class to live on the industry of another, they never can be rich, they never can be free, and, what is more, they do not deserve to be. Mankind must exert the dignity of intellect, and acknowledge only that creed founded upon facts and observation. He may believe in a general providence, or order of nature, which rules, governs, and directs all things, but he must be insane that asserts that the mighty cause that regulates the motions of the mighty globes around us changes the economy of the spheres at the solicitation of some idiot, who would not pray were he not well paid. Let us rest assured the Author of Nature has not vested prerogatives or rights to one man or one set of men above another. Priests are but men, they are liable as ourselves to error-they have bad passions, they have vices as well as virtues. And their anathemas may not be able to follow us to the next world, even if their statement be correct that there be one. Let us be content in the certainty of the enjoyment that

springs from a life of virtue; let us be assured, if justified by that monitor the conscience, we have nothing to fear if there be a future existence, and that a great and righteous God cannot punish those who make use of the intellect they possess and live in accordance with the dictates of truth and wisdom. R. L. B.

THE POLITICAL REVIEWER.

THE public have had a sufficiency of 'sensations' during the last thirty days. Palmerston has got himself cleverly whitewashed in the Commons, and Ashley has won, with the aid of Lord John, a half-victory in favour of Saint Hypocrisy and Cardinal Cant. The Queen has been struck by the cane of a mad ex-officer of light cavalry. The vivacious and blatant Ferrand has been astonishing polite society in these hot months by preaching, amidst ' vociferous cheering,' his gospel of wool versus cotton as an article of clothing; and the amiable prince and president of dinners and diners-out, called by courtesy Duke of Cambridge, has contrived to make a quiet exit at the good old age of seventy-six. The 'seventh' royal baby has been christened, and, to the disgrace of the Queen, the Prince of Prussia was one sponsor to the infant pauper.

But these are minor facts, and have been lost in the intense interest excited by the sudden accident, which was followed by a few hours of such sharp anguish, and terminated in the death of Robert Peel. It is a brief, painful, tragic event; and no doubt the effort he made on that memorable 29th of June had some share in the catastrophe.

For three nights the debate which should decide whether the Whigs were to remain 'in' and the Tories 'out' had proceeded with an interest singular in these times. The House was full, and expectation at its height; anxious faces, stolid faces, faces exulting in the probabilities of office, faces expressive of brave resolution to sever the links of party and follow to the call of principle, faces indifferent, faces sarcastic, faces impassioned, appeared on all sides. What passions slumbered in that mass of men, waiting only for the touch of eloquence to kindle and blaze forth; what seething emotions, kept down by decorum, lay hidden in the hearts of some; what cool calculations possessed the brains of others! Russell sat there with his uncomfortable, straggling shape, and his pitiful countenance, animated at times by a concerted grin; Palmerston sat there, cool, astute, graceful, a mask of unintelligible purposes; Grey the ideal of stolidity, and Wood the man of figures. Peel was in his place, with his noble head and stalwart, though toil-worn, frame; Disraeli scowled upon the assemblage from under his dark brow and curled locks, like melancholy malice disappointed of his prey; Cobden looked on with his pale, thoughtful face, intent on setting an example to his timid friends. Conspicuous among the opposition were the strong-headed Graham, the monastic Gladstone, the graceful Herbert, the

