Territorial Titles and Canon Law.

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ritorial titles was introduced amongst us for two reasons-1st, to be a public proclamation to the world, that England was now again subjected to the Roman obedience, like Italy and Spain, and that the Pope was entitled to parcel out its counties to be " verned" by his creatures; and, 2d, to pave the way for the full application of the canon law to Great Britain. It is the undeniable right, and the imperative duty of the Sovereign and the nation of Great Britain, to throw back this insult, to contradict this falsehood, to trample upon this claim, by prohibiting and annihilating the act by which the insult is conveyed, the falsehood is asserted, and the claim is advanced. The substance of the canon law is thus given by Luther in his defence of his conduct in publicly burning it, Papa est Deus in terris, superior omnibus, celestibus et terrenis, spiritualibus et secularibus. Et omnia papae sunt propria, cui nemo audeat dicere, quid facis?—(Tom. ii. p. 334.) It is certainly nothing more than a necessary act of self-defence -a just protection to Romanists as well as Protestants-to resist a measure avowedly directed to the introduction of such a systein as this.

There is no difficulty, then, in point of principle, in the British nation directly repelling the Papal Aggression, by expelling the Cardinal and prohibiting the assumption of territorial titles. The only consideration that can be plausibly advanced against this mode of action, is that it would elevate into importance a man and an act, which might be, with equal safety and more dignity, disregarded. But the man, insignificant as he may be individually, is the representative and the agent of the Papacy in this country, and is himself the main author and cause of the insulting aggression; and the act, however paltry in itself, is one by which the Pope assumes and exercises jurisdiction over Great Britain, as if it were a country wholly subject to his control. Upon these grounds, it becomes not only warrantable but imperative, to bring to bear upon this man and this act, all those powerful considerations which demonstrate, that it is the present duty of the Sovereign and the Parliament of Great Britain, to watch the movements of the Papacy with a jealous eye, to treat Popery in all its manifestations as a formidable and implacable foe, and to take care, as they shall answer to God and the nation, that nothing, lawful in itself and competent to them, shall be left undone, which may be fitted to check the progress of Popery, and to prevent its prevalence in the British Empire. Some of these considerations are very vigorously and eloquently brought out in Mr. Warren's pamphlet, "The Queen or the Pope," the title of which we have prefixed to this Article, and which we commend to the perusal of our readers.

We have thus sketched a very brief and imperfect outline

of a train of thought, which, if followed out and filled up, would, we are persuaded, afford a satisfactory vindication of the strong feeling which the recent Papal Aggression has called forth in the minds of Protestants, and of the measures which have been taken to repel it, while it would also shew that much more remains to be done than has yet been attempted. We regret that Lord John Russell's Bill against the Papal Aggression, did not contain a provision for the expulsion of the Cardinal, and that it has been emasculated of much of its original strength; but we would regard the rejection of it as a "heavy blow and a great discouragement to Protestantism," and we would rejoice to see it become the law of the land. There is, however, some additional legislation, bearing upon topics which this Papal Aggression suggests, especially nunneries and deathbed bequests, which is perfectly consistent with the principles of toleration, and can be fully vindicated, upon the ground of the obligation of Government to secure complete protection to all its subjects in their persons and their property. As legislation upon these points, and with this view, is thoroughly justifiable in itself, and is imperiously demanded by existing circumstances, by events which have most seasonably come to the knowledge of the community, we trust that the composition of the next House of Commons, will be such as to render the Prime Minister independent of the minions of Popish Continental despots like Lord Aberdeen and Sir James Graham, of the sordid "shopkeepers" of the Manchester school, and of the ferocious mouthpieces of the Irish priesthood, and enable him to prosecute with firmness the noble Protestant course, on which we would fain hope that he has entered.

