ticated genius...... Your account of Disraeli is most interesting; I am afraid he is a charlatan in every sense of the word. He has, however, one quality which I rather admire (perhaps because I have it not myself): faith in the pleasure and profit of distinction, and power and courage to work for it."

These paragraphs also were written in

1865:

"Did you read the debate on Baines's Bill? More especially Lowe's speech? If not you should get it sent to you. Nothing to my mind is more mournful than the homage paid to that speech. It was wrong from beginning to end, and yet has been treated by every one (including Liberals) as unanswerable; for

the reformers could not turn out a single decent 'speech in reply. What do you think of his

statement that the outcome' of the British

Constitution in its present shape, was absolutely without fault? Pretty strong, considering that the British Constitution is now a Delanocracy tempered by evening parties. Plutocracy seems to be the form which our glorious constitution is rapidly assuming. There are some gleams of light in the election of Mill for Westminster, not to mention Hughes and other honest, if not logical men."

We are greatly excited about Jamaica, and

illimitable nonsense is talked about it. It seems to me, at all events, clear that a Governor who stated in his official account that he had no sort of idea what was the cause of the disaffection wasn't the right man for the place. For the rest, the general prejudice and unfairness is more than need have been expected, even from a British public."

"Lord Hobart, who came out to Madras persuaded that the system of taxation, which a few years previously the local Legislature had initiated for the material and moral improvement of the country, presented many harsh features, felt himself bound to take every opportunity of mitigating the evils he feared. Both in this case and in others, where he had formed a strong opinion, his generous and impulsive disposition allowed him no rest; no compromise was possible; more than once, when he had appealed unto Cæsar in vain, he was ready to resign his commission, and was with difficulty dissuaded from doing so.

Those who knew and loved the

author of the Minutes which it is now decided best security for British rule in India is the to publish, as well as all who believe that the confidence of its people in the justice and benevolence of their rulers, will rejoice to find in the papers I have edited abundant evidence that he was strongly animated by those qualities, endearing himself to all classes of the community, who lamented his sudden and untimely death as a general calamity. His colleagues in the Government of Madras 'in sorrowful and affec

tionate remembrance' recorded their appreciation of his laborious life, his warm sympathy for the people, and his zeal for the moral and material progress of the Presidency."

"The Bishop of (see Times to-day) appeals eloquently to his Christian friends to draw the sword and forgive nobody, as becomes their profession. I wish he had to fight himself, and to pay 50 per cent. taxation on an income of 6d. a day, instead of growing a double chin in a comfortable arm-chair!"

The most memorable stage of Lord Hobart's work, as we have said, was the last, and it was, unfortunately, limited to less than three years. He was in the prime of life, and with a mind well informed for the task before him, when, in 1872, he entered on his duties as Governor of Madras. He died at his post, struck down by typhoid fever, in 1875, having achieved great things during the three years, but leaving unaccomplished the far larger measure of good work for India and for England of which these three years had given promise.

The "Letters and Minutes on Indian Subjects," which fill more than half of Lady Hobart's second volume, have had the advantage of careful editing by Mr. Carmichael, whose long experience in Madras has enabled him to preface each document with explanatory matter of great value to the general reader; and to these is added a reprint of the memoir on 'The Salt Tax in Southern India,' which Lady Hobart herself compiled in 1878, and which tells the story of one, and not the least important, of her husband's efforts to promote good government in Madras. This section is especially

6

"The sight which met our eyes on our arrival here,' he writes to Lord Northbrook, was very distressing-the shore strewn with wrecks, and the pier torn in pieces. It is surely discreditable to us in the eyes of the world that even in calm weather there is no easy or safe approach to the capital of this Presidency. The "Madras Roads," which is the name given to about the most exposed part of a stormy coast, are a by-word and jest both to Englishmen and foreigners.'

