tages: it secures an orderly administration, and a comfortable support to the clergy; it gives the church access to the whole population and brings all the young under religious instruction. In most countries of Europe, Catholic as well as Protestant, the state has secularized the landed and other possessions of the church, and in supporting the clergy, it only pays the interest of a debt assumed. The state is not likely to surrender the church property, and to lose its power over the clergy by making it independent; while the clergy is not disposed to give up its claim and to entrust itself to the good-will of the congregations for its daily bread. The United States never possessed any church property, and never meddled with ecclesiastical affairs except to protect them by law.

Nevertheless the basis on which the union of church and state is founded, namely the identity of the community of citizens and the community of Christians of one creed, no longer exists, and acts of uniformity in religion have become an impossibility. The state has sacred obligations to all its citizens, and dare not promote a creed at the expense of justice and humanity. The mixed character of the population as regards their religious convictions peremptorily demands concessions to dissenters, and every such concession or act of toleration is a weakening of the bond of union between church and state, until at last a separation becomes inevitable. This at least is the tendency of things in modern Europe. There are few intelligent advocates of statechurchism, at least in Protestant countries, who will not concede the necessity of toleration as a simple act of justice, or even go further and admit the principle of free-churchism, namely that the profession of religion ought to be voluntary, and that the church ought to support and to govern herself. The internal controversies of Christendom should be fought out on the basis of freedom without fear and favor of the secular power.

Great Britain.

England is the mother of the United States, though she acted more like a step-mother in colonial days. Our lan

guage, laws, customs, and religion, and our conception of liberty and self-government, are derived from her. Without the Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, and the Bill of Rights-the three documents which Lord Chatham called the Bible of the English Constitution,-there would be no American Constitution, which embodies their most valuable guarantees of personal and national freedom.'

The era of religious uniformity and consequent persecution, which sent so many of England's best citizens to the wild woods of North America, closed with the expulsion of the tyrannical and treacherous dynasty of the Stuarts and the Act of Toleration of 1689. The benefit of this act was subsequently enlarged, and extended to Unitarians (1813), to Roman Catholics (1829), and at last to the Jews (1858), all of whom may now be represented in Parliament. Practically there is as much civil and religious liberty and as much religious activity in England and Scotland as in the United States, and the voluntary principle, owing in part to the good example set by dissenters, has made wonderful progress within the established church itself.

But nominally and legally the Queen is still the supreme governor, both of the Episcopalian Church of England, and of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland; and as Empress of India she is bound to protect the Hindoo religion of her subjects. Presbyterians are dissenters in England; while Episcopalians are dissenters in Scotland. The Queen changes her churchmanship and dissentership twice every year, as she passes from Windsor to Balmoral and back again This

1 Francis Lieber (“On Civil Liberty and Self-Government," p. 260) says: "American liberty belongs to the great division of Anglican liberty [as distinguished from Gallican liberty]. It is founded upon the checks, guarantees, and self-government of the Anglican race. The trial by jury, the representative government, the common law, self-taxation, the supremacy of the law, publicity, the submission of the army to the legislature . form part and parcel of our liberty. There are, however, features and guarantees which are peculiar to ourselves, and which, therefore, we may say constitute American liberty. They may be summed up, perhaps, under these heads: Republican federalism, strict separation of the state from the church, greater equality and acknowledgment of abstract rights in the citizen, and a more popular or democratic cast of the whole polity."

double headship-leaving out the sex-is a strange anomaly, and without a shadow of precedent in the Bible or antiquity. It dates from Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth. It cannot last much longer. The dissenters are uneasy and discontented with their status of legal and social inferiority, and a large class of Episcopalians feel equally discontented with the subserviency of their own church to the royal supremacy and to a Parliament composed no more exclusively of churchmen, but also of dissenters, Jews, and Gentiles. In England and Wales the dissenters numbered in 1883 nearly one half of the population (12,500,000 to 13,500,000 Episcopalians), and in Scotland, the Free Church and United Presbyterian Church, even without the non-Presbyterian communions, are nearly as strong as the established Kirk.

In Ireland the Church of England was disestablished in 1869 under the leadership of a high-church Episcopalian prime minister, who in his youth had written an elaborate defence of the union of church and state.' Mr. Gladstone has not changed his religion, but he has changed his politics. After years of practical experience in government, he found it impossible to maintain his views in the mixed character of the modern state, without doing injustice to a large portion of the people. At the union of England and Ireland in 1801, it was enacted that the Churches of England and Ireland were forever to form one Protestant Episcopalian Church; and this was to be a fundamental part of the union between the two countries. The Irish were forced to support a religion which was professed only by a small minority, and which was hated as heretical and tyrannical by three fourths of the population.

