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statesmen, and in this sense the surrender of patronage is simply a form of political cowardice.

Nor should there be any difficulty in combining the two needful conditions. By all means have an examination for admission, but let the right to appear at this examination be conferred by nomination. With independent commissioners to enforce them there need be no relaxation of tests; and if it be alleged that pressure would be put on the examiners to pass unfit candidates, and that the task of rejecting the nominees of the Government for particular posts would be too invidious for the commissioners to enforce, the difficulty may be solved in a perfectly simple way. It would be quite easy to arrange that the nominations should be in excess of the available appointments, as now obtains with respect to naval cadetships, so as to create a limited competition; and also, that instead of separate nominations being given to every vacancy, the different branches of the public service should be grouped together in appropriate classes, and the vacancies in them filled up periodically, one examination taking the place of many. Thus a minister, instead of nominating to a particular office, would nominate to a branch of the service; it would rest with the nominee to earn his place in it, by passing a creditable examination, and he would have his choice of the appointments available in the order of standing. It would not, therefore, be a case of success or absolute failure, except with regard to those at the bottom of the list, and all the good effects of competition would be secured without its drawbacks. Let us add that a test examination of this sort will fulfil the main object in view-which is not of securing men for the public service who will be most immediately useful, by having undergone a special training for the examination, but men who are likely in the long run to prove the most useful-just in proportion as it is kept free from technicalities, and is confined to the subjects ordinarily comprised in the course of education of the classes from among whom the nominees are selected. A good raw material is of much more value than an inferior article with a polished veneer laid on by a cramming master.

A modification in this new mode of appointment to the English Civil Service appears to us to be as urgently needed as that which we have already urged should be introduced with respect to the great body of Indian administrators, because if the opinion of those is worth anything who have the best opportunities of judging, the so-called reform is already producing a distinct degeneration in its character. Open com

petition may produce independence, but it also generates other qualities not so admirable. The nominee civil servant had received his appointment as an act of favour, and regarded it as a valuable gift for which he had given no consideration in return. He entered the service, therefore, with feelings of gratitude. With the man who gains his place by competition, on the other hand, there is often a very plainly manifested feeling to regard the matter as a contract to which one party has contributed a valuable commodity-his brains, accompanied by a ready disposition to discover supposed breaches of the spirit of the contract, and generally a carping, discontented habit of mind. This change is to be noticed very plainly in the Indian Civil Service, which now contains an ever-increasing proportion of discontented men, disposed to take an exaggerated estimate of the talents evinced by success in a competition, and to fancy that they have thrown themselves away. Whatever may have been the shortcomings of the civilian of the old school, he at any rate was usually properly impressed with a sense of his good fortune, being quite aware that he would have been puzzled to do as well in any other line, and that in fact the service was his best friend. The same change of feeling is now beginning to make itself apparent in the home Civil Service, where it tends more than any other cause to produce that deterioration in the public spirit of the body which those who have good opportunities of judging perceive and deplore. Yet the remedy is plain and simple. If the considerations we have offered are of any value, it should be possible to retain all that is good in competition while weeding the system of the more patent defects which now deface it. We submit that to carry this out would constitute a real administrative reform, not unworthy the attention of any statesman of our time.

ART. III.-1. SоHм: Das Verhältniss von Staat und Kirche. Tübingen: 1873.

2. Die Grenzen zwischen Kirche und Staat. Von Dr. E. FRIEDBERG. Tübingen: 1872.

3. Staat und Kirche. Betrachtungen zur Lage Deutschlands in der Gegenwart. Von F. FABRI. Gotha: 1872.

4. Die Stellung der deutschen Staatsregierungen gegenüber den Beschlüssen des Vatikanischen Concils. Von P. HINSCHIUS. Berlin 1871.

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5. Der Katholicismus und der moderne Staat. Berlin: 1873. 6. Die preussischen Kirchengesetze. Herausgegeben von R. HOEINGHAUS.

1873.

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IF in the brilliant circle of princes and statesmen assembled at the Congress of Vienna, any one had ventured to suggest that before two generations should have passed away, the question of the relation of Church and State would stand foremost among great public interests, such a prophecy would probably have been met by the incredulous smile of those who then ruled the destinies of Europe. The philosophy of 1815 considered the struggle between Church and State as a thing of the past, it looked down with a feeling approaching contempt upon the dogmatic quarrels of former ages, and, proud of its enlightened belief in God, virtue, and immortality, sured the world that the old leaven of religious controversy had lost its force. The mighty stream of the Reformation seemed to have run to waste in the sands of a shallow rationalism, whilst only the living brooklets of dissenting communities bore witness to the force of the Gospel; and the Roman Catholic Church, which had opposed to Protestantism a bold and not unsuccessful resistance, seemed by its long duration to be itself exhausted. It had been unable to prevent the encroachments of absolute rulers such as Joseph II., Pombal, and Miranda upon its domain; it had been compelled to destroy its own most powerful instrument, the order of the Jesuits; it had been hopelessly overwhelmed by the French Revolution, and owed its restoration merely to the good-will of Napoleon, whilst he held the Pope in chains and sent the noblest members of the Church to Vincennes. How could such a Church become dangerous to a powerful modern State? Why should the members of the Congress be afraid to restore the temporal power of the Chief of that Church, who had preferred captivity to obeying Napoleon's imperious command to declare war against

