This theory, too, justifies the seduction of a Gentile's wife on the ground that her salvation can be only thus secured.

'There is no doubt that the tie which binds a Mormon to 'his third or fourth wife is just as sacred and indissoluble as 'that which binds him to his first.' (Stansbury, p. 5.) But this sentence may be read in two ways.

The education of the children is carefully attended to; there is a school in every ward at the public expense, to which the poorer citizens are compelled to send their children.

Such is their system of polygamy. Of its working on the social system none of our travellers have remained long enough in the city to speak with confidence: it would seem, as a matter of necessity, destructive of all personal purity, and robbing the marriage-bed of all its sanctity; yet all authorities agree in remarking the utter absence from the city of all outward forms of vice. Yet there are not wanting in Captain Burton's book indications that this purity, in which he seems himself a firm believer, is only on the surface; among the small company with which he left the Salt Lake City were two adulterers flying from justice. In thinking, however, of Mormonism, we must not lay too much stress on polygamy as its distinctive feature, to the exclusion of others more deeply inherent in its system, and thus more essential to its existence. Mormonism has existed without polygamy; it was authorized for political reasons, and all our writers agree in thinking, that it is highly probable that another revelation may shortly appear, in which its existence will be abolished.

The wives under this system are SAID to speak as if they were happy and contented; but under the pressure of the spy system they could hardly be expected to speak otherwise. The usual aspect of the city is cheerless and gloomy, from the comparative seclusion of the women; but austerity is no part of the system; on the contrary, picnics and sleighing parties abound, dancing is almost a religious institution, and Captain Burton gives us an account of a ball, which began with a blessing from the Prophet, and continued for thirteen hours, with only an intermission for supper. The chief novelty in these assemblies is a Mormon quadrille, in which each gentleman leads out two ladies.

Such, then, are the chief social aspects of the Mormon settlement: a strict theocracy, supported by continuous revelations, resting on implicit faith, with all the governing elements of other bodies the priestly, the prophetic, the legal, the masonic -centred in the person of one President, and wielded by him with an irresponsible authority, combining in itself the spy system of continental despotism, the confessional of Rome, and the sworn allegiance of freemasonry, over a people who appear

to unite an Oriental submission to despotism, with an English love and reverence for law. It is apparent, too, that there are many elements of disunion in such a system; even though the existence of the Turkish monarchy warn us that a system founded on the lie, or delusion, of an impostor may wax old and perish by laws of natural decay. The chief causes of the breaking up at Nauvoo-jealousy, corruption, and intestine strife-must be still at work, and will probably break out into a flame at the death of the present Prophet. Lieut. Gunnison thinks that the system of tithes is causing much discontent, as the poor toiling man sees the rich in luxury, supported at his expense. It is evident that a strong national pride and political ambition underlie all their system, and are at the root of all their revelations; the whole secret of their religion is the subservience of the will of the individual to the well-being of the State.

The physical effects of their polygamy seem hardly yet apparent: their law abounds in hygienic restrictions on wedded life; its natural evils are tempered by the pressure of poverty and the necessities of hard labour; the ill-disposed or profligate members can be always got rid of by being despatched on missions; while the State itself is kept pure and healthy, by the continual fresh currents that are ever setting into it from the unceasing stream of emigration. These causes may probably for a time modify the working of their system, and defer the nemesis that has ever elsewhere followed on the indulgence of human passions in an authorized system of polygamy.

But it is evident they will soon overgrow their present limits, and then they must either swarm off, like bees from their desert hive, in bodies, carrying their belief and constitution with them, or else there will be a thorough disintegration of their system, a resolution into its component elements. It is evident that the former is in the minds of their chiefs, from their application to our own Government for permission to settle, first in Vancouver's Island, and then in the Valley of the Saskatchawan.

If the latter should be the event, it may be, in God's good providence, that the belief, the obedience, and the order to which travellers witness, may be turned to good, and like the rich crops which flourish in their own disintegrated volcanic soil, so the dissolution of their state may yet bear good fruits of faith to Him and to His Church. In the meantime, we cannot but wonder, that out of a system founded by an impostor on a lie, resting on a revelation whose stupidity is only equalled by its absurdity, bearing the marks of ignorance, of greediness, of selfishness, of uncleanness in every page, should issue a polity, presenting the appearance of a theocracy more perfect in its

practice than any which has been known since the Jewish people travelled in the wilderness; of a faith simple and implicit, and resulting in as simple and implicit an obedience; of a stern, austere, and outwardly, at least-successful system of legislation on the subject of those social evils, with which, for the most part, civilized nations have been forced to confess their inability to grapple.

