and recognized sphere of duty. Again: the average of one to thirteen hundred is, on the gross return: an examination of the items shows, that in some of the manufacturing towns the proportion of the people to the clergy is upwards of three thousand to one, whilst in the manufacturing counties it is more than two thousand. Either, then, a better adaptation of the means to the emergency is needed, or a great increase in the number of the clergy, The former would involve it in inextricable difficulties in the necessary interference with the rights of property; the latter would require, for its legitimatizing, a legislative sanction, which the government deems unnecessary or impossible. Bishoprics, instead of being destroyed, ought to be multiplied. The financial difficulties connected with such a course would not, as in the case of a large increase of subordinate ministers, be difficult of solution; for the one would not require, we think, like the other, the creation of fresh resources. The dignitaries of the Church themselves would gladly compound for the increase of her spiritual efficiency by the diminution of their own worldly comfort and wealth; and the better division of ecclesiastical labour would quickly result in a more efficient oversight than at present is practicable, and a consequent increase of diligence and activity in parochial ministrations. Many are endeavouring to supply the want of clerical numbers by extraneous aids: one consideration, somewhat fatal to the success of some of their efforts, has, we think, escaped them. It is not an ecclesiastical police that is needed, but pastors-it is not the scrutiny of a man's household that is required, but an acquaintance with his heart-it is not a printed inventory of his sins and failings, exposed to the judgment of a committee, that will avail to correct and make him a better man; but a capacity to sympathize in his sufferings or infirmities, authority to teach and to direct, power to heal with the message of mercy. These are the attributes of the pastor's office, and not of the paid or voluntary agent of a society: these only can be conferred by the Lord, through the ministers which he has ordained in his Church for that purpose, and never can be compassed by the mere aspirations of benevolence, nor bestowed by the self-elected authorities of a committee, however humanely originated or constituted. In saying this, we are far from desiring to cast dishonour upon the efforts of good men, who, in perceiving evils, endeavour to check them; but simply endeavouring to show that in this, as in all other cases, what God has ordained cannot be substituted by what man devises.

The sufferings of the labouring classes are unprecedented. They, therefore, demand more than ever the tender care and

watchful sympathy of the clergy; for, if the Church fail them in their hour of need, there is no source to which they can turn for help or look for comfort. The policy of the day is unhappily hard and unbending where the feelings of men are dealt with-stern and unyielding when the poor man bows the knee, though pliant enough when clamorous ambition or lawless agitation is the suitor. The selfish struggles of influential classes, one with another, eat out the best sympathies of the human heart, and one of the necessary consequences of a monstermanufacturing system has been to destroy or weaken the ancient ties which bound the rich and the poor together.* In calculations where considerations of personal gain are always paramount, the true estimate of human misery seldom finds a place, and colossal fortunes continue to be made out of the very elements that are daily adding appalling numbers and increased intensity to the ranks and woes of pauperism. "A cheap loaf for the poor!" is the cry of the manufacturer; but it is but a part of his plan for extracting a greater amount of labour at a less cost, that his own gains may be enlarged;† whilst, on the plea of low prices, the farmer mulcts his unhappy serfs down to the meanest pittance that poverty in its desperate necessity consents to. Thus, between the two, human labour is reduced to a condition of abject slavery, and its price becomes the wages of physical suffering. Abundance, by the operation of a tariff, which has been considered the triumph of financial legislation, and a starving poor!-such is the great anomaly in this land at this hour. Returns, which show a large proportion of the inmates of some county jails to be constituted of those sent thither for punish

Productive power is greater in England than elsewhere, yet no where is there such frightful pauperism. M. Michel Chevalier, a clever and intelligent writer on political economy, says that England can furnish with the same number of workmen, and on the same surface, three or four times the same amount of goods more than any continental nation, and yet that pauperism is proportionately greater here than elsewhere. He seems to consider pauperism, indeed, as a necessary attendant on the manufacturing system, for he adds "Prussia has scarcely commenced to rank itself amongst the manufacturing nations, and already the distress of its workmen has become a subject of sorrow and affright. This result seems so inevitably connected with the operations of manufacturing industry, that many men are beginning to accept it as a decree of fatality. The contempt of the workman by the English tradesman has become a trait of national character." We do not subscribe to the last sentiment; but we set the passage down to show that we are not singular in all our estimates of the necessary consequences of a system which has gone too far for the peace of the land, and must, if extended according to the wish of its votaries, ultimately prove its ruin.

For authorities in proof of this, see the report of an able speech of Mr. George Game Day, spoken at Huntingdon, June 17, 1843. Published by Ollivier, 1844,

ment by the poor-houses*-which show upwards of six thousand heads of families in one year deserting their wives and children through the oppressive operation of the poor laws or the pressure of want and what must these be, to stifle feelings and affections rife in every human heart! Shirts made for threehalfpence; trousers for less than sixpence; twelve hours toilsome labour for a pittance that will not purchase a loaf of bread! Police magistrates and officers become the ministers of mercy and the averters of starvation; a commission engaged in ascertaining the least possible amount of cost at which human life can be sustained; the man who has spent the strength of his years and the vigour of his health in hard and honest labour offered in his old age, as the reward which society provides, a condition upon which it has put the brand of shame-from which, if there be aught of independence left in his bosom, he turns with loathing, and dies! These are the fruits of England's boasted wealth and greatness-the fallen estate of that "bold peasantry" once the pride of the land-and yet, in melancholy mockery, toasted, as though they were still in being, at convivial feasts. These are the clever results of her vaunted reforms and skilful economies. With an increasing revenue and a decreasing burthen, national pauperism daily enlarges its ranks-strong men, willing to work, ask for labour and cannot get it: they either turn felons for the felon's fare, or moodily pine away in the wasting horrors of starvation. Mothers destroy their offspring; children forsake their parents; parents their children-and every day's record of passing events brings to our knowledge some fresh and frightful development of suffering poverty. Is there not, in all this, strong reason for lifting up the ery of a sorrowing and burthened creation to heaven for the speedy coming of Him who alone can help? Is there not strong reason why the Church should bear the condition of her poorer children specially on her heart, and spend her strength and energy in ministering to their wants-in aiding and comforting them in their extremity?

