perfect. As a means of supporting religion, it is destitute of even the semblance of fitness." Page 68. "Fifteen thousand clergy dependent on the one hand, and powerful on the other-to the aristocracy pledged servants, to their own flocks supreme dictators-stationed at convenient intervals over the length and breadth of the land, and thus coming into contact with society at all points: could mechanism more fatal to religion, or more serviceable to the interests of the upper classes, be framed and put together?" Page 69. "The State Church is upheld by the aristocracy -it is subservient to their designs-it shields and secures their interests. It is a political organ brought to bear against the liberties of the people. It desecrates religion-it obstructs popular freedom -it perplexes every question of civil governmentit is a confirmed rheumatism to the State." Page 70. ** "The clergy have taken active part against the people in every great political struggle, from the Reformation downwards. They have on all such occasions allied themselves with the tyrant." Page 75. "The system has its basis in physical force. The germ and essential principle of war is the inmost core of it." Page 84. * "The State Church is still found the active friend of those who range themselves against the liberties and the happiness of the people." Page 92. "An Established Church is built upon the ruins of mental freedom." Page 106. "The Established Church has been and is the creature of Oligarchy, receiving sustenance at its hands, and evincing in return a thorough subservience to its will. Correctly speaking, the State Church and Aristocracy are one and the same thing. They are twin branches of the same root. They have flourished, and but for ignorant intermeddling, will decay together." Page 117. * * ** "The natural antagonism between the principle of Democracy and the principle of a Religious establishment." Page 118. "Democracy is a reality; a State Church is a mere conventionalism: reason animates the one, the other can live only in the absence of reason: the former is a sincerity, a vital, glowing, earnest sincerity; the other a semblance only, a form, a disguise, a falsehood, having designs which it dares not avow, and avowing designs which it never had; light is the congenial element of Democracy, close investigation its habit-a State Church flourishes best in darkness, is then most perfect when in juxtaposition with the least intelligence, and denounces that prying curiosity which might one day be induced to examine her pretensions. The two things cannot co-exist, cannot run in couples; the one will assuredly strangle the other, and possibly both may perish in the struggle." Page 118. "Liberal statesmen are the parents of Democracy." Page 119. ** "Let them, if they will, regard the separation of Church and State as, under existing circumstances, impracticable-Democracy will know hereafter how to deal with that." Page 119. ** "We have identified the Church as the mere tool of aristocracy, which has been in all times past, and is at the present moment, handled with terrible effect against the liberties of the people." Page 120. "The question of a State Church is not one of creeds, but of patriotism. It belongs not to denominations, but to subjects of the realm." Page 278. Such was a portion of the Anti-State-Church Catechism drawn up by Mr. Miall, and inserted in the Nonconformist, for the instruction of neophytes. That was the teaching of the Nonconformist SketchBook, which contained other matter equally interesting, but not so closely connected with the subject in hand. Let us now turn to the Political and Complete Suffrage articles which appeared at the same time, and were designed as a manual and exposition of civil duties. The dates appended refer to the Nonconformist:-"If to learn by hard experience that the Reform Bill was a great poli cal falsehood, serving only to 'Palter with us in a double sense, And keep the word of promise to our ear if this be reaction, it has set in like a spring-tide." April 14, 1841. * * "A Tory Dissenter is a mystery." June 23, 1841. ** "Above all, we trust "The they will stand clear of Whig influences. Let them not repeat the mistake which ruined the Radical party four years ago." July 14, 1841. * * educational suffrage theory is a fallacy greatly dangerous, because very specious." July 28, 1841.* * "The result of the recent general election demonstrates that the aristocrats, both Whigs and Tories, fear nothing so much as the extension of the democratic principle into the government. The Whigs are aristocrats at heart, and if they could only do without the Radicals, they would cut the people they care not for the people, but for place." August 4, 1841. "The advent of Sir R. Peel to power, is the commencement of a new era in the progress of Reform the setting in of political winter." * "Mr. Wakley ventured to render himself ridiculous (in 1837), by giving in the name of the Radical body the most high-flown and extravagant professions of attachment to the throne, and declaring their sincere affection for the Established Church. Did the honourable member speak for Mr. Roebuck and Sir W. Molesworth? Well, when avowed Radicals of the first water go out of the way to express affection for an institution thoroughly Conservative in all its tendencies and all its acts,-which lives and moves and has its being in Toryism,—we take leave to set them down as either ignorant of their own principles, or false in their profession of them." Sept. 1, 1841. * "With the aristocratic principle as such, will the next serious struggle probably be." Sept. 15, 1841. * * "The democratic principle is spreading. The democratic principle means a government proceeding from and controlled by the people. It does not involve the form of government but its source." Sept. 15, 1841. ** "The people is the only source of legitimate power--this is the democratic principle." Sept. 29, 1841. * "The choice lies between democracy and aristocracy, between the rights of the many and the privileges of the few. Compromise is now out of the question. Of one or both of them the time is come." Oct. 13, 1841. "The suffrage a right." October 20, 1841. ** "Political power and personal independence must stand or fall together." Oct. 27, 1841.*"Rights |