This at least is the impression produced on us by reading the books which we have named. True it is, that this outward appearance of order, health, and purity, is but a mantle cast over the falsehood and corruption which are at the heart of their system, like the bright-hued fungus growing on the rotten tree, or the phosphorescent light that hovers over putrefaction; yet even here we cannot but see, as in another witness, how deeply inherent in the human nature are those principles which, in these days of timidity and expediency, many would have faintly asserted, if not altogether disavowed by our own Church-an assertion of Church authority and Church discipline, a clear recognition of a distinctive Church-membership and Church-fellowship, a defined and a dogmatic rule of faith.

201

ART. VIII.-Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. New Series: Vols. 165, 167, 168.

In the year 1849, contemporaneously with Mr. Stuart Wortley's successful introduction of the Bill for Legalizing Marriage with a Deceased Wife's Sister, a Bill passed the House of Commons, 'for the Relief of Persons in Holy Orders of the United Church of England and Ireland, declaring their Dissent therefrom." The Bill never reached the Lords, and lay dormant for thirteen years until last Session, when Mr. Bouverie, its author, thought fit to revive it, curiously enough, on the very day on which the Wife's Sister's Marriage Bill received its coup-de-grace. The tempest of indignation excited by Sir Morton Peto's Burial Bill, the agitation against the Revised Code, and the triumphant rejection of the Bill for the Abolition of Church Rates, obscured and hindered the due consideration of the Clergy Relief Bill, which was read a second time, referred to a Select Committee, and passed through Committee of the whole House, but was rejected on the third reading, July 9th, by 98 votes to 88.

The Bill was subjected to little public discussion; but as its reappearance on a future occasion is by no means impossible, we propose to call the attention of our readers to its principal provisions, and their effect upon the welfare of the Clergy and the Church.

The Bill was so drawn as to trench but slightly upon the indelibility of Holy Orders, although the denial of a locus pœnitentiæ to a repentant clergyman would tend in that direction. We may, therefore, pass by the theological aspect of the question, contenting ourselves with the observation, that the Church of England, of course, maintains that Holy Orders, once conferred, impart a share in the priesthood of our LORD, which is for ever and ever; and as a person once baptized, though he become a Turk or an Infidel, yet cannot have his baptism taken away, or cease to be a baptized soul, so the Bishop, at Ordination, confers a character which endures into the life to comein the case of the good priest to his eternal glory, in the case of the wicked to his eternal shame. This is an integral part of that Divine economy which is framed for the restoration of fallen man, and as such is held by the Church of England in common with the whole of the Church of Christ.

We proceed to give a sketch of the principal provisions of

the measure, as adopted by the Select Committee to whom it was referred.

By Clause 1, it was provided that a Priest or Deacon might, after six months' notice to the Bishop, make the following Declaration:

'I A. B. having been ordained a Priest of the United Church of England and Ireland [or a Deacon as the case may be] do solemnly declare that I conscientiously dissent from 'the Doctrine and Discipline (or either of them as the case may 'be) of the said Church.'

And shall thereupon cease to be subject to any proceeding in an Ecclesiastical Court for breach of discipline.

Clause 3 enacted that the Bishop should register the Declaration without delay, and that the Priest should thenceforth be incapable of officiating, or of holding a benefice and the Bishop was to be empowered to record against the Priest any sentence which it would be competent for an Ecclesiastical Court to pronounce against a Clerk found guilty of contradicting the doctrine of the Church, or of disobeying his Ordinary: provided that he should not be liable to the payment of costs, nor to imprisonment, nor to any temporal punishment what

ever.

Clause 7 proposed to deprive a Priest so circumstanced of all rights, privileges, and exemptions which he enjoyed as being in Holy Orders; as well as of all disabilities, disqualifications, restraints, restrictions, and prohibitions to which he was subjected: provided always that he should be disqualified from sitting in the House of Commons.

Such were the main features of the Bill, to which the other clauses were subsidiary. It will be seen, that while the indelibility of Holy Orders is left technically intact, all those temporal safeguards and outworks which protect the practical application of the doctrine were by clause 7 to be withdrawn, and the censure of the Church, and the spiritual consequences of that censure, unenforced even by the disapprobation of the State.

The supporters of the Bill advance as the grievance which they propose to remedy, that Clergy who have ceased to believe the doctrines they have engaged to preach, should be relieved from the consequences of their engagement. Of course, if Ordination were merely an agreement between A. B. on the one hand, to preach conformably to the teaching of the Church ratified by the licence of the Bishop on the other, it would be impossible to defend the existing law, and the more expeditiously it were abolished the better. But if, as we believe, the above statement is only a partial enunciation of a portion of the considerations involved, it may well be a