duplication ought greatly to be attributed those personal discontents, and political cross-purposes, for which the Liberal party has of late years been disastrously remarkable. Moreover, for eleven out of these thirteen years of disembodied existence, the Peelites were independent members. They were like roving icebergs, on which men could not land with safety, but with which ships might come into perilous collision. Their weight was too great not to count, but it counted first this way and then that. It is not alleged against them that their conduct was dishonourable, but their political action was attended with much public inconvenience; and even those who think they were enlightened statesmen may feel that the existence of these sensibly large weights, in a state of detachment from all the organisation of party, acts upon the Parliamentary vessel as a cargo of corn in bulk acts on the trim of a ship at sea. Again, as a party, they had been, like their leader, pacific, and economical. The effects of their separation from official Liberalism during the first Government of Lord Palmerston were easily traceable in the policy of that Government as to various matters of importance. From this time onwards Lord Aberdeen was in retirement, and Peelism ceased to be, as such, in contact with the Court, at which it had certainly weighed as an important factor of political opinion.

The Prince resembled Lord Aberdeen in this, that, with an eminently just and liberal mind, he clung to traditions of Continental policy, or these traditions clung to him, which were by no means uniformly liberal. We cannot but trace his hand in the recognition (p. 44) of the Five Great Powers as having been, since the peace of 1815,' the guarantors of treaties, the guardians of civilisation, the champions of right. When Sardinia was struggling for the liberation of Italy, and when she had acted as a very timely ally in the Crimean War, Belgium is emphatically described (p. 501) as 'the only satisfactory child of the new epoch;' and in conversation with Louis Napoleon in 1854, the Prince wished, indeed, that Austria were out of Lombardy for Austria's own sake, but held that she could not recognise its title to an Italian nationality, and that she must hold it for the sake of her military frontier (p. 119). But the reconstituted Italy has thus far been in European politics a Power eminently Conservative; and the only fear is lest she should be seduced, by the bad example of other Powers, into speculations and schemes of territorial aggrandisement.

We have still to offer a remark on the important subject

of the Danubian Principalities, which is touched by Mr. Martin. Subsequently to the Peace of Paris, Moldavia and Wallachia were united into one State under the name of Roumania, and after a time there was placed at its head a foreign Prince. To this measure Austria and the Porte were strongly opposed; and we grieve to say that the influence of official England was thrown into their scale. Its adoption was mainly due to the sound instinct and the decided action of the people of the two Provinces; which Russia at the very least thought it prudent not to thwart, and which France energetically favoured and helped onwards to a successful issue. Lord Clarendon expressed the opinion (p. 466) that, if these Provinces were united under a foreign prince, such a prince would in a few years be able to declare his independence.

Mr. Martin, strangely enough to our mind, says that events have shown how just were these apprehensions (p. 465). Is this just? What are the facts? That for twenty years, though the misgovernment of Turkey would at any moment have afforded a pretext, Roumania remained in tranquil submission to the suzerainty of the Porte; that she did nothing to assist the abortive Bulgarian rebellion of May 1876; that she showed no sympathy with the Servian and Montenegrin war of that summer; that she did not take a step of any kind in opposition to the Porte, until the overpowering might of Russia demanded a military passage through her territory, and virtually forced her into active hostilities. Had Turkey fulfilled the promises of civil equality, which she has shamelessly and obstinately broken, but which Lord Clarendon honestly believed she would be able and disposed to keep, what opportunity would Roumania have had, even if so inclined, to rise against Turkey? Did not her quietude, during nearly two years of festering troubles on her frontier, show how wise it had been to give her contentment and some solidity of existence? If Moldavia and Wallachia had continued in their state of severance and weakness, it would have been not more difficult, but much easier, for Russia either to agitate them by intrigue during the tranquil years 1856-75, or to issue her commands for supplying a free passage through their land to her armies.

But we cannot have any quarrel with Mr. Martin. We must part from him in the good humour which gratitude inspires. In the production of his work, he is without doubt ministering to the just demand of a fond and unquenchable affection in the highest place. But he is also performing a

great service to the country: he gives the permanence of the written record to a life of public duty, which is certainly the most conspicuous that the nineteenth century has witnessed. It is perhaps also the noblest and the purest: the only rival to it in these respects, that we are bold enough to name, is the life of Lord Spencer, better known as Lord Althorp.

We venture to hope that Mr. Martin's labours will not end either with three volumes, or with the fourth; but that when his work is completed, he will with new energy reduce it to a form suited for a wide popular circulation. Outside the circle of domestic affections, the proper place for the Prince's memory to repose in is the heart of the people.

ART. X.-BURIAL ACTS CONSOLIDATION BILL,

1877.

