chiefly the enterprising spirit and energy of her commerce and manufactures that rendered her the mistress of the waters and the terror of the Romans. Rome herself indeed, strictly speaking, only fell when, intoxicated with the spirit of conquest and the glitter of the sword, she neglected the more solid, lasting, and peaceful pursuits of commerce, manufactures, and agriculture.

The physical wealth of the cotton manufacture is of course based entirely upon the mental energies of the men of the north, and stands infinitely higher in the scale of mind than the more common and lower departments of trade and traffic; and is therefore by no means so exclusively selfish in its bearing upon its agents, the artisans themselves, and much less on society, for it actually stands upon a different basis. Society itself, on the contrary, we see reaps a rich harvest, for which it gives not in return to the artisan any adequate compensation. While machinery and the hand-loom operatives are, in short, pouring forth their treasures, society, thoughtless of the consequences, walks off with the spoils, and clothes itself with the produce at a trifling

cost!

It is a great though a common failing, however, even among men of mighty pretensions in society, to estimate the importance of a people more by its apparent wealth and numerical strength, than its amount of intelligence. Hence the commonly drawn up reports of our own government in reference to the agricultural and commercial classes of the state, ignorantly balancing mere numbers against numbers, without any regard whatever to the status of a man, the requirements of society, or the demands of a great empire, whose rank among the nations must be, and actually is, its measure of intelligence. How small the power and little the strength of a multitude, even armed with wealth, against intelligence in comparative poverty! The boor or serf of the agricultural district is frequently a nonentity, or a mere cipher in the scale of what antiquated statesmen and politicians call the balance of power. Intelligence and mind embodied in a few, have always triumphed over mere riches in unison with ignorance and numbers. Society has outlived the ideal world of the politicians of Europe, and their language.* Intelligence, in short, not numbers, is the legitimate residence, the only source and emanation, of all power. The struggle between these two contending powers, if the latter can be so called, and the antiquated statesman, has been long carried on in our own country with va rious success; but every renewed attack, as might be expected,

*Spain, poor Spain! has now little sympathy with the balanced ideas of power. She has been long suffering for great transgressions of the true balance of things, and is endeavouring to free herself from the load.

ending more or less in favour of the intelligent few. They have been fated to bear the burden of the State in the heat of the day, and their great resources have frequently been pawned and sold to defray the ignorant and lavish expenditure of their opponents.

The great multitudes engaged in the cotton manufacture have been distinguished for their industry and desire to improve their social and political condition. Of all the great classes, however, of the cotton manufacture, the hand-loom weavers have long exhibited the greatest amount of intelligence. Many, moreover, of the higher grades of knowledge in the manufacture, and in different parts of society, have been supplied from the ranks of the weaver. The chief improvements in the manufacture have also sprung from their genius and instrumentality. The transition, moreover, from improvements in the art and manufacture to improvements in the social and political condition of life, was very easy, and indeed natural. Many causes besides have contributed to excite their minds; there is, for example, the continual bustle of the trade, the nature of their calling which admits of much freedom, the high considerations so frequently pressed upon them to account for the fluctuations of supply and demand, the frequent orders of the market for particular goods with the nature of the people that require them, in conjunction with the state of their social and political condition, their unequal taxation, their very numbers, not to speak of their intelligence, which was little respected in either House of Parliament, proposing reform,-all these furnished them forty years ago with frequent subjects for consideration. The western district of Scotland, where the greatest amount of intelligence prevailed in the trade, exhibited these things in active operation. They formed an association, met to petition Parliament and remonstrate with the Government on their unequal taxation and unrepresented condition; a course of conduct which, however praiseworthy and even necessary, was in those days very dangerous.

As the manufacture, moreover, rose in magnitude, and intelligence spread among the people, the same symptoms of social and political improvement on a greater scale showed themselves throughout the length and breadth of the cotton manufacture, till in our day its chiefs, many of them of Scottish extraction, in the neighbourhood of Manchester, aided by the men of mind and other manufactures in the country, have at last nearly finished what those men began.

488

ART. XII.-1. Dublin University Review. No. CLXV.

2. Morning Post. 1846.

3. Times, October 1846.

4. Charge of the Bishop of London, 1846.

THERE are few subjects at the present moment attracting greater public attention than that which we first propose briefly considering in the present article, the law of promotion to offices in the Established Church. It is one on which the public mind has long been at work, and which is now beginning to attract the notice of the legislature itself. The leader of the Protectionist party has, we believe, avowed his determination to look into the question, in its double ramification of the lay patronage of the government, and that exercised by the principal church dignitaries themselves. One matter is not only attracting the attention, but we might say the jealousy of most reasonable-minded persons; viz. an attempt to combine under episcopal patrons, the whole of the vast system of district churches at present establishing throughout the country. We do not think. it right, we frankly own, that in the instance of the patron of a parish not happening to be a bishop, that power should be given to take sections out of it, and to place them under a distinct authority. The abuses of lay patronage also, by which men of eighty are put in to hold livings until some scion or some special favourite of noble family is old enough to take them, are great, and were curiously developed in a ludicrous instance which has lately occurred. A noble lord received high commendation for presenting an unknown Nestor to a living which, we believe, when thus filled up, was immediately sold. We admit all this to be bad; that it ought to be amended we are bold enough to say, by doing away with a law which most lawyers censure, the existing law of Simony. This has no imaginable bearing, that we can understand, on the sin of Simon Magus, since no spiritual powers are attempted to be purchased of which the minister in question is not already possessed. Still we are not clear that matters would be much bettered by placing all livings under episcopal patronage. If any English diocese really did exhibit the beautiful and Christian spectacle of men promoted solely with reference to their piety, long service, extensive labour, uncommon learning, and practical ability, then, say we, heap upon that diocese the full amount of all possible patronage; but whether there be any difficulty, in rerum natura, in such a course or not, we are certain it will no where be found