The improvement that Lord Hobart obtained in this matter was followed by many others of a different sort, though, as Mr. Carmichael says, only a small part of what he wanted to do was sanctioned. All the reforms which he effected, or tried to effect, were prompted by the wise and unalterable conviction with which he started, that, if India is to be governed at all by England, it must be governed for the benefit of the people of India, and that the benefit of the people of England must be, at most, only a subsidiary consideration. With this view he insisted over and over again on taxation of the natives being, in the first place, as small as possible; in the second place, as conducive as possible to the welfare of the natives; and, in the third place, as much as possible within the natives' own control. Though there was close friendship between him and Lord Northbrook, who at that time was Governor-General of India, he often differed from his chief, and it hardly need be added that he differed yet more from his colleagues. One among several grounds of quarrel was his proposal in 1873 to devote a large part of the amount raised for roadmaking in the Madras presidency to the advancement of elementary education, and out

of that grew a broader quarrel as to the expediency of retaining or augmenting the in come tax. His views on this subject are thus summed up in a letter to Lord Northbrook:

"Your proposal to retain the Income Ta for the purpose of reducing local taxation i tempting, for it is a proposal to relieve the poo at the expense of the rich. Nevertheless, I an still of opinion that if your surplus is no mor than sufficient to deal with the Income Tax, the best course is to get rid of it once for all. Th amount of relief which would thus be given to the poorer classes would (I think) be hardly worth the extreme unpopularity which would attend the retention of the tax, not only a regards the whole European community, but also a large and influential native class, and the injustice, oppression, and demoralization conse quent on the utter antagonism of the tax to the habits and circumstances of this country. Moreover, it is not altogether correct to describe the proposal as one for the relief of the poor at the expense of the rich. The Income Tax is a source themselves, because it is a comparatively new of discontent and dread among the poorer classes downwards; and because it confirms the idea of tax; because it may at any time be extended the native mind that there is no end to the number of our taxes. The complete abolition of any one tax, be what it may, is, in this sense, in itself an advantage. The Income Tax once swept away, and all cause for reasonable complaint being thus removed from the upper stratum of society, the ground would be all the clearer and firmer for reducing the burdens upon the lower. The great objection to this, and the strongest argument in favour of your retention alternative, is that your Budget would thus afford relief to one class exclusively, and that the class which least requires it. It would have been (as appears to me) in the highest degree desirable to combine with the abolition of the Income Tax some large and easily intelligible measure of fiscal concession to the poorer classes; and I thought that you had accordingly determined to reduce the salt duty (except in Bengal) to two rupees-a measure which appeared possible because (all things considered) it would have involved no loss of revenue. Í infer from your letter that you have now abandoned that idea, and the abolition of the Income Tax becomes, therefore, more questionable. But on the whole, and for the reasons which I have given, I would still abolish it."

Lord Hobart's strong objections to the salt tax, on grounds of philanthropy as well as political expediency, are worth reading. Here is one of his earliest letters to Lord Northbrook on the subject :

chapters at the end of the various periods into which the history naturally falls."

He has faithfully and successfully carried out this programme, and certainly additional clearness of conception is gained by treating the social side of our history in chapters separate from those that treat of other topics. The mutual action and reaction by which, for instance, consti

tutional and economic events or institutions

affect each other are, of course, evident to any student of history, and neither department can be fully understood without the other; but the connexion can be pointed out as occasion arises, and the historical chain of cause and effect can be more accurately traced when it is not interrupted by the insertion of extraneous matter. We can only wish that in all historical works this principle were more fully observed, for what is applicable to the social side is equally applicable to other sides of a nation's history. We do not know any other small work on English history in which so much attention has been devoted to the growth and changes of the English language as in the volume Mr. Powell takes care to distinguish between the different dialects of North, South, and Middle England, and illustrates

before us.

the differences between them as well as the growth from one period to another by extracts from representative works of early English literature. The sources of these extracts are mentioned in the text, but it is to be regretted that Mr. Powell gives no references to indicate whence he has taken the other quotations, not linguistic, but historical, which he often introduces with such

effect.

