* * * * *

[ECONOMICS OF BOOK READING.]

III. The head just now finished includes really by far the greatest portion of the economy of study. There are various other devices of importance in their way, but much less liable to error in practice. Of these, a leading place may be assigned to the best modes of Distributing the Attention in reading. Such questions as the following present themselves for consideration to the earnest student. How many distinct studies can be carried on together? What interval should be allowed in passing from one to another? How much time should be given to the art of reading, and how much to subsequent meditating or ruminating on what has been read? These points are all susceptible of being determined, within moderate limits of error. As to the first, the remark was made by Quintilian, that, in youth, we can most easily pass from one study to another. The reason of this, however, is, that youth does not take very seriously to any study. When a special study becomes engrossing, the alternatives must rather be recreative than acquisitive; not much progress being made in what is slighted, or left over to the exhaustion caused by attention to the favourite topic. A more precise answer can be made to the second and third queries, namely, as to an interval for recall and meditation, after putting down a book, and before turning the attention into other channels. There is a very clear principle of economy here. We should save as far as possible the fatigue of the reading process, or make a given amount of attention to the printed page yield the greatest impression on the memory. This is done by the exercise of recalling without the book; an advantage that we do not possess in listening to a lecture, until the whole is finished, when we have too much to recall. To hurry from book to book is to gain stimulation at the cost of acquisition.

I have alluded to the case of an engrossing subject, which starves all accompanying studies. There are but two ways of obviating the evil, if it be an evil; which it indeed becomes, when the alternative demands also are legitimate. The one is peremptorily to limit the time given to it daily, so as to rescue some portion of the strength for other topics. The other is to intermit it wholly for a certain period, and let other subjects have their swing. In advancing life, and when our studious leisure is only what is left from professional occupation, two different studies can hardly go on together. The alternative of a single study needs to be purely recreative.

One other point may be noted under this head. In the application to a book of importance and difficulty, there are two ways of going to work: to move on slowly, and master as we go; or to move on quickly to the end, and begin again. There is most to be said for the first method, although distinguished men have worked upon the other. The freshness of the matter is taken off by a single reading; the re-reading is so much flatter in point of interest. Moreover, there is a great satisfaction in making our footing sure at each step, as well as in finishing the task when the first perusal is completed. We cannot well dispense with re-reading, but it need not extend to the whole; marked passages should show where the comprehension and mastery are still lagging.

* * * * *

[DESULTORY READING.]

IV. Another topic is Desultory Reading. This is the whole of the reading of the unstudious mass; it is but a part of the reading of the true student. It may mean, for one thing, jumping from book to book, perhaps reading no one through, except for pure amusement. It may also include the reading of periodicals, where no one subject is treated at any length. As a general rule, such reading does not give us new foundations, or constitute the point of departure of a fresh department of knowledge; yet the amount of labour and thought bestowed upon articles in periodicals, may render them efficacious in adding to a previous stock of materials, or in correcting imperfect views. The truth is, that to the studious man, the desultory is not desultory. The only difference with him is that he has two attitudes that he may assume—the severe and the easy-going; the one is most associated with systematic works on leading subjects; the other with short essays, periodicals, newspapers, and conversation. In this last attitude, which is reserved for hours of relaxation, he skips matters of difficulty, and absorbs scattered and interesting particulars without expressly aiming at the solution of problems or the discussion of abstract principles. There is no reason why an essay in a periodical, a pamphlet, or a speech in Parliament, may not take a first place in anyone's education. All the labour and resource that go to form a work of magnitude may be concentrated in any one of these. Still, they are presented in the form that we are accustomed to associate with our desultory work, and our times of relaxation; and so, they seldom produce in the minds of readers the effect that they are capable of producing. The thorough student will not fail to extract materials from one and all of them, but even he will scarcely choose from such sources the text for the commencement of a new study.

The desultory is not a bad way of increasing our resources of expression. Although there be a systematic and a best mode of acquiring language, there is also an inferior, yet not ineffective mode; namely, reading copiously whatever authors have at once a good style and a sustaining interest. Hence, for this purpose, shifting from book to book, taking up short and light compositions, may be of considerable value; anything is better than not reading at all, or than reading compositions inferior in point of style. The desultory man will not be without a certain flow of language as well as a command of ideas; notwithstanding which, he will never be confounded with the studious man.

* * * * *

V. A fifth point is the proportion of book-reading to Observation of the facts at first hand. From want of opportunity, or from disinclination, many persons have all their information on certain subjects cast in the bookish mould, and do not fully conceive the particular facts as these strike the mind in their own character. A reader of History, with no experience of affairs, is likely to have imperfect bookish notions; just as a man of affairs, not a reader, is subject to narrowness of another kind. It was remarked by Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, that the German historians of the Athenian Democracy write like men that never had any actual experience of popular assemblies. A lawyer must be equally versed in principles and in cases as heard in court: this is a type of knowledge generally. In the Natural History Sciences, observation and reading go hand in hand from the first. In the science of the Human Mind, there are general doctrines, contrived to embrace the world of mental phenomena: the student may have to begin with these, and work upon them exclusively for a time, but in the end, phenomena must be independently viewed by him in their naked character, as exhibited directly in his own mind, and inferentially in the minds of those that fall under his observation. Book knowledge of Disease has to be coupled with bed-side knowledge; neither will take the place of the other.

* * * * *

VI. I began by limiting the meaning of study to the reading of books, and have reviewed the various points in the economy of this process. The other means of attaining, enlarging, deepening our knowledge, namely, Observation of facts, Conversation, Disputation, Composition, have each an art of its own—especially Disputation, which has long been reduced to rule. Observation also admits of specific directions, but, in stating the necessity of combining observation with book theories and descriptions, I have assumed the knowledge of how to observe.

[AIDS OF CONVERSATION AND COMPOSITION.]

Of all the adjuncts of study, none is so familiar, so available, and, on the whole, so helpful, as Conversation. The authors of Guides to Students, as Isaac Watts, give elaborate rules for carrying on conversation, a good many of them being more moral than intellectual; but an art of conversation would be very difficult to formulate; it would take quite as long an essay as I have devoted to study, and even then would not follow half of the windings of the subject. The only notice of it that my plan requires, is such as I have already bestowed upon Observation: namely, to point out the advantage of combining a certain amount of reading with, conversation; a thing that almost everybody does according to their opportunities. To rehearse what we have read to some willing and sympathizing listener, is the best way of impressing the memory and of clearing up difficulties to the understanding. It brings in the social stimulus, which ranks so high among human motives. It is a wholesome change of attitude; relieving the fatigue of book-study, while adding to its fruitfulness. Even beginners in study are mutually helpful, by exchanging the results of their several book acquirements; while it is possible to raise conversation to the rank of a high art, both for intellectual improvement and for mutual delectation. I cannot say that the ideal is often realized; since two or more must combine to conversation, and it is not often that the mutual action and re-action is perfectly adjusted for the highest effect.

The last great adjunct of study is original Composition, which also would need to be formulated distinct from the theory of book-study. Viewed in the same way as we have viewed the other collateral exercises, one can pronounce it too an invaluable adjunct to book-reading, as well as an end in itself; it is a variation of effort that diverts the mental strain, and re-acts powerfully upon the extraction of nutriment from books. Besides the pride of achievement, it evokes the social stimulus with the highest effect; our compositions being usually intended for some listeners. But, when to begin the work of original composition, as distinct from the written exercises upon books, in the way of abstracting, amending, and the rest; what forms it should assume at the outset, and by what steps it should gradually ascend to the culminating effects of the art,—would all admit of expansion and discussion as an altogether separate theme. Enough to remark here, that a course of book-reading without attempts at original composition is as faulty an extreme, as to begin and carry on writing upon a stinted basis of reading. The thorough student, as concerned in my present essay, carrying on book-study in the manner I have sketched, will almost infallibly end, at the proper time, in a self-thinker, and a self-originator. An adequate familiarity with the great writers of the past both checks presumptuous or hasty efforts of reproduction, and encourages modest attempts of our own as we feel ourselves becoming gradually invigorated through the combined influence of all the various modes of well-directed study.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: Milton had charge of pupils in 1644, when Locke was twelve.]

