interests existing in a country, with all their permanent establishments, connections, rights, privileges, and immunities, is that country fettered and locked up from freedom of action, is the majority of its people restrained by the privileges of a minority, is the liberty of that country, its advancement, the healthiness and purity of its political life, imperilled.

A vested interest is a millstone hanged about the neck of society. Like Sinbad's old man, it clings round the shoulders of a nation with an ever-tightening grasp. It does not much matter whether its legs are clerical, or aristocratic, or plebeian—whether they wear the livery of the monarch, or the boots of the dragoon, or the silk-stockings of a bishop, or the fleshes of an alderman, or the naturals of a sans-culotte their grip is none the less strong and deadly-it impedes both breath and motion.

Such interests must to some extent exist wherever there are human societies, but the aim of wise statesmen and a wise people will be to keep or reduce them to the smallest number and lowest power. Laws which en

vested in

the Church

land.

Most prominent at this moment of all these A great interests in England is the Established terestChurch; endowed with 90,000,000l. of pro- of Engperty; its bishops sitting in the House of Peers; its clergy of every grade scattered over the country, prescribing in rural districts, with few exceptions, the religion of the people, preponderating also in the towns; its ministers-and only its ministers-ex officio registrars of marriages, and managers of endowed schools; its burial-grounds (those of the parish and therefore of the parish people) closed to all services but those of its rubric; its schools the principal media of education in England. This is a church not only wealthy and politically powerful, but socially preeminent, not to belong to which is a disability.

Its allies.

VIII.

ITS ALLIES.

This mighty institution, holding in its hands the keys of heaven and hell, wields in England to-day a power rivalled only by that of its strange ally, the Licensed Victuallers' Association. For in this crisis of their fates the clergy and the publicans no longer stand afar off from each other. They have joined hands; and four elections out of five are won by the unholy combination. It is characteristic of such an institution to have no conscience about its allies. It was more than two centuries ago the aider and abettor of a tyrannical monarchy. From it were cruelly driven the noblest elements it contained, and some of its cast-off members laid the foundations of one of the greatest nations in the world. Through its whole history it has been on the side of privilege against equality-of patronage against liberty-of power against right-of caste and priesthood against liberation.

IX.

ITS POWER AND CHARACTERISTICS.

and

istics.

Its patent incongruity with the ideas of Its power this age and its inherent defects had shaken its characterfoundations. But as a last effort, and true to its instincts, it has by taking advantage of a combination of circumstances, succeeded in procuring legislation in England which virtually throws into its hands the education of a majority of English children, with additional endowments.

The pretensions and privileges of this vast organisation complicate almost every social problem-obstruct almost every social reform. Its influence is divisive of Christianity, through the arrogance of its claims. and the assumption of its clerics. So long as its supremacy lasts religious equality is impossible and religious bigotry is a national characteristic. It is a conglomerate of irreconcilables. Within are fightings, without are fears. The representatives of free thought, of Calvinism, of Ritualism, alike find nests

*C

under the eaves of its churches and cathedrals.

The neologian, the disciple of the religion of culture if it has any disciple, the Evangelical, the Ritualist, may alike feed within its fold. Its livings are bought and sold by Simoniacal contracts. The Ritualists have lately been rejoicing because they succeeded in purchasing the oversight of a piece of Christ's fold in Liverpool, of rather larger size and with sheep of somewhat better breed than usual. Who ever expected to see. Christ's kingdom cut up into lots and disposed of to the highest-bidding adventurers of religious joint-stock companies with limited liability?

But this is not all. In many places the rector or vicar is also a magistrate, and (as clerics love power) an active magistrate; so that he who preaches in Christ's name on the Sabbath, and is to soothe the pillow of dying parishioners, administers on week days the criminal law, sends poachers to be tried at the assizes, and convicts agricultural unionists, be they men or women, under Acts passed in