heretical England, protesting that his office was one of peace and good-will towards men? Indeed, so little was any recurrence to the intolerant practices of former ages apprehended, that the non-Catholic Powers, England, Russia and Prussia, were the chief promoters of the restoration of Pius VII., little imagining what difficulties they were preparing for themselves in Ireland, Poland, and the Catholic parts of Prussia. One of the first acts of the restored Pope was the re-establishment of the Jesuits, whose existence one of his predecessors had declared incompatible with the true and lasting peace of the Church (Papal Breve of July 21, 1773), whilst in France, Spain, and Italy the Ultramontane party became all-powerful in Church and State. Nevertheless the liberals of all Protestant countries, faithful to their own principles of civil and religious liberty and toleration, eagerly endeavoured to remove all civil disabilities to which Catholics still were subjected, maintaining that the progress of liberty and civilisation would be strong enough to defeat any attempt at re-establishing the dark powers of superstition, intolerance, and priestcraft.

It has been reserved for our time to destroy these fond illusions, and to re-assert the great truth, attested by all history, that religious passion is for good and evil the strongest moral power of humanity. It was from sheer exhaustion that after the desperate struggle which followed the Reformation, in which neither of the combatants had been able to crush its adversary, religious quarrels seemed to be allayed, but only the utter religious barrenness of that epoch could engender the belief that henceforth philosophy was to take the place of faith. In 1758 Horace Walpole might write in his flippant way, There were no religious combustibles in the temper of 'the times. Popery and Protestantism seemed at a stand. The ' modes of Christianity were exhausted and could not furnish ' novelty enough to fix attention.' What would he have said if a century later he had witnessed the Ritualist movement, and seen the first Catholic peers of England head a procession to a sanctuary where Christ is said to have appeared two centuries ago to a French peasant girl? In the same measure as this period of exhaustion gave way to new life in the Church the powers of positive religious belief reasserted their force, and with the progress of this movement the relation of Church and State has again become the great question of the age. And it is but natural that it should be so. Wherever a religious community has a life of its own, Church and State cannot remain indifferent to each other; they cannot co-exist as two independent powers, because both are framed of the

same materials, interpenetrate each other, live on the same territory, and, in short, represent only different aspects of the same individuals.

But no one will deny that the old strife is recommencing under very altered conditions. The great events of the two last centuries have exercised a powerful influence both on the State and on the Church of Rome. When the battle of the Reformation was fought, England and Holland were nearly the only countries which enjoyed constitutional liberty; the continental absolutism of the eighteenth century, enlightened or not as it might be, cared little for the public opinion of those days; but now nearly all civilised states have become more or less constitutional; experiments such as Joseph II. ventured to make upon the convictions of his subjects are out of the question, since every important measure of reform requires a law, which can only be passed with the concurrence of an intelligent legislature.

Nor is the condition of the Church less altered. Whilst a considerable number in the higher as in the lower classes have become indifferent or even hostile to all positive religion, the Church has gained the more absolute authority over the smaller circle of its determined adherents. This is particularly the case with the Church of Rome, which shows a spirit very different from that of the days of Ganganelli; the age of rationalism and revolution has been followed by a reaction. which has completely changed the character of the Clergy; the place of elegant abbés and philosophising bishops has been taken by a new generation of fanatical priests, who have turned the enfeebled and luxurious Church of the eighteenth century into an aggressive power, commanding an army, reduced perhaps in numbers, but thoroughly drilled, entirely cosmopolitan, and strong by passive obedience to its leaders.

It is true that even in the time of its weakness the Roman Court never abandoned in principle one jot of its old pretensions; but, temporum ratione habita, it suffered the old weapons to rest and to rust, whilst in our days it wields them with as much pretension as in the days of Gregory VII. or Innocent III. Evidently the State cannot remain indifferent to such a change. change. Our modern governments have to face a power headed by a spiritual foreign sovereign, who proclaims himself the infallible vicegerent of God, who denies the independent rights of the State, and claims the implicit obedience of all Catholics to his commands, even if such commands be in direct opposition to the laws of the State. The latter can the less acquiesce in such pretensions, as the Church claims

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