* * * * *

VIII.

RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS.

Every man has an interest in arriving at truth for himself. However useful it may be to mislead other people, however sweet to look down from a height on the erring throng beneath, it is neither useful nor sweet to be ourselves at sea without a compass. We may not care to walk by the light we have, but we do not choose to exchange it for darkness.

This reflection is most obvious with reference to the order of Nature. Our life depends on adapting means to ends; which supposes that we know cause and effect in the world around us. A long story is cut short by the adage, "Knowledge is power"; otherwise rendered, "Truth is bliss".

The bearing of truth is free from all doubt when the problem is, how to gain certain ends—how to be fed, how to get from one place to another, how to cure disease. A new case is presented by the choice of ends. The tyrannical French minister, when appealed to by a starving peasantry in the terms, "We must live," replied, "I do not see the necessity". There was here no question of true and false, no problem for science to solve. It was a question of ends, and could not be reargued. The only possible retort was to ask, "What does your Excellency consider a necessity?" If the reply were, "That I and my King may rule France and be happy," then might the starving wretches find some aid from a political scientist who could show that, in the order of nature, ruler and people must stand or fall together. So, it is no question of true or false in the order of nature, whether I shall adopt, as the end of life, my own gratification purely, the good of others purely, or part of both. In like manner the Benthamite, who propounds happiness as the general end of human society, cannot prove this, as Newton could prove that gravity follows the inverse square of the distance; nor can his position be impugned in the way that Newton impugned the vortices of Descartes, by showing that they were at variance with fact.

There is a third case. Assertions are made out of the sphere of the sensible world, and beyond the reach of verification by the methods of science. There is a region of the supersensible or supernatural, where cause and effect may be affirmed and human interests involved, but where we cannot supply the same evidence or the same confutation as in sublunary knowledge. That all human beings shall have an existence after death is matter of truth or falsehood, but the evidence is of a kind that would not be adduced for proving that a caterpillar becomes a butterfly or that a seed turns to a plant. The reasoning employed, no doubt, makes references to facts of the order of nature; but it is circuitous and analogical, and is admitted merely because better cannot be had.

[THREE DIFFERENT CLASSES OF ASSERTIONS.]

The peculiarity of this last class of affirmations is that they give great room for the indulgence of our likings. So little being fixed with any precision, we can shape our beliefs to please ourselves. Even as regards the sensible world, we can sometimes accommodate our views to what we wish, as when we assume that our favourite foods and stimulants are wholesome; but such license soon meets with checks in the physical sphere, while there are no such checks in the realms of the superphysical.

Now, in all these three departments of opinion, the interest of mankind lies in obtaining the best views that can possibly be obtained. As regards the first and third—- the region of true and false, one in the sensible, the other in the supersensible world—we are clearly interested in getting the truth. As regards the second—the region of ends—if there be one class of ends preferable to another, we should find out that class.

The only doubt that can arise anywhere is, whether in the third case—the case of the supernatural,—truth is of the same consequence to us. Such a doubt, however, begs the whole question at issue. If the truth be of no consequence here, it is because we shall never be landed in any reality corresponding to what is declared: that the nature of the future life is purely imaginary and not to be converted into fact; in other words, that there is no future life; that there is merely a land of dreams and fiction, which can never be proved true and never proved false. It would then be a projection of thought from the present life, and would cease with that life. All that people could claim in the matter would be the liberty of imagination; and this being so, we are not to be committed to any one form. In short, we are to picture what we please in a world that cannot be made out to exist. The point is not, to be true or false; it is, to be well or ill imagined.

What, then, is to be the criterion of proper or improper imagination? On what grounds are we to make our preference between the different schemes of the supersensible world? Is each one of us to be free to imagine for ourselves, or are we to submit to the dictation of others? These questions lead up to another. How far are the interests of the present life concerned in the form given to our conceptions of a future life?

It would seem to be an unanswerable assumption that, in all the three situations above supposed, we should do the very best that the case admits of. In the order of nature we should get, as far as possible, the truth and the whole truth; in the choice of ends for this life we should embrace the best ends; in the shaping of another life we should be free to follow out whatever may be the course suitable to the operation.

* * * * *

[EARLY SOURCES OF INTOLERANCE.]

The means for arriving at truth in the order of nature is an active search according to certain well-known methods. It farther involves the negative condition of perfect freedom to canvass, to controvert, or to refute, every received doctrine or opinion. There is no use in going after new facts, or in rising to new generalities, if we are not to be allowed to displace errors. This is now conceded, except at the points of contact of the natural and the supernatural. In spite of the wide separation of the two worlds—the world of fact and the world of imagination,—we cannot conceive the second except in terms of the first; and if the shaping of the supernatural acquires fixity and consecration, the natural facts made use of in the fabric acquire a corresponding fixity, even although the rendering is found to be inaccurate. The prevailing conception of a future life needs a view of the separate and independent subsistence of the mental powers of man, very difficult to reconcile with present knowledge.

* * * * *

The growth of intolerance is quite explicable, but the explanation is not necessarily a justification. Although every division of the human family must have passed through many social phases, and must therefore have experienced revolutionary shocks, yet the rule of man's existence has been a rigorous fixity of institutions, with a hatred of change. Innovations, when not the effect of conquest, would be made under the pressure of some great crisis, or some tremendous difficulty that could not otherwise be met. The idea of individuals being allowed, in quiet times, to propose alterations in government, in religion, in morals, or even in the common arts of life, was thought of only to be stamped out. There was a step in advance of the ancient and habitual order of things, when an innovating citizen was permitted to make his proposal to the assembled tribe, with a rope about his neck, to be drawn tight if he failed to convince his audience. This might make men think twice before advancing new views, but it was not an entire suppression of them.

The first introduction of the great religions of the world would in each case afford an interesting study of the difficulties of change and of the modes of surmounting these difficulties. There must always have concurred at least two things,—general uneasiness or discontent from some cause or other; and the moral or intellectual ascendency of some one man, whose views, although original, were yet of a kind to be finally accepted by the people. These conditions are equally shown in political changes, and are historically illustrated in many notable instances. It is enough to cite the Greek legislation of Lycurgus and of Solon.

Such changes are the exceptions in human affairs; they occur only at great intervals. In the ordinary course of societies, the governing powers not merely adhere to what is established, but forbid under severe penalties the very suggestion of change. The chronic misery of the race is compatible with unreasoning acquiescence in a state of things once established; incipient reformers are at once immolated pour encourager les autres. It is the aim of governments to make themselves superfluously strong; they take precautions against unfavourable ideas no less than against open revolt. In this, they are seconded by the general community, which would make things too hot even for a reforming king.

[SEPARATION OF RELIGION FROM POLITICS.]

It is said by the evolution or historical school of politicians, that this was all as it should be. The free permission to question the existing institutions, political and religious, would have been incompatible with stability. In early society more especially, religion and morality were a part of civil government; a dissenter in religion was the same thing as a rebel in politics; the distinction between the civil and the religious could not yet be drawn.

Without saying whether this was the case or not—for I should not like to commit myself to the position, "Whatever was, was right" at the time—I trust we are now far on the way to being agreed that the civil and the religious are no longer to be identified; that the State, as a state, is not concerned to uphold any one form of religious belief. Modern civilized communities are believed capable of existing without an official religion; the citizens being free to form themselves into self-governed religious bodies, as various as the prevailing modes of religious belief. It may be long ere this goal be fully reached; but even the upholders of the present state religions admit that, supposing these were not in existence, nobody would now propose to institute them.

