school-boards are only to be allowed to provide instruction in 'reading, writing, and arithmetic' for the children of parents who are 'unable from poverty' to pay the school fees for their own children. This, of course, settles the principle of the English debate in regard to the 25th clause of the English Act in the wrong way, and at the same time makes it impossible that this class of children, the most necessitous of all, should receive any religious instruction at the public schools. In a word, the spirit and provisions of the Bill, whilst tending, as Dr. Playfair proved in Parliament, to lower the whole style of Scotch education, imply a great advance in the direction of pure secularism; and if these, with many other objectionable provisions of the Bill in regard to teachers and otherwise, are sanctioned in regard to Scotland, it is easy to see that the same principles will soon be applied to England. The most probable conjecture seems to be that the Government, unable to gratify their voluntary and secularist supporters in England at present, by an immediate alteration in the English Act, are meantime seeking to please them by the secularization of the Scotch schools, and thus holding out to them the prospect of gaining all their objects ultimately by persistent agitation.

It may seem strange that any Government should be so infatuated as thus to trifle in any part of the United Kingdom with the most sacred interests of the country. Still more may we wonder that Scotland in particular should be chosen as the field for such a dangerous experiment. No country probably affords a more striking illustration of the benefits of religious knowledge and training in raising men above the disadvantages of a cold and variable climate and of a sterile soil. Is it possible, one may well ask, that the Government can succeed in carrying their secular Education Bill for Scotland under such circumstances? Without presuming to answer this question, the result will depend mainly on the attitude assumed by the English members of the House of Commons and by the House of Lords. From circumstances, into which it is unnecessary to enter, but certainly which do not imply supreme wisdom on the part of former statesmen, the great mass of the Scotch representatives are at present on the side of the Government. We believe that this state of things will not be permanent, although, for reasons which could easily be explained, the reaction in the north may not be so rapid as in England. For one thing Dissent has, since 1843, assumed a far more formidable position in Scotland than in England, and recent schemes for uniting the mass of these Dissenters together, no doubt with a view to political action, have been connected with a remarkable lowering

of

of the tone of some leading men on the subject of religious instruction in the public schools. Nevertheless the great body of the people are, we have reason to know, thoroughly sound on the subject. During last Session of Parliament only about 5000 Scotch people petitioned in favour of the Lord Advocate's Education Bill, whilst nearly 70,000 either petitioned either absolutely against it or for alterations, mostly vital, in their effect. The public feeling in Scotland is increasingly in the same direction now, and this will be still more clearly seen in the petitions during the present Session of Parliament. Meetings have been held in all parts of the country, in which the most strenuous opposition has been offered to the measure. At first many of the people were unwilling to believe that any change so serious as the Bill implies could really be intended; and the partisans of the Government laboured hard to perpetuate this delusion. But in proportion as sound information has been diffused, all doubt as to the true nature and design of the measure has passed away. The duty, moreover, of giving the Bill the most uncompromising opposition seems now to be admitted with unanimity and enthusiasm, by men really in earnest in maintaining the importance of religious teaching and the hereditary glory of Scotland. Still, as we have said already, the result will mainly depend upon the English members of Parliament, as the mass of the Scotch members may still act with Government. The question is one which has very serious imperial as well as local bearings. It involves in its consequences the whole question of the future kind and quality of education in the United Kingdom. These are very serious considerations. We must be blind to all the lessons of the past, and even of the present, if we are prepared for the introduction of a virtually secular system of education into any part of the United Kingdom. Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined,' says the poet. A greater than he has said, 'Train up a child in the way that he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.' Universal Scriptural instruction may truly be called 'The cheap defence of nations,' and the recent experience of France, as of all other nations, proves that men may be skilful in arts and arms, abundant in wealth and in secular knowledge, and yet, with the religious training of the young neglected, they will soon become a prey alike to internal divisions and to outward foes.

One word in conclusion. Sooner or later, and perhaps sooner than many anticipate, the people will have to decide at a general election upon this great question of Religious or Secular Education. We have no fear of the result. The Liberal party are

at

at present irreconcilably divided upon the subject; and if Mr. Gladstone seeks to reunite his disorganized ranks by yielding to the views of his secularist allies, we have no doubt that the country will refuse to ratify his decision. Meanwhile it is our duty to wait patiently, and not seek to gain any temporary triumph or partial success. We cannot too earnestly enforce upon our friends the wise advice which Lord Derby gave in his recent speech at Manchester :

'Let no man on our side of politics be cast down or disheartened because the last general election gave a majority of 100 against the Conservative cause. The question is not what the last general election did, but what the next will do. We are pretty well used, or ought to be, to the ups and downs of political conflict. Why, gentlemen, in 1832, after the Reform Bill, the Conservative party was swept clean and clear out of Parliament. There is no other word to describe their situation at that time; and yet, as you have been reminded to-night, within five years they again presented a compact and powerful Opposition, and within less than ten years from that time of utter prostration and defeat they commanded in the House of Commons a majority of ninety. Never doubt, therefore, that the opportunity will come to you soon or late. That is not the main question. The main question is, when the opportunity comes, we should be prepared to use it wisely. Let there be no haste, no eagerness to snatch at any merely temporary and casual success. And above all, if I may venture to give such a hint, let us take care not to allow ourselves to be made to any extent the tools of the ambition or of the discontent of extreme politicians on the other side. I tell you what I mean. It may very likely be the game of the Radical party to try and turn out the present Ministry if they can, and to put a Conservative Government in its place, that Conservative Government being in a minority, hoping that by so doing they shall be able to reconstruct their own party upon a new platform, pledged to more extreme and more violent measures, and then to have a Cabinet formed of the most thorough-going Radicals. These may be their tactics. But just because it is their game it ought not to be ours.'

