by virtue thereof, or a true copie thereof, to us or our said Chancellor, or into our principal registry before the ffeast of St. Michael the Archangel now next ensuing; togeather with the names of all such who shall refuse, neglect, or not paye theyre severall rates imposed upon them as aforesaid, for and towards the premises; that soe we may understand how this our commission hath beene put in execution, and take such further order therein as shall be fitt and necessary in or about the same. In witness whereof, we have caused the seale of our Chancellor, which is used in this behalf, to be sett to these presents, dated the first day of August, 1662, and in the second yeare of our consecration.

PLURALITIES BILL.

THE following Petition to both Houses of Parliament was adopted at the late Visitation of the Archdeacon of Exeter, and has been unanimously signed by the clergy of the archdeaconry :

TO THE HONOURABLE THE COMMONS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED,

The humble petition of the archdeacon of Exeter and the clergy of the archdeaconry of Exeter, sheweth

That your petitioners view with much regret and alarm many of the provisions of a measure introduced into your honourable house, intituled, 'A Bill for restraining the holding of benefices in plurality, and for amending the laws relating to the residence of the clergy.' It is with great pain that they feel themselves compelled to offer any objection to a bill so intituled: but having seen that besides the professed objects stated in the preamble other ends are contemplated, and other alterations introduced, affecting the clergy, both resident and non-resident, with a system of pains and penalties degrading to their character and destructive of their influence, they cannot silently acquiesce in such a measure.

In the first place, your petitioners beg to call the attention of your honourable house to the mention made in sec. 11 of the ecclesiastical commissioners, -whose perpetual existence as a corporation is therein recognised; from which it appears also that new powers are to be given to a body which, from the mode of its appointment and the preponderance in it of lay members, is an unconstitutional innovation, utterly at variance with the ecclesiastical government of the church of England.

"Secondly, they object most strongly to the provisions of sec. 42, which enforce the regular performance of divine service on Sundays by pecuniary penalties. This they consider to be uncalled for in the present state of the church; in proof of which, they would appeal to the general discharge of their public and private ecclesiastical duties by its ministers. They conceive that the introduction of a system of fines would infallibly create a most unjust and injurious impression,-that the clergy might be deterred by sordid fears from the neglect of duties which are now voluntarily fulfilled from the purer and higher motives of love to God and man, and a faithful regard to their Ordination Vows.

The same objections are strongly felt to attach to sec. 43, where, likewise, the requiring the counter-signature of the rural dean to their parochial returns is not only a new and vexatious obligation imposed upon the clergy, but conveys an unworthy suspicion of their veracity.

Your petitioners desire, in the next place, to enter their decided protest against the provisions of sect. 64, which refer to cases of supposed inadequate performance of ecclesiastical duties. From the vague and unlimited power assigned therein to the bishop, and from the system of erecting the neighbour

ing clergy into judges of the adequate discharge of duty by any one of their brethren, they consider that this clause would not only place them under a constant liability to frivolous charges from every secret accuser, but would also tend to establish a different standard of duty in different dioceses, and be universally productive, among the clergy themselves, of mutual jealousy, suspicion, and distrust. If there were any necessity for arming the bishops with fresh powers for the government of their clergy, such powers, in the judgment of your petitioners, would better be conveyed in the measure, long promised and anxiously expected, for the more speedy, cheap, and effectual punishment of flagrant offenders;-whereby, without infringing the liberty of the subject, the church might rid herself of delinquent ministers.

Your petitioners, in conclusion, beg leave to express their sorrow at observing the feeling apparently entertained by the framers of the bill, that the clergy are to be dealt with solely by coercive measures and pecuniary inducements. They think themselves warranted in declaring that their duties are for the most part voluntarily performed from religious principle, and without reference to the unworthy considerations of the mere value of their benefices or the amount of the population.

Your petitioners, therefore, being fully persuaded that the willing and conscientious discharge of their ministerial duties, and the ready performance of more than the law requires of them, especially endear them to their respective flocks, humbly pray that no measure may pass your honourable house which by such compulsory provisions shall cause their services to be less appreciated by their people, and less satisfactory to themselves.

KING'S COLLEGE, CANADA.

(From the Report of the Committee of the Legislative Assembly.)