* * * * *

The foregoing remarks may appear somewhat desultory, as well as too brief for the extent of the theme. They must be accepted, however, as an introduction to a more limited topic, which presupposes in some measure the general principle of toleration by the state of all forms of religious opinion. Whether with or without established religions, perfect freedom of dissent is now demanded, and, with some hankering reservations, pretty generally conceded. Individuals are allowed to congregate into religious societies, on the most various and opposite creeds.

So far good. Yet there remains a difficulty. Long before the age of toleration, when each state had an established religion, the people in general formed their habits of religious observance in connection with the State Church—its doctrines, its ritual, its buildings, and its sacred places. When disruption took place, the separatists formed themselves into societies on the original model, merely dropping the matters of disagreement. Fixity of creed and of ritual was still enacted; the only remedy for dissatisfaction on either subject was to swarm afresh, and set up a new variety of doctrine or of ritual, to which a rigid adherence was still expected as a condition of membership.

By this costly and troublesome process, Churches have been multiplied according to the changes of view among sections of the community. A certain energy of conviction has always been necessary to such a result. Equally great changes of opinion occur among members of the older Church communities, without inducing them to break with these; so that nominal membership ceases to be a mark of real adhesion to the articles of belief.

* * * * *

[EVILS OF PENAL RESTRAINT ON DISCUSSION.]

These few commonplaces are meant to introduce the enquiry—now a pressing one—whether, and how far, fixed creeds are desirable or expedient in religious bodies generally; no difference being made between state Churches and voluntary Churches. This is the question of Subscription to Articles by the clergy.

Let us now review the evils attendant on subscription, and next consider the objections to its removal.

In the first place, the process of restraining discussion by penal tests is inherently untenable, absurd, and fallacious.

In support of this strong assertion, we have only to repeat, that every man has an interest in getting at the truth, and consequently in whatever promotes that end. We live by the truth; error is death. To stand between a man and the attainment of truth, is to inflict an injury of incalculable amount. The circumstances wherein the prohibition of truth is desirable, must be extraordinary and altogether exceptional. The few may have a self-interest in withholding truth from the many; neither the few nor the many have an interest in its being withheld from themselves. Each one of us has the most direct concern in knowing on what plan this universe is constituted, what are its exact arrangements and laws. Whether for the present life, or for any other life, we must steer our course by our knowledge, and that knowledge needs to be true. Obstruction to the truth recoils upon the obstructors. To flee to the refuge of lies is not the greatest happiness of anybody.

It has been maintained that there are illusions so beneficial as to be preferable to truth. Occasionally, in private life, we practise little deceptions upon individuals when the truth would cause some great temporary mischief. This case need not be discussed. The important instance is in reference to religious belief. A benevolent Deity and a future life are so cheering and consoling, it is said, that they should be secured against challenge or criticism; they ought not to be weakened by discussion. This, of course, assumes that these doctrines are unable to maintain themselves against opponents, that, with all their intrinsic charm (which nobody can be indifferent to), they would give way under a free handling. Such a confession is fatal. Men will go on cherishing pleasing illusions, but not such as need to be protected in order to exist. According to Plato, the belief in the goodness of the Deity was of so great importance that it was to be maintained by state penalties—about the worst way of making the belief efficacious for its end. What should we think of an Act passed to imprison whoever disputed the goodness of King Alfred, the Man of Ross, or Howard?

Granting that certain illusions are highly beneficial, it does not follow that they are to be exempted from criticism. Their effect depends on the prestige of their truth. That is, they must have reasons on their side. But a doctrine is not supported by reasons, unless the objections are stated and answered; not sham objections, but the real difficulties of an enquiring mind. If the statement of such difficulties is forcibly suppressed, the rational foundations will sooner or later be sapped.

[FREEDOM ESSENTIAL TO THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH.]

If illusions are themselves good, freedom of thought will give us the best. Why should we protect inferior illusions against the discovery of the superior? The unfettered march of the intellect may improve the quality of our illusions as illusions, while also strengthening their foundations. If religion be a good thing, the best religion is the best thing; and we cannot be sure of having the best, if men are forbidden to make a search.

Supposing, then, truth is desirable, the means to the end are desirable. Now one of the means is perfect liberty to call in question every opinion whatsoever. This is not all that is necessary; it is not even the principal condition of the discovery of new truth. It is, however, an indispensable adjunct, a negative condition. While laborious search for facts, care in comparing them, genius in detecting deep identities, are the highways to knowledge,—the permission to promulgate new doctrines and to counter-argue the old is equally essential. Men cannot be expected to go through the toil of making discoveries at the hazard of persecution. If a few have done so, it is their glory and everybody else's shame.

That the torch of truth should be shaken till it shine, is generally admitted. Still, exceptions are made; otherwise the present argument would be superfluous. On certain subjects there is a demand for protection against innovating views. The implication is that, in these subjects, truth is better arrived at by delegating the search to a few, and treating their judgment as final. I need not ask where we should have been, if this mode of arriving at truth had been followed universally. The monopoly of enquiry claimed for the higher subjects, if set up in the lower, would be treated as the empire of darkness.

Second. The subscription to articles, and the enforcement of a creed by penalties, are nugatory for their own purpose; they fail to secure uniformity of belief.

This is shown in various ways. For instance, to inculcate adhesion to a set of articles, is merely to ensure that none shall use words that formally deny one or other of the doctrines prescribed. It does not say, that the subscriber shall teach the whole round of doctrines, in their due order and proportion. A preacher may at pleasure omit from his pulpit discourses any single doctrine; so that, in so far as his ministrations are concerned, to the hearers such doctrine is non-existent; without being denied, it is ignored. Against omission, a prosecution for heresy would not hold. In this way, the clergy have always had a certain amount of liberty, and have freely used it. In so doing, they have altered the whole character of the prescribed creed, without being technically heterodox. Everyone of us has listened to preachers of this description. Some ignore the Trinity, some the Atonement; many nowadays, without denying future punishment, never mention hell to ears polite. If the rigorous exclusion of a leading doctrine should excite misgivings, a very slight, formal, and passing admission may be made, while the stress of exhortation is thrown upon quite different points.

[SUBSCRIPTION FAILS TO ATTAIN ITS END.]

To attain a conviction for heresy, involving deprivation of office, the forms of justice must be respected. It is only under peculiar circumstances, that the ecclesiastical authority can be content with saying, "I do not like thee, Dr. Fell, or Dr. Smith, and I depose thee accordingly". A regular trial, with proof of specific contradiction of specific articles, allowing the accused the full benefit of his explanations, must be the rule in every corporation that respects justice. In the Church of England, a man cannot be deprived unless he contradict the articles clearly and consistently; the smallest incoherence on his part, the slightest vacillation in the rigour of his denial, is enough to save him. We may easily imagine, therefore, how widely a clergyman may stray from the fair, ordinary, current rendering of the doctrines of the Church, without danger. The whole essence of Christianity may be perverted under a few cunning precautions and by observing a few verbal formalities.

It has been pointed out, many times over, that the legally imposed creeds were the creatures of accident and circumstances at the time of their enactment, and are wholly unsuitable to the conservation of the more permanent and essential articles of the Christian faith. The amount of heresy, as against the more truly representative doctrines, that may pass through their meshes is very great.

This weakness is aggravated by another—the want of any provision for amending the creed from time to time. If it were desirable to adopt measures for maintaining uniformity of opinions among the clergy, the creed should be excised, or added to, according to the needs of every age. That this is not done, shows that the machinery of tests is altogether abnormal; it is not within the type of regular legislation. That any given creed should be regarded as out of keeping, as both redundant and defective, and yet that the ecclesiastical authority should shrink from applying a remedy to its most obvious defects, proves that the system itself is bad. All healthy legislation lends itself to perpetual improvement; that the enactments of articles of belief cannot be reconsidered, is a sign of rottenness.

