glorious, and what will secure us best from the necessity for such stern work in future?" Nor can any one wonder that in such a moment of excitement the German press, never over wise in a political sense, always a little tending to light-headedness and an effervescent enthusiasm, should cry aloud for most drastic measures for the humiliation of France. The real matter for consideration is, what will the rulers and the statesmen say in this probable emergency ? Will they stimulate or will they restrain the passionate popular ambition? Will they tell the Germans that their great self-sacrifices will make them twice as strong if they add to the heroism of battle the heroism of self-restraint ?-that a united Germany which has achieved such deeds will be far more invulnerable and terrible in future, if it does not weaken itself with the self-imposed task of subjugating a hostile people? Or will the great leaders of Germany, the princes and the statesmen who have prepared this great victory, stimulate instead of restraining its ambition, as Count Bismarck admitted that he would willingly have stimulated rather than restrained the ambition of Prussia for the acquisition of the Danish Duchies? It is only fair to the great Prussian statesman to admit that it was he who moderated the demands of Prussia after the defeat of Austria in 1866, and who fought not for, but against the exalté ideas even of his royal master. By his own admission, however, his motives for moderation then were the hostile attitude of France, which he did not desire to irritate into immediate action, and the pestilence which threatened his victorious army in a Bohemian or Hungarian August; and there was, too, in that case, perhaps, no great room for higher motives. At least, the annexations in dispute were matters rather of policy than principle-annexations which, had they taken place, would not have injured any national feeling, though they would have excited the fiercest external jealousies. Now, however, that Count Bismarck has met and conquered the great foe whom then he most feared, there is no equally good guarantee for his moderation. In his treatment of the Schleswig question he openly professed that he took far more account of the effect on the position of Germany as a great European State, than of the grievances which gave him the excuse or opportunity for war, the grievances of the Germans in the Duchies. Of that matter he seems to have taken no

very different view on his side from that of Denmark on hers. She asked, what policy will most add to the strength of Denmark? He asked, what policy will most add to the strength of Prussia? And all the rest was pretext. So, we suspect, it will be again. The great German statesman will not ask himself many questions about the justice of annexing French provinces to Germany, when he has the power. But he will ask himself many questions as to its expediency; as to

its effect on the France of the future; as to its effect on the neutral States of Europe; as to its effect on the development of German unity; as to its effect on the individualism of German liberty. As he said after Sadowa, "One must remember that one has neighbours, and not look only at the little speck of country under one's nose.' At the same time the "neighbours" are likely to be much less formidable now than then. Bismarck will not be insensible to the too evidently rising cry for annexations in Germany. He will not be insensible to the sobering effect of insubordinate and hostile dependencies on the democratic spirit—both as requiring a more efficient military organization to keep them down, and as involving the logical sacrifice of many of the theoretic principles of liberty on the part of those who would justify the conquest. He will not feel the moral grandeur of dealing out to France a measure of popular justice so infinitely larger than she had intended to deal out to Prussia. He will be guided by large views of policy, and by the almost physical instinct of Teutonism which is so deep in him. Napoleonism, even in its less unwholesome Bismarckian form, can ill resist the glitter of a policy of annexation.

Both for the sake of the great nation which, after twenty years of petting and degradation, is suffering as much for the sins of her ruler as for her own, and for the sake of the still greater nation which is at one and the same time emerging into political unity, and assuming the place of honour in Europe, I cannot but wish that it were a less Napoleonic politician who has struck Napoleon from his place, and earned the right to determine in a great degree the destinies of Europe. The signal defeat of the wicked and ostentatious French invasion of Germany has been a great act. "The proud are robbed; they have slept their sleep; and all the men whose hands were mighty have found nothing." I wish I could see in the statesman who has effected this, the temper "to restrain the spirit of princes," and rebuke the fierceness of that patriotism to whose courage he has not appealed in vain.

R. H. HUTTON.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE DISESTABLISHED

CHURCH OF IRELAND.

