shackles of society, yet they would hardly be recreating themselves at midnight for the purpose of admiring the beauties of a luxuriant spring vegetation; and, although you cannot sympathize much with them in their calling, nor love them as thieves, yet you perhaps would despise them still more, if they should be at the trouble of breaking into the garden, and take nothing from it. A thief may have some good qualities blended with his failings, to excite our admiration, and call for our laudatory testimonials in his favour; but who will waste his breath, or his paper and ink in palliation of a fool? The indictment, however, will not avail, unless the articles are minutely specified which they abstracted; but as the advertiser has not mentioned them, we must wait till he comes forward with some further explanation.

11th. It.'

Insignificant as this tiny pronoun may appear, and though it must be admitted to be the smallest word the alphabet can bestow in two letters, yet in its sense it is of superior importance. It is, in this case, the rear-guard of the whole document, and it prevents the necessity for much roundabout circumlocution. You may magnify it, till it shall be as large as the garden it-self, or a bag of moonshine, or the solar system, or even the whole universe. Let it then have its due, and let crowns and palaces yield it the palm of superiority.

But now, may not a forensic objection be legally started,-was it the garden that was robbed, or was it Mr. Blyth? To rob, may be defined, to take something secretly or by force from another. Another what? A person, undoubtedly, be it man or be it woman. But one garden cannot rob another garden; and by the definition here given, how can a man be said to rob a garden? The cabbages and roses don't belong to the garden; the garden can't prosecute, or carry the action into a court of justice, nor can it pay the costs in case of being nonsuited. The law is always presumed to guard, as much as possible, against its being perverted or strained to suit any particular purpose, and must therefore be understood and acted upon to the letter. A man was prosecuted for stealing a couple of ducks, but was acquitted, on the plea that, though what he stole had once been ducks, they were no longer so, as they were dead when he took them, and being stripped of their feathers and decapitated, they were not perfect, and therefore not ducks. By analogy, a human being ought not to be pronounced a man, if he, by accident or otherwise, has lost one of his toes, or even a tooth from his masticating apparatus. And how shall a poulterer proceed against his debtor, when he has nothing but dead or imperfect animals charged in his bill?

Leaving, however, these queries to be settled as future occasions may bring them into public notice, as the garden cannot lodge the complaint before a magistrate, it appears an unavoidable

corollary, either that Mr. Blyth must make the application himself, and thus obtain redress through the opinion and authority of the bench, or the whole affair must be neglected, and perhaps, alas! be soon forgotten.

FINIS.

PETITION OF A CLERGYMAN OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH FOR ECCLESIASTICAL REFORM.

To the Editor of the Monthly Repository."

SIR,-The enclosed, which I have thrown into the form of a petition to Parliament, will serve at least to explain why I did not take part in that Petition for the Separation of Church from State, which was brought forward so ably by yourself, and with which I agreed in many points.

I am, Sir, yours faithfully,

A CLERGYMAN OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH.

That your petitioner was brought up by his step-father, a clergyman of the established church, in a belief of the doctrines of the church of England, and that in his preparation for the ministry of the established church, your petitioner, both in his examination for a degree, and in his examination for orders, received testimonials of the approbation of the university in which he was educated, and of the bishop of the diocese in which he was ordained.

That your petitioner was not unsuccessful in his ministration during the time his health allowed him to undertake the active duties of his profession, having established and conducted the management of a daily school for poor children in the parish intrusted to his care, and having more than doubled the number of the congregation which attended the services of the church in which he ministered.

That falling into bad health, in consequence of exertions he made in studying for his degree, your petitioner was obliged to relinquish the active duties of his profession, but continued to pursue his theological studies, till he had obtained clear views on many important subjects.

That some of these views were published by your petitioner in the Quarterly Review,* and afterwards, being republished in a separate form, were spoken of with praise by the Edinburgh Review, and would have opened to your petitioner a road to preferment, if he could have been satisfied to suppress further statements of truth.

* In two reviews of the Despondency of Cowper and the Enthusiasm of Newton.

That your petitioner would draw your attention to the false and tyrannical spirit of the established church, and to the peculiar harshness and severity with which it bore upon his own feelings and opinions, by stating the single fact, that the appointed services of the church of England required your petitioner solemnly to profess his belief, as in the sight of God, that his own father,* and his wife's father, and many of their relations and connexions, 'without doubt shall perish everlastingly,'

That your petitioner begs to submit that a national church ought to be founded on the principle of respecting the sincerity of the individual minister, and of not violating the right of judgment of bodies of men; and that this may be accomplished by the state legislating in the case of the church in the same way in which the state legislates in the case of other professions; thus, for example, the law requires candidates for a medical degree to give proofs of a sufficient acquaintance with medical studies; but candidates for a medical degree are not required by the law to pledge themselves to hold narrowly defined opinions about which the most able men have not been able to agree.

That your petitioner would beg further to submit, that the great objects for which a national church has to make provision, are the promotion of pious feelings towards God and the diffusion of religious obligations towards man, and that these objects have been fully accomplished by persons holding different, and even opposite doctrinal opinions; and, consequently, that in attempting to enforce one system of doctrinal opinions to the discouragement of other systems, the state, whilst it claims to itself infallibility of judgment, and divides the community into privileged and degraded orders, thereby placing discord and variance between bodies of men who may be equally pious and religious, is losing sight of the real objects of a national church.

