than because it is forbidden. If the law had saidHere, on this ground, you shall wake your dead, of course there would have been an equally inordinate desire to get out of a plot of ground which had been set apart by superstitious rites and usages.

As Sir Morton Peto's absurd proposal is merely an impudent attempt to gain a footing for dissenters on Church property, it comes with very bad grace at a time when Dissenters wish to abolish Church-rates -at one and the same time saying, We will pay no rates give us your burying-ground. Give it, too,

on our own terms, and according to our own liberal views-that is to say, if we order the parson to read his service over our dead he is to do it nolens volens ; but, if we wish to use any other mode of sepulture, we will, nem. con. Is not this liberal ?-for we do not take the property of the Church for any one sect of Christians: we call upon all to come and share the plunder-Jews, Mahommedans, and Heathens : all who are not members of the Church of England may come, and pollute with unholy rites the consecrated ground. It is true, we do not want the ground: we have burial grounds of our own; but this would be a severe blow at Mother Church; and, if we can only get within the palace grounds, who knows but by and bye we may get within the palace itself? At present we scorn such an object; but, if we can only get in on our own terms, we will not forget the example of the newly-fledged cuckoo, though it does not bear the

On our part, we

best of characters for toleration. have not the least fear of such a measure passing at the present time. It will meet the fate of similar bills of last Session to unsettle the rites and ceremonies of the Church. The object is too evident to be mistaken, and surely the net is spread in vain in the sight of any bird only let Churchmen use ordinary vigilance and take prudent measures for self-defence.

ma

THE NEW BISHOPRICS BILL, III.

['Union,' April 5, 1861.]

HIS bill which Lord Lyttelton has introduced into the House of Lords, is but a specimen of the way in which well-meaning but ill-advised friends would legislate for the Church. We wish we could clear away the clouds and mists which surround this loosely constructed and most impolitic measure, but find it altogether impossible. In theory, unquestionably a large increase of the Episcopate is required in order that the Church may keep pace with the population; but let us clearly understand what we are about and what we are asking for. Are we to have Bishops ruling their dioceses according to the laws of the Church, without fear and without partiality-the practical heads of the cathedral clergy, and with their aid and council rather than of their own private judgment, administering to the several wants of their respective dioceses? Or are we to have only an additional number of men to go through the mechanical routine of ordinations and

triennial visitations and confirmations, which in these days of easy locomotion are not after all such great undertakings as they used to be, when the population was less by one-half than it is at present? It has never been asserted that the Bishops are unequal to these duties. This, however, is not our view of the episcopal office; and, if we could throw overboard the popular ideas of a Bishop, and get real working men like the Bishop of Oxford, we don't care to what extent the numbers are multiplied. But to attain this end, we should proceed somewhat differently to Lord Lyttelton. We should not ask for Bishops as a favour to be sought on any terms: we should demand them as the Church's right,

It is now the fashion for friends of the Church to endeavour to uphold it by unlimited concessions-by voluntarily ceding to the enemy our very outworks, which may, before long, be turned into points of attack against the citadel. Of this sort, is the proposition to exempt all Dissenters from the payment of Church-rates-a boon which they did not ask for and do not appreciate, though it is giving up the principle of a poor man's church supported by the country. What a contrast there is between the timid Churchman hardly daring to hope that the Church may have her own, begging for some small portion of her rightsalmost for tolerance-and the impudent Dissenter clamouring for that which is not his and never has been. And here we have, as a case in point, Lord Lyttelton

humbly asking for Bishops for the Church, who are to be mere tools of the State, having no greater authority than an archdeacon, without seats in the House of Lords, and without ability to do anything but coerce the power of the Church at the beck of the State and restrain its freedom of action. Surely nothing

can be more suicidal than this proposition to increase the influence which the State now exercises over the Church, and this too at the expense of the Church, by placing in the hands of a Prime Minister, of any or no religious opinions, a number of ecclesiastical appointments to be used as mere stepping-stones to political power.

Why not demand that the Church shall be permitted to elect these new Bishops? On what pretence can the Crown claim to nominate them? Is it pretended that the Crown is going to endow the new Sees ? Why not demand, too, more seats in the House of Lords? Is the Church by any means fairly represented in Parliament ? In the time of Henry VIII. the spiritual peers formed the majority of the Upper House. In the reign of James I. the numbers were twenty-six to about eighty, or more than a fourth; and at the accession of George I. there were but one hundred and eighty-one temporal peers, the number of Bishops remaining the same. But now the spiritual peers are but a twelfth of the whole-too large a number for those who wish to see the House of Lords abolished, but far too small a number for the