THE Session of Parliament for 1877 will be memorable, if for nothing else, yet certainly for the unexpected change of front upon the Burial question. Until then the question had simmered on after the manner of other assaults upon rights or privileges inherited by the Established Church; it seemed as though, some day, a raid upon the Church's burial-grounds might afford a convenient rallying cry for the scattered hosts of the Liberal party, and that the Church might not improbably be deprived of some of her duties and responsibilities with regard to the precincts of her Churches, when a new turn of the political wheel had reversed the present position of parties in the House of Commons. Last Session brought an unlooked-for ally into the field for those who wished to hasten this catastrophe. It revealed the startling fact that if our churchyards are to be alienated, and the clergy to be deprived of their immemorial trusteeship for them, the hand by which the severance will be effected will not be that of the Liberation Society, or of the Liberal party, but of the Church's own archbishops and of noblemen who have taken an active part in what affects the fortunes and welfare of, at all events, one section of the Church of England.

The present interest in the question has thus come to centre round the events of last Session, and the line of policy

which ought to be pursued in consequence of it. We could add nothing to the history, given in our April number of 1876, of previous Parliamentary conflicts, since this Nonconformist grievance first found expression in Parliament in 1857; neither could we hope to set forth more forcibly the facts on which must be based our judgment of the reality and moral worth of the agitation for a change in those laws, and the objects and aims of the persons who have hitherto conducted that agitation. These will be found in our number of January 1877. We are, therefore, happily limited in our range of dealing with this subject by what we have already said concerning it, not less than by the requirements of the present hour.

It is then to the history of the Burials question in the last Session of Parliament that we purpose mainly to confine ourselves. On March 13 last, the Lord President introduced a Bill which he described as a Burial Acts Consolidation Bill, the special object of which was to deal with the question of burying the dead from a sanitary point of view. The Bill had been anxiously expected, as it was known that such a measure was in preparation. The struggles over Mr. Osborne Morgan's Bill in previons Sessions made Churchmen fearful lest some arrangement or compromise might be attempted, which would make the defence of their churchyards more difficult in the future. From any approximation to this the Government Bill was perfectly free; and it is only right to acknowledge thankfully the manner in which the Government has throughout dealt with the question. Nor would we omit to express our satisfaction with the firm yet conciliatory mode of handling the Bill by the Duke of Richmond, who was charged with the conduct of it, throughout the difficult and trying debates. The Bill seemed to us a thoroughly fair and honest attempt to remove whatever could be justly alleged as a grievance on the one side, whilst it refused to inflict what would certainly be regarded as a grievance on the other. It was based throughout upon sanitary considerations; there was only one clause, which we will consider presently, that touched the religious-grievance side of the question. Its aim was to close such churchyards as from insufficiency of space or considerations of public health were no longer fit places for burying the dead, and to compel and enable the inhabitants of parishes thus insufficiently furnished to supply what was needed for the decent interment of their dead. It gave to the Local Government Board power to enforce compliance with its requirements, and to Burial Boards or Vestries the duty of carrying out its provisions. It dealt even-handed

justice to Churchmen and Nonconformists, by requiring that in every burying-ground there should be a sufficient consecrated and unconsecrated part,' and that whilst a chapel might be provided for Churchmen and another for Nonconformists, the local authority was 'not to provide the one without providing the other, except in pursuance of a special resolution of the burial authority sanctioned by the Local Government Board.' To the local authority was entrusted whatever power was needed to create, sustain, embellish and protect the cemeteries called into existence by the Act. Provision was made for these local bodies to supersede the parish clergyman in certain cases, as it was intended to enact by Clause 36 that where a burial-ground has been provided for any parish under the Acts commonly called the Church Building Acts and consecrated, the incumbent of that parish, with the consent of the ordinary and of the burial authority for the district in which such parish, or any part thereof, is situate, may, by writing under his hand and seal, transfer the burial-ground to the burial authority for that district, and thereupon such ground shall be deemed to be the consecrated part of a burial-ground acquired by the burial authority under this Act.' Under this clause, therefore, it would seem that a churchyard as well as consecrated ground at a distance from the church might be transferred to the Burial Board; only the Bill did not enable such Board to permit the service in the consecrated portion of the ground to be performed by Nonconformists. This 36th Clause, as well as the whole tenor of the Bill, shows that if it had become an Act it would have rendered it impossible to add to the Church's own burying-grounds for the future, except by the voluntary contributions of her own members. The provision of burialgrounds by the Church, and the possible absorption of some of those which she possessed by the local burial authority, would, in some important respects, have resembled the provision concerning the possible transfer of Voluntary Schools to School Boards made by the Education Act of 1870.

Only one clause, the 74th, in any way affected the existing law with regard to the religious rites to be used at the grave; we cannot say that it altered it, as it is doubtful whether the authority which it professes to give does not already exist. It provided that where the relative or person taking upon himself the duty of providing for the burial of a deceased 'person might request it, 'the burial shall be permitted to take place in the churchyard without the performance therein of the burial service of the Church of England.' The avowed