A third objection to tests is, that mere dogmatic uniformity, if it were more complete than any tests can make it, is at best but a part of the religious character. It does nothing to secure or promote fervour, feeling, the emotional element in religion. It is by moral heat, far more than by its mould of doctrine, that religion influences mankind. There is no means of censuring preachers for coldness or languid indifference; or rather, there is another and more legitimate means than penal prosecutions, namely, expressed dissatisfaction and the preference of those that excel in the quality. A warm, glowing manner, an unctuous delivery, commands hearers and conducts to popularity and importance. The men of cold and unfeeling natures may get into office, but they are lightly esteemed. They are not had up to a public trial and deposed, but they are treated, and spoken of, in such a way as to discourage men of their type from becoming preachers, and to encourage the other sort. There are many qualifications that go to forming a good preacher; the holding of the creed of the body is only one. Yet, with the exception of gross immorality or abandonment of duty, correctness of creed is the only one that is subjected to the extreme penalty of loss of office; the others are secured by different means. Is it too much to infer that, without the extreme penalty, a reasonable conformity to the prevailing creed might also be secured?

[ELEMENT OF FEELING NOT SECURED.]

The importance of the element of feeling has been most perceived in times when the religious current was strongest. At these times, its expression would not be hemmed in by rigorous formulas. The first communication of religious doctrines has always partaken of a broad and free rendering; apparent discrepancies were disregarded. To reduce all the utterances of the prophets and the apostles to definite forms and rigid dogmas, was to misconceive the situation. We may well suppose that the New Testament writers would have refused to subscribe the Athanasian Creed or the Westminster Confession; not because these were in flat contradiction to Scripture, but because the way of embodying the religious verities in these documents would be repugnant to their ideas of form in such matters. The creed-builders may have been never so anxious to give exact equivalents of the original authorities; yet their fine distinctions and subtle logic would have, in all probability, been ranked by Paul and Peter among the latter-day perversions of the faith. The very composition of a creed would have been as distasteful to the first century, as it is incongruous to the nineteenth.

The evil operation of religious tests, and of the accompanying intolerance of the public mind as shown towards any form of dissent from the stereotyped orthodoxy, admits of a very wide handling. It is of course the problem of religious liberty. Some parts of the argument need to be reproduced here, to help us in replying to the objections against an unconditional abolition of compulsory creeds.

In conversing, many years ago, with the late Jules Mohl, the great Oriental scholar, professor of Persian in the College de France, I was much struck with his account of the nature of his duties as an expounder of the modern Persian authors. These authors, for example the poet Sadi, were in creed adherents of the ancient Persian fire-worship, notwithstanding the Mohammedan conquest of their country. They were, of course, forbidden to avow that creed directly; and in consequence, they had recourse to a form of composition by doubles entendres, veiling the ancient creed under Mohammedan forms. Mohl's business, as their expounder, was to strip off the disguise and show the true bearings of the writers, under their show of conformity to the established opinions.

This is a typical illustration of what has happened in Europe for more than two thousand years. The first recorded martyr to free speculation in philosophy was Anaxagoras in Greece. Muleted in the sum of five talents, and expelled from Athens, he was considered fortunate in being allowed to retire to Lampsacus and end his days there. His fate, however, was soon eclipsed by the execution of Socrates,—an event whereby the Athenian burghers were enabled to bias the expression of free opinions from that time to this. The first person to feel the shock was Plato. That he was affected by it, to the extent of suppressing his views on the higher questions, we can infer with the greatest probability.

[CONSEQUENCES OF THE EXECUTION OF SOCRATES.]

Aristotle was equally cowed. A little before his death, the chief priest of Eleusis, following the Socratic precedent, entered an indictment against him for impiety. This indictment was supported by citations of certain heretical doctrines from his published writings; on which Grote makes the significant remark, that his paean in honour of his friend Hermeias would be more offensive to the feelings of an ordinary Athenian citizen than any philosophical dogma extracted from the cautious prose compositions of Aristotle. That is to say, the execution of Socrates was always before his eyes; he had to pare his expressions so as not to give offence to Athenian orthodoxy. We can never know the full bearings of such a disturbing force. The editors of Aristotle complain of the corruptness of his text; a far worse corruptness lies behind. In Greece, Socrates alone had the courage of his opinions. While his views as to a future life, for example, are plain and frank, the real opinion of Aristotle on the question is an insoluble problem. Now, considering the enormous sway of Aristotle in modern Europe,—how desirable was it that his real sentiments had reached us unperverted by the Athenian burgher and the hemlock!

It would be too adventurous to continue the illustration in detail through the Christian ages. It is well known that the later schoolmen strove to represent reason as against authority, but wrote under the curb of the Papal power; hence their aims can only be divined. A modern instance or two will be still more effective.

It can at last be clearly seen what was the motive of Carlyle's perplexing style of composition. We now know what his opinions were, when he began to write, and that to express them then would have been fatal to his success; yet he was not a man to indulge in rank hypocrisy. He, accordingly, adopted a studied and ambiguous phraseology, which for long imposed upon the religious public, who put their own interpretation upon his mystical utterances, and gave him the benefit of any doubts. In the "Life of Sterling" he threw off the mask, but still was not taken at his word. Had there been a perfect tolerance of all opinions he would have begun as he ended; and his strain of composition, while still mystical and high-flown, would never have been identified with our national orthodoxy.

I have grave doubts as to whether we possess Macaulay's real opinions on religion. His way of dealing with the subject is so like the hedging of an unbeliever that, without some good assurance to the contrary, I must include him also among the imitators of Aristotle's "caution". Some future critic will devote himself, like Professor Mohl, to expounding his ambiguous utterances.

[EVIL OF DISFRANCHISING THE CLERGY.]

When Sir Charles Lyell brought out his "Antiquity of Man" he too was cautious. Knowing the dangers of his footing, he abstained from giving an estimate of the extension of time required by his evidences of human remains. Society in London, however, would not put up with that reticence, and he had to disclose at dinner parties what he had withheld from the public—namely, that, in his opinion, the duration of man could not be less than fifty thousand years.

These few instances must suffice to represent a long history of compelled reticence on the part of the men best qualified to instruct mankind. The question now is—What has been gained by it? What did the condemnation of Socrates do for the Athenian public? What did the chief priest of Eleusis hope to attain by indicting Aristotle? Unless we can show, as is no doubt attempted, that the set of opinions that happen to be consecrated at any one time, whether right or wrong, were essential to the existence of society,—then the attempt to improve upon them was truly meritorious, instead of being censurable. If the good of society as a whole is not plainly implicated, there remains only the interest of the place-holders under the existing system, as opposed to the interest of the mass of the people, who are, one and all, concerned in knowing the truth.

Again contracting the discussion to the narrow limits of the title of the essay, I must urge the special injury done to mankind by disfranchising the whole clerical class; that is to say, by depriving their authority of its proper weight in matters of faith. It is an incontrovertible rule of evidence, that the authority of an interested party is devoid of worth. Reasons are good in themselves, whoever utters them; but in trusting to authority, apart from reason, we need a disinterested authority. This the clergy at present are not, except on the points left undecided by the articles. If a man has five thousand a year, conditional on his holding certain views, his holding those views says nothing in their favour. For a much less bribe, plenty of men can be 'got to maintain any opinions whatsoever. When to this is added that, for certain other views, the holders are subjected to loss—it may be to fine, imprisonment, or death,—the value of men's adhesion to the favoured creed, as mere authority, is simply nil.

Truth, honesty, outspokenness, are not so well established as virtues, that we can afford to subject them to discouragement. The contrary course would be more for the general good in every way. When the law is intolerant in principle, men will be hypocrites from policy. You cannot train children to speak the truth if, from whatever cause, they have an interest in deception. A repressive discipline induces a coarse outward submission, but cannot reach the inward parts: it only engenders hatred, and substitutes for open revolt an insidious secret retaliation. Those only that come under the generous nurture of freedom can be counted on for hearty and willing devotion. If we would reap the higher virtues, we must sow on the soil of liberty. Encourage a man to say whatever he thinks, and you make the most of him; for difficult questions, where the mind needs all its powers, there should be no burdensome 'caution' in giving out the results.

