Catholics and converts to the Catholic faith which Dr. Lee quotes in his favour has less weight still. They are like the bunches left by the gatherers in the vineyard-very few; and of them we venture to affirm that several disbelieved the validity of Anglican orders. We have consulted personal friends of Dr. Hendren, ahd they all declare that not only did he disbelieve their validity, but he spoke of them with a contempt akin to pity. Dr. Lingard goes no further than to affirm that Parker had a consecration; but he does not by that admission acknowledge that the consecration was valid; on the contrary, in Note K, Vol. VII., of his "History of England," he points out that the seven sacraments of the old Church have been curtailed to two by the new Church, which, as he expresses it, "was built on the ruins of the old." Archbishop. Murray, too, whom Dr. Lee brings forward, held exactly the same opinion as Dr. Lingard, for when Dr. Doyle's letter on the union of the churches drew forth such marked attention, Dr. Sadleir, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, sought an interview with the archbishop, and expressed his willingness to see the reconciliation effected. "I fear it is not easy," said Dr. Murray, "we have seven sacraments, while you have only two." And, we doubt not, additional testimony might be adduced of others whom Dr. Lee assumes to have been or to be partisans of his cause; but did they all speak as strongly and as clearly as Dr. Lee could wish them to speakthe evidence as it stands is merely Dr. Lee's interpretation of what they said we should still cry out Quid sunt inter tantos!" Two or three for each generation, while the opponents of Anglican claims can be numbered by hundreds. If there is a thin chain of evidence in favour of the tradition, the chain of opposition is incomparably stronger. The whole Church has never for one instant hesitated in rejecting Anglican orders, and even the men who held Dr. Lee's opinion bowed to her decision.

We cannot conclude our notice without an acknowledgment that Dr. Lee's book will do good to those who read it with minds free from prejudice. While it fails completely, as we conceive, in proving the object he had at heart; it proves also completely another thing which Dr. Lee surely never contemplated when he compiled it; it proves that the Anglican Church is, at all events, in schism. The very evidence which he adduces to support his cause shows that the English Church withdrew from the jurisdiction of its lawful superior, the Bishop of Rome, without any adequate cause or right assigned; and that she thus rent the seamless robe of Christ. Her bishops therefore were consecrated (supposing them to have had a valid consecration) illicitly, and without any lawful approbation; for, as the author of Matthew Parker's life acknowledges, he, though he was the seventieth Bishop of Canterbury, was the first and only one who was consecrated "sine

bullata approbatione papali." The state of things which was thus inaugurated has been continued by their successors, the consecrations which were unlawful in the days of Elizabeth, are unlawful still, according to the axiom "nullum tempus occurrit Ecclesiæ." No length of time gives a privilege against her rights, and those unlawful consecrations must so remain till men seek once again the only fold, and make their submission to him who sits to-day in the See where his predecessor sat in the days of Henry and Elizabeth, and who claims their obedience in virtue of the succession derived from that one to whom it was said " to thee I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven."

ART. VI. THE EDUCATION BILL.

1. A Bill to provide for Public Elementary Education in England and Wales. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 17th February, 1870.

2. Authorized Report of the great Meeting of the Friends of Religious Education, held in S. James's Hall, London, Friday, April 8th, 1870, under the Presidency of the Right Hon. the Earl of Shaftesbury, &c. Also a Report of a large Conference of Schoolmasters on the Education Bill, held in the Palace Hotel, Westminster, Saturday, April 9th, 1870. Rev. W. STANYER, M.A., General Secretary, Manchester Buildings, 116, Cheetham Hill; and, City Buildings, Corporation Street. London Offices, 18, Parliament Street, S.W.

3. Letters to my Constituents on Popular Education. By HENRY S. P. WINTERBOTHAM, M.P. Reprinted from the Stroud Journal. Higgs, Journal Office, Stroud. 1869.

4. Popular Education at Home and Abroad. Burns, Oates, & Co.

HAT huge omnibus, the Irish Land Bill, has at length forced its way through Temple Bar, and the next in order is the Government Education Bill. In treating at all of a subject which has changed, and may still change its aspect week by week, we write under considerable disadvantages, compared with those of our contemporaries who reflect and discuss, day by day, the changing tone of public opinion. Still, national education is the question of the day. Its settlement, one way or another, can hardly fail to affect the national happiness and welfare for centuries to come; and there is no body of men whom it can so deeply interest as it does us Catholics. Even if we should have resolved to say nothing about it, it would, of necessity, be the chief subject of our thoughts.

In our last number we reviewed the state of the question, a

little later than the second reading of the Bill. Since that, the public at large has had little attention to spare to it; but there has not been a moment in which the growl of the thunder, though distant, has not been loud enough to make itself plainly heard by the attentive ear. The loudest objections to Mr. Foster's Bill have come from the supporters of secular education. They continue to demand that their system, their whole system, and nothing but their system, shall be accepted and enforced; that is, that ratesupported schools, free to all children, and giving secular education alone, shall immediately be established for all the children of the labouring classes throughout the land, and that all who cannot be proved to be receiving a competent education elsewhere, shall be compelled to attend them. This demand is so monstrous that it would not deserve serious attention, if those who consistently urge it were not, in fact, supported by many who fundamentally differ from them in principle. Those who really desire that the children of England should be brought up wholly without religion are comparatively a handful. They do not deserve even the dubious honour of being regarded as a religious sect. But let us class them as "secularists;" and they are, at the utmost, the very smallest of the multitudinous sects into which the English people are divided. And what they demand is nothing less than that all the children of all the working classes in England, whatever and however strong may be the religious convictions of their parents, shall be compelled by law to be educated in the peculiar and distinguishing views of their own minute sect; and that all the ratepayers in England, be their own religion what it may, shall be compelled to pay for that education. Such a demand, absurd as it would be in any case, would come with much more appearance of plausibility from the Quakers or the Plymouth Brothers, not to say the Baptists or the Wesleyans, than from the secularists, both because they are more numerous, and because their opinions and principles differ less fundamentally from those of the mass of their countrymen.

