Now, on merely political grounds, there is much to be said in favour of endowing the clergy of the numerical majority of the people. If the endowment is to be exclusive, this is the most equitable and useful application which the State can make of the church property. But this system, though productive of considerable practical advantages, is nevertheless liable to serious objections. In the first place, the opinion of the majority of the population is not a correct, or, indeed, a recognised standard of belief, even in secular matters. In religious matters, it is still less applicable. The smaller sects, each of which constitutes an inconsiderable minority of the population, utterly repudiate any such measure of truth, and recognise only their own conscientious convictions, and the dicta of the teachers whose authority they reverence. By adopting this criterion, the State admits. its own unfitness to judge of religious truth; and yet it refers to no other judge of acknowledged competency. In the second place, exclusive endowment, though less oppressive and intolerant than a proscription of religious error, and less offensive and vexatious than a system of State proselytism, nevertheless implies political inequality on religious grounds, and therefore creates a certain amount of religious discontent and discord. The unendowed sects, though they cannot complain of the intolerance of the government, yet complain of its partiality; and transfer to the political institutions of the State a portion of the dislike with which they regard a rival, but more favoured church. Owing to these difficulties, both in theory and practice, two other plans have been resorted to by the governments of countries in which there is a plurality of Christian sects. One of them sacrifices the principle of church endowment-the other widens its operation. The one is, for the State to abstain altogether from the recognition of any religious body, from the establishment of any political standard of religious truth, and from the endowment of any church; the other is, for all the Christian churches and sects to be concurrently endowed by the State. Both of these plans avoid the evils of religious inequality-the latter by admitting, the former by rejecting, all sects indiscriminately. Neither of them sets up the opinion of the majority of the people or any other political standard of religious truth. The former is adopted in France, Belgium, Prussia, and other continental States, and, to a certain extent, in the United Kingdom; inasmuch as the Episcopal Protestant Church is established in England, while the Presbyterian Church is established in Scotland, and endowed in Ireland*-not to mention the colonies. The latter plan is adopted in the United States. The old system of exclusive toleration still subsists in the purely Catholic States of Southern Europe. § 7. Besides endowing the clergy of a particular sect, and defraying the expenses of its public worship, the State may also seek to promote religious truth by an interference with Public Instruction. It may establish schools having a certain religious character, and it may afford facilities for religious instruction of the same complexion. Its influence over public instruction may be exercised for the purpose of favouring the doctrines of a certain religious persuasion, so as to confirm some children in their actual faith, and to convert others to that faith. * Mr. Gladstone, The State in its Relations with the Church, ch. 3, § 47, sees no decisive objection to this system. He thinks that the connexion of the State need not, in all cases, be exclusively with one church. Arguments similar to those which have been used above, in the case of ecclesiastical endowments, apply in the case of public instruction. Where children remain untaught in religion, from the want of teachers, and from mere neglect and indifference about religion, there the establishment of schools by the State, and the supply of religious instruction, will promote the spread of the peculiar religious opinions which may be inculcated in such schools: but where a spirit of sectarian repugnance exists, and the religious doctrines taught in the schools are considered by the people as unsound, parents will not send their children to receive the instruction, even gratuitously, or permit them to become attendants for the purpose of learning what they themselves believe to be error. Hence the establishment of government schools, for purposes of religious proselytism, may be expected to be attended with no better success than that which accompanied the Protestant Charter Schools of Ireland. The objections to an exclusive assistance of the schools of one religious denomination by the State, when the funds granted come, not from a permanent endowment, but from the annual taxation, have been so strongly felt, that in most modern countries, which give a public aid to instruction, the grant has been divested of an exclusive character, and has been made indiscriminately to schools. of all religious sects. The principle of Concurrent Endowment, which has been more reluctantly admitted with respect to the maintenance of public worship, has been more readily applied to the assistance of public instruction. § 8. Besides punishment and reward, endowment of the clergy and public instruction, the only means available to the State for the promotion of religious truth, and the repression of religious error, is the Regulation of the Press by a Censorship. A censorship of the press, rigorously and consistently exercised, may unquestionably do much for preventing the circulation of heterodox religious opinions in a country. It did much for this purpose in most parts of Europe, in the first centuries. after the invention of printing, and it still does much for the same purpose in Italy and Spain. A censorship of the press has, however, at all times been met by evasions and indirect violations, and thus has been found an imperfect means of preventing the circulation of religious ideas. Books prohibited in one country were printed in another; they were introduced clandestinely, and were sought with the greater eagerness on account of the prohibition: the interest of the smuggler defeated the zeal of the censor.† The Reformers of the sixteenth * See Sarpi, 1. VI. c. 5. The entire passage, with the answer of Pallavicini, is given in Brischar, Controversen Sarpi's und Pallavicini's in der Geschichte des Trienter Concils, vol. II. pp. 347-58. See also Hoffmann, Geschichte der Büchercensur, (Berlin, 1819,) c. 2; Hallam, Literature of Europe, vol. II. c. 8. §§ 69-72; Disraeli, Curiosities of Literature, p. 250. ed. 10. + Madame de Stael makes the following remarks upon the efficacy of the censorship of the press in the last century: "On se plaît à dire en France que c'est précisément par égard pour la religion et pour les mœurs qu'on a de tout temps eu des censeurs, et néanmoins il suffit de comparer l'esprit de la littérature en Angleterre, depuis que la liberté de la presse y est établie, avec les divers écrits qui ont paru sous le règne arbitraire de Charles II., et sous celui du Régent et Louis XV. en France. La licence des écrits a été portée chez les Français, dans le dernier siècle, à un degré qui fait horreur. Il en est de même en Italie, où, de tout temps, on a soumis cependant la presse aux restrictions les plus gênantes: L'ignorance dans la masse, et l'indépendance la plus désordonnée dans les esprits distingués, est toujours le resultat de la contrainte." - Considérations sur la Révolution Française, part VI. c. 5. and seventeenth, and the Freethinkers of the eighteenth century, were able to inundate Europe with their writings, in spite of the Catholic censors of the press. At present, a censorship of the press, either for religious or other purposes, would not be submitted to by the countries which enjoy a popular government. In those States of Germany which have retained a censorship, it has been lately applied almost exclusively to the current political discussion, and has left a wide latitude to theological controversy. Practically, therefore, a censorship of the press can scarcely be enumerated among the engines which a government can now use for the repression of religious error. The same remark applies with still greater force to a Law of Libel, the practical effect of which, in regulating serious argumentative controversy on religious questions, may be considered as nearly insensible. § 9. The general result, therefore, at which we arrive is, that although the promotion of religious truth, and the repression of religious error, are universally admitted to be desirable objects, yet the State is not able, by the means at its disposal, to compass them effectually; and that not only will its attempts to attain them be wholly or in great part unsuccessful, but that they will be attended with serious incidental evils. For the fruitless efforts made by the State are not merely so much labour wasted and thrown away: the attempts to propagate its own religious creed disturb civil society-they aggravate and embitter the existing dissensions and animosities of the rival sects, and create new causes of discord, which would not otherwise have existed.* * Sully represented to the king-"Qu'il y avait assez longtemps que la différence des religions donnait en France les scènes |