* * * * *

[RELAXATION NOW PRESSING.]

The imposing of subscription has its defenders, and these have to be fairly met. First, however, let us advert to the reasons why relaxation is more pressing now than formerly.

It is known that, among dissentients from the leading dogmas of the prevailing creed of Christendom, are to be included some of the most authoritative names of the last three centuries; our present formulas would not have been subscribed by Bacon, Newton, Locke, Kant; unless from mere pliancy and for the sake of quiet, like Hobbes. If they had been in clerical orders, and had freely avowed their opinions as we know them, they would have been liable to deposition. Yet the difficulties that these men might feel were far less than those that now beset the profession of our prevailing creeds. The advances of knowledge on all the subjects that come into contact with the various articles, as received by the orthodox Churches, may not, indeed, compel the relinquishment of those articles, but will force the holders to change front, to re-shape them in different forms. To such necessary modification, the creeds are a fatal obstacle. On a few points, such as the Creation in six days, these have been found elastic. The doctrine that death came by the fall has been explained away as spiritual death. This process cannot go much further, without too much paltering with obvious meanings. The recently-proclaimed doctrine of the Antiquity of Man comes into apparent conflict with man's creation and fall, as set forth in Genesis, on which are suspended the most vital doctrines of our creed. A reconciliation may be possible, but not without a very extensive modification of the scheme of the Atonement. It is not necessary to press Darwin's doctrine of Evolution; the deficiency of positive proof for that hypothesis may always be pleaded, as against the havoc it would make with the more distinctive points of Christian doctrine. But the existence of man on the earth, at the very lowest statement, must be carried back twenty thousand years; this is not hypothesis, but fact. The record of the creation and the fall of man will probably have to be subjected to a process of allegorising, but with inevitable loss. Now, whoever refuses a matter of fact counts on being severely handled; it is a different thing to refuse an allegory.

The modern doctrine named the "struggle for existence" is the old difficulty, known as "the origin of evil," presented in a new shape. It is rendered more formidable, as a stumbling-block to the benevolence of the Author of nature, by making what was considered exceptional the rule. It gathers up into one comprehensive statement the scattered occasions of misery, and reveals a system whereby the few thrive at the expense of the many. The apologist for Divine goodness has thus an aggravation of his load, and needs to be freed from all unnecessary trammels in the shaping of his creed.

[OPPOSING DOGMAS TO THE RECONCILED.]

It has not escaped attention, that the honours paid to the illustrious Darwin, are an admission that our received Christianity is open to revision. In consequence of a few conciliatory phrases, Darwin has been credited with theism; nevertheless he has ridden rough-shod over all that is characteristic in our established creeds. Can the creeds come scathless out of the ordeal?

It is passing from the greater to the less, to dwell upon the increasing difficulties connected with the Inspiration of the Bible. The Church-of-Englander luckily escapes making shipwreck here; the legal interpretation of the formularies saves him. Yet to mankind, generally, it seems necessary that a superior weight should attach to a revealed book; and the other Churches cling to some form of inspiration, notwithstanding the growing difficulties attending it. Here too there must be more freedom given to the men that would extricate the situation. At all events, the doctrine should be made an open question. Even Cardinal Newman suggests doubts as to its being an imperative portion of the creed.

The attacks made on all sides against the Miraculous element in religion will force on a change of front. When an eminent popular writer and sincere friend of the Church of England surrenders miracles without the slightest compunction, it needs not the elaborate argumentation of "Supernatural Religion" to show that some new treatment of the question is called for. But may it not be impossible to put the new wine into the sworn bottles?

Like most great innovations, the proposal to liberate the clergy from all restraint as to the opinions that they may promulgate, necessarily encounters opposition. We are, therefore, bound to consider the reasons on the other side.

These reasons may be quoted in mass. As regards Established Churches in particular, it is said there is a State compact or understanding with the clergy that they should teach certain doctrines and no other; that if tests were abolished, there would be no security against the most extreme opinions; men eating the bread of a Reformed Church might inculcate Romanism instead of Protestantism; the pulpits might give forth Deism or Agnosticism. No sect could hope to maintain its principles, if the clergy might preach any doctrine that pleased themselves. More especially would it be monstrous and unjust, to allow the rich benefices of our highly endowed Church of England to be enjoyed by men whose hearts are in some quite different form of religion, or no religion, and who would occupy themselves in drawing men away from the faith.

On certain assumptions, these arguments have great force. Clearly a man ought not to take pay for doing one thing and do something quite different. When a body of religionists come together upon certain tenets, it would be a reductio ad absurdum for any of its ministers to be occupied in denying and controverting these tenets.

All this supposes, however, that men will not be made to conform by any means short of prosecution and deprivation; that the suspending of a severe penalty over men's heads is in itself a harmless device; and that religious systems are now stereotyped to our satisfaction, so that to deviate from them is mere wantonness and love of singularity. Such are the assumptions that we feel called upon to challenge.

The plea that the Church has engaged itself to the State to teach certain tenets, in return for its emoluments and privileges, has lost its point in our time. 'L'etat, c'est moi.' The Church and the State are composed of the same persons. Gibbon's famous mot has collapsed. 'The religions of the Roman world,' he says, 'were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful' The people are now their own magistrates, and the true and the useful must contrive to unite upon the same thing. If the Church feels subscription and fixity of creed a burden, it has only to turn its members to account in their capacity of citizens of the State to relieve itself. If it silently ignores the creed, it is still responsible mainly to itself.

[POSSIBLE ABUSES OF CLERICAL FREEDOM.]

The more serious objection is the possible abuse of the freedom of the clergy to utter opinions at variance with the prevailing creed. This position needs a careful scrutiny.

In the first place, the argument: supposes a condition of things that has now ceased. When creeds were accepted in their literality by the bodies professing them, when the state of general opinion contained nothing hostile, and suggested no difficulties,—for any one member of a body to turn traitor may have well seemed mere perversity, temper, love of singularity, or anything but a wish to get at truth. The offence assumed the character of a moral obliquity, and discipline can never be relaxed for immorality proper.

All the circumstances are now changed. The ministers and members of religious communities no longer cherish the same set of doctrines with only immaterial varieties; they no longer accept their articles in the sense of the original framers. The body at large has contracted the immoral taint; the whole head is sick; any remaining soundness is not with the acquiescent mass, but with the out-spoken individuals. In such a state of things, ordinary rules are inapplicable. There is a sort of paralysis of authority, an uncertainty whether to punish or to wink at flagrant heresy. To say in such a case that the relaxation of the creed is not a thing to be proposed, is to confess, like Livy on the condition of Rome, that we can endure neither our vices nor their remedies.

Too much has at all times been made of individual divergences from the established creed. The influence of a solitary preacher smitten with the love of heretical peculiarity has been grossly overrated. The assumption is, that his own flock will, as a matter of course, follow their shepherd; that is to say, the adhesion of individual congregations to the creed of the Church depends upon its being faithfully reproduced by their regular minister. Such is not by any means the fact; the creed of the members of a Church is not at the mercy of any passing influence. It has been engrained by a plurality of influences; one man did not make it, and one man cannot unmake it. Moreover, allowance should be made for the spirit of opposition found in Church members, as well as in other people.

[INDIVIDUAL DIVERGENCES UNIMPORTANT.]

