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tary of State in the room of the Lord-Advocate-are the main practical measures of remedy that have yet been propounded by the leaders of the Scottish Rights agitation. Now, while these two measures have our hearty and unreserved approval, we do not think that of themselves they will secure Justice to Scotland.' They will do much; but they will not do all. The full remedy, we believe, is deeper and more distant. It lies in that idea already propounded in our columns, that, for the proper government and administration of this country, the present system of one Parliament legislating on and for everything, small or great, from the Orkneys to Cornwall, is utterly and radically bad; and that what is necessary is a division of the country into great districts, each with a Parliament or legislative apparatus, for the transaction of its own business; while the general or Imperial Parliament of the nation shall take in charge only the national business as such, and furnish, as it were, the highest legislative hints necessary to secure the concurrent action of the whole British body-politic."

Mr. Dove, at the Glasgow meeting of December the 15th, broached the same speculation as follows:

"Is Scotland so absolutely stupid that she cannot transact her own local business, but she must ever run off to London with a great many Scotch guineas in her pocket that never return? Must we in every act of life always look to London, as if all the wisdom of the world were concentrated there? Can we do nothing for ourselves, not even administer our own local affairs, with which no other country has any concern? Truly, I do not think this is reasonable, and I do not think it is right. Let the Imperial Parliament regulate all imperial affairs; but let there be also some Scottish assembly for the direction of those matters which are exclusively Scottish. I do not say a legislative assembly, but an administrative one. You can have no difficulty in understanding how this might be effected, for you are all familiar with a system which proves that an administrative assembly may co-exist with a legislative assembly. You all know that in the Presbyterian form of church government there are sessions, presbyteries, synods, and a General Assembly. The legislative power and ultimate appeal lie with the General Assembly, which is the supreme judicature. Now, the present House of Commons represents a Presbyterian Assembly without sessions, without presbyteries, and without synods, and every little petty case is brought before the general assembly of the nation, when it could be quite as well disposed of by local presbyteries and local synods. Why should not Scotland have a political synod to manage her Scottish affairs? The synod does not legislate, but it administers; and so long as England has different laws and different institutions, I say there is great need of a Scottish synoda political synod to administer the affairs of Scotland."

It would be absurd to confound such an argument as this with a cry for the Repeal of the Union. It is something very different. It is, in reality, an indication of the manner in which the

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Union might be consummated in accordance with the latest and best ideas of political science. It is an application to the case of Scotland of one of the most promising speculations of the time-the speculation as to the mutual limits of centralization and local self-government.

For many years there has been a growing dissatisfaction with that system of government which centralizes all or the greater part of the management of a nation's affairs in a single metropolitan institution or cluster of institutions; and a growing conviction that it is desirable for the interests of education, good government, and progress, that we should have as much as possible of active local citizenship. The principle which the advocates of this speculation put forward is this very obvious and natural one, that, whatever business pertains to any locality, town, or district, ought, as far as possible, to be transacted within the limits of that locality, town, or district, and by the common agreement of its inhabitants, considering and discussing the matter among themselves. It would be a good thing, it is held, if we could have in every parish a weekly folk-mote on a certain day for the public discussion by the parishioners, of topics of local interest as well as of the political questions agitating the nation. Taking this weekly parochial meeting as the primary political institution of the country, there ought, according to the plan indicated, to be a regular gradation of institutions, connecting the local organization with the general Parliament of the country, precisely as a Presbyterian kirk-session is connected with the General Assembly by the intermediate action of Presbyteries and Provincial Synods. Thus the whole nation would be thoroughly penetrated to its smallest local fibre by the feeling of energetic political life. The benefits, as regards efficient government, order, and liberty would, it is thought, be immense. The ordinary classification of governments into monarchical, aristocratic, republican, and the like, is held to be far less valuable as a means of testing the degree of liberty enjoyed by any given community, than would be a division of governments into two general classes, those whose main feature is government from a centre, and those which permit a local distribution. of the political power. There may be despotism in a centralized. republic; but despotism cannot co-exist with local self-government, whatever is the ostensible form of the general authority. Great Britain, though a monarchy, has more of local self-government than France though a republic, and is consequently a free country; but Great Britain is still behind America in this respect. Only on the other side of the Atlantic do we see local institutional self-government developed to anything like the extent it might attain. Only there, consequently, is active citizen

ship a reality. In every district in the United States there is as full and intense a political life, as there was in Athens, or any other of the petty Hellenic Republics of the ancient world; the function of citizenship is as real a part of human duty and as valuable a means of human education; the mass of the people are not trained to regard political indifferentism as a virtue; and yet there seems, if we except the slavery question, to be no difficulty in reconciling this autonomy of the parts with the general conduct of the whole republic. The time is coming, it is said, when it shall be so all the world over; and in Great Britain there might be a movement in that direction even now. The glory of Athens, and that which enabled her to send forth out of her small free population of some hundred thousand souls, such clusters of eminent contemporaries as were always to be found in her, was her intense political life. Every Athenian was a citizen, who felt his individual weight, and could make his individual weight felt, in the proceedings of the community. Solon even made it a law that no Athenian should remain neutral on any great question of the time under pain of death or disfranchisement. True, the days of small republics are gonelarge areas of the earth are now submitted to a common rule, and acknowledge a common path and destiny; but there is no reason why, even in the largest nation, the functions of a central government (and it is the business of advanced science to determine what the functions shall be) should not be harmonized with a system of deliberative and administrative institutions, branching through the whole body-politic like ducts and arteries, growing smaller and smaller as they reached the extremities.