ART. IX.-1. The Case of the United States, to be laid before the Tribunal of Arbitration to be convened at Geneva.

2. Case presented on the part of the Government of Her Britannic Majesty to the Tribunal of Arbitration constituted under Art. 1 of the Treaty concluded at Washington on the 8th of May, 1871, between Her Britannic Majesty and the United States of America.

TH

THE American Case, drawn up for the information of the Geneva tribunal, starts with the assumption that, in the Vol. 132.-No. 264.

2 N

course

course of many transactions with Great Britain, the United States have displayed a very moderate and conciliatory spirit; that American rights, which might have been pressed, have often been given up; that the settlement of the boundary of the State of Maine was one example of American moderation, and that the settlement of the Oregon boundary in 1846 was another. It is worth while to quote the passage in which these views are expressed. The Case sets out by declaring that from no people had the people of America a better right to expect a just judgment than from the people of Great Britain, and it goes on to enumerate some considerations in support of this statement:

In 1812 they were forced into war with Great Britain by the claim of that power to impress seamen on the high seas from vessels of the United States. After three years the war ceased, and the claim has never since been practically enforced. In 1818 they met British negotiators more than half way in arranging disputed points about the North American Fisheries. In 1827, having added to their own right of discovery the French and Spanish titles to the Pacific coast, they voluntarily agreed to a joint occupation of a disputed portion of this territory rather than resort to the last arbitrament of nations. In 1838, when a serious rebellion prevailed in Canada, the congress of the United States, at the request of Great Britain, passed an Act authorising the Government to exercise exceptional powers to maintain the national neutrality. In 1842 the Government of the United States met a British envoy in a spirit of conciliation, and adjusted by agreement the disputed boundary between Maine and the British possessions. In 1846 they accepted the proposal of Great Britain, made at their own suggestion, to adopt the 49th parallel as a compromise line between the two Columbias, and to give to Great Britain the whole of Vancouver's Island.'

This passage, in all probability, represents fairly enough the view of Anglo-American diplomacy, popular in the United States. Nevertheless almost every statement thus put forward is untrue, while some convey an idea diametrically the reverse of the truth. Unhappily the years from 1815 to 1850 are the dark ages of politics. Their events are too old to be remembered too fresh to be recorded in history. But for this, the authors of the Case could hardly have been misled by erroneous impressions so far as to venture on the assertions quoted above. As they have thus ventured, however, and as nothing can be more desirable than that the British Nation should at this crisis correctly appreciate the lessons of our past diplomatic relations with America, we propose to invade the obscurity of the last fifty or sixty years and to exhibit the real nature of those half-forgotten transactions, on account of which the United States now claim from us a grateful acknowledgment of their generosity.

It is worth while to notice that even with regard to the war of 1812-into the causes of which it would be beside our present purpose to enter the language of the Case is inaccurate, and the implied charge against this country unfair. The American people were not forced into war' in 1812 by the claim of England to impress seamen on the high seas from vessels of the United States. We claimed the right to search American merchantmen for deserters from the British navy, and never advanced any claim in reference to impressment; and though some British naval officers were overbearing and aggressive, their worst acts were promptly disavowed and made the subject of apologies.*

The Orders in Council, which had originally given rise to the disputes between this country and the Americans, were repealed by us before Congress declared war in 1812; and the United States, in going to war, presented the odd spectacle of a nation attacking another to exhale feelings of anger, the principal justification of which had passed away.

But passing over this episode in our relations with America, we venture to assert that from the treaty of Ghent to the present day all important disputes between the two countries have ended, not only in settlements favourable to the United States, but in the actual surrender by Great Britain of advantages to which she has established sound and equitable claims. Such claims she has several times abandoned, in the hope of securing the friendship of America or for the sake of averting imminent danger of war.

Let us examine first the story of the Maine boundary.† The treaty of Paris of 1783, recognising the independence of the United States, defined a boundary between British and American territory from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains. At that time, it is well to remember, no claim was advanced on behalf of the new republic for any territory west of the Rocky Mountains. The line was appointed to run as follows:

From the north-west angle of Nova Scotia, viz., that angle which is formed by a line drawn due north from the sources of St. Croix River to the highlands; along the said highlands which divide those rivers that empty themselves into the River St. Lawrence, from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean to the north-westernmost head of Connecticut River; thence along the middle of that river to

* It was shown in the Quarterly Review' for July, 1833, that Great Britain never impressed an American, knowing him to be such.

To avoid the repeated quotation of authorities in the text we may refer the reader for all facts in the next few pages to the great debate in the House of Commons on the Ashburton Treaty that took place on the 21st of March, 1843, and to Mr. G. W. Featherstonhaugh's 'Observations upon the Treaty of Washington, signed 9th August, 1842.' Also to an article which appeared in the 'Quarterly Review,' for March, 1843.