observing how little their great establishments contribute to the sacred purposes for which they were intended. Not only have the Church services degenerated into cold and unimpressive forms, so as to lead virtually to a discontinuance of congregational attendance, but the system of non-residences and pluralities, abolished every where else, has an effect decidedly injurious to religion. It is notorious that in our cathedral towns there is the least education and the most Dissent. Now I propose to attempt some remedy for this.

"And I do so upon the plan suggested by one who must be held a very high authority, since it was to him that the Government were indebted for their measure in 1836. Every leading provision of their Act was taken from Lord Henley; on one practical point only did they materially depart from his suggestions, and that was on the constitution of the commission, in which experience has proved that he was right. In Lord Henley's plan of Church Reform, accompanied by a letter to the King in 1832, he makes this proposal, with regard to the cathedrals:

"In the administration of the cathedral property, the first consideration which naturally arises, is that due consideration be made for the celebration of cathedral service. For this purpose (as one great object will be the abolition of every thing approaching to a sinecure, that can be dispensed with,) it will be most convenient to entrust the performance of divine service exclusively to the dean, assisted by such a number of chaplains as shall be deemed necessary. As his residence will be for nine months in the year, he shall perform the same quantity of public duty as the incumbents of our great London livings. But as there will be no occasional duty-no registries to be kept-no vestries to attend no visiting of the poor and sick, his labours will be extremely slight.'

"In each cathedral now there is a dean whose average income is 16801.-four canons with average incomes of 800%.-and six minor canons, each with 150/. Reckoning the cathedrals at twenty-six (there are more, but one or two may be poorer than I have said), the return stands thus:

"Now if, in accordance with Lord Henley's proposal, we reduce this establishment to a dean with 1000l. a year, and the minor canons, we shall leave 1900l. a year for the cathedral services, and have the following surplus :

"Here, therefore, is a sum of 100,000l.; more than sufficient for the most extravagant number of suffragans that would be wanted. The advantages of this plan would be threefold-First, you get the whole amount now paid to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners' Episcopal and Common Fund, for the augmentation of poor livings. Secondly, you bring in your cathedrals to aid the general wants of the country, establishing a resident clergy, between whom and their congregation ties and sympathies are formed, and you elevate the tone of your cathedral service. Thirdly, you get, if you need them, more bishops, and without any difficulty either as to number or payment. Prove the necessity before Parliament, and it will thus supply your deficiency by an addition to the episcopacy of an efficient and popular body, who will form a link between the prelates and the clergy-aiding the one, controlling and encouraging the other.

“ While, however, I express this preference for suffragan bishops, supposing more bishops to be needful, I think I have given a picture of parochial destitution sufficient to prove that the evil is of a very different character, and needs a very different remedy. Our first thought must be for our parochial poor: our first duty is to bring home religious instruction to them. Of this too I am quite sure, that an enlargement of the episcopacy would not alone make it more efficient."

This passage brings us back to the subject of cathedral establishments, in which, as we have already seen, very great and undesirable alterations have been permitted to take place. The collegiate character has been allowed to fall wholly into abeyance, and a number of offices contemplated by the founders have been suppressed. Funds destined for charitable objects have long ceased to be so applied. We lament these alterations extremely, but we fear the time is gone by for the revival of the cathedral system, according to the plans of the founders of chapters. It has been too long permitted to remain in abeyance, and the whole body of cathedral dignitaries have been accustomed to so totally different a view of the case, that we cannot look on a return to the original constitution as feasible. The cathedral bodies have, for a long series of years, stood before the world as complete sinecurists, and generally as the most opulent of the clergy, without any higher personal claims than their brethren. Appointed by political friends or by relatives, they have been too commonly guided by considerations of the same kind in dispensing the large patronage entrusted to them. And the result of all has been, that the chapters have had no hold upon the public mind-no services to appeal to-no practical usefulness to show-so that they have been unable to resist the alienation of their funds to objects of a more obviously useful character. And we earnestly hope that, in the end, they may not entirely perish, but be restored to that cure of souls in

