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tion with the supposition of a minister's being an active abettor of pol.tical measures; which I do not admit to be proper. I was only pursuing the same idea when I spoke immediately afterwards of particular applications,' and the teaching of general political morality;' though, at the same time, I allow, that, as the ideas of abetting and teaching shade off into each other, my modes of expression did not properly discriminate the two. Further explanation I could give, but let this suffice. I was, therefore, ready to accede to your esteemed correspondent, Mr. Scott's principle, before I saw his letter, that if a particular act or law be directly opposed to the first principles of justice or the Word of God, a minister may officially condemn it. The doctrine of my letter, that a minister may express his sentiments on whatever moral subject is beyond the proper province of government, would have been well extended to all things which a government has no right to enact. Nor was it my intention to affirm that a government had no right to pass any legis lative act on the subject of slavery, but that slavery, as it existed in that case which received so recently the attention of British philanthropists, was a crime by virtue of laws higher than those of man. On these points I regret to have expressed myself with such a degree of inadvertency as to give occasion for some argumentation on the part of your correspondents, which might otherwise have been spared. Were they, on their part, to admit (which Dr. Payne appears to do,) the real distinction between religion and politics, and the impropriety of a minister dealing with the latter in his official character, we should be pretty much agreed in principle on this subject, and should differ only in their application to the corn laws.

In asking how this and other mixed subjects are to be dealt with by a Christian minister, little satisfaction could be felt in vague generalisations by way of answer. Yet I observe, that while a subject may be complex, the question for discussion which it involves may be so simple as to point out clearly the course which a regard to official duty demands from a minister. To take the illustration which Mr. Scott has given, the punishment of petty theft by a death of torture: a legislative enactment may be involved in the matter; but the question to be decided is perfectly simple, does Christian morality approve the punishment? The direct application of the rule of duty must determine the point, and this is the special province of a Christian teacher. So also West Indian slavery; while it involved political enactments and interests, the question was, Is it right to make men slaves by rapine, and retain them or their children in bondage? The morality of nature and revelation answers, No. But such is not the question as to the corn law; for although like every other enactment affecting the welfare of the body politic, it has a bearing upon the state of morals in the community, the point in debate which agitates the nation, and has to be settled before morals or religion can be applied to the subject, is, whether the political operation of the law be good or bad.

As this statement of the case will be disputed, and as it includes almost the entire sum and substance of the question, as to the constitution of the ManchesterConference, it claims a more particular attention.

"In the first place the injurious operation of the corn laws on the state of morality and religion amongst the suffering portions of the community, has been largely alleged as making the present a moral and religious question. Now, I humbly conceive that nothing can be clearer, than that this position assumes the very thing which is in dispute, that the corn laws exert such an influence. They do So, it is said, because they produce poverty and famine, by which are engendered bad passions, recklessness, inattention to religion, inability to attend religious worship, and procure education. But the question to be settled is, whether the corn laws do produce poverty? Without settling this, it would be idle to adduce the evils flowing from poverty as an argument against the corn laws. It is, of course, exceedingly proper to attempt to show that the corn laws produce poverty, by general reasoning and facts-it is indeed the point to be established; and the Manchester Conference did good service here as on other parts of the controversy; but the discussion of it is a matter of commerce and economy, and a minister's official cha racter has no connection with it. His duty to consider the interests of morality and religion may be a good reason why he should attempt to get truth established in a proper way in reference to this question; but that proper way is not to discuss

this political point as one which is to be settled by moral principle, or to be enforced on the community by connecting official character and authority with an opinion upon one side of it. An argument which I forgot to allude to the bad effect of the corn-laws on the funds of our religious institutions-stands on the same ground with the above. It seems very plain, that, on the principle of reasoning now referred to, every political question whatsoever may be converted into a religious and moral one; for what one can be named that does not affect the prosperity of the community?