HE constitution of the disestablished "Church of Ireland "*

THE

should possess all the interest which can be derived from fellowfeeling in the hearts of English Churchmen. The same measure which has been meted out to Ireland will doubtless be extended to England also in due time: the Irish Church Act, the most important passed since the Revolution, will not fail of its logical consequences. A high dignitary of the English Church, whilst expressing gratitude for health partially restored, is said to have wished that the boon were so far completed that he might survive to see how the sistercommunion, liberated from State control, would deal with the Prayer-Book. That the Book of Common Prayer must be revised and remodelled in many points is clear to all who do not shut their eyes to avoid perceiving. Its illogical comprehensiveness renders it unfit for a communion which will have to depend on internal coherence, instead of on external pressure: its very excellences, as the expression of the wider national, must be considered defects when it comes to be the expression of the narrower sectarian, mind. Let no one be offended at this statement. The Church of the nation must narrow itself and its standards when it ceases to be that, and So called by Act of Parliament.

becomes the choice of only part of the nation. The Articles, too, will hardly be retained in their present shape, for the sake of a protest against Romish error, so loosely and inaccurately worded that it utterly fails in excluding Romish errors from the English Church. The compromise between mediæval divinity and modern thought which characterises our formularies, will cease to satisfy when external pressure is withdrawn; and the example of the Irish Church must be useful, whether as a guide or as a warning, to the English Church in the approaching revolution. The constitution, too, of a Church not gradually formed by inward growth, but suddenly called into existence by the wrench which separated the State from a definite profession of Christianity; the terms of membership, no longer coinciding with the extent of the nation; the form of government, nominally episcopal in times past, and hardly likely to be more than nominally episcopal in times to come; in a word, the whole of doctrine, discipline, and worship, besides the vital question of maintenance, all are brought up for resettlement in Ireland, and the solution there arrived at will be fraught with instruction or with warning.

For these or similar reasons the conductors of this journal have thought that a paper, giving a brief account of what has actually been done up to this date in Ireland to reorganize the Church might not be without use and interest; and for giving such an account the present writer is so far qualified as membership of the different bodies which have been at work on the constitution of the Irish Church the Provincial Synods of last autumn, the Organizing Committee, and the General Convention-can make him.

It might have seemed that no time should have been lost, after the passing of the Irish Church Act in July, 1869, in taking the steps necessitated by that measure. Eighteen months were no long period in which to re-create a Church, to give internal cohesion to its disunited elements, to settle its constitution, and to provide for its wants. But the authorities of the Church seemed paralyzed by the blow. More than six weeks elapsed before anything was done; and what was then done was done in a way the least adapted to the times. Every Churchman in England is alive to the demerits of Convocation, to its inadequate representation of the working clergy, and its absolute exclusion of the laity. So long as the English Church is established, the latter defect is supplied after a fashion by Parliament; but in Ireland the disruption from the State, which was virtually consummated, made this defect intolerable. The Irish Convocation had not even the merit of antiquity; it originated in the wish of the pedantic James I. to model the Irish Church upon the fashion of the English. Yet this

was the engine with which the two Irish archbishops deemed it best to begin the work. The two Provincial Synods of Armagh and Dublin, answering to the Convocations of York and Canterbury, met on the summons of the archbishops in the chapter-room of St. Patrick's, Dublin, on the 14th of September, 1869. Clumsy and inefficient as was this assembly, its first act ought to have dispelled all laic jealousy. A preamble moved by Dr. Lee, Archdeacon of Dublin, in which he attempted to limit considerations of doctrine and discipline to the clergy in the future Synods of the Church, was negatived without a division; indeed, it was not even taken into consideration. The next step was equally important. All exofficio membership was excluded from the future Synod or Convention. No dean or archdeacon was to sit in it, unless he were elected like any other clergyman; whilst every priest of five years' standing was allowed the franchise, and the proportion to be elected was fixed at one in ten-a proportion too large for convenience.

The proceedings of the Convocation, of which I have specified the chief, were throughout embarrassed by the unclearness of mind of some of its highest dignitaries. Was Convocation simply remodelling itself? or was it providing for something else? Was the future Convention merely an improved Convocation with a lay element admitted into it by favour, or was it something radically different? To the present writer the latter of these alternatives seemed the true one; the authorities evidently tried hard to believe, and to make others believe, the former. Probably their idea was to settle for the laity the terms on which they were to be admitted; to prescribe to them their numbers and the subjects on which they should be allowed a voice and vote. But the great bulk of the assembly thought differently, and declined attempting what they felt to be beyond their powers. The very attempt, however, though that attempt were rather hinted than expressed, left a rankling jealousy in the bosoms of many laymen, which ought to have melted away before the generous determination with which the immense majority of the assembly refused even to entertain any such proposition. The fixing of all matters connected with the laic part of the future Convention was left absolutely to a Lay Conference, to be convened for the purpose of making the requisite arrangements.

But here, again, delay wrought mischief. The Lay Conference might have been at once convened, before the impression produced by the liberality of the clergy had evaporated. Instead of this, six weeks more were allowed to elapse before it met. This Conference was elected as follows: each parish sent up one or more representatives to a Diocesan Conference, and each Diocesan Conference elected a certain number of their body to represent them in the