acquirement, history, and past legislation, Parliament is bound to claim these as the absolute property of the nation. It cannot dispossess itself of what it has appropriated, and continued to control, save by a legislative act. It must also be added that whatever moral claim the disestablished Church may have to modern benefactions-and no one we believe will be disposed to contest such a claim legally, and according to all analogous conditions of benefaction, they are the property of the institution to whichthey are given. They belong, that is, not to the episcopal clergy or congregations, but to the national institution in virtue of which the clergy and congregations claim their status. A ship, if presented to the navy, would be the property, not of the captain and crew, but of the Admiralty. Contributors to a Nonconformist Church bestow their gifts upon the institution; and, except by special legal provision, they have no private claim in virtue of them. The community in which the property is vested deals with it absolutely, whether special donors approve or not. All property given to the national Church as such must merge in the national Church. It is no part of the duty of Nonconformists to prepare a dis-endowment scheme; that is the province of statesmen. It is for Nonconformists to insist simply that a national institution, injurious as they believe to religious, political, and social life, shall be removed. It is for statesmen to devise equitable means of doing this. And in demanding this they do not, as Mr. Hughes would fain make it appear, confound the Episcopal Church with its National Establishment. With the Episcopal Church they have, in this matter, no controversy; their objection would be the same to a Presbyterian, or Congregational Establishment; and as one of the Churches of Jesus Christ, illustrious by the piety and service of its members, they are as solicitous for its spiritual power and usefulness, as for those of any of the Churches. All that we purpose here is simply to affirm the position that to the Parliament of the nation, in its totality of national representation, it legally and rightfully belongs to deal with all the property of the Established Church.* When it was so dealt with at the Reformation, the Episcopal Church was probably in a smaller minority than it is now. The actual terms of disendowment will be determined not by legal, but solely by equitable and moral claims. In trying to demonstrate the superior liberality of the English Establishment, Mr. Hughes hazards the following * Dr. Arnold maintained that in the event of disestablishment all Church property should be secularizel. 'Life of Arnold, vol. ii. p. 68. astounding affirmation: Who were those who supported the pretensions of the Pope to infallibility? Why, they were all the Free Churches-the Voluntary Churches.' And in support of this amazing assertion he instances the voluntary Roman Catholic communities of England, Ireland, and America; that is, sections of the Church whose head was claiming infallibility. And he adds: Who were the persons who opposed it? The members of State Churches. The members of the State Church of Germany, the members of the State Church of Hungary, the members of the State Church of France. There never was a case in which the principle came out more clearly than in the most searching ordeal that has been before our generation; . . . the great supporters of the Pope's monstrous claims were the three Voluntary Churches!!! and his great opponents were the three State Churches.' Not a word about the Protestant Free Churches of England, Scotland, America, France, Germany, Holland, and Italy, who in innumerable publications and from every pulpit, and in their congregations to a man, uncompromisingly denounced the impious claim. Mr. Hughes does not even remember the noble fight of the Old Catholics. And yet, incongruously enough, he says, concerning the state of his own Church, that in the event of disestablishment the power over this great religious organization would pass into the hands of the High Church party, whose views as to the proper relations of the temporal and spiritual power scarcely differ from those of Romanists'! It is with something like humiliation, and with most unaffected regret, that we cite these instances of unfair, nay, we must say it, of absolutely dishonest argument, by a man like Mr. Hughes. 6 We have said much more than we intended. We had noted for comment many more points touched by Mr. Hughes, but we forbear. Mr. Hughes's book has given us greater sorrow than almost any contribution to this controversy that we remember. Our faith in the lofty sentiment and manly fairness of the author of Tom Brown's School Days' was very high. We knew him to be a strenuous advocate for State Establishments, we expected from him stout argument, and we were ready as always to render homage to strong and conscientious convictions. The superficialness and fragmentariness of his criticisms are disappointing enough; but we were not prepared for the blind prejudice, the careless misrepresentation, and the essential unfairness of argument and statement, which disfigure almost every page of his book. ART. VIII.-The Three Treaties. (1.) Parliamentary Papers. Turkey. 1878. Nos. 19, 22, 27, (2.) The Times. August 5th, 12th, 23rd, 1878. (4.) Les Bulgares devant l'Europe. Bucharest. 1878. (6.) La Succession de l'Empire Ottoman dans la Turquie d'Europe. THE treaty signed a few weeks back is the last word of Europe on the Eastern Question.' So spoke the oracular voice of The Times' on the last Monday in August. The formula chosen for the utterance at once suggested the famous story, how 'the last words of Mr. Baxter' were presently followed by 'more last words of Mr. Baxter.' It is certain that many more last words of Europe will have to be spoken on that eternal Eastern Question,' which the representatives of Europe seem to have come together at Berlin for the express purpose of making harder and darker. The article from which we have just quoted had just before said-in language which, though metaphorical, contains a truth- The Eastern spectre has been quite long enough before the world.' 