Secondly; the argument from Scripture authority, when brought to decide the point of dispute, appears to me singularly weak and irrelevant. My respect for the judgment of the Conference, who say, that on Scriptural grounds they are called to denounce all restrictions on the supply of food'-my respect for my friend Mr. Scott, who expresses a strong conviction of the bearing of Scripture against the corn laws requires me to believe that they considered the bad operation of the corn laws to be settled on other grounds, when they expressed themselves in this manner. When we have ascertained that those laws are the causes of starvation and its attendant evils, I allow that Scripture wears a most condemnatory aspect against their supporters. I may also think the case of fact so clear a one, that the blindness of many persons on the point involves a melancholy opposition to the spirit of Scripture precepts, enjoining justice and humanity. But such impressions have no right to enter into the controversy, so long as it is a controversy. When we appeal to Scripture, a demand is reasonably made for passages interdicting a free trade in foreign corn; but where are such passages to be found? Under the head of Authorities,' the 5th tract of the Manchester Anti-Corn-law Association refers to four texts of Scripture—(Gen. i. 29, Ps. cxv. 16, Eccl. v. 9, Prov. xi. 26.) Let the first three of these be consulted, and they will be found to express nothing but the fact that God has given the earth and its produce for the common sustenance of the human family. But does this exclude all specific limitations in the distribution of these things among the members of the human family? If so, I see no reason why I may not go into my neighbour's field, and make free use of what I find, because 'the profit of the earth is for all? Who does not recognise in such passages the style of general affirmation which pervades Scripture, which admits of all kinds of modifications suggested by connected truths?—and if the distributions of property may limit in the present instance, why not, in so far as the evidence of the passages goes, the arrangements of a Government? The other passage (one often quoted) is, He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him; but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it.' While the same principle applies also to this verse in its full extent, I say farther, that the question properly under discussion is whether the operation of the corn law really is to withhold corn.' Of course, it easy to point to the bonded storehouses, out of which no grain can come but by the payment of a duty which in effect prohibits it; and the argument may be pressed upon our feelings by the spectacle of thousands starving in a time of famine. But is one's mind not to be enlarged to the real length and breadth of the argument (no very great stretch!) which is, whether the corn laws conduce on the whole to our general national prosperity, taking one year with another, agriculture and commerce together, times of war as well as seasons of peace. It maybe very clear to me that they do not; but is there no controversy? Is half the nation to declare the question settled? If so, let discussion cease. But if it be not settled, then the application of such a passage of Scripture as that last mentioned is a mere begging of the question; and of all modes of begging a question, I humbly think the most indiscreet and most offensive is to launch against an opponent texts of Sacred Writ which are only pertinent when you have proved him in the wrong. I am happy that the Conference entered upon no expositions of texts; but I am also sorry that they affirmed Scripture to be on their side without any attempt to prove it. If it be said, they were entitled to speak according to their own convictions, I humbly submit they did more than speak-they declared that they spoke with the claim of ministers of the gospel; and the very right to do this in the particular case depended on their proving that Scripture had legislated on the corn laws, and that the question was therefore a religious one.

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"In the third place, it is said that the corn-law is unjust in its very principle;' Dr. Payne asks whether it may not be said of protective duties in general, but especially of a protective duty on food,' that they belong to the crimes of a nation rather than its politics, as I had asserted of slavery. Now, if I saw this by any intuition, or by the law written upon the heart-if the essential principles of morality told me directly, as they do of the act of kidnapping and enslaving men, that to restrict a nation for corn to its own growth except when that growth is very deficient, is a crime,' is unjust in its very principle,'-I would confess the question to be a moral one, in which ministers might officially denounce the system as a sin against the God of nations. But he would be a very rash and inconsiderate disputant, who should make such an assertion. On the contrary, the case stands within political ground, and we can reach the conclusion only by political reasoning. The question is, not as to any indefeasible, inherent rights which no goverment can lawfully invade, except as a punishment for crime; it is one as to the adjustment of natural and civil liberty. To do what we will,' says Paley,

' is natural liberty; to do what we will, consistently with the interests of the community to which we belong, is civil liberty; that is to say, the only liberty to be desired in a state of civil society.' If I am deprived of some portion of liberty, which cannot be exercised without danger or injury to the community, I only submit to the necessary conditions of a social state; if I am deprived of liberty without advantage to the community, I am treated unjustly. It is evident, however, that on the latter supposition, the previous question of the general interests has to be decided, before we have a right to complain of wrong. Such is the form in which the corn-law question stands before the nation. It is a question whether it is for the advantage of the nation, that those classes who labour and trade should be allowed to sell their labour and merchandise as they please for foreign corn.