What makes this demand more strikingly ludicrous is, that it professes to be made in the name and interests of religious freedom. Of course, the principle assumed is that, with regard to education at least, religious freedom is purely negative; that it is a gross violation of it that any child should be taught any dogma which its parents do not believe, or that any ratepayer should contribute towards the expense of teaching what he does not believe; but no hardship at all, either to the parent that his child should be compelled to attend a school where he is taught everything else except his own religion, or to a ratepayer, that he should contribute towards such a negative education, even of the children of parents of his own religion.

We fear we must admit that those secularists who consciously and deliberately desire to get rid of all religion are few only by comparison. Canon Consitt stated, at the Newcastle meeting of the Education Union, that "one of the advocates of the League, one of the most determined, and, I may add, violent advocates in this town, did not hesitate to say publicly, that one reason why he wished to have secular education established in this country was because he felt it would be the upsetting and the end of all Christian teaching in the land." We fear he stands by no means alone. Yet he and those who sympathize with him would be by no means formidable if they were not supported by many who would much more willingly retain Christian teaching, and who only join in opposing it because they do not see how it is to be maintained without increasing the influence of the Anglican establishment, or at least without abandoning the hope of making use of national education as an instrument for its overthrow. The leader and type of this large party is Mr. Winterbotham, a barrister of ability, who has lately become member for Stroud, and who, as the representative of the political dissenters, has already attained in the House of Commons a degree of influence very unusual in so young a member. Mr. Winterbotham, we doubt not, is a religious man, and as such really desires that the youth of England should be religious. But he believes that denominational education, if it does not strengthen the Anglican communion, will prevent the new educational system from working to its disadvantage. His demands, therefore, hardly differ from those of the League. He says:

I am met by a question with which I cannot help sympathizing. Why should we separate secular from religious education? Why should they not be blended as they are in the lessons of home? Why, indeed? There is but one answer. Men agree upon secular knowledge, and disagree upon religious truth (p. 33).

He is far too clear-headed to imagine, with many well-meaning men, that education can really be religious without being denominational. He therefore proposes that purely secular schools, supported by rates, should at once be provided for all children for whom sufficient means of education have not yet been provided, professing to continue on the present conditions the assistance now given from the Parliamentary grant to denominational schools. Under this system," he says, "the denominational schools will 'still flourish,' if they continue to be supported by subscribers and parents as they are at present ;" and "the secular schools will not empty or interfere with them unless (as I expect) they give a better education."

How large a proportion of Dissenters may be prepared to take Mr. Winterbotham as their leader, we cannot yet say. It is, how

ever, already clear both that many of them do, and also that the demands of the secularists might safely be left out of practical consideration, if they were not thus supported by men who, in their hearts, prefer religious education, and only consent to give it up because they do not see how to secure it without losing an opportunity of weakening a rival body of religionists. Whenever we are met by any real danger to religion, it is always sure to result from religious divisions. If those who believe in Christ had been contented to remain in the Church He founded, they would have had nothing to fear from the opposition of others.

It is well worth notice that, although Mr. Foster's Bill demanded great sacrifices from the supporters of religious education, both in the Anglican Establishment and the Catholic Church, hardly any serious opposition to it has been made in either of those quarters. The loud opposition has been solely from the Secularists, and those Dissenters by whom they are supported. This is a strong and memorable testimony to the moderation of the other party, and to their sincere desire to see a system which shall offer the means of education to all children practically carried out. Another fact of much the same kind is that those who are so loudly protesting against any system of education which does not fully and entirely carry out their own notions, are men who have, in practice, done next to nothing for education, while the supporters of religious education, whom they wish absolutely to lay on the shelf, are the men who, for some forty years past, have been at work building schools by self-denying sacrifices and exertions, and labouring hard at teaching in them. But no sooner has Parliament expressed its purpose of establishing a national system of education, open to all the children of the land, than these Secularists, who have hitherto stood by idle, cry out, "Yes, by all means, only as to religion you must, of course, teach what we think right, and nothing else. We may be counted by tens, and those who fundamentally differ from us by millions, but we demand that they shall all give up all their wishes and views as to religious education, and that our own should be carried out whole and entire; upon this understanding and on the further understanding that we are not to be asked to subscribe a farthing towards the schools in which our views are to be taught, we are willing to give our high patronage to the scheme."

This seems absurd enough, but it must not be forgotten that when one party is loud in its demands and the opposite party nearly silent, the natural tendency of every popular Government is to make concessions to the noisy party at the cost of those who take things quietly. And hence we are far from surprised that all the concessions hitherto made by the Government have been in the direction not of religious but of secular education. The first