To the clergy belongs the formation of the rural mind. To the unseen and quiet agency of their office, the rustic population almost entirely owes whatever it possesses of right notions and patient spirit; the residence of so many men of education, and oftentimes of some fortune, in the retired districts of the country, must, of itself, exercise a beneficial influence on those around; but when it is considered that the most of these, as may be safely inferred, live amongst their neighbours, exercising the duties of a stronger bond than exists between the intelligent

* In the county jail of Aylesbury, for instance, the inmates were, not long ago, one-fourth from poor-houses; in that of Devizes, one-fifth,

and wealthy layman and the poorer people, it will not be surprising, that amidst so much privation in the agricultural classes there should have been so little disturbance and violation of the laws. Great revolutions have taken place in the nature of property through the introduction of railways, and such political changes, as having been thought necessary, have been adopted. The immediate effect of such revolutions, whatever may be their ultimate results, is always a great amount of suffering somewhere; and monetary changes, though the manufacturing interests may be the first to feel them, always press most lastingly and heavily on the land. The agricultural labourer has felt, and still is feeling, the full force of that protection which it has been the policy of late governments to give the manufacturer at the expense of the landlord-of that policy he is at once the victim and the exponent. The farmer, uncertain of the working of the new tariff, has hitherto employed no more labour than has been absolutely necessary. The usual amount of labour required at the period of harvesting has been greatly diminished, owing to the peculiar and unseasonable circumstances in which the harvesting has been carried on; and the rate of wages, even where work has been in some demand, has been diminished, contrary to the ministerial promise and assertion, in a ratio much more disadvantageous to the labourer than the fallen price of provisions has been beneficial. Add to this, what we have already referred to, the stern provisions of that law which meets the indigent in his hour of need; and none can doubt that the condition of the agricultural labourer in the present day is unquestionably one of great hardship and suffering. Yet, with the exception of the partial and furtive efforts of peasant discontent in Suffolk, rather the index to a general consciousness of wrong, than the true expression of the revengeful dispositions of a class, the rural population has hitherto borne its hard lot in patient endurance. The wonder is, not that there has been any crime, but that there has been so little; and as this class is usually accounted and mourned over as the most ignorant in the kingdom, it cannot be from the knowledge of any of the new fangled theories of social compact, which modern enlightenment exalts as all powerful, that the rural labourer has been kept in quietness, but from religious principle, and a still unbroken respect for the laws, its necessary consequence. The clergyman has hitherto exercised a greater influence over him than any other man. With him has rested hitherto the formation of his principles; and to this, and this alone, must be attributed the fact, that a condition, so fraught with suffering, has been so patiently endured.

How long the influence of the clergy may last in rural disa

tricts is another matter, difficult to decide. The facilities of inter-communication, whatever good may have resulted from them, have done much evil. The town and the country are brought nearer together; the vices of the one are more easily disseminated, whilst, in exchange for the simplicity of the other, there is neither capacity nor place. The construction of the railways has brought into many a peaceful hamlet a lawless population of labourers, notorious for their hardihood, their fierce profligacy, and owning no other restraint than that of a self-imposed combination; and wherever they have gone the traces of the contamination they bring may be observed: whilst the better educated, but more subtle emissary of politically hurtful or blasphemous systems, has found his way to the village ale-house, and converted the honest debaters upon the merits of fat cattle and neighbour news into sour sectaries and discon tented politicians. The strife that is rampant in the town tries its strength in cautious essays in the country parish, and out of the same armoury, from which the fierce artillery that is levelled against the Church in city warfare is furnished, issue the smaller weapons that arm the country skirmisher against his pastor. Still, though the work of pastoral care be more toilsome its necessity is not less, and there yet remains, in every rural parish, many who look for it as their spiritual right, and are thankful for its exercise.

He has but little estimation of the nature and value of his office, who thinks it fulfilled when the prayers are read and the sermon is preached. As a priest in the house of God he worships with his flock, and as a teacher he instructs them; but it is in the daily intercourse of life, by the side of the sick, in holy converse with the aged, in the diligent superintendence of the school, that the chief ministrations of the pastor, as the feeder and comforter of God's ignorant or suffering children, must be carried on; and though in country parishes there are increasing hindrances to the proper exercise of this ministration, yet we must all confess, with shame, that there are facilities and opportunities which too many of us do not use as we ought. Our own pleasures, though innocent in themselves-our own pursuits, our own tastes-too often interfere with them, and we not unfrequently waste the time and strength which should be employed in effecting what we can, in fruitless lamentation over that which we cannot. There is no lack of skilful dissection of the causes and nature of the evils that afflict the Church-there is no lack of poetic sentiment-no want of beautiful imagery wherewith to deck the bier of truths and customs departed from the reverence of men; but, with all this, there is too great a