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1 William Ewart Gladstone: "The State in its Relations with the Church." 4th ed. London, 1841. 2 vols. The famous critique of Macaulay in the Edinburgh Review" for April, 1839, is very respectful to the author, but very severe on his theory, which, he says, ought to be built on "buttresses of adamant," but is "made out of flimsy materials fit only for perorations." For a more recent defence and exposition of Anglican state-churchism, see Roundell, Earl of Selborne : "A Defence of the Church of England against Disestablishment" (London, 1886); also Hon. Arthur Elliot: "The State and the Church" (London, 1882).

The wonder is, that such an anomaly could continue so long and be defended by good men misguided by hereditary prejudice. The disestablishment and disendowment of the Anglican Church in Ireland, accompanied by proper compensation or commutation, was an act of simple justice, and has resulted in giving greater efficiency to the Episcopal and other Protestant bodies.

Since that time all Christian denominations in Ireland are placed on a footing of legal equality, and each manages its affairs independently in its own way. This state of things would have appeared impossible not only to Englishmen before the Reformation, when all citizens were Roman Catholics, but also to Protestant Englishmen during the times when the principle of uniformity in religion prevailed. Now this principle is universally abandoned as oppressive, unjust, and unreasonable.

Whether disestablishment will follow in Scotland, Wales, and at last even in England, is only a question of time. True religion in these countries will be the gainer. The Free Church of Scotland started with the establishment principle, but has abandoned it under the influence of successful experience.

Switzerland.

Switzerland approaches nearest the United States in her republican organization, though differing in nationality and language. She is the oldest republic in Europe, dating from "the eternal covenant" of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, which was concluded August 1, 1291.'

1 See Dr. Bluntschli (a native of Zürich, Professor of Legal Science at Heidelberg, d. 1881): "Geschichte des Schweizerischen Bundesrechtes von den ersten ewigen Bünden bis auf die Gegenwart," 2d ed. Stuttgart, 1875. 2 vols. The second volume contains the documents. The first covenant of 1291 is in Latin, and begins: "In nomine Domini. Amen." This form is followed in the later covenants. The sacred oath of the men in Grütli, on the Lake of the Four Cantons, in 1308, was a renewal of the covenant of 1291, and followed by the expulsion of the foreign rulers appointed by King Albrecht of Austria. On Dec. 9, 1315, after the memorable battle of Morgarten, the covenant was again renewed at Brunnen. The story of William Tell, immortalized by the historic skill of Johann von Müller, and still more by the poetic genius of Schiller, is unfortunately a myth, though with a kernel of truth "Auch die Geschichte

Originally the Swiss republic was a loose, aristocratic confederacy of independent cantons, and recognized only one religion, the Roman Catholic, in the middle ages, and two after the Reformation, the Roman Catholic and the Reformed (i. e., the church reformed by Zwingli and Calvin).

In 1848, after the defeat of the Sonderbund of the Roman Catholic cantons, which obstructed all progress, the constitution was entirely remodelled on democratic principles, and after the American example. The confederacy of cantons was changed into a federal state with a representation of the people, and with a central government acting directly. upon the people. The legislative branch of the government (Bundesversammlung, Congress) was divided into two houses, -the Ständerath, corresponding to our Senate, and consisting of forty-four deputies of the twenty-two cantons (which constituted the old Diet), and the Nationalrath, or House of Representatives, elected by the vote of the people according to population (one to every 20,000 souls). The executive department or Bundesrath consists of seven members, appointed by the two branches of the legislature for three years. They constitute the cabinet. The President (Bundespräsident) and the Vice-President of the republic are not elected by the people, as in the United States, but by the cabinet out of their number, and only for one year. The judicial department or supreme court (Bundesgericht) consists of eleven judges elected by the legislature for three years, and decides controversies between the cantons, etc.1

The constitution of 1848 was again revised and still more centralized May 29, 1874, with reference to the relation of the Federal government to railroads, post, and telegraphs, liberty of commerce, emigration, etc. The revision was subvon Tell" (says Bluntschli, I., 69), "welcher den Vogt Gessler erschoss, weil er in ihm den freien Mann verhöhnt und den Vater geschändet hatte, enthält, wenn sie auch im Verfolg sagenhaft geschmückt wurde, doch einen ächten Zug des schweizerischen Nationalcharakters, und ist desshalb auch so populär geworden."

1 Comp. Rüttimann : "Das nordamerikanische Bundesstaatsrecht verglichen mit den politischen Einrichtungen der Schweiz." Zürich, 1867–72. vols.

2