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have a pretty strong conviction, that, at bottom, the keeping up of rent is the main object of these laws, and that the interests of a class are more concerned than those of the State; but whatever use may be made in debate, and properly made, of evidence that so it is, the fact cannot be assumed as the position of the corn-law question. The question is made up of a variety of political arguments on the one side and on the other; and for a body of Christian ministers to ground their interference in an official character, on the assumption that all this is a farce, and that the selfishness of the landlords is the only argument to be disposed of, would be not only to occupy unfair ground in a national controversy, but to drag their sacred office of ambassadors of mercy through the odium of a method of conducting the war, in them altogether unseemly. On the other hand, if we assume what is the fair position of the question to be that on which we proceed, the thing we have to consider is, how the power of trading in foreign corn stands in reference to the interests of the community. If it be said, as it justly may, that men have a natural right to sell their labour and buy their food in a way most to their advantage, it seems equally obvious, that this is one of those rights which is liable to the controul of a government, if the general good require. It has been conceded by several of my opponents, that a government has a right to regulate the trade in corn; and can it be questioned, that if a government believes a free trade with foreign nations would reduce a country to a state of dangerous dependence, or otherwise injuriously affect its prosperity, the right would belong to it of imposing such restrictions as it thought necessary?

"I admit, at once, that if the restrictions are impolitic, they are also unrighteous; because the only reason why my interest should be interfered with is, that the welfare of the community may be promoted. But, it must be seen, the impolicy is the previous question; and that question has to be decided upon political grounds. The matter, then, stands with the corn-laws briefly thus: their justice or injustice depends upon their general expediency; that question must be determined by their political working for good or evil; and with the latter question, as one of pure politics, the ministerial office has nothing to do.

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"The only other ground I am aware of, on which the direct application of religious obligation to this case has been rested, is, that the variety in the productions of different countries declares it to be the evident intention of Providence, that

nations should trade freely with each other. This consideration, however interesting, and beautiful as it is, cannot be singly founded upon as an authority for official teaching on this subject. The sentiment is but a human interpretation of a physical arrangement, and can only stand in the place of an auxiliary to weightier evidence. "Your readers, I trust, will not suppose, from the line of argument which has been just pursued, that I in the least sympathise in the views, or attach the least weight to the arguments, of the abettors of the corn monopoly. I believe them to be utterly false and hollow. What I mean is, that in an anti-corn-law movement, they must be proved to be so they were proved to be so in Manchester; but to give such a proof does not belong to the subject of morals, nor to the office of teachers of religion. In a word, the subject had not come to the position, in which official teaching could properly interfere.

"Dr. Payne questions whether the ministers of the Conference met in their sacred character; and thinks that, to most of them, the thought might not occur whether they acted as ministers or as citizens. Assuredly, I have no desire to prove that any of my brethren entertained views of which I disapprove, and should welcome any evidence of their having been led unawares into a false position rather than by adopting an erroneous principle, though I do not presume Dr. P. to admit either the one or the other. But that the Conference did act in a ministerial capacity, my friend can have doubted only from failing to refresh his memory by a reference to the Acta Senatûs, published under authority, by Mr. W. Gadsby, Manchester. I pass by, for brevity's sake, all argument upon the fact, that a body of ministers-laymen excluded, except as spectators-met, by announcement, as a National Convention of ministers of religion; which practically amounted to the attaching of a professional or official character to the assembly in public estimation. I refer you to the important documents which the convention put forth, the addresses to the sovereign, to the country, and to parliament, in which the ministerial character of the meeting is kept prominently in view, and connected with religious and moral inculcations as suited to it. Our duty,' they observe, as ministers of religion, is plain. On scriptural grounds, we are called to denounce all human restrictions upon the supply of food to the people, and to apply all appropriate means to place the Fatherly provisions of God within the reach of His suffering and famishing children.' Again, Your petitioners are only acting in the spirit of their office, when they remind your honourable House that laws of human legislation should be framed in strict accordance with the revealed will of God