It may be said that persons ought not to be subjected to the annoyance of hearing attacks upon their hereditary tenets, in which they expect to be more and more confirmed by their spiritual teacher. This is of course, in itself, an evil. We are not to expect ordinary men to recognise the necessity of listening to the arguments against their views, in order to hold these all the stronger. If this height were generally reached, every Church would invite, as a part of its constituted machinery, a representative of all the heresies afloat; a certain number of its ministers should be the avowed champions of the views most opposed to its own—advocati diaboli, so to speak. There would then be nothing irregular in the retention of converts from its own number to these other doctrines. It would be, however, altogether improper to found any argument on the supposition of such a state of matters.

It is an incident of every institution made up of a large collection of officials, that some one or more are always below the standard of efficiency, whence those that depend on their services must suffer inconvenience. A great amount of dulness in preaching has always to be tolerated; so also might an occasional deviation from orthodoxy; the more so, that the severity of the discipline for heresy has a good deal to do with the dulness.

If heretical tendencies have shown themselves in a Church communion, either they are absurd, unmeaning, irrelevant—perhaps a reversion to some defunct opinion,—or they are the suggestion of new knowledge in theology, or outside of it. In the first case, they will die a natural death, unless prosecution gives them importance; in the other case, they are to be candidly examined, to be met by argument rather than by deposition. An individual heretic can always be neglected; if he is enthusiastic and able, he may have a temporary following, especially when the community has sunk into torpor. If two or three in a hundred adopt erroneous opinions, it is nothing; if thirty or forty in a hundred have been led astray, the matter hangs dubious, and discretion is advisable. When a majority is gained, the fulness of the time has arrived; the heresy has triumphed.

* * * * *

However strong may be the theoretical reasons for the abolition of the penal sanctions to orthodoxy, they do not dispense with the confirmation of experience; and I must next refer to the more prominent examples of Churches constituted on the principle of freedom to the clergy.

[THE ENGLISH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH EXEMPLARY.]

The most remarkable and telling instance is that furnished by the English Presbyterian Church, with its coadjutor in Ireland. The history of this Church is not unfamiliar to us; the great lawsuit relating to Lady Hewley's charity gave notoriety to the changes of opinion that had come over it in the course of a century. But whoever is earnest on the question as to the expediency of tests should study the history thoroughly, as being in every way most instructive. The leading facts, as concerns the present argument, are mainly these:—

First, the great decision at the Salters' Hall conference, on the 10th of March, 1719, when, by a majority of 73 to 69, it was resolved to exact no test from the clergy as a condition of their being ordained ministers of the body. The point more immediately at issue was the Trinity, on which opinions had been already divided; but the decision was general. The principle of the right of private judgment admitted of no exceptions.

Second. Long before this decision, the minds of the ministers had been ripening to the conviction, that creeds and subscriptions could do no good, and often did harm, indeed, the terms employed by some of them are everything that we now desire. For example, Joseph Hunter, on the eve of the decision, wrote thus: "We have always thought that such human declarations of faith were far from being eligible on their own account, since they tend to narrow the foundations of Christianity and to restrain that latitude of expression in which our great Legislator has seen fit to deliver His Will to us".

Third. Most remarkable is it to witness the consequences of this great act of emancipation. A hundred and sixty-five years have elapsed—a sufficient time for judging of the experiment. The Presbyterian body at the time were made up partly of Arians, partly of Trinitarians, who held each other in mutual tolerance; the ministers freely exchanging pulpits. No bad consequence followed. We do not hear of individual ministers going to extravagant lengths in either direction. A large body gravitated, in the course of time, to the modern Unitarian position; but, considering the start, the stride was not great. In such a century as the eighteenth, there might well have been greater modifications of the creeds than actually occurred. Evidently, in the absence of any compulsory adherence to settled articles, there was an abundant tendency to conservatism. Commencing with Baxter, Howe, and Calamy, we find, in the course of the century, such names as Lardner, Price, Priestley, Belsham, Kippis, James Lindsay, Lant Carpenter—men of liberal and enlightened views on all political questions, and earnest in their good works. These men's testimony to what is truth in religion, is of more value to us than the opinions of the creed-bound clergy. Reason is still reason, but the weight of authority is with the free enquirers.

Fourth. The history of the Presbyterians answers a question that may be properly asked of the creed-abolitionist; namely, What bond is left to hold a religious community together? The bond, in their case, simply was voluntary adhesion and custom. A religious community may hold together, like a political party, with only a vague tacit understanding. When a body is once formed, it has an outward cohesion, which is quite enough for maintaining it in the absence of explosive materials. The established Churches could retain their historical continuity under any modification of the articles. By the present system, they have been habituated to take their creed as their legal definition; for that they could substitute their history and framework.

* * * * *

[MODES OF TRANSITION FROM THE PRESENT SYSTEM.]

Various modes have been suggested for making the transition from the present system.

One way is, to fall back upon the Bible as a test. This is the same as no test at all. A man could not call himself a Christian minister, if he did not accept the Bible in some sense; and it would be obviously impracticable to frame a libel, and conduct a process for heresy, on an appeal to the Old and New Testaments at large. The Bible may be the first source of the Christian faith, but other confluent streams have entered into its development; and we must accept the consequences of a fact that we cannot deny. However much religion may have to be broadened and liberalised, the operation cannot consist in reverting to the literal phraseology of the Bible.

A second method is, to prune away the portions of the creed that are no longer tenable. It could not have been intended by the original framers of the creeds, that they should remain untouched for centuries. With many Churches, there was a clear understanding that the formulas should be revised at brief intervals. The non-established Churches show a disposition to resume this power. The United Presbyterian Church of Scotland has had the courage to make a beginning; still, relief will not in this way be given to minorities, and small changes do not correspond to the demands of new situations.

A more effectual mode is to discourage and suspend prosecutions for heresy. The practice of heresy-hunting might be allowed to fall into disuse. Instead of deposing heretics, the orthodox champions should simply refute them.

In the Church of England, in particular, a change of the law may be necessary to give the desired relaxation. The judges before whom heretics are tried are very exacting in the matter of evidence, but they cannot stop a prosecution made in regular form. The Church of Scotland has more latitude in this respect, and has already given indications of entering on the path leading to desuetude.[17]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 17: See, at the end, Notes and References on the history and practice of Subscription and Penal Tests.]

* * * * *

IX.

THE PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES.[18]

That great institution of political liberty, the Deliberative Assembly, seems to be on the eve of breaking down. I do not speak merely of the highest assembly in the country, but of the numerous smaller bodies as well, from many of which a cry of distress may be heard. The one evil in all is the intolerable length of the debates. Business has increased, local representative bodies have a larger membership than formerly, and, notwithstanding the assistance rendered by committees, the meetings are protracted beyond bounds.

In this difficulty, attention naturally fastens, in the first instance, on the fact that the larger part of the speaking is entirely useless; neither informing nor convincing any of the hearers, and yet occupying the time allotted for the despatch of business. How to eliminate and suppress this ineffectual oratory would appear to be the point to consider. But as Inspiration itself did not reveal a mode of separating in advance the tares from the wheat, so there is not now any patent process for insuring that, in the debates of corporate bodies, the good speaking, and only the good speaking, shall be allowed.

Partial solutions of the difficulty are not wanting. The inventors of corporate government—the Greeks, were necessarily the inventors of the forms of debate, and they introduced the timing of the speakers. To this is added, occasionally, the selection of the speakers, a practice that could be systematically worked, if nothing else would do. Both methods have their obvious disadvantages. The arbitrary selection of speakers, even by the most impartial Committee of Selection, would, according to our present notions, seem to infringe upon a natural right, the right of each member of a body to deliver an opinion, and give the reasons for it. It would seem like reviving the censorship of the press, to allow only a select number to be heard on all occasions.

May not something be done to circumvent this vast problem? May there not be a greater extension given to maxims and forms of procedure already in existence?

* * * * *

[OBVIATING HURRIED DECISIONS.]