The development of learning and education, particularly at the University of Oxford -it is rather characteristic, by the way, that the existence of another university at Cambridge is completely ignored-comes in for its share of attention. Early art, especially architecture, does not pass unnoticed; the characteristics of the Norman and other styles are noted, and the most prominent examples mentioned. Trade and industry, wages and prices, dress and manners, are all laid under contribution to complete the picture of English life in the Middle Ages, and with admirable results. That the author has written with the contemporary authorities before him, as he says in his preface, is evident throughout the volume. The effect of this appears in the sense of originality, of first-hand treatment, which the most cursory examination affords, as well as in the minuteness of detail and accuracy of statement-as, for instance, when, instead of saying vaguely that, on the death of John, William the Marshal was made protector or regent, he states that his title was "Warden of the King and the Kingdom"; or when the reader is reminded that the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was popularly known as "Hurling-tide." Of more importance than such details are the pregnant remarks of a general nature which are not infrequent in Mr. Powell's summaries, as when he says of

Richard III. :

:

"In his plan of governing by men such as Catesby and Lovel, whom he could put up and set down as he liked, in his determination to quell the turbulence of his nobles by strict laws ......in the plans of finance by which he strove to lighten the burdens of the merchant, yeoman,

and artisan, he improved upon his brother's policy, and laid down the lines upon which the Tudors ruled England for six-score years to the people's liking and their own good fortune." This estimate of Richard's policy is at once original and true.

Small mistakes there doubtless are here and there-they are inevitable in a work of this kind; but those that have struck us are so few and generally so unimportant that it is scarcely worth while to notice them. An Oxford man may be excused for thinking that the famous Stourbridge Fair (p. 171) was held at a place called Stourbridge, instead of on the common so called near Cambridge, where it is held in sadly diminished proportions to this day. Here and there in Mr. Powell's remarks on constitutional history there are slips of more importance. The tabular analysis of the medieval constitution, given on pp. 176-9, is excellent for clearness and compression, but it is strange to find the three houses of Convocation, Lords, and Commons put down as the "Three Estates of the Realm.” clergy were an "estate" in France, but in England Convocation was never, so far as we are aware, reckoned as such, and cer

The

tainly never exercised like powers with the "estates" properly so called. Again, it is quite wrong to say, as Mr. Powell says (p. 200), that in 1297 "it was agreed that the king. . . . should levy no kind of tax or duty or tallage save by consent of Parliament." What was agreed was that the king should raise no extraordinary aids, tasks, or prises; but his right to the usual aids and customs was expressly reserved, and nothing whatever was said in the authoritative settlement about tallage. We may hope to see these and a few similar errors corrected in a second edition. On the other hand, there is an excellent remark on p. 160:

66 The great struggle of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in England was not the old one, whether the king was to rule absolutely, but whether the Council, ministers, and officers were to be appointed by the Crown or by

Parliament."

Attention should be drawn to the maps of England and France at different periods, which seem to be as clear as maps can well be without colours, and to the tables and pedigrees, which are abundant and indispensable. Mr. Powell's translations of the old French or Latin poems introduced into the text are exact and vigorous. What can be better, for instance, than the following ?—

Filii nobilium, dum sunt juniores,
Mittuntur in Franciam fieri doctores;

which is Englished thus:

The Complete Story of the Transvaal, from
"Great Trek" to the Convention of Lond
By John Nixon, Author of Among
Boers.' (Sampson Low & Co.)
Our South African Empire. By Willi
Greswell, M.A., F.R.C.I. (Chapman
Hall.)

THE publication of another work on t Transvaal may, we suppose, be regarded proof of the continued interest of the pub in the affairs of that country; at any rate, shows that South Africa has not yet ceas

to be attractive to writers on colonial su jects, and that in the circumstances atten ing the annexation and retrocession of th Transvaal they have apparently found a inexhaustible theme. The recent proceed ings of Sir Charles Warren in Bechuana land, and especially the interesting visits h Khame, have again compelled some amour has paid to the great chiefs Secheli an of public attention to our relations with th Boers; and Mr. Nixon's work is chief valuable for the hints it may afford a to the best means of regulating our inter course with a people who on the west a well as the east and the south seem des

tined to be our near neighbours. He ha some special qualifications for his task. H has an intimate personal acquaintance with the Transvaal, whither he went in search o health. He accompanied Sir Owen Lanyon to Bechuanaland when that officer settled the boundary between the Transvaal and Secheli's country. He resided in Pretori during the siege, and served in the com Committee he attended before the Royal missariat. As a member of the Loyalists Commissioners at Newcastle when they were engaged in drawing up the convention with the Boers; and he was one of the deputation which the loyalists sent to England to support their views. These are the grounds upon which Mr. Nixon claims to speak with some degree of authority on the course of the blame which, in his opinion, attaches to events in the Transvaal, and to apportion individual statesmen for the blunders they have committed in their dealings with the Boers.

