agreement. The basis of this Truce was the UTI POSSIDETIS. The Pope withdrew no claim, but he desisted from all interference, except such as was necessary for the direction of his flock. At the date of the truce his Irish bishops were found in the exact position of their predecessors prior to the madnesses of James II. There existed no such bishops in England, and he made no attempt to create them. He accepted, when under the pressure of French despotism, the assistance of Great Britain; at the restoration of European peace many courtesies and civilities were interchanged between him and the Crown. The first encroachment respected our colonies, but this was at least palliated in the outset by our own neglect of the interests of our Church in them. Rome saw us allow them to multiply and grow without taking any care for planting in them our own ecclesiastical system; and the apparent indifference with which her first steps were observed, added to the long-continued abandonment of our own duty, might be considered as some proof that in that direction the empire was willing to acquiesce in her measures. Then came the erection of a new see (Galway) in Ireland-a step which would certainly have attracted much notice under ordinary circumstances; but it occurred in 1831, when the whole nation were in the fever of the Reform Bill: it therefore passed literally without observation. Finally, even as to the subsequent concessions of title and precedence to the Pope's Irish and colonial prelates-however weighty the argument drawn from them by Dr. Wiseman against the Whigs-however we are bound to admit that they might naturally encourage the Court of Rome to believe that it would carry the sentiment of our present rulers with it in further innovations—we must repeat that these concessions were, in spite of all the sophistries of Lord Grey, ministerial, not legislatorial; and insist that, grievously inculpating a knot of partisans, they can avail but little for the defence of the Pontiff of 1850.

It is something, after all, that those surreptitious steps were taken in respect of our outlying dependencies. It does not follow, because faithless stewards have encouraged, and a careless landlord has winked at, squatting on the skirts of his chase, that he will feel himself bound to tolerate the cutting up of his garden into lots or the demand of a lodgment in his manor-house. The invasion of England was an egregious novelty — a monstrous inroad; by that, at least, the Truce of a hundred years was openly trampled under foot-there could no longer be any pretence that the Uti Possidetis had not been violently disturbed. All the advocates of quiescence, from Dr. Wiseman to Lord St. Germans, assume that the Pope does and can exercise his authority in no other way than that which he has now adopted with respect

respect to us. This, however, is not the fact. If it were, no doubt the fact would much embarrass the opposite side; but that he has other means, and can use them when he pleases, our own experience proves; and no one is better aware how the case stands than Dr. Wiseman, though we can readily believe that Lord St. Germans has not considered matters so closely.

Since, then, the Truce is at an end, what remains for our election? We think, one of two things only-War or a Treaty of Peace. Now war, either in the shape of hostilities against the feeblest of all temporal princes, or in the shape of the summary re-enactment of the severe penal laws, whereby to compel our Romish fellow-subjects back into the condition of their grandfathers-this is, we need not say, utterly a dream. No such measures would be endured by Parliament, nor, even at this moment, excited as it is, by the British people. The alternative is peace-a treaty-a solemn and distinct engagement as between two sovereign powers.

The reasoning of those who insist that any such treaty would be a violation of principle, is to us simply unintelligible. If we be told that it is ridiculous to propose the experiment of a peace with a power which has just broken a truce, we reply, that a truce has no sanction save in foro conscientia-whereas a written compact passes instantly into the body of European law, and that, were such a treaty trampled on by the Pope, he would find himself alone in the Roman Catholic world. Every government, Protestant or Romish, which has been in the habit of conducting her relations with Rome on a Concordat, would be instantly roused by such an infraction, and would become our ally against the Vatican. It must be needless to expatiate on the consequences which this would involve.

The dilemma' stated by Lord St. Germans has, we believe, disturbed We admire the adroitness many temperate minds. of the noble logician, but he does not touch our convictions. He says

'The supremacy of the Queen, that is, her authority as head of the Church, is as much part and parcel of the constitution of the Church in Ireland as in England. Anything which, if done in England, would constitute an aggression on the supremacy of the Queen, must equally constitute an aggression on it if done in Ireland.

Parliament, in proceeding to legislate on the subject, will therefore find itself in this dilemma; either it must prohibit in England that which it permits in Ireland, or it must prohibit in Ireland that which has been immemorially done in that country without let or hindrance.'

We admit the great difficulty and delicacy of such legislation as Lord St. Germans contemplates; but we think he has per

plexed himself and others unnecessarily by confounding very different things. Toleration and Permission, which he takes for convertible terms, are by no means such. That which is prohibited may be tolerated-it cannot be permitted. Sin is not permitted. Every Truce on the principle of uti possidetis must include the tolerance of many anomalies: these must remain till they are set to rights by some definite arrangement: both parties are bound in honour to leave them as they are meanwhile. Interference with them by the solitary act of either is aggression, and breaks the Truce. The noble Earl's dilemma rests, therefore, on nothing but oblivion or suppression of the existence of the Truce between us and Rome; and he is wholly unwarranted in arguing either that a tolerance in Ireland, which made part of the uti possidetis, ties us up from repelling an aggressive innovation as to England; or that, the principle of uti possidetis having been set aside by the Pope's own deed, our Legislature is not at full liberty to take up the whole question de novo, and proceed to rectify the grand omission, which neither Pitt nor Grenville ever contemplated, but which was made by the hasty Ministers of 1829.