We would return for a moment, in conclusion, to the Church of England. Whenever we think of the mass of confusion and inconsistency, not to speak of what we reckon error, to be found in the constitution of that Church, we feel grateful that we have no connexion with it-that we have no responsibility for the defence of its position or the management of its affairs, and that we are not called upon, unless we choose, to give advice to those who have. The course which should be adopted in existing circumstances by an out-and-out Church of England man, would be a very odd one, a course which it would be very difficult to trace in theory, and still more difficult to realize in practice. Upon Scriptural and Christian grounds, our general sympathies are all with the Evangelical party in that Church, and we are very willing to make ample allowance for the practical difficulties of their position. But we must say, that having the two primates at their head, they might surely now do something vigorous and decided, if they are not totally unfit for the emergency into which they have been thrown. We have been grieved by the indications which the Evangelical

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clergy have been giving of late, that they place much reliance upon the exercise of the patronage and of the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Crown. They seem to be thus converting what is only a lucky accident, or rather a temporary providence, bringing good out of evil, into a principle of general and permanent application. The appointment of bishops by the Crown, and the final determination of Ecclesiastical causes by a civil tribunal, are utterly indefensible in principle, and never can commend themselves to the understandings and consciences of thoughtful and earnest men who know what a Church of Christ is; and the patronage of the Crown, and the decisions of its tribunals, may very soon be turned against them. The two main causes that fostered and strengthened Tractarianism, and led ultimately to Popery, in the Church of England, were the very equivocal Protestantism of the Liturgy and the Canons, and the dissatisfaction legitimately called forth by the patronage and the supremacy exercised by the Crown. It was the latter of these influences that was the immediate cause of the original Tractarian movement, and this has been the turning point of many of the recent secessions to the Church of Rome. In so far as these men merely deny the lawfulness of the controlling influence and jurisdiction of the Crown and the civil power, the Evangelical clergy are utterly unable to meet them on the ground of Scripture, whatever they may have to allege from the constitution of the Church of England. And if these really were the two main causes that led first to Tractarianism and then to Popery, surely the Church is bound to endeavour to apply corresponding remedies and preventives: 1st, by taking advantage of the present strong Protestant feeling for thoroughly clearing her Liturgy and Canons of the Popish element that corrupts them; and then, 2d, by trying at least to cast off the bondage of civil control, and to stand forth in the liberty and independence of a Church of Christ.*

* In speaking of the office of Cardinal, p. 285, we omitted to mention that during vacancies in the Papal chair, and these have sometimes lasted for a considerable period, the execution of the ordinary functions of the Pope, not only as the head of the Church, but also as the sovereign of the Roman States, is constitutionally vested in the Sacred College, as it is called, so that if the Pope were to die tomorrow, Cardinal Wiseman would at once, and ipso facto, be involved in the responsibilities and obligations of the actual possession, in conjunction with others, of the sovereignty of an independent foreign kingdom, a consideration which brings out very strikingly the incompatibility of the office he holds, with the discharge of the duties, or the enjoyment of the privileges, of a British subject.

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THE

NORTH BRITISH REVIEW.

AUGUST, 1851.

ART. I.-1. Principes de la Philosophie de l'Histoire, traduits de la Scienza Nuova de J. B. Vico. Par JULES MICHELET. 2 tom. Paris, 1835.

2. Système de Philosophie Positive. Par AUGUSTE COMTE. 6 tom. Paris, 1830-42.

3. A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. By JOHN STUART MILL. Book VI. "On the Logic of the Moral Sciences." 3d Edition. London, 1851.

4. The Characteristics of the Present Age. By JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE. Translated by WILLIAM SMITH. London,

1849.

5. Social Statics; or, The Conditions essential to Human Happiness specified, and the first of them developed. By HERBERT SPENCER. London, 1851.

6. Lectures on Political Economy. By FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN, formerly Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. London, 1851.

AMONG the many lucid and valuable conceptions that have been given to the world by the French thinker Auguste Comte, whose name, we believe, is now tolerably familiar to most British readers, one of the most serviceable is his classification of the Sciences. Taking for his principle of arrangement that of proceeding from the more general and simple onward to the more special and complex, M. Comte classifies the sciences or possible departments of human knowledge in the following order:-Mathematics; Astronomy; General Physics; Chemistry; Biology, or the science of individual organized beings, (subdivided into the two branches of Vegetable and Animal Physiology, of the latter of which the whole science of the human mind constitutes, in M. Comte's scheme, only a prolongation or ap

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