historical sketch of the Transvaal Boers as Mr. Nixon opens his work with a brief a nation, and then gives a detailed account of the border wars-with the attendan civil discord and bankruptcy-which led to the taking over of the Transvaal by Si narrative he confirms all that has been sais Theophilus Shepstone in 1877. In this by previous writers concerning the wan of common justice exhibited by the Boer wherever native rights are concerned. H

says:

"A glance at the successive maps of the Transvaal is instructive with regard to the relations between the Boers and other native chiefs [he has been speaking of the raid upon the Bapedis]. Each map shows a progressive The maps overlapping of the preceding one. illustrate how, little by little, the boundaries were extended, and by force, fraud, or fair means, the millions of natives pressing round the borders were compelled or induced to yield up their land to make sheep-farms for the thirty five or forty thousand Boers of the Transvaal who found a country as big as France too smal for them.”

Mr. Nixon repeats the old story of th hostility of the Boers to English missionaries

(

led to the destruction of five mission stations and to many other acts of violence and brutality. These persecutions were provoked by the courage with which the ssionaries protested against the capture and enslavement of native children by the Dutch commandos. Mr. Nixon gives painful details of similar acts, some of which Lave occurred at a comparatively recent period, the practice of the Boers being to fake raids upon the native villages, to kill the men, and to carry off the women and children into captivity. His personal observations in Bechuanaland enable him to give Taluable testimony as to the industry and parative civilization of the natives in that region. His views on this subject are fally confirmed by the recent experiences of Sir Charles Warren and Mr. G. BadenPowell in Northern Bechuanaland. They found there a people much given to agriculture, who cultivate extensive plantations of maize and millet, raise large quantities of vegetables, and have also estabshed an excellent system of irrigation. They also found that many of the same people were well versed in the manufacture of cotton and other goods, and quite disposed of cotton and other goods, and quite disposed to encourage the settlement in the country of industrious white men, by setting apart for their use free grants of land. It is a singular fact that in the heart of the African wilderness the Queen's representative was received with as much loyalty and enthusiasm as if he were visiting a British colony.

This opens up a new phase of an interesting question. Mr. Nixon, however, deals mainly with the past, and gives a detailed account of the events which preceded the annexation of the Transvaal. He thinks that if the Dutch had received a constitution

apart from these cases, the Boers, as a race, are unready to pay money, and they resented the pressure brought to bear upon their pockets by an unpopular administration in which they were entirely unrepresented."

like that of the Cape Colony, and if steps had at once been taken to provide the country with the means of railway communication, the British Government might, perhaps, have obtained the support of the people. But Sir Theophilus Shepstone offended them by introducing officials from Natal, and Sir Owen Lanyon's military rule

was still less calculated to exercise a conlatory influence. Mr. Nixon says that Sir T. Shepstone was personally popular because he could speak the Boer patois and Tas affable to all who came to Government House; and he thinks that if Sir Theophilus

Strange to say, Mr. Nixon's enumeration of the grievances of the Boers does not suggest any doubt in his mind as to the wisdom of proceeding to extremities with them. On the contrary, he is never weary of denouncing every act connected with the retrocession of the Transvaal, and he would, apparently, have been willing to hold it as a conquered province.

war.