We, at least, do not believe that any mere Bill passed by the British Parliament would have been effective for that purpose even at the commencement of the century; still less that it would be effective now. One thing, however, is quite clearthat, supposing the attempt towards a settlement to be made by a statute, we shall gain but little if it deal only with the outward and visible signs of recent aggression. If the enemy is not to be disarmed, it signifies little to hinder his marching with beaten drums and flying colours. This new aggression is the reductio ad absurdum of the Relief Bill; we shall certainly take nothing by any new Bill which shall not do what that unfortunate Bill wholly eschewed-establish the necessary restrictions upon the administration of the Romish Church within this empire-such restrictions as are to be found in operation in every other European State but this. To such regulations no Romanist really faithful in heart to his Sovereign and the Constitution can reasonably object. It is happily seen that some of the most respectable adherents of that religion are prepared to stand by the body of their countrymen against the overweening presumption of the Roman Court. Let us repeat once more that we ought to be exceedingly thankful for the late excess to which that presumption has been tempted. But for this, one encroachment might have followed another until we had grown completely callous and casehardened, or accepted submission as an inevitable destiny. It is not yet, we hope, too late to profit by the warning

that

We must seize this oppor

that has been rashly afforded to us. tunity for giving ourselves a chance at least of internal tranquillity for England-of repose and civilisation for Ireland. Ireland is the main and permanent consideration. The insult which has raised the country from one end to the other is the rattle of the snake, but it is idle to think of silencing the rattle by cutting off the tail; it is the bite that is fatal. We must find an antidote to the poison.

We well know how offensive the mention of a Concordat will be at present. Few, perhaps, call to mind from how early a date such treaties have been found necessary. The series can be traced distinctly from A.D. 1122 to the settlement of the modern kingdom of the Netherlands; and to them Europe has owed the far greater share of such ecclesiastical peace as she has ever enjoyed. Among all the innumerable pamphlets and speeches called forth on this occasion,* we have not observed a Treaty alluded to as the possible solution, except in the one very statesmanlike reply of the Bishop of Norwich to his clergy; and that allusion was fiercely rebuked in newspapers justly respected for their consistent protestantism. Nevertheless, we confidently anticipate that, when the present fever is allayed, it will be gradually apprehended by the good sense of the nation that there is no other measure which can promise even a chance of ultimate repose. It is very probable that the enforcement or imposition of some restrictions, by direct authority of Parliament, may be in the first place wise and expedient: a negotiation could not be brought to a rapid conclusion; something may be necessary at once to allay the irritation of Protestants, and to check the arrogance of Romanists-and so by degrees predispose both parties to an accommodation. Restrictions, however, we firmly believe, can be of no real value any further than as they may tend to the consummation so devoutly to be wished-a Concordat.

ART. X.-The Defenceless State of Great Britain. By Sir Francis B. Head, Bart. Murray, 1850. THE readers of the Quarterly Review need hardly be reminded of the respect and regard which we have always felt towards Sir Francis Head. We have been the ready witnesses and sometimes the auxiliaries of his various and brilliant successes, as well in his spirited and ill-requited administration of Upper

* In the last Number of that useful monthly sheet, the London Publishers' Circular, the publications announced in connection with the aggression' are 184!

Canada

Canada as in the many literary essays in which he has combined much information with much amusement. We therefore were prepared to receive with the most favourable disposition any work from so lively and fertile a pen; but when we recollected that Sir Francis, in addition to his other qualifications, had been a soldier, and had, no doubt, exercised in that profession the same singular powers of observation and combination which he has shown on other subjects, we were at once startled, and additionally interested, by the announcement of a work of such an ominous title and import as the Defenceless State of Great Britain. We opened the book with a strong predilection for our author; but we soon perceived that the impressionable turn of his mind, the singular adroitness with which he gives importance to minute objects, his seductive facilities of graphic illustration, a certain love of singularity and paradox, and, above all, the activity and dash with which he delights to ride as it were a steeple-chase after any favourite object--that all these, we say, which give such a charm to his lighter essays, are not so well adapted to subjects so serious as the defences of the country, and the financial and political considerations to which all the military and mechanical elements of national defence must be subordinate.

We have shown in two articles, as long since as September, 1847, and March, 1848,* that we were fully alive to the great question of our national defences, both military and naval, and to the inappreciable importance of the change which many circumstances, and particularly the application of steam in its various forms, had made in our defensive position since the conclusion of the last war; but Sir Francis appears to us to have treated the subject in a style so dangerous to the true principles of our national defence, that we cannot refrain from entering our protest, alike against his judgments on the past and his suggestions for the future.

The whole scope and object of the work may be comprised in a general proposition that England will be in a defenceless state as long as she shall not have a STANDING ARMY AND A STANDING NAVY equal in every respect to those that in any war can possibly be arrayed against her; in other words, that we should support, henceforward and for ever, nothing but war establishments on the most extensive scale. Against this, we repeat, we must protest in toto.

Sir Francis undertakes to establish his lemma of the Defenceless State of Great Britain analytically, by a series of details exhibiting the insufficient state to which, by the false economy of peace establishments, different branches of our public force

* Quart. Rev., vol. 81, p. 572; vol. 82, p. 453.