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and that all laws which contradict His will and counteract His bounty, must be wrong in principle,' &c. The manner of official teachers would be more distinctly seen, could my extracts be lengthened. The speeches delivered were in harmony with the above. 'We are come together,' it was observed in one address, often referred to with approbation by subsequent speakers, as ministers and teachers of the Christian religion.' 'We are discharging an important and necessary part of our function, as men consecrated to the teaching of religion, when we explain and enforce its obligations as demanding universal righteousness. We take our stand upon the foundation both of the law and the Gospel,' &c. 'As teachers of religion, therefore, we are bound to be teachers of politics.' All this was said in vindication of the Conference. Dr. Payne approved of the vindication, observing also that 'ministers have much to do with politics-they have to show how the great principles of the Gospel should influence political measures and movements; and a Christian minister, not capable of doing this, is so far incapacitated for the discharge of his duties.' Can it be doubted, that the effect of this vindication of interference with politics, delivered in the place in which Dr. Payne then stood, was to challenge for the Conference its being but a discharge of ministerial duties ? It was well, therefore, that my friend only affirms that the 'preliminary' proceedings did not fix a ministerial character upon the Convention. It seems to me, clear as noon-day, that if the gentlemen who assembled did not set out for the meeting in their official character, they put it on in Manchester.

"In reference to this point, I must not omit to say, that Dr. Payne altogether misconceives my sentiments, when he supposes I should have been quite satisfied if the meeting, or its Chairman, had only declared that its members had deliberated VOL. XIII.

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as citizens, not as ministers. I desired the manifestation of sound principle on this point, in a broad and palpable way, such as the public can understand, not in that of a thin salvo to consistency, which would look very like saying one thing while we were doing another. I think, in short, a mixed constitution, in which the members should have assembled as friends to the cause, as has been exemplified in antislavery and anti-Church rate conventions, would have been the best. And if the mixed nature, not of the question, but of the subject of the corn laws, rendered it desirable for the ministers present to express any sentiments proper to themselves concerning the moral aspect of the case, there would have been little difficulty to their doing so in a mode, against which no just exception could be taken. The cause of the slave has been signally served by meetings of this kind; nor was it needful that, whilst wise in the study,' we should be any thing else out of doors, in order to show most availingly the compassion excited by those wild and withered forms of misery,' which, alas! press upon our view at this melancholy time in the streets of our once flourishing towns, and the scenes of rural industry.

"The second question which I proposed in the outset to notice is, what may a minister do officially as a political actor, in the measures necessary to rectify moral errors in legislative enactments. I am probably saved the necessity of enlargement here in order to be understood, by the admission which Dr. Payne makes, that it is not the duty of ministers to originate' measures, but only to judge of them, and direct them by the expression of opinion. This I take to be the import of Dr. P.'s statements. I also take it for granted that he will not say, we may help such measures forward as ministers, though we may not originate them. Perhaps he and other correspondents will concur with me in the general principle, that whatever is properly the exercise of political power or influence-whatever forms a part of what is commonly called a political movement-belongs not to the minister as such, but to the citizen. The case seems to me so plain as to require little argumentation. Look at it from a political point of view. Is political power given us as ministers or as subjects? In the latter capacity; we Dissenting teachers have no corporate rights. To say that we act as ministers in exercising our rights as subjects, would be but a political solecism. Consider it, again, in its religious aspect. Does the ministerial office, as defined and commissioned by Christ, or as understood by the Church in appointing to it, include the exercise of political power? It were absurd to say so. The exercise of such power, therefore, belongs not to our office. It may be difficult to say, sometimes, where teaching ends and political movement begins. I hold it to be clear that the meeting in Manchester was a political movement; and so did Earl Ducie, when he stated in his place the other day in the Upper House, that it was the first of a series of demonstrations which would soon spread over the country. For this reason, also, I conceive that official character ought not to have been connected with it.

"With regard to the practical bearings of this discussion, and the principle involved in it, I can only beg your permission to hint at them before concluding.

"1. My friend Dr. Payne, though he cannot deduce from this limited question an obvious practical guide' to the obligations of a minister as a citizen, ought to do justice to its importance, if it clear the subject from false principles, or false applications of right ones. When politics, in their most general aspect, are connected with the office of minister, as was the case when the subject came first under notice, a wide obligation was imposed upon all ministers, to which no limit could be found but that of physical ability. It appears to me of no little practical advantage, to know where obligation holds, and where only expediency.

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"2. With all respect for the judgment of those opposed to me, I conceive the principles on which ministerial duty has been connected with the corn laws, are calculated to affect in an injurious manner the conduct and the spirit of ministers of the Gospel, particularly of the younger portion of them.

"3. When a question is made a religious one which is properly political, it finds its way into the Church as well as into the proceedings of ministers, and politics are introduced by the means of it. I regret nothing more in this whole matter, than that our churches and congregations met, in so many places, in a congregational capacity, to express their sentiments on this question. Do let us preserve our fel

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