First, then, we recognize in various ways the propriety of obviating hurried and unpremeditated decisions. Giving previous notice of motions has that end in view; although, perhaps, this is more commonly regarded simply as a protection to absentees. Advantage is necessarily taken of the foreknowledge of the business to prepare for the debates. It is a farther help, that the subject has been already discussed somewhere or other by a committee of the body, or by the agency of the public press. Very often an assembly is merely called upon to decide upon the adoption of a proposal that has been long canvassed out of doors. The task of the speakers is then easy—we might almost say no speaking should be required: but this is to anticipate.

In legislation by Parliament, the forms allow repetition of the debates at least three times in both Houses. This is rather a cumbrous and costly remedy for the disadvantage, in debate, of having to reply to a speaker who has just sat down. In principle, no one ought to be called to answer an argumentative speech on the spur of the moment. The generality of speakers are utterly unfit for the task, and accordingly do it ill. A few men, by long training, acquire the power of casting their thoughts into speaking train, so as to make a good appearance in extempore reply; yet even these would do still better if they had a little time. The adjournment of a debate, and the reopening of a question at successive stages, furnish the real opportunities for effective reply. In a debate begun and ended at one sitting, the speaking takes very little of the form of an exhaustive review, by each speaker, of the speeches that went before.

It is always reckoned a thing of course to take the vote as soon as the debate is closed. There are some historical occasions when a speech on one side has been so extraordinarily impressive that an adjournment has been moved to let the fervour subside; but it is usually not thought desirable to let a day elapse between the final reply and the division. This is a matter of necessity in the case of the smaller corporations, which have to dispose of all current business at one sitting; but when a body meets for a succession of days, it would seem to be in accordance with sound principle not to take the vote on the same day as the debate.

* * * * *

[ASSUMPTIONS AT THE BASIS OF ORAL DEBATE.]

These few remarks upon one important element of procedure are meant to clear the way for a somewhat searching examination of the principles that govern the, entire system of oral debate. It is this practice that I propose to put upon its trial. The grounds of the practice I take to be the following:—

1. That each member of a deliberative body shall be provided with a complete statement of the facts and reasons in favour of a proposed measure, and also an equally complete account of whatever can be said against it. And this is a requirement I would concede to the fullest extent. No decision should be asked upon a question until the reasonings pro and con are brought fairly within the reach of every one; to which I would add—in circumstances that give due time for consideration of the whole case.

2. The second ground is that this ample provision of arguments, for and against, should be made by oral delivery. Whatever opportunities members may have previously enjoyed for mastering a question, these are all discounted when the assembly is called to pronounce its decision. The proposer of the resolution invariably summarizes, if he is able, all that is to be said for his proposal; his arguments are enforced and supplemented by other speakers on his side; while the opposition endeavours to be equally exhaustive. In short, though one were to come to the meeting with a mind entirely blank, yet such a one, having ordinary faculties of judging, would in the end be completely informed, and prepared for an intelligent vote.

Now, I am fully disposed to acquiesce in this second assumption likewise, but with a qualification that is of considerable moment, as we shall see presently.

3. The third and last assumption is as follows:—Not only is the question in all its bearings supposed to be adequately set forth in the speeches constituting the debate, but, in point of fact, the mass of the members, or a very important section or proportion of them, rely upon this source, make full use of it, and are equipped for their decision by means of it; so much so, that if it were withdrawn none of the other methods as at present plied, or as they might be plied, would give the due preparation for an intelligent vote; whence must ensue a degradation in the quality of the decisions.

It is this assumption that I am now to challenge, in the greatest instance of all, as completely belied by the facts. But, indeed, the case is so notoriously the opposite, that the statement of it will be unavoidably made up of the stalest commonplaces; and the novelty will lie wholly in the inference.

The ordinary attendance in the House of Commons could be best described by a member or a regular official. An outsider can represent it only by the current reports. My purpose does not require great accuracy; it is enough, that only a very small fraction of the body makes up the average audience. If an official were posted to record the fluctuating numbers at intervals of five minutes, the attendance might be recorded and presented in a curve like the fluctuations of the barometer; but this would be misleading as to the proportion of effective listeners—those that sat out entire debates, or at all events the leading speeches of the debates, or whose intelligence was mainly fed from the speaking in each instance. The number of this class is next to impossible to get at; but it will be allowed on all hands to be very small.

Perhaps, in such an inquiry, most can be made of indirect evidences. If members are to be qualified for an intelligent decision in chief part by listening to the speeches, why is not the House made large enough to accommodate them all at once? It would appear strange, on the spoken-debate theory of enlightenment, that more than one-third should be permanently excluded by want of space. One might naturally suppose that, in this fact, there was a breach of privilege of the most portentous kind. That it is so rarely alluded to as a grievance, even although amounting to the exclusion of a large number of the members from some of the grandest displays of eloquence and the most exciting State communications, is a proof that attendance in the House is not looked upon as a high privilege, or as the sine qua non of political schooling.

[EVIDENCE OF THE INUTILITY OF THE MERE SPEAKING.]

If it were necessary to listen to the debates in order to know how to vote, the messages of the whips would take a different form. The members on each side would be warned of the time of commencement of each debate, that they might hear the comprehensive statement of the opener, and remain at least through the chief speech in reply. They might not attend all through the inferior and desultory speaking, but they would be ready to pop in when an able debater was on his legs, and they would hear the leaders wind up at the close. Such, however, is not the theory acted on by the whips. They are satisfied if they can procure attendance at the division, and look upon the many hours spent in the debate as an insignificant accessory, which could be disregarded at pleasure. It would take the genius of a satirist to treat the whipping-up machinery as it might well deserve to be treated. We are here concerned with a graver view of it—namely, to inquire whether the institution of oral debate may not be transformed and contracted in dimensions, to the great relief of our legislative machinery.

Of course, no one is ignorant of the fact that the great body of members of Parliament refrain altogether from weighing individually the opposing arguments in the several questions, and trust implicitly to their leaders. This, however, is merely another nail in the coffin of the debating system. The theory of independent and intelligent consideration, by each member, of every measure that comes up, is the one most favourable to the present plan, while, even on that theory, its efficiency breaks down under a critical handling.

It is time now to turn to what will have come into the mind of every reader of the last few paragraphs—the reporting of the speeches. Here, I admit, there is a real and indispensable service to legislation. My contention is, that in it we possess what is alone valuable; and, if we could secure this, in its present efficiency, with only a very small minimum of oral delivery, we should be as well off as we are now. The apparent self-contradiction of the proposal to report speeches without speaking, is not hard to resolve.

To come at once, then, to the mode of arriving at the printed debates, I shall proceed by a succession of steps, each one efficient in itself, without necessitating a farther. The first and easiest device, and one that would be felt of advantage in all bodies whatsoever, would be for the mover of a resolution to give in, along with the terms of his resolution, his reasons—in fact, what he intends as his speech, to be printed and distributed to each member previous to the meeting. Two important ends are at once gained—the time of a speech is saved, and the members are in possession beforehand of the precise arguments to be used. The debate is in this way advanced an important step without any speaking; opponents can prepare for, instead of having to improvise their reply, and every one is at the outset a good way towards a final judgment.

[DEBATES INTRODUCED BY PRINTED STATEMENTS.]

As this single device could be adopted alone, I will try and meet the objections to it, if I am only fortunate enough to light on any. My experience of public bodies suggests but very few; and I think the strongest is the reluctance to take the requisite trouble. Most men think beforehand what they are to say in introducing a resolution to a public body, but do not consider it necessary to write down their speech at full. Then, again, there is a peculiar satisfaction in holding the attention of a meeting for a certain time, great in proportion to the success of the effort. But, on the other hand, many persons do write their speeches, and many are not so much at ease in speaking but that they would dispense with it willingly. The conclusive answer on the whole is—the greater good of the commonwealth. Such objections as these are not of a kind to weigh down the manifest advantages, at all events, in the case of corporations full of business and pressed for time.

