to fraud, there are no lying declarations. It can, as we hope we have shown, be easily adjusted so as to press in very fair proportion upon all classes, and this without any bungling repayments to those who allege that they are poor. Whatever defects may be traced in the present scheme we believe they will be but very small when compared with the income-tax, abounding as it does with inconsistencies and irregularities of all kinds and magnitudes, in respect of which the people grumble at the Government, and also fraught with evasions and falsehoods which constitute the complaint of the Government against the people. The Inland Revenue Commissioners have over and over again pressed upon the attention of the Government of the day the fraudulent character of the incometax returns. In their Report of 1862 they state that in one place the assessment of a large trading firm having been found greatly inadequate, inquiries were instituted as to the charges under Schedule D in the same neighbourhood, and they append as some of the results a table of particulars of fifteen cases, of which the following is a brief analysis:- In eight of them, the parties liable returned incomes ranging from £170 to £6000, and amounting in the aggregate to £13,263; these were raised by the

officials to a total of nearly double, viz., £24,903. In the other seven cases, the parties made no returns at all, but income-tax was charged to them upon the aggregate sum of £21,500. And the largest charges were almost invariably those which were paid without appeal-a tacit acknowledgment that even they were inadequate. These are cases, be it remembered, from 'one neighbourhood; and the place which the Commissioners appear, from their last Report, to consider the most strangely unproductive is, of all others, the City of London itself. So urgent are these circumstances, and so futile has become the plea of the temporary character of the income-tax, that the Government may, we submit, be most reasonably asked to bring forward some alternative taxation, not, indeed, entirely free from objections or inequalities, for that would be a Utopian requirement, but one that shall be upon the whole a marked improvement. And we have at the present time a Chancellor of the Exchequer who, though the most dexterous apologist of the income-tax in other respects, has always been among its most emphatic denouncers in the matter of fraud, and who declared in the last session of Parliament, that experience convinces him this cannot be exaggerated in its gravity and extent.

E. S.

FRASER'S

MAGAZINE.

TH

HE importance of the judgment of the Privy Council in the cases of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson may not have been recognized at once; but it is now pretty plain that both the public and the clergy have become alive to its real significance. It is indeed a memorable transaction, and is characteristic in the highest degree of the institution which it affects. It was received with little favour. Hardly any of the public journals by which the subject has been discussed fully stated its effects. Many of them, even the most influential, did their utmost to underrate its importance; and it provoked a fierce opposition, and a somewhat remarkable protest on behalf of the two old parties in the Church. These parties suddenly find themselves confronted by a third party which they both detest, and which they had both denied to have any legitimate standing-ground in the Church of England.

Mere ecclesiastical quarrels have a slight interest for the laity. They can view with an equanimity approaching to indifference the standing feud between High Churchmen and Low Churchmen. Each side has its stronghold. Each appeals to feelings deeply rooted in the English character; and neither uses language calculated to shock the religious sentiments or habits of thought of the mass of the community. That there should be Evangelicals and Tractarians; and that they should differ, and discuss the points on which they differ, appears as natural to the common run of respectable

VOL. LXIX. NO. CCCCXIII.

people, as that there should be Whigs and Tories. When the leaders of both parties unite to repel what they obviously view as an assault on the foundations of a common faith differently conceived, the new concord is more distressing to the ordinary mind than the old discord. Something very strange indeed must have happened, it is thought, when Dr. Pusey writes a 'faithful' letter to the Record, and joins with the best-known leaders of the Evangelical school in a protest against fa doctrine threatening to the structure in which both schools had hitherto been included. Let us see, in the first place, what it is that has caused so much commotion; and let us consider, in the next place, whether it is wise to be so much moved.

The cause of the commotion is that the highest authority known to the 'law of England has solemnly decided that it is not illegal for a clergyman of the Church of England to deny that the Bible contains any prophecies at all, in the common sense of the word; to deny, that is, that the coming of Christ was supernaturally predicted centuries before his birth; to affirm that parts of the Bible, usually supposed to be literally true, must be understood to be allegories or fables, or, to use an unfortunate expression, myths; to deny the historical truth of such parts of the Bible as appear to them to be untrue; to deny the goodness of such parts of it as appear to them to be immoral. It has further been declared that the law permits the clergy to hold

M M

and teach any doctrine they please on the subject of inspiration; so that they may, if they like, assert that there is no generic difference between the canonical Scriptures and other books. In short, the effect of the judgments is that the law has laid down no positive doctrine whatever respecting the Bible, except that it contains all things necessary to salvation. What else it may contain, and in what sort of vehicle the things necessary to salvation may be contained, are, by the law of England, open questions which the clergy may discuss as freely as the laity.

Whoever reads the judgments of Dr. Lushington and those of the Committee of Council, and compares them with the incriminated passages of the essays of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson, will be able to satisfy himself that this is by no means an overstatement of the result of the whole proceedings. That the result should startle those who have never reflected seriously on the character and position of the Church of England is not surprising. Hardly any other Christian body in this country allows so much liberty of opinion to its clergy; and it is certain that, though in the Church of England itself great liberty of thought on this subject has, in fact, prevailed amongst the more learned part of the clergy for a length of time, this fact did not, till very recent times, attract nearly so much general notice as its importance required. The speculations of Middleton went as far in fact, and those of Warburton went as far in principle, as anything written by Dr. Williams or Mr. Wilson; but the great bulk of the clergy not only did not agree with them, but did not even care to recognize their existence. So true was this, that a writer in the Tracts for the Times-usually supposed to be Dr. Newman-used the absence of any article on the subject of the inspiration of the Bible as a reductio ad absurdum of those who held that the Thirty-nine Articles were the standard, and the only standard, of doctrine in the Church of England. He took it for granted that the in

It is thus not surprising that, when the nature of the late judgments is fully understood, they should excite both surprise and alarm; but, when the subject is carefully considered, moderate and reasonable persons will probably conclude that, whatever may be the theological value of the opinions of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson-as to which, on the present occasion, we mean to say nothing-the judgment of the Committee of Council was not merely legally right, but was the only one which would have been consistent with the existence of the Church of England as a national Church, or, indeed, as anything wider than a sect based on mere popular prejudice, and on no plain or intelligible principle what

ever.

Some twenty years ago intense interest was excited by the question, 'What is the Church?" and a variety of answers were devised, each of which favoured the pretensions of some one of the theological schools which divide the country; but none of which could be reconciled with the facts of the case. То those who look at the facts alone, without thinking it necessary to adapt them to any theological conclusion, the answer is obvious. The Church of England is an institution established by law. Both in fact and in theory it comprehends for some purposes all the Queen's subjects in England and Ireland; but its principal direct benefits are confined to that part of them who have a sufficient degree of sympathy with the services which are by law appointed to be held, and with the doctrines which are by law protected from discussion by the clergy,