The most important of Mr. Nixon's personal recollections are associated with the siege of Pretoria. He returned to that place from Bechuanaland in December, 1880, just before the mass meeting of the Boers at Paarde Kraal was held, and he gives a lively idea of the state of public excitement which existed there at a moment when it was yet uncertain whether there would be It will be remembered that Dr. W. H. Russell, in several published letters, seriously impeached the discipline of the troops stationed in the Transvaal, and that the military authorities, when called upon for an explanation, indignantly contradicted his charges. Mr. Nixon, however, defends the accuracy of the special correspondent. He says that at Pretoria there were numerous complaints about the drunkenness and bad behaviour of the troops," and that he heard similar accusations at Heidelberg, adding:

46

"Official denials were made, but I saw several people who had been eye-witnesses of the riots, and one or two who had been sufferers, and I Russell's statements." have no reason to doubt the correctness of Mr.

It was on December 18th, 1880, that the reached Pretoria. It was soon decided by news of the proclamation of the republic Major Le Mesurier that the town itself could straggling. He therefore directed that two not be fortified as it was too long and laagers should be formed, one at the neighbouring camp, and the other by joining the gaol and the Roman Catholic convent on

rising ground south of the town. The women and children were at first "packed like herrings" into the convent, where the

fort of the disconsolate refugees. Eventually they were lodged in the camp, and the convent was handed over to the volunteers.

nuns did their best to minister to the com

most weevily biscuits were picked out for his special delectation; and the volunteers were highly delighted when they saw the gruesome looks with which the Commander-in-Chief regarded the fare set before him.”

The military authorities had caused a rumour to go forth that some of the buildings and roads were" dynamited," and this deterred the Boers from entering the town, which, as a matter of fact, was not "dynamited" at all. As time went on permission to enter the town was more frequently granted than it had been at first, and in February the schools were reopened for two or three hours a day. At the camp an openair theatre offered some recreation, the officers played polo, and cricket matches

were held. Short services were celebrated on Sundays, but the bishop failed to draw congregations, because he preached a scolding sermon against the men who had neglected to bring their Prayer Books with them to the laager. The Wesleyan minister, on the other hand, was much liked, because he joined in the hard work of the camp and was very kind to the sick and wounded. It would seem that in a siege when men have time to look round them there are few things about which they are more sensitive than the demeanour and conduct of the clergy.

Mr. Nixon gives a tolerably complete epitome of the operations of the British troops in the Transvaal, not sparing the reader Lang's Nek and Majuba Hill. He adds nothing to our stock of information concerning Sir George Colley's rash and disastrous tactics, which astonished the Boers quite as much as they perplexed the colonists. The Boers gained their victories not by bravery or dash, but by their skill as marksmen. Mr. Nixon gives an illustration of what they did at Potchefstroom :

:

to draw the fire of the enemy by holding up a

"It was a favourite amusement of the soldiers

helmet on top of a rifle, and it would at once be hit. The Boers, as everywhere in the Transvaal, shot splendidly, and during the daytime it was certain death to show any part of the body above the parapet."

The least satisfactory part of Mr. Nixon's be called the politics of the Transvaal queswork is that in which he discusses what may tion. He writes like an intemperate partisan two sides to the controversy, and who, in his who is incapable of seeing that there are anxiety to fasten blame upon individuals,

sere

a constitution, instead of being obliged, by the difficulties which existed with Cetywayo and Sekukuni, to spend so much of his time the frontier, the dislike of the Boers to xation might have died out. But this speculation. The Boers, it would see do not readily submit to the ordinary restraints of government, and in particular regard taxation as an intolerable evil. It * important to remember that the actual break of hostilities arose from the presare put upon certain Boers who refused to

pay their taxes.