It appears that both in England and Scotland, the colleges and universities are founded upon exclusive religious principles, and that they are not so open, or, in modern phrase, so liberal, as King's college, against which so great a clamour has been raised, and yet they have been eminently useful, and have nobly remunerated the public for the peculiar privileges which they enjoy. But this system of exclusion, if it can be so called, has never prevailed to a greater degree in Great Britain than in the United States of America. Unhappily for the cause of religious truth, Harvard University, the best endowed literary institution in that country, is wholly unitarian. It was founded in 1638, by Mr. John Harvard, minister of Charleston. It is governed by a board composed of the governor, lieutenant governor, the council, the senate, the president, and the congregational ministers of Boston, Charleston, Cambridge, Watertown, Roxburg, and Dorchester. The president, five fellows, and treasurer, constitute the corporation, and by them the immediate government is exercised. Yet to this college the children of all denominations are sent. is in possession of funds to the amount of more than half a million of crowns, principally the accumulated donations of individuals, and enjoys moreover a large annual stipend from the treasury of the state. It has a library of thirty thousand volumes, and extensive apparatus for illustrating science, and twenty professors, aided by a number of tutors, to carry on the business of instruction. With means so ample, and at unity in its religious belief, and without any pledge against its propagation, it must operate a material change in the religious views of the community, and particularly so, as its professors occupy the first rank among the learned in America.

It

Such is the present state, resources, and influence of Harvard University; and has it excited any uneasiness or heart-burning in the community? Has it been made the beacon of faction? Has it been slandered and calumniated

by other denominations? Have the episcopalians, the baptists, methodists, and presbyterians, cried out against it? Or has the house of representatives been petitioned to change its constitution, and make its government open to all parties? Or have the professors been called upon not to inculcate their own opinions-Far from it, the legislature would never have entertained such a petition; they are too well aware of the sacred right of property and of conscience, to attempt to expunge them at the request of malice and envy; on the contrary, they are proud of their splendid university, and have actually cherished it, and munificently supplied its necessities.

The second place among American universities is occupied by Yale college, which is exclusively directed by congregationalists; yet we have never heard that the legislature of Connecticut has taken offence at this exclusion, or in any degree interfered, except to confer honours and emoluments on the institution. And so far have episcopalians been from railing against it, that to their munificence it is greatly indebted for its prosperity. Dr. Berkley, the famous bishop of Cloyne, conferred upon it a magnificent donation of books, and a landed estate in Rhode island and Mr. Dummer, another episcopalian, agent for the state, then a colony, was likewise a liberal contributor to its

resources.

So far have the legislatures of the United States been from interfering with these institutions, or meddling with their principles, that they have only noticed them to grant them favours.

In Nova Scotia, the college which is established at Windsor is much more exclusive than King's college, "for it was established," says the learned and amiable bishop of the diocese, in his eloquent address to the British public, in 1825, "to preserve the doctrines, liturgy, and discipline of the church of England in their unabated purity. It seemed necessary that the means of a right religious education should be provided for those who were to teach, and those who were to be taught, the holy principles of our church, that so they might live and die in the faith and hope of their forefathers." For this purpose the university of Windsor was established, and called King's college, as a testimony of gratitude to the kindness and piety of his late Majesty King George the Third, under whose sanction, and by whose charter, it was principally formed.

As the college charter recently received with much gratitude in New Brunswick, and now in full operation, is an exact transcript of that of King's college, your committee need not dwell on its various provisions.

CHURCH MATTERS.

CHURCH RATES.

EVERY one is aware that all the reformers and ministerialists have been talking much of a pamphlet, called, A few Historical Remarks on the supposed Antiquity of Church Rates, that it was published by the Reform Association, quoted as undoubted authority, and pronounced to have settled for ever the question of church rates. And no doubt it makes great show of all sorts of learning, Anglo-Saxon, Latin, historical, ecclesiastical. Like Hamlet's actors, the writer is the best writer in the world for history, grammar, law, and, in good truth, for comedy,- for more truly comical law, grammar, and history, never has been seen. But still, for the law of writ, he is the only man, accord

ing to Lord John Russell and the Reform Association. And when a gentleman flourishes away with Anglo-Saxon, and Latin, and law, and history, it is not very strange that he should be listened to with reverence in these days. Men have no time nor taste for reading, and any one who will assert boldly, that he knows all about the matter, and will look into half a dozen books, will beat the world now-a-days. But unfortunately for these world-beaters, there are about two or three people who do read, and have an awkward habit of closely following and examining bold assertions.

Mr. Hale has shewn long ago that he is one of this class, and if learning, accuracy, patient and close investigation, as well as high principle, can give a man claim to respect, no one has that claim in a higher degree than Mr. Hale. He has taken the liberty of examining this great Anglo-Saxon hero very closely, and the results of his examination are such as every one ought to know and to study, if they wish to know, first, what is the truth as to church rates; and next, the peculiar safety of trusting to the Reform Association, their authorities, and their pamphleteers.

