mention shall be made of coral or of pearls; for the price of wisdom is above rubies. The clergyman is with his parishioners and among them; he is neither in the cloistered cell, nor in the wilderness, but a neighbour and family-man, whose education and rank admit him to the mansion of the rich-landholder while his duties make him the frequent visiter of the farm-house and the cottage. He is, or he may become, connected with the families of his parish or its vicinity by marriage. And among the instances of the blindness or at best of the short-sightedness, which it is the nature of cupidity to inflict, I know few more striking than the clamours of the farmers against Church property. Whatever was not paid to the clergymen would inevitably at the next renewal of the lease be paid to the landholder, while, as the case at present stands, the revenues of the Church are in some sort the reversionary property of every family that may have a member educated for the Church or a daughter that may marry a clergyman. Instead of being foreclosed and immoveable, it is, in fact, the only species of landed property that is essentially moving and circulative. That their exist no inconveniences, who will pretend to assert? But I have yet to expect the proof that the inconveniences are greater in this than in any other species; or that either the farmers or the clergy would be benefited by forcing the latter to become either Trullibers or salaried placemen. Nay, I do not hesitate to declare my firm persuasion that what

ever reason of discontent the farmers may assign, the true cause is that they may cheat the parson but cannot cheat the steward: and that they are disappointed if they should have been able to withhold only two pounds less than the legal claim, having expected to withhold five.

CHAPTER IX.

Practical Conclusion: What unfits for, and what excludes from, the National Church.

THE Clerisy, or National Church, being an estate of the realm, the Church and State, with the King as the sovereign head of both, constituting the body politic, the State in the larger sense of the word, or the nation dynamically considered (ἐν δυνάμει κατὰ TVεμa, that is, as an ideal, but not the less actual and abiding, unity); and in like manner, the Nationalty being one of the two constitutional modes or species, of which the common wealth of the nation consists; it follows by immediate consequence, that of the qualifications and preconditions for the trusteeship, absolutely to be required of the order collectively, and of every individual person as the conditions of his admission into this order, and of his capability of the usufruct or life

interest of any part or parcel of the Nationalty, the first and most indispensable, that without which all others are null and void, is, that the national Clergy and every member of the same from the highest to the lowest, shall be fully and exclusively citizens of the State, neither acknowledging the authority, nor within the influence, of any other state in the world;-full and undistracted subjects of this kingdom, and in no capacity, and under no pretences, owning any other earthly sovereign or visible head but the King, in whom alone the majesty of the nation is apparent, and by whom alone the unity of the nation in will and in deed is symbolically expressed and impersonated.

The full extent of this first and absolutely necessary qualification will be best seen in stating the contrary, that is, the absolute disqualifications, the existence of which in any individual, and in any class or order of men, constitutionally incapacitates such individual and class or order from being inducted into the national trust: and this on a principle so vitally concerning the health and integrity of the body politic, as to render the voluntary transfer of the Nationalty, whole or in part, direct or indirect, to an order notoriously thus disqualified, a foul treason against the most fundamental rights and interests of the realm, and of all classes of its citizens and free subjects, the individuals of the very order itself, as citizens and subjects, not excepted. Now there are two things, and but two, which evidently and predeterminably

G

disqualify for this great trust: the first absolutely; and the second,-which in its collective operation, and as an attribute of the whole class, would, of itself, constitute the greatest possible unfitness for the proper ends and purposes of the National Church, as explained and specified in the preceding paragraphs, and the heaviest drawback from the civilizing influence of the national Clergy in their pastoral and parochial character-the second, I say, by implying the former, becomes likewise an absolute ground of disqualification. It is scarcely necessary to add, what the reader will have anticipated, that the first absolute disqualification is allegiance to a foreign power: the second, the abjuration-under the command and authority of this power, and as by the rule of their order its professed lieges (alligati)—of that bond, which more than all other ties connects the citizen with his country; which beyond all other securities affords the surest pledge to the State for the fealty of its citizens, and that which (when the rule is applied to any body or class of men, under whatever name united, where the number is sufficiently great to neutralize the accidents of individual temperament and circumstances,) enables the State to calculate on their constant adhesion to its interests, and to rely on their faith and singleness of heart in the due execution of whatever public or national trust may be assigned to them.

But I shall, perhaps, express the nature of this

security more adequately by the negative. The marriage tie is a bond the preclusion of which by an antecedent obligation, that overrules the accidents of individual character and is common to the whole order, deprives the State of a security with which it cannot dispense. I will not say that it is a security which the State may rightfully demand of all its adult citizens, competently circumstanced, by positive enactment: though I might shelter the position under the authority of the great publicists and state lawyers of the Augustan age, who, in the Lex Papia Poppaa* enforced anew a principle common to the old Roman Constitution with that of Sparta. But without the least fear of confutation, though in the full foresight of vehement contradiction, I do assert that the State may rightfully demand of any number of its subjects united in one body or order the absence of all customs, initiative vows, covenants and by-laws in that order, precluding the members of such body collectively and individually from affording this security. In strictness of principle, I might here conclude the sentence, though as it now stands it would involve the assertion of a right in the State to suppress any order confederated under laws so anti-civic. But I am no friend to any rights that can be disjoined from the duty of enforcing them.

A.U.C. 762.-inditi custodes, et lege Papia Poppea præmiis inducti, ut, si a privilegiis parentum cessaretur, velut parens omnium populus vacantia teneret. Tac. Ann. III. 28.-Ed.