'We are now interested that it should vanish away as soon as possible.' The troublesome monster is to be laid to rest.' But the diplomacy of assembled Europe has decreed that the spectre, the troublesome monster, shall remain before the world. It has forbidden the spectre to vanish away. It has hindered the employment of the only means by which the monster might have been laid to rest. While the Turk holds Constantinople, or any spot of Christian earth, the Eastern spectre, the troublesome monster, is there in full force. As long as he abides, the Eastern Question still awaits its solution, and its solution will hardly be reached without Europe saying a good many more 'last words' than those which were spoken at Berlin. As long as Europe simply speaks instead of acting, as long as, when it speaks, it only invites '-even in the stronger French sense and does not command, so long we are far from having reached the last word that must be spoken. The last word has been spoken, but nothing has come of the last word. It remains the dead letter which all invitations, all exhortations, addressed to the Turk, always have remained, always will remain. Two years and more ago an admirable sermon was preached to the Turk in the form of the Andrassy Note. But the Turk was none the better for the preaching. Midhat answered the sermon by the Bulgarian massacres. So now, when the Turk is invited' to give freedom to a small scrap of enslaved Greece, Safvet naturally enough answers the invitation by a stout refusal to surrender a single victim. Some other last words of a different kind. from the strongest form of invitation will have to be spoken before the troublesome monster is laid to rest; and till he is laid to rest, he will naturally go on as heretofore, devouring and seeking whom he may devour. We do indeed live in strange times when to prolong this state of things, to extend the area to which it applies, is held in some mysterious way to conduce to the interest, and even to the honour, of England. Lessen the area of freedom, extend the area of bondage, insist that a greater number of victims be handed over to a foe who never knew what truth or mercy meant, and the exploit is hailed as a diplomatic victory. The necromancer comes back, with words of triumph in his mouth-I bring you peace with honour. Where is the peace? Where is the honour? Of all recorded human utterances, perhaps none ever outdid the shamelessness of those memorable words. If Europe had lately seen a bloody war, that war had been wholly of Lord Beaconsfield's own causing. It was owing to his refusal to bring any real moral pressure to bear upon the obstinacy of the Turk that Russia, forsaken by the other Powers of Europe, was driven to draw the sword alone against the oppressors of her brethren. If, before and after the war of Russia against the Turk, England had ever seemed to be on the brink of a war with Russia, that was more distinctly Lord Beaconsfield's own doing. Russia threatened no war against England: Lord Beaconsfield threatened, or pretended to threaten, an unprovoked war against Russia. It matters little whether he really wished to go to war, and was cowed by the fixed determination of the nation not to be hurried into so monstrous, a crime, or whether he only pretended to wish to go to war, when he really meant nothing of the kind, simply to gain a reputation for a spirited foreign policy' from the blinded followers who were ready to applaud him for anything. In either case, his brag and bluster, the insolent threats with which he thrust back the friendly advances of the prince and the nation whom he insulted, did bring us to the brink of one of the greatest of national crimes... Having all but entangled us in a wicked war, he dares to boast of having given us peace; having dragged the fair fame of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury. 467 England through the dirt as it never was dragged before, he dares to say that the peace which it brings is accompanied with honour.' Let us look at the official explanation of what the honour of England now means. It is a strange quarter in which we have to look for the mind of Lord Beaconsfield. Truly the Asian mystery is mighty indeed, when we find to what the bluest blood of England can sink beneath its glamour. Who that glances over the parliamentary strifes of the last twenty, the last ten, the last two years, would have believed that the proudest head in England could have stooped to the basest of services, that Robert, Marquess of Salisbury, could, as by the enchantment of some Eastern sorcerer, have been changed into the lowly henchman, the humble copying-clerk, of his Hebrew master? To that master it was indeed a triumph when he could kindly remind his shouting admirers that all the shouts should not be given to himself, but that some few should be kept for so faithful a lackey. So it is: in the despatches of Lord Salisbury we read the mind of Lord Beaconsfield. In the despatch which accompanied the Treaty of Berlin* we see what in Lord Beaconsfield's ideas is meant by British interests and British honour. The leading principle of those ideas is easily grasped. It is the usual principle of Oriental rulers, the time-honoured doctrine of every tyrant who, from Assyrian despots onward, has boasted himself that he can do mischief. Lord Beaconsfield's philosophy may be utilitarian as far as concerns British interests, those interests compared with which it matters not whether the victims of a massacre are twenty thousand or only ten. As regards the people of South-eastern Europe, the philosophy of Lord Beaconsfield, as shown forth in the despatches of his noble servitor, in his own and his noble. servitor's speeches at the Congress, is eminently the reverse of utilitarian. He goes forth prepared at every stage to play the part of an anti-Bentham, to insist before all Europe, in the name of the honour of England, on the greatest unhappiness of the greatest number. This last doctrine stands forth, in one shape or another, in nearly every paragraph of Lord Salisbury's despatch. The simple fact is that, throughout these negotiations, in the circular in which Lord Derby commented on the Russian declaration of war, in Lord Salisbury's despatch commenting on the Treaty of San Stefano, in the whole course of the discussions at Berlin, in the despatch commenting on the Treaty of Berlin, England-so far as Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury Turkey, November 38, 1878. |