That your petitioner therefore submits, that a national church ought not, by its professions of belief, to exclude pious and religious men who differ in opinion on questions about which the wisest and best men have been unable to agree, but ought to avail itself of the services of a Watts, a Wesley, and a Priestley, as readily as of a Horsley, namely, in promoting pious feelings towards God, and in diffusing religious obligations towards man, and in spreading useful knowledge, and in advancing real civilisation, and in strengthening the bonds of justice and peace through the whole land.

That your petitioner is desirous, according to the measure of his ability, to promote the objects of a national church, and is convinced that thousands are to be found with whom his opinions on disputed points of doctrine and belief would give him great

* He died before your petitioner was born.

advantage in the promotion of the real objects of a national church, -pious feelings, religious obligations, sound knowledge, and right conduct.

That your petitioner cannot consent to the insincerity and fraud of professing what he does not believe; and that he conceives the state has no right to force him to this under penalty of losing his station in society and his means of life; and that if he were to submit to that injustice, he should sacrifice a moral satisfaction and an intellectual power which might be employed with good effect in promoting the real objects of a national church.

That your petitioner begs to submit, that it is not a national church, but a sectarian creed, which, by depriving him of useful employment and daily bread, forces him into opposition to the government of the country, in order to obtain the repeal of false principles and unjust practices, which bear hard upon his rights and interests, and still more hardly on sincerity and justice.

That your petitioner has clung, in defiance of many evidences, to the hope of right measures, respecting the union of church and state, being adopted by a Whig government, is proved by the fact that he has declined to attend meetings and to sign petitions for a separation of church and state.

That your petitioner adduces this fact as a proof that he has some feeling for the daily bread and the deliverance from evil of the members of an established church; he cannot call it a national church, which hitherto has proved that it cares little for the sincerity of the individual minister, little for justice to bodies of pious and religious men, little for the peace and welfare of the community. These blessings, together with an advance in truth, already become so necessary for the repression of anarchy and the support of government, the established church is willing to sacrifice for a short lease of its spiritual and temporal monopoly. It is abundantly evident that on a determination to employ national means for national objects, depends the union or disunion, not only of Catholics, and Churchmen, and Dissenters, but of the higher, the middle, and the lower orders.

That your petitioner deeply regretted to see one great opportunity lost by the present Ministry of placing the state in its true position with the church, namely, at the time of the disturbances in Ireland, to suppress which the Coercion Bill was passed. The government might then have boldly declared its intention to defend the revenues of the church, as a fund for the education and civilisation of Ireland, instead of sacrificing an insufficient portion of them. Protestants and Catholics, Catholics and Protestants, might have been called to unite in this great object, under promise that the doers of the work should, under some arrangement, be rewarded without fear or favour. It was a glorious opportunity for statesmen to have told churchmen a truth they ought to hear, You may become good servants, and therefore we will save you from your

enemies; you have been bad masters, and therefore we will save you from yourselves.' It was a position for the state to assume towards the church as obvious as it was commanding. The enunciation of the principle would have advanced not only educa tion and civilisation, but piety and religion a hundred years: as applied to Ireland the principle would have been so manifestly just and useful, that a large portion of the church, a larger portion of the dissenters, and the great body of the people, would have hailed the measure. On the other hand, that cowardly measure, on which Lord Althorp congratulated himself as having established no principle, that cowardly measure which sanctioned confiscation without attaining justice, gave the church an opportunity of resorting to her old tactics, exposed the dissenters to the danger of committing their old error, and caused the weakness and prejudices of the people to be played upon by the old cries, religion is attacked! the church is in danger!

That your petitioner cannot admit the plea, that a Whig Ministry did not dare to hazard so bold a measure.' That the Whigs had sufficient courage to hazard a bold measure, when they individually were to gain by it, witness the Reform Bill; that the Whigs had sufficient courage to hazard a bold measure, when they individually were not to lose by it, witness the emancipation of the slaves. The very point of which your petitioner complains is, that when a measure of great benefit to the community is not to be paid for altogether by English Tories or West Indian slave-owners, but is to be partly at the expense of Whigs, (such are the great questions of the Corn Laws, the Septennary Bill, and Church Reform,) then the Whigs become attached to a cautious policy, and are very tender of vested interests.

That your petitioner prays for such an union between church. and state as may, without robbing any clergyman of his daily bread, or depriving the state of a great means of promoting and diffusing, of establishing and advancing, what is good, cease to outrage the sincerity of individual ministers and to insult the opinions of large bodies of pious and religious men. That entertaining this hope, your petitioner is still unwilling to pray for that extreme measure, which yet, and that at no distant time, if sincerity and justice cannot be otherwise obtained, will be demanded by the great body of the people.

MRS. AUSTIN'S TRANSLATION OF M. COUSIN'S REPORT ON THE STATE OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION IN PRUSSIA.*

IN a recent number we briefly announced the appearance of this important document in an English form. We now return to it, because the reception of Mr. Roebuck's motion by the House * Effingham Wilson.