Nixon describes how

66

a Judge of the High Court became an issuer

of rations; a Wesleyan minister a sanitary Inspector; myself an Acting- Deputy - Assistant

Quartermaster General; a leading advocate, chief biltong maker, i. e., maker of dried meat for the military, and so on."

experienced. It was the wet season, and The usual discomforts of a siege were those who lived in the tents suffered great inconvenience from the thunder-storms. The quality of the proprevalence of volunteers were compelled to fall back upon biscuits which had passed through both the Zulu and the Sekukuni campaigns :—

66

They swarmed with weevils; and the only way of consuming them was by crushing them eating the remainder. On one occasion, Col. into pieces, picking out the weevils, and then Bellairs came to dine at our mess. Some of the

action was influenced by circumstances either beyond their control or for which

they were only partially responsible. Nor are his facts always trustworthy. A glaring example of inaccuracy may be found in his

statement that before the Zulu war broke out "it was well known that Cetywayo was meditating an invasion of the colony of Natal." He makes this assertion without vouchsafing a single scrap of evidence in fore, reasonable to assume that he is acsupport of it. His book shows that he is familiar with the Blue-books. It is, therequainted with the contents of Sir Henry Bulwer's despatch on the causes of the war,

dated March 10th, 1880 (C. 2584, pp. 196The Lieutenant-Governor there reviews all the circumstances which preceded 207). the outbreak of hostilities, but his despatch does not contain a single word which justifies even the suggestion that Cety wayo at

any time meditated an invasion of Natal. On the contrary, Sir Henry Bulwer declares that "for over thirty years the colony grew up side by side with the Zulu people without a single breach of the peace, and without, it may be said, any serious question arising between them "; and, in fact, he shows that the idea of war originated in a policy for which neither the Zulus nor the colonists were responsible. This is not the place to pursue the subject further, but in leaving Mr. Nixon we may remark that, although his work contains some interesting information, it is essentially a political pamphlet, and that consequently the history of the Transvaal has yet to be written.

Mr. Greswell's work treats of a great variety of subjects connected with South Africa, but in a very discursive manner. It is manifestly the production of an educated. colonist, who, although occasionally able to take a dispassionate view of the situation, yet on the whole deals with history in the spirit of a party politician. He is an ardent admirer of Sir Bartle Frere, and apparently believes that South Africa had in him a heaven-born and infallible administrator. We greatly doubt the wisdom of reopening at the present moment the old and bitter controversies which the Zulu war called into existence. Mr. Greswell, like Mr. Nixon, condemns the native policy of the Boers, but he is strangely oblivious to the fact that there was much akin to that policy in some of the measures which he warmly defends. We can, however, express almost unqualified approval of his chapters on our relations with the Basutos, for although he supports the disarmament policy which resulted in a disastrous war, he has yet given a fairly complete and impartial account of England's dealings with the tribes inhabiting the mountain fastnesses of Basutoland. Mr. Greswell's remarks on this subject are the more useful because there is reason to believe that the affairs of the Basutos will before long call for some amount of public attention in this country. He explains clearly the puzzled state of the savage mind in consequence of its inability to understand the difference between imperial and colonial authority, and he says truly that "to expend three or four millions of colonial money to try to force a point of law upon clans whose real property did not amount to a million, was a costly undertaking." Mr. Greswell's chapters on the native question do not furnish many hints for the solution of existing difficulties, and we think that he is at his best when writing on educational and social topics.

the object of showing that Papal authority had plainly committed itself to the condemnation of Galileo, and so unanswerably demonstrated its own fallibility. The present work is a much enlarged republication of that essay, and its special value consists in the instructive picture it presents of the disingenuous quibbles by which Ultramontane writers have tried to evade the evidence of their idol's impotence, and the remarkable skill with which the author follows them through every turn of the controversy, and brings clearly forward not only the truth of his contention, but the portentous consequences to the whole Roman system which are involved therein. For the question, as Mr. Roberts presents it, bears quite a new aspect. Many of our readers may be disposed to consider the Galileo controversy as worn-out theme about which nothing remains to be said both new and important. A perusal of this book, however, will soon show them that such is by no means the case, and that the full and true significance of Galileo's trial is now for the first time put plainly before the world.