If we are not mistaken, the agitation for Scottish Rights will, sooner or later, connect itself with this great speculation. Perhaps, indeed, the most interesting mode of viewing the agitation is to regard it as an unexpected revolt of one most important and sedate part of the island against a system of Parliamentary and official centralization, which all parties equally dislike. Scotland takes the lead in the movement, and has regard chiefly to herself in her mode of advocating it; but it is a movement by which England, Wales, and Ireland will also profit.

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ART. IV.-1. General History of the Christian Religion and Church. From the German of Dr. Augustus Neander. Translated from the Second and Improved Edition. By JOSEPH TORREY, Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy in the University of Vermont. Vol. I. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1847.

2. General History of the Christian Religion and Church. Translated from the German of Dr. Augustus Neander. By JOSEPH TORREY, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Vermont. New Edition, carefully revised by the REV. A. S. W. MORRISON, B.A. Vol. I. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1850.

THE two publishers whose names we find in the respective title pages of these translations of Neander's Church History, have done good service in making this great work more accessible to English readers. In now drawing attention to the first volume of the work, we have no intention to compare the merits of these two translations. Our business at present is with the great importance in these days of a careful examination of the early records of Christianity. We wish that some one well qualified for the task would undertake to bring these records within the reach of all classes of our countrymen. Neander's history is sure to interest persons who have received a learned education: We would gladly see portions of the earlier part of it reproduced in such a form as would attract all readers.

Every one who attentively considers the state of society in this age, must be filled with a melancholy conviction, that great and unwearied efforts are being made by the enemies of Christianity to undermine belief in the historical truth of its divine origin. These efforts are in many instances especially directed to the class of working-men. Argumentative books, originally addressed to the more educated classes, are explained and abbreviated in lighter publications, which circulate but too widely in our towns. Some of these books are ribaldrous and impure. These will at once be cast aside by all persons of good feeling. But others confine themselves to argument; and the arguments they advance often circulate more widely than the books themselves. They are propagated from mouth to mouth; and many a good man may at times feel himself placed in a difficulty from not knowing how to meet such arguments, though he has an implicit conviction that they are unsound.

The same evil is at work amongst the upper classes. En

quiring minds are in this age perpetually scrutinizing old established principles; and, as there is a great affectation of novelty in the attacks lately made on Christianity, while the books containing these attacks are certainly extensively read, it seems certain that the subject of the evidences of Christianity requires to be carefully elaborated.

English literature is very rich in books of evidences; and perhaps not much can be added to what is already contained in these books. They are a great storehouse, and from them the student may arm himself fully with the means of resisting these attacks, which, however they affect novelty, are really made with the old weapons. The Christian Church has not grown for these eighteen centuries and a half, in the midst of opposition from all quarters, and of the most incongruous kinds, without having had occasion at one time or another to resist almost every conceivable species of attack. But, though the arguments of assailants may be substantially the old arguments which have been often answered, still they are reproduced with a show of novelty. Now most of the books of evidences have been written with distinct reference to some particular errors, which they opposed in their own day; and new assaults will generally require a new attitude of defence, though after all it is the old strength of arm and the old weapons that are to be used.

Hence, probably no greater service could be done to the cause of Christianity by any one who was equal to the task, than to write a new book of evidences, adapted to the exact exigencies of this age; and, in order to meet the particular errors which are now most dangerous, such a book of evidences ought to be in the main historical. It is in looking back to the history of the way in which the religion of Christ was established on the ruins of heathenism, and in the distinct and well accredited facts which such history brings before us, that we shall find the best antidote to the vague insinuations of that scepticism, which would represent the whole early progress of the Christian Church as veiled in a dark cloud.

It is not of course meant that clear and powerful arguments, and a skilful exposure of antichristian fallacies, will necessarily force conviction on the unwilling or on him whose mind is morbidly given to doubt; but still it is a duty to maintain truth by sound reasoning, even where antagonists will not or cannot appreciate it. And no one can calculate the wide-spreading evil that might follow, if we allowed falsehood to have the seeming triumph of being allowed to attract attention and go forth amongst the rising generation without an answer.

We have said that books of evidences for the present needs of the age ought to be especially historical. Intended to benefit