I only say they are exceptions, and that the usual mode of God's later dealings with this nation, has been like the building of a house not made with hands: and further, that I see in this mode itself, a ground of wider hopes, and greater confidence.

But to sum up. I have mentioned, I think, nine several grounds for entertaining a reasonable, if sanguine, hope of our being as a nation restored to the faith. 1. There is the upward tendency of official Anglicanism as a system, and as a history for the first epoch of its lapse. 2. There is the present marked increase of religious observance throughout the land, as contrasted with all previous times since the so-called Reformation. 3. There are the irregular but earnest religious movements of the last century. 4. There is the literary rehabilitation of the Christian and medieval idea by our romantic poets. 5. There is the consequence of the French and Irish migrations into England. 6. The profuse martyrdoms and other sufferings for the faith, and their special character as State prosecutions. 7. The typical and influential character of the conversions of the latter years. 8. The instincts of the Church in prayer, and of the Holy See in provision, for a national conversion. 9. The absence of direct Catholic influence in most of the modern conversions, on the nation. Now I am not conscious of exaggerating the importance of these topics, but, of course, they are not all of equal importance, and I can quite understand that to some minds. some will seem to have little or no weight. What, however, I conceive to be of weight is their collective force. For instance, take the direction of cumulation. The first five considerations seem to have this force visibly impressed on them as a series or whole. If Anglicanism had an upward tendency, it is not possible to disconnect it from an increase of religious observance as a fruit thereof: if that fruit exists it has an antecedent history which is supplied by the religious movements of the last century and of this, and if they later took that form of a reaction favourable to Catholic ideas which they now present, that reaction was rendered possible by the revival of the mediaval ideas in literature, and by the accidents of the French and Irish immigrations at the same time. Then, again, looking to the natural connection of cause and effect, we are struck by seeing an absence of such a connection in most of the subjects mentioned a bloody persecution of the Church and an infidel philosophy in one country, and a corrupt Protestant ascendancy in another, do not seem likely à priori to conduce to the advance of Catholicity in a third. Nor, again, would it seem probable that the first harbingers of a return on the part of many to truer and juster, and therefore kinder, thoughts of the Church, her ministers, her doctrines, and her practices, should be found in

the persons of a learned Protestant, a dreamy Germanized metaphysician, and a Scottish Presbyterian lawyer. Napoleon the First is said to have exclaimed, "Give me the making of a nation's songs and you give me the nation." Our lake poets and Scottish novelists wrote our songs, and they turned out to be Catholic psalms, though they were written by the waters of Babylon. So again the recrudescence of Calvinistic fanaticism in the last age and in this, outside and inside the Establishment, would seem not likely to pave the way for the Oxford movement, which nevertheless it did. It is this kind of overruling of things to an end which seems quite foreign to their natural result which is embodied in so many proverbs like the French "l'homme propose, mais Dieu dispose," and which must be in the experience of every thoughtful person's interior consciousness as regards themselves.

As to my three last topics, they touch on other and higher grounds of confidence; for every martyrdom was a special grace of God, not only in the constancy of the martyr, but in each and all of its circumstances; so is each conversion, and so are the instincts of the Holy Church of God and of His Vicar. But in all and through all that I have so feebly attempted to recall to you I think I see the evidence of a great design-a merciful resolve in the inscrutable counsels of the Most High to lead us back as a nation to Him. It would be beside the object of this Paper were I to allude to the means within our reach for the furthering of this end; and, indeed, it may be said that the tendency of my remarks would be rather to encourage us to stand aside and see the work of God accomplished by Him without our intervention. My feeling, however, is not such; for surely that which is true of the progress of the spiritual life within each soul is equally true of the aggregate souls of a race or nation -viz., that whereas we should believe that it is God alone who can and will convert, and sanctify, and perfect, we should act as if all depended on our own activity and perseverance. Nor can I admit any contradiction or opposition between the two convictions-that God, who sweetly and strongly disposes all things according to His will, designs the ultimate conversion of our nation, and that we have our share to perform in the fulfilment of the same, however subordinate and limited the sphere of our co-operation. In conclusion, I will say that I think we must all agree that we can hardly conceive it possible that we should be destined to a national return without national humiliation. May it not be that the humiliation lies in this, that every trace and vestige of our old Catholic polity is destined to destruction before the new structure is to rise again? If, as I have tried to show, the building up is eminently Divine, the

destruction is eminently human, and, whether in motive or in result, such as no Catholic can consistently admire or take part in. It was an opposite course of action-forced, we may admit, by the circumstances of the time upon Catholics, which tended as much as anything to impair their influence on the upper classes of Protestants a generation or two ago. Even forty years ago Newman could enumerate among the reasons holding back good Protestants from sympathy with Catholics "as a church, the spectacle of their intimacy with the revolutionary spirit of the day" ("Essays," vol. ii. p. 71). I well remember that feeling, and I think we must deprecate giving any just cause for it now, though we may see in the acts of the destroyers just judgments of God, and the inevitable consequences of a national departure from His law.