a

The late Dr. Ward, long the editor of the Dublin Review, may be taken as perhaps the best English representative of fearless and unbending Ultramontanism. With characteristic audacity he had not failed to defend the reasonableness of Galileo's condemnation, while strenuously asserting that Papal authority was in no way committed to the doctrine that condemnation involved, because it was not stated therein that the decree was published with the Pope's express approval. Mr. Roberts replies to this plea by showing that the practice of affixing such a notice to a congregational decree is modern, and was not observed in the case of any decree till many years after Galileo's time, while he cites a variety of eminent Roman theologians to the effect that no such notice is at all needed in order to give infallible authority to decrees of the kind. But Mr. Roberts has unearthed a much more effective rejoinder, namely, nothing less than a bull (entitled "Speculatores Domus Israel") of Pope Alexander VII. recapitulating and republishing the previous decrees of the Congregation of the Index against all Copernican literature. Mr. Roberts says:

:

to possess in virtue of a notice from the secretary of "Whatever authority a decision can be supposed a congregation that the Pope has ratified it......it must possess far more indisputably in virtue of an assurance to the same effect given by the Pope himself in a Bull addressed to the Universal Church."

Our author places his Ultramontane opponents in a truly remarkable dilemma. Every one now admits that the decisions of the Papal Congregations against Galileo were wrong. But Pius IX, in a wellknown brief addressed to the Archbishop of Munich, solemnly declared it to be necessary for all learned Catholics to submit themselves to such decisions. Either, then, Pius IX. erred in his teaching, or else Urban VIII. erred when his Congregations blundered as they did. Let our modern Ultramontane take his choice. author pertinently remarks: "How can the man of science not distrust those who, in return for loving obedience, have given him not true, but false guidance?

As our

The opinion of Dr. Ward and his allies,

that decrees of the kind may not infallible, but nevertheless demand su mission, is even more monstrous than t assertions of the mistaken men who adher to the anti-Copernican decrees as autho tative and true. As Mr. Roberts say "bour

the proposition that men may be in conscience to abandon what they hold be true, and embrace with unreserved asse what they hold to be false, at the biddi of a body of men who do not even profe to be divinely secured from error...... scarcely recommended to the reason b cause the authority of those men is calle sacred and the assent they claim religious. But the Congregation of the Holy Office (as the Inquisition is called) is in a very specia way under Papal direction. The Pope, a Pope, is its president. He is present at it meetings every Thursday. He has informes the Church that he reserves the presidency of this congregation to himself, because o the intimate connexion of its decisions with the preservation of the faith. Either, then it has the so-called infallible authority, or i ventures to claim obedience for what may after all be mistaken judgments. If th Ultramontanist would console himself for the mistakes of such a tribunal by saying tha the Pope was not in his chair, we may wel ask with Mr. Roberts, "Why was the Pop not in his chair?" Was the progress of science to be impeded and were conscientious minds throughout Europe to be distressed and most severely tried because a Pope did not choose to step into a chair which, like a conjuring cap, would have enabled him to explain the true structure of our planetary system?

every

But there is another aspect of this question, which is, if possible, more remarkable still. Modern Ultramontanism, as represented by the late Dr. Ward, has actually ventured to say that Scripture is word of it inspired, but that it may be so ex pressed that a doctrine may be rightly con demned as opposed to it, because opposed t its obvious meaning, while later on, owing to physical proofs, the same authority may as rightly, interpret it in quite another sense, "God surely having the right to interpret His own word, as has an ordinary mortal." Well may Mr. Roberts say:—

"Desperate indeed must be the cause tha stands in need of such monstrous doctrine..... Who admits for a moment that an ordinary morts may determine retrospectively the meaning o his words, and be quit of responsibility fo their deceptive effect, on the strength of a sub sequent declaration, that he meant the ver reverse of what he said or wrote ?......Who ca Copernican interpretation of Scripture is tants fail to see that Dr. Ward's estimate of th tion is a mere makeshift?..... Thus it appears tha mount to a confession, that such an interprets Rome's ill-judged attempt to save the authority of Holy Scripture was an implicit denial of he own dogma on inspiration, and a virtual surrende of the whole position into the enemy's hand."

In fact, if Rome meant what she said and if there is any truth in Dr. Ward' contention, she utterly mistook the force and scope of her own decree, in which case she blundered over the very easiest matter that could possibly come before her; or that decree was meant to be taken as absolutely true, in which case even men such as Dr. Ward must admit that it was a mistake in

every sense of the term.