the cathedral city of which they ought never to have been divested, and which would have ensured their residence in the sphere of their duties, and prevented them from holding benefices in plurality. The cathedrals have been ousted of their rights by parish churches in cities. Though nominally the parish church of the whole diocese, the cathedral has actually no cure of souls annexed to it. Why should not the surrounding parishes be brought once again into connexion with the cathedral and its clergy? One of Mr. Horsman's most effective speeches is taken up almost entirely with statistics, intended to show the very small number of persons who avail themselves of daily service at the cathedrals. Perhaps, if he had extended his inquiries to Sunday services, the number in attendance might still have seemed small in comparison with the capacity of the cathedrals. And yet this is, after all, the fault of the system of the Church in reference to the cathedrals, and is not to be attributed wholly to the chapters. Is it not a fact that the whole of each cathedral city is parcelled out into parishes, each with its parish church and priest; and is not the ecclesiastical system, therefore, so arranged in those places, that the whole of the inhabitants are virtually drawn away from the cathedral? Is not the cathedral necessarily left without a congregation, except as it is made up by cathedral officials and their families, and casual visitors? This is really and simply the fact. If the cathedrals have not as good congregations as parish churches, it is because they have ceased to be in any sense parish churches; because they have lost the cure of souls, which they had for a thousand or twelve hundred years, or, in some cases, still later.

ART. VI.-1. Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education, with Appendixes. 1847-8-9. England and Wales. Schools of Parochial Unions. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. London. Printed by Clowes and Sons for Her Majesty's Stationery Office. 1849.

2. Return to an Address of The Honourable the House of Commons, dated July 21st, 1849, for a copy of so much of the Minutes of the Committee of Council as relates to the establishment of Normal Schools for Training Masters for Workhouse-Schools, together with a Statement of the Measures which have been taken in consequence for providing buildings for that purpose, the sums expended in giving effect to the said Minute, and the Funds out of which the expenditure has been defrayed. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, Aug. 1st, 1849.

In the year 1839 an attempt was made, as our readers are aware, to lay the foundations of a system of so-called National Education, the supreme direction of which was to centre in a Government Education Board-the Committee of Council on Education,-to the exclusion of the Bishops of the National Church, to whose province the superintendence of National Education properly belongs. One of the leading features of the scheme was the essentially secular character of the education to be imparted; religious instruction was carefully distinguished from the general tuition of the school, to be admitted under such restrictions and regulations as must have rendered it, practically, altogether nugatory; the avowed object being to substitute for the national faith, of which the Church is the witness and guardian, a colourless, tasteless compound, nicknamed "general religion." This notable scheme, after being concocted in the dark, was brought forward, not by any of the constitutional methods usually employed in adjusting our institutions, but by a novel mode of proceeding, half-administrative and half-legislative, in the unobtrusive form of a letter addressed by one member of the Government to another. Lord John Russell, at that period Secretary of State for the Home Department, broke ground by a letter to the Lord President, then as now the Marquis of Lansdowne, who in his reply entered into further explanations, which were followed up by a Minute of the Committee of Council. The minute having been duly recorded, the scheme was considered un fait accompli, and the only

thing remaining to be done was an application to Parliament for necessary funds.

the

Unfortunately for the ministerial contrivance, there was more vigilance and firmness in the legislature of that day than had been calculated upon; the correspondence and minute had scarcely come to the knowledge of Parliament, when the most determined opposition was at once set on foot; and, while the grant passed the Lower House with a majority so slender as to amount in reality to a defeat, the Upper House supported the late Primate with an overwhelming majority in his solemn protest against the contemplated encroachment upon the religious character of the education to be imparted to the rising generation. The result was the compact of 1840, the guarantees of which have been frittered away piecemeal in the subsequent controversies between the Committee of Council and the National Society; the former body framing, under the inspiration of Mr. Kay Shuttleworth, Minute after Minute, in contravention, not of the spirit only, but of the very letter of the terms agreed to by the Church. Still, however cunningly the engagements of the educational treaty of 1840 were evaded, and however insidiously the distinction between secular and religious education was introduced into the management of Church Schools by the Committee of Council, the lastnamed body was restricted to the position assigned to it by the compact-that of a body charged with the distribution of the Parliamentary Grant, and exercising, in consideration of it, a certain degree of supervision over all schools, whether belonging to the Established Church, or to other religious denominations, which obtained a share of the public money voted for educational purposes. The idea of a State machinery of education, distinct from that of the Church and of other religious bodies, under the immediate direction of the Committee of Council, appeared to be fairly given up, in deference to the will of Parliament, and to the unequivocally expressed sense of the country at large.

Will it be believed, that the scheme which the resistance of Parliament, and especially that of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, backed by the House of Lords, effectually obstructed in the year 1839, has actually been carried into effect in 1849, unsuspected by the legislature and the country. Yet such is the astounding fact. An official report, recently published, exhibits the plan in question in a state of complete organization, and in full operation. A normal school for the training of teachers, separated from all connexion with the Church,-a body of inspectors, placed, like the normal school, under the immediate superintendence of the Committee of Council,-and a system of centralization, which, through this normal school, and through the