in operation. Every effort is made to curtail the power of the people in such matters: it is always assumed that their choice is unmixedly bad, which we do not believe, and the recent bills by which Lecturers, a highly popular element in the Church, have been nearly annihilated, clearly indicate that the extension of that principle is viewed with deep alarm. Well, then, if that were evil, ought not that which attempts to supersede it to be purer? Is it so? We doubt if better instances, nay, if such good instances are necessarily selected under the law of episcopal patronage as now administered. Is there in any diocese a clergyman who reckons on length of service as a claim on his bishop? Is it admitted any where as such? Does he flatter himself that an amount of learning which would dim that of his diocesan will do this? Will zeal and devotedness to his parish effect it? Will the secured love of the community, as in the recent case of the Rev. Gerrard Andrews in St. James's, effect it? Will the wishes, the expressed wishes, of a congregation have any weight? Not in the slightest degree. Now we shall not discuss from what causes this state of things arises, but denounce it as unmixedly bad. The presbyters have a right to look on the bishop as one that is to wield the governing power with an impartial hand. But we ask, do they think that this is so? Distrusting our own conclusions, we inquired of a clergyman, one of the most exemplary and talented men we know, who has been twenty years occupied in a most useful sphere, and who has now attained to an income of £200 per annum, whether he had never formed any expectations of promotion? "Never!" was his reply. "I have never recollected any clergyman in this diocese who was promoted on the ground of service or desert, or on any principle but interest, in my life." Can we wonder, if this be so, that the Church numbers few warm-hearted, zealous sons? Why their very life is crushed out of them. The most intellectual preacher of his day, consequently, leaves the active service of her banner, and shelters himself from poverty in a civil appointment, Do we think men like Mr. Newman and others were not originally dissatisfied with the state of things that awarded to deep exertion the same meed as to passive inertness, nay, undoubtedly less in many instances? They may have not been justified in their recent conduct: our opinion upon that has been clearly expressed; but what led to it? What is leading to a still more alarming defection, but the simple fact. that encouragement is not afforded to zealous exertions? The Church is treated very much in Lord John Russell's recent style of action. A son of the late General Nott happens not to be provided for in any manner: without the slightest question as to this gentleman's clerical efficiency, for that could not have been tested,

he receives a valuable living from the Premier. He applied to a friend of the writer's for a title for admission to Holy Orders, certainly not many months since, and when next heard of by the writer is a beneficed clergyman. Now we have nothing to object to this gentleman: we know nothing of him: we will suppose him gifted with the learning of Barrow and the piety of Leighton, but we declare that in whatever diocese he has been placed, Lord John Russell has, however unintentionally, done great injustice to hundreds of clergymen to the full as deserving as that gentleman, and with claims on the diocese for all within its limits to furnish, whether the patron be the Crown or the Church. It is our wish to do justice to all men; therefore, while we censure the Premier, we are delighted to be enabled to praise his colleague, Lord Palmerston. This nobleman has conferred an appointment in the Foreign-office on the son of Dr. Wolff, simply, we believe, from a high appreciation of the deeply-neglected services of the well-known missionary. Now Lord Palmerston was perfectly justified in this act; no injustice is done to any one in it, and merits that Europe and Asia ring with are gracefully acknowledged by it. Mr. Drummond Wolff receives an appointment for which he is qualified, without any invidious distinction; but if he were placed over the heads of many members in the Foreign-office, without being tested, all would cry out on such injustice. Is it less injustice to appoint Mr. Nott over the heads of many gentlemen who have well and honourably served the Church? Is it right to make him independent for life, while others who have ably served the best and noblest interests of mankind have been neglected? The Premier is at fault, but Lord Palmerston redeems to a great extent the error, for we acquit Lord J. Russell of any thing worse than want of reflection. While we are upon this subject, we trust that a report that has reached us of the appointment of the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Villiers to a bishopric is untrue! The weak theology of this gentleman should alone exclude him from any such promotion; for in a course of lectures in Lent, published, we believe, with his sanction, the world arrives at its end in 1847, if we remember right. It really would be quite a work of supererogation to appoint this gentleman for so short a period. We think he would not wish it himself. We believe Mr. Pym was the author of this notable assertion. Lord Clarendon, we trust, has too much sense to permit any such appointment, however agreeable in other points of view; certainly not one that his judgment could approve.

We are fully aware that we shall be charged with Utopian schemes; we shall be asked to graduate a scale for patronage;