A few specimens of their great hero's knowledge of law and of Latin shall be given, in order to prove the points, briefly. First of all, he actually says that the statutes of Mortmain were enacted because the clergy never did, and never could, make the most of their lands! Now this is not only actually asserted by him,-which is nothing very wonderful, for persons affecting great authority often make great blunders, but it is retailed and published by the learned Reform Association, and puffed and admired by the reformers and ministerialists! So much for this gentleman's profound knowledge of law.

Now for his Latin. He actually translates onera ecclesiæ, one of the commonest phrases in ecclesiastical and law Latin of an early date, and signifying the various charges laid upon a particular church,-i. e., on its incumbent,—by the charge of the church,'-i. e., of repairing it! After this very happy specimen of his knowledge of middle-age Latin, it is not wonderful to find him making such a gross blunder as translating "secundum competentes eis pensiones," by, "according to their competent incomes;" marvellous as such a translation would be in any one else who had got beyond Corderius. Out of four words, he has mistranslated two wholly, and made a fearful grammatical blunder in the third. He has no notion that competens ever signifies any thing but competent, or that pensio has a definite meaning in Latin of this period. Still less does he seem to know that "competentes eis" could not possibly be "their competent incomes," and that if such a meaning were intended, and if competentes did mean competent, another case must have been used.

Such, then, are reform law and reform Latin. As to the history department, Mr Hale has shewn that this learned gentleman is about as well skilled in this as in the others. If he had read Gregory's letter to Augustine, he would have known (always supposing that he could construe it) that, so far from Gregory's substituting the tripartite for the quadrupartite division, as the gentleman asserts, in England, he says, totidem verbis, that there shall be no division, but that

all shall be kept in common. Mr. Hale shewed all this before; so that the reform advocate might have learned what Gregory's letter meant from a pamphlet written as lately as 1832.

Mr. Hale then shews that of the two sets of canons which this learned gentleman brought forward as the law of the land, one which he expressly ascribes to Archbishop Ælfric, if written by Ælfric at all, so far from being a set of canons promulgated by him as archbishop, was a mere collection drawn up more than twenty years before he was archbishop, for the use of some bishop; and that Archbishop Egbert's canons never could have been made by him, as most of them were not made till long after he was dead, and that none of them are English canons, (most of them, indeed, being French.) So that they could never give authority for English law. And besides all this, neither Ælfric nor Egbert were ever metropolitans of England, but archbishops of York; so that their laws could only have extended over part of England, had they made any such laws.

Mr. Hale then proceeds to shew that, (1) Even if Ethelred's law were genuine, it could only shew that for twenty years the clergy were compelled by him to repair, for in twenty years afterwards Canute's law lays the charge on the people; and, (2) that there is strong reason for thinking Ethelred's law spurious.

Let us ask, in conclusion, how it is that the reformers are so exceedingly anxious to go back to Saxon antiquity? Is it not title enough, that a body, or an individual, has had a right for five or six centuries? If this does not make them safe in its possession, what can ? Is this to be overthrown by a sort of-not even half-proofs, but hundredth part of insinuations, (resting on bad laws, bad Latin, and worse history,-laws ascribed to men which were not written till they were dead, &c. &c.) that there was a different condition of things before these five or six centuries? But suppose the proofs to be full and complete, are we then to adopt it as a principle that, because one course was adopted 600 years ago, and another has been adopted ever since, we are to go back at once to the old practice, on proof of its existence being given? Are we really to understand the AttorneyGeneral to lay it down as law, that when a right exists by prescription only, or custom only, it cannot, if resisted, be enforced, though exercised for five or six centuries?

It may be right to add, that a young gentleman, named Jelinger Symons, having all possible desire of effecting such mischief as his powers may enable him, but yet not very dangerous, has thought proper, in undoubting reliance on the Reform Association, to put forth a small pamphlet, coarser and worse in tone, but the same in spirit as theirs, and quite dependent on it for facts. Mr. Hale having sunk the sloop, the cock-boat will sink with it. But it may be well to mention the remarkable coincidences of taste and knowledge in church reformers. This young gentleman produces a passage from Lyndwood, as he says, which states that the jus commune makes the clergy repair the churches; and this he construes by "the common law." Now it is well known that, in the Latin of that age, "jus commune" was not what we mean by the common law of England, but the com