chivalrous Manners. Roebuck sat on the right of the Speaker, among the Whigs, like a casket of crackers, each cracker a crotchet, and each crotchet warranted to explode and fizz with appalling intensity at the slightest touch. And there sat Hume the dauntless, and Anstey the long-winded; and Bright with his honest, sagacious face; and Fox, with the head of a Milton on the body of a Bacchus. In all there were five hundred and seventy-six picked men. For a few hours these men were surprised out of their feelings of indifference by the greatness of the occasion. Cockburn's speech, vigorous and brilliant, was cheered sentence after sentence, as he denounced the continental despots, and commented with amazing vivacity and point on the rumoured coalition between Peel and the Protectionists. The House has not enjoyed so strong a sensation since the Peelipics of Disraeli. The two succeeding speakers were lost in the subsidence of enthusiasm; and Cobden was required to awaken those who courteously listened to Walpole, but who slumbered under the benignant influence of the unaccountable Monckton Milnes. Cobden's statement was plain, manly, and consistent. He opposed Ministers, not upon the high grounds of a consistent radical opposition, but upon the lower ground of peace policy and non-intervention. The tone of the debate had changed. The cheers which saluted Mr. Cockburn's passionate appeal on behalf of the oppressed peoples of the continent had changed into the cries of party when he attacked Sir Robert Peel. The intervening speakers had argued the question on party grounds. But Cobden restored it to its proper issue, that of the merits of the Palmerston policy in particular, and diplomacy in general. So that when Peel arose after Cobden the feeling of the House had become somewhat earnest and sombre. In perfect silence Sir Robert stood up, and with a marked solemnity of manner replied for the last time to those imputations of dishonesty which had been so enthusiastically cheered as they were pointedly uttered by Mr. Cockburn. A shadow seemed to float over the House. More than usual the weight and importance of Peel's every word was felt. Seldom, even in his parliamentary career, had he so entirely possession of the attention of his audience. That speech which reads so poorly, which seems a tissue of repetitions and hesitating expressions, as if the mind of the speaker was not well in hand, as if his brain was wavering and his intellect giddy-that speech so deficient in clearness of arrangement, in masterly grasp, in force, and unfaltering vigour, when compared to Sir Robert's great speeches in the debates of '46, produced upon the minds of those who heard it an unusually deep, sympathising, and melancholy impression. That the speaker was in earnest, and that the ordinary motives of statecraft did not move him then, was clear to all. He had nothing to lose, it is true, but neither had he anything to gain. The remainder of the debate preserved the same tone, and which the captious Russell and the elastic Disraeli could not wholly destroy. Ministers, however, gained the day by forty-six majority, mainly owing to the defection of the Radicals, who seem disposed to follow Lord John's Will-o'-the-Wisp

through any parliamentary swamp. But not the saving of the Ministers will make that night's debate so well remembered in history as the fact that, on that night Peel made his last speech, gave his last vote, and left behind him-the old parties in ruins, the new parties unformed. The day had dawned, the sun arisen, as the Commons poured forth into the area beneath the chapel of Henry VII. and the mottled Tower of St. Margaret. Canning's blackened statue looked down with its sad expression on the departing throng. There was a roar of cabs and carriages up Parliament Street, leaving behind the stillness of morning-of a London morning—interrupted only by the early workmen, the quiet gossips of the wayside coffee shops, and the regular tread of the policeman.

Saturday, the 29th of June, was like all other Saturdays. London was seething like a cauldron with industrial activity; and the roar of the rushing and heaving and streaming mass of men and vehicles and horses, the sounds of scores of street organs and hundreds of street cries, the huge whisper of that incessant tramp of feet and trundling of wheels, the shrieking of railway whistles and crashing of escaping steam, all welded together into a cataract-like sound, came stealing on the ear of him who dwelt on the verge of the semi-peaceful fields. Evening came, and with it a painful rumour which absorbed the attention of all men.

'Sir Robert Peel has been thrown from his horse!' 'Sir Robert Peel has met with a fatal accident!' were sentences which startled the lounger in his evening stroll, the man of business over his quiet dinner, the politician reading his evening paper, and the reporter, alive to the slightest whispers of the town. The Sunday papers confirmed the rumour of Saturday night, and throughout the metropolis there was but one mingled feeling of consternation and regret. Anxiety agitated the minds of all men. 'Is it fatal ?' 'Will he get through it ?' 'It is an alarming fall for a man of his time of life.' 'Poor fellow ! what a sad fate,' were the questions and remarks one heard everywhere. Whitehall Gardens were crowded with carriages. Men of all parties hastened to inquire into the seriousness of the accident. There was little hope. On Monday a little encouragement; on Tuesday positive bad news, augmenting in gloom, until the last bulletin announcing the death of Sir Robert Peel. Dead! and the word ran from mouth to mouth until it almost seemed to pervade the atmosphere of the great maze of London. Dead! and the electric telegraph silently pointed to it in all corners of the land. Dead! and on the wings of steam it was borne into all the realms of Europe, and into every city and village of America, carrying consternation and deep sadness within the compass of one word.

occupied in the public

He is gone. Few know how great the space he mind, until they found the void his absence made. The dark grave holds now that stalwart noble Saxon frame, and the creeping things of the earth will soon burrow in that large brain. In the humble rustic church, among his kindred, beneath the cold flag stones of the low roofed aisle, he rests at