I believe that a debate so introduced would be shortened by more than the time gained by cutting off the speech of the mover. The greater preparation of everyone's mind at the commencement would make people satisfied with a less amount of speaking, and what there was would be more to the purpose.

We can best understand the effects of such an innovation by referring to the familiar experience of having to decide on the Report of Committee, which has been previously circulated among the members. This is usually the most summary act of a deliberative body; partly owing, no doubt, to the fact that the concurrence of a certain proportion is already gained; while the pros and cons have been sifted by a regular conference and debate. Yet we all feel that we are in a much better position by having had before us in print, for some time previous, the materials necessary to a conclusion. At a later stage, I will consider the modes of raising the quality and status of the introductory speech to something of the nature of a Committee's Report.[19]

The second step is to impose upon the mover of every amendment the same obligation to hand in his speech, in writing, along with the terms of the amendment. Many public bodies do not require notice of amendments. It would be in all cases a great improvement to insist upon such notice, and of course a still greater improvement to require the reasons to be given in also, that they might be circulated as above. The debate is now two steps in advance without a moment's loss of time to the constituted meeting; while what remains is likely to be much more rapidly gone through.

The movers of resolutions and of amendments should, as a matter of course, have the right of reply; a portion of the oral system that would, I presume, survive all the advances towards printing direct.

There remains, however, one farther move, in itself as defensible, and as much fraught with advantage as the two others. The resolution and the amendments being in the hands of the members of a body, together with the speeches in support of each, any member might be at liberty to send in, also for circulation in print, whatever remarks would constitute his speech in the debate, thereby making a still greater saving of the time of the body. This would, no doubt, be felt as the greatest innovation of all, being tantamount to the extinction of oral debate; there being then nothing left but the replies of the movers. We need not, however, go the length of compulsion; while a certain number would choose to print at once, the others could still, if they chose, abide by the old plan of oral address. One can easily surmise that these last would need to justify their choice by conspicuous merit; an assembly, having in print so many speeches already, would not be in a mood to listen to others of indifferent quality.

[THE MAGIC OF ORATORY NOT DONE AWAY WITH.]

Such a wholesale transfer of living speech to the silent perusal of the printed page, if seriously proposed in any assembly, would lead to a vehement defence of the power of spoken oratory. We should be told of the miraculous sway of the human voice, of the way that Whitfield entranced Hume and emptied Franklin's purse; while, most certainly, neither of these two would ever have perused one of his printed sermons. And, if the reply were that Whitfield was not a legislator, we should be met by the speeches of Wilberforce and Canning and Brougham upon slavery, where the thrill of the living voice accelerated the conviction of the audience. In speaking of the Homeric Assembly, Mr. Gladstone remarks, in answer to Grote's argument to prove it a political nullity, that the speakers were repeatedly cheered, and that the cheering of an audience contributes to the decision.

Now, I am not insensible to the power of speech, nor to the multitudinous waves of human feeling aroused in the encounters of oratory before a large assembly. Apart from this excitement, it would often be difficult to get people to go through the drudgery of public meetings. Any plan that would abolish entirely the dramatic element of legislation would have small chance of being adopted. It is only when the painful side of debate comes into predominance, that we willingly forego some of its pleasures: the intolerable weariness, the close air, the late nights, must be counted along with the occasional thrills of delirious excitement. But as far as regards our great legislative bodies, it will be easy to show that there would still exist, in other forms, an ample scope for living oratory to make up for the deadness that would fall upon the chief assembly.

A friend of mine once went to Roebuck to ask his attention to some point coming up in the House of Commons, and offered him a paper to read. Roebuck said, "I will not read, but I will hear". This well illustrates one of the favourable aspects of speech. People with time on their hands prefer being instructed by the living voice; the exertion is less, and the enlivening tones of a speaker impart an extraneous interest, to which we have to add the sympathy of the surrounding multitude. The early stages of instruction must be conducted viva voce; it is a late acquirement to be able to extract information from a printed page. Yet circumstances arise when the advantage of the printed page predominates. The more frequent experience in approaching public men is to be told, that they will not listen but will read. An hour's address can be read in ten minutes: it is not impossible, therefore, to master a Parliamentary debate in one-tenth of the time occupied in the delivery.

A passing remark is enough to point out the revolution that would take place in Parliamentary reporting, and in the diffusion of political instruction through the press, by the system of printing the speeches direct. The full importance of this result will be more apparent in a little. There has been much talk of late about the desirability of a more perfect system of reporting, with a view to the preservation of the debates. Yet it may be very much doubted, whether the House of Commons would ever incur the expense of making up for the defects of newspaper reporting, by providing short-hand writers to take down every word, with a view to printing in full.

* * * * *

[SECONDING EXTENDED TO A PLURALITY OF BACKERS.]

[PROPORTIONING OF BACKERS.]

Before completing the survey of possible improvements in deliberative procedure, I propose to extend the employment of another device already in use, but scarcely more than a form; I mean the requiring of a seconder before a proposal can be debated. The signification of this must be, that in order to obtain the judgment of an assembly on any proposal, the mover must have the concurrence of one other member; a most reasonable condition surely. What I would urge farther in the same direction is that, instead of demanding one person in addition to the mover, as necessary in all cases, there should be a varying number according to the number of the assembly. In a copartnery of three or four, to demand a seconder to a motion would be absurd; in a body of six or eight it is scarcely admissible. I have known bodies of ten and twelve, where motions could be discussed without a seconder; but even with these, there would be a manifest propriety in compelling a member to convince at least one other person privately before putting the body to the trouble of a discussion. If, however, we should begin the practice of seconding with ten, is one seconder enough for twenty, fifty, a hundred, or six hundred? Ought there not to be a scale of steady increase in the numbers whose opinions have been gained beforehand? Let us say three or four for an assembly of five-and-twenty, six for fifty, ten or fifteen for a hundred, forty for six hundred. It is permissible, no doubt, to bring before a public body resolutions that there is no immediate chance of carrying; what is termed "ventilating" an opinion is a recognized usage, and is not to be prohibited. But when business multiplies, and time is precious, a certain check should be put upon the ventilating of views that have as yet not got beyond one or two individuals; the process of conversion by out-of-door agency should have made some progress in order to justify an appeal to the body in the regular course of business. That the House of Commons should ever be occupied by a debate, where the movers could not command more than four or five votes, is apparently out of all reason. The power of the individual is unduly exalted at the expense of the collective body. There are plenty of other opportunities of gaining adherents to any proposal that has something to be said for it; and these should be plied up to the point of securing a certain minimum of concurrence, before the ear of the House can be commanded. With a body of six hundred and fifty, the number of previously obtained adherents would not be extravagantly high, if it were fixed at forty. Yet considering that the current business, in large assemblies, is carried on by perhaps one-third or one-fourth of the whole, and that the quorum in the House of Commons is such as to make it possible for twenty-one votes to carry a decision of the House, there would be an inconsistency in requiring more than twenty names to back every bill and every resolution and amendment that churned to be discussed. Now I can hardly imagine restriction upon the liberty of individual members more defensible than this. If it were impossible to find any other access to the minds of individual members than by speeches in the House, or if all other modes of conversion to new views were difficult and inefficient in comparison, then we should say that the time of the House must be taxed for the ventilating process. Nothing of the kind, however, can be maintained. Moreover, although the House may be obliged to listen to a speech for a proposal that has merely half a dozen of known supporters, yet, whenever this is understood to be the case, scarcely any one will be at the trouble of counter-arguing it, and the question really makes no way; the mover is looked upon as a bore, and the House is impatient for the extinguisher of a division. The securing of twenty names would cost nothing to the Government, or to any of the parties or sections that make up the House: an individual standing alone should be made to work privately, until he has secured his backing of nineteen more names, and the exercise would be most wholesome as a preparation for convincing a majority of the House.