What do we see about us at this moment? We see a Government which has subjected us as a nation to a profound humiliation, by forcing a professed and emphatic atheist and blasphemer into the national council, and, too probably, the nation accepting that humiliation. It was in that assembly that the rejection of Christ's Vicar and all his authority was made to be thenceforth the foundation of our national religion and law, three hundred years ago. We are indeed draining that cup to the dregs! In one sense it is the beginning of the end: we can go no lower. May it be so in another and happier sense! Amidst the ruin and wreck of our institutions, where the Christian character of the State, nay, even the basis of natural religion is compromised, and by a necessary consequence the national establishment of religion, the privileged classes, the landed proprietary, and hereditary rights, including the Crown and its succession, are piece-meal destroyed-all of which seems to be now visibly looming at no great distance in the future-may the right hand of God once more build up the walls of Jerusalem, and His light shine upon the island, sometime of His saints, as in the days of yore the days of Alfred and of Edward: "reposita est hæc spes in sinu meo!"

JAMES, BISHOP OF EMMAUS.

ART. IX.-MR. GLADSTONE'S SECOND LAND BILL.

1. The Land Law (Ireland) Bill. Session of 1881. 2. Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners of Inquiry into the Working of the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870, and the Acts Amending the same. Together with Minutes of Evidence and Appendices.

3. Preliminary Report from Her Majesty's Commissioners on Agriculture. Together with Minutes of Evidence.

IT

T has again fallen to the lot of Mr. Gladstone to make a great effort for the pacification of Ireland by the re-adjustment of the relations of landlord and tenant in that distracted country. More than ten years have elapsed since the Land Act of 1870 came into operation, and so lately as the spring of last year its author spoke with pride and satisfaction of the effects that it had produced. "It gave a confidence," he said, "to the cultivator of the soil which he never had before;" and, after alluding to the distress in some parts of the country, he continued:

The cultivation of Ireland had been carried on for the last eight years under cover and shelter of the Land Law, with a sense of security on the part of the occupier-with a feeling that he was sheltered and protected by the law, instead of feeling that he was persecuted by the law. There was an absence of crime and outrage, with a general sense of comfort and satisfaction such as was unknown in the previous history of the country.*

It is not a little remarkable that, before a year had passed, the great leader of the Liberal party found himself constrained to reconsider the action of the law which he thus eulogizes, and to propose to Parliament a measure for the further shelter and protection of the Irish tenantry. The explanation of this change of opinion is to be found in the troubled events of the past year, and its justification in the Reports of the several Commissioners which we have placed at the head of this Article. Even the Conservative majority of the Commissioners on Agriculture, including the Dukes of Richmond and Buccleuch, bear the following testimony to the necessity of again dealing with the Land Question in Ireland :

*Mr. Gladstone's Speech to the Edinburgh Liberal Club: Times, April 1, 1880.

Bearing in mind the system by which the improvements and equipments of a farm are very generally the work of the tenant, and the fact that the yearly tenant is at any time liable to have his rent raised in consequence of the increased value that has been given to his hoiding by the expenditure of his own capital and labour, the desire for legislative interference to protect him from an arbitrary increase of rent does not seem unnatural; and we are inclined to think that, by the majority of landowners, legislation, properly framed to accomplish this end, would not be objected to. With a view of affording such security, "fair rents," "fixity of tenure," and "free sale," popularly known as the 66 three F's," have been strongly advocated by many witnesses, but none have been able to support these propositions in their integrity without admitting consequences that would, in our opinion, involve an injustice to the landlord.

The minority Report of the same Commission, and the several Reports of Lord Bessborough, Baron Dowse, the O'Conor Don, Mr. Shaw, and Mr. Kavanagh, while they differ as to the form that legislation should assume, all agree in the expediency of some check being placed on the power of raising rent in an arbitrary manner. We may, therefore, summarily dismiss the objection that no Land Bill is necessary, and pass at once to the consideration of the proposed measure, and the agricultural condition of the people who hope to be benefited by it.

Mr. Gladstone, in his speech introducing the Bill, on the 7th of April, spoke of it as "the most difficult and complex question with which, in the course of his public life, he had ever had to deal;" and even his marvellous powers of exposition, and mastery over details, failed to impress the mind with the conviction that the difficulties had been overcome, or the complexities simplified. The perusal of the Bill itself corroborates this conclusion. We miss the clear enunciation of principle, the courageous recognition of right, the outspoken message of reform which are absolute essentials of a great and connected work; and which are never absent where the evil is clearly discerned, and mercilessly dealt with. Considering at present merely the form of the Bill, it leaves the impression of being the joint product of several minds, taking very different views of the policy to be adopted. This is probably to be explained by the necessity of conciliating opposite parties by concessions scarcely in harmony with the general plan. Not alone landlords and tenants in Ireland, but the several sections of the Liberal party, and even, to some extent, the Olympian Upper Chamber, had to be considered in the drafting of the Bill; and, in some places, it almost seems as if the impossibility of pleasing all sides compelled the draftsman to take refuge in deliberate obscurity. Ambiguity of language