does Mr Goode imagine they have created a liability at common law, which would enable him, if the writ of subpæna were abolished, and the Chancery thereby disarmed, still to insist on answers to his interrogatories; and, if they were refused by the defendant, to obtain a Mandamus from the Queen's Bench to open his mouth?

To resume in a few words the view we have taken of the writ of Circumspecte agatis-that writ enabled the spiritual courts to enforce the payment of church rates which had been granted in vestry, but gave them no power to impose a rate by their own authority. The only instrument they could employ to obtain a rate from an unwilling vestry, was the menace or infliction of an interdict, and that instrument they possessed as well before as after the writ of Circumspecte agatis had been issued. For an interdict, or suspension of divine service, being a matter purely spiritual, the temporal courts could not interpose to prevent it. But, though a rate might have been procured in that way, it could not have been enforced against refractory parishioners who applied to the common law courts for protection. It was by taking away that protection, and not by any new power it directly conferred on the spiritual courts, that the writ of Circumspecte agatis added in this matter to their authority.

Considering church rates to have been at all times voluntary grants on the part of the vestry, though their origin be a curious subject of historical investigation, it can be of no practical importance whether they were introduced before the commencement of legal memory or afterwards. The motives of vestries for the grants of rates may have been various-devotion, respect for their rector, or fear of his censures; but while the grant on the face of it was voluntary, it seems as absurd to found on it a common law obligation, as it would have been to argue from the annual votes of a land-tax, that there was a common law liability on land to be taxed; though it was left to the House of Commons to determine what the amount of the tax should be. That the churchwardens have authority to convoke a vestry--that the majority of those present at the vestry have power to bind the minority-and when the majority have consented to a rate, that all the parishioners may be compelled to pay their respective quotas, are settled points; but that the parishioners assembled in vestry are bound to impose a rate when required by the spiritual court, and, when refractory, that others may impose it for them, are points which have not been adjudicated; and, when attempts have been made by the ecclesiastical authorities to impose such rates by means of commissioners nominated for the purpose, prohibitions, when applied for, have been constantly granted by the common law courts.

What remains to be done? Whatever might be expected from the liberality of lay impropriators, or from the holders of great and opulent livings, no one would saddle the great body of the clergy with the reparation of churches and expense of public worship; for which, burdened as they usually are with families, their means are wholly inadequate. No one would consent to see our venerable parish churches go to ruin, associated as they are with so many recollections of the past, and hopes of the future. No one would permit the churchyard, where his fathers, and perhaps his children, are interred, to be neglected and defiled. No frequenter of divine worship would suffer the church he attends, to be deprived by poverty of the decencies and ornaments with which he has been accustomed to see the service performed. The Government has made various attempts to avert these calamities; but opposed, sometimes by Churchmen, sometimes by Dissenters, their efforts have been of no avail. Vestries continue to be scenes of discord more discreditable than the worst of popular elections in the worst of times. There is but one remedy, and that remedy is justice. The churches belong to the Establishment. The worship celebrated within their walls is for members of the Establishment. Let vestries for church rates be attended by none but members of the Establishment; and let the church rate they impose be assessed on none but members of the Establishment. As a church established and endowed by law, in subordination to the state for all her civil rights, the Church will continue to possess her lands, rents, and other legal emoluments; while the repair of her churches and the expense of her worship will be defrayed by members of her own communion. The indecent contentions that disgrace our present vestries will be prevented. Rectors will have no longer occasion to stuff their ears with cotton, as some of them do at present, before they venture into the vestry-room. Dissenters will have no pretext to intrude themselves into meetings where the subject of discussion is a church rate from which they are exempted; and, if any of them were to show himself there, his presence at the vestry ought to subject him to his quota of the tax. There could be no practical difficulty in distinguishing Churchmen from Dissenters. Whoever occupied a pew in the parish church, or in any chapel in communion with the Establishment, should be considered and rated as a Churchman; and, whether he attended the church-rate vestry or not, he should be subject to its assessments. As the members of the Established Church include a great majority of the wealthier portions of the community, especially among the landed proprietors, all of whom pay rates at present, it is obvious that a very small addition to their existing assess

ment would be sufficient to defray all the expenses for which church rates are required; and slight indeed must be the attachment of the lower classes to the establishment, if the addition of a few pence yearly to their present payment could make them desert her altars and proclaim themselves Dissenters. A laudable pride would deter the poorest farmer or tradesman from professing himself a Dissenter, when he was in reality a Churchman; and in this religious age no one would venture to make that declaration without incurring a greater expense, by the moral necessity in which he would be placed of attaching himself to some dissenting place of worship, where he would have both chapel and pastor to uphold.

What, it may be asked, can prevent an arrangement, that would take from one party all just ground of complaint, while the additional burden it imposed on the other, was one which they could well afford to bear, and which in equity they ought not to throw on those who can have nothing for it in return? The only obstacle, we apprehend, is the tenacity of Churchmen, whether lay or clerical, to maintain every privilege or exclusive advantage that flatters their pride, however worthless in itself or unjust to the rest of the community. Having assumed to themselves the title of National Church, as if the English constituted the whole nation-as if there were no Presbyterians in Scotland, no Dissenters in England, no Roman Catholics in Ireland-seduced by this high-sounding appellation-this mock dignitythey inundate our colonies with bishops, for the benefit of the few Episcopalians that emigrate from our shores, and would consider themselves degraded at home if Nonconformists were exempted by law from repairing their churches and contributing to the expenses of their public worship. It is this spirit which makes them resist every plan for general education that is not confined exclusively to their own body. It is not the money they care for, but the principle on which it is proposed to be given. If committed to their management, they would have no objection to dole it out in charity to Dissenters, but their pride cannot bear that it should be claimed as a right. Though compelled by the Toleration Act, and other statutes, to recognise the existence and privileges of Dissenters, they regard them in the same light that the Church of Rome regards the Church of England-as rebellious children entitled to no indulgence that can be withheld from them. Respect for their own sacred edifices, which are converted into bear-gardens by the dissensions about church rates, should, if no other motives have weight, make them listen with favour to our suggestion.

ART. III.-Voyage du Maréchal Duc de Raguse en Hongrie, en Transylvanie, dans la Russie Méridionale, en Crimée, et sur les Bords de la Mer d'Azoff à Constantinople, dans quelques parties de l'Asie-Mineure, en Syrie, en Palestine et en Egypte. 4 Tom. 8vo. Paris: 1837.

HAT a book of travels written by so eminent a person as General Marmont should excite so very little attention as these volumes have done, can only be ascribed to one of two causes; the occupation of the reading world with other subjects, or the uninteresting nature of the work itself. The latter is generally given as the true reason; but we think the fact or opinion upon which it rests more than questionable. The book contains much valuable information; it is not deficient in matter of entertainment; and it is written in a plain and sensible style, which hardly ever offends against the rules of good taste. Its fault is its length-there are four volumes made out of what could hardly suffice to make two; and all that is of any value might well have been contained in one.* The large interstices between the pieces that are worth reading for their novelty or importance, are filled up with things which are either not worth relating, or which every one knows; and the reader is thus tired before he can pass from one oasis to another of the dry and barren waste. Nevertheless, it is the useful office of honest critics to give warning of the existence of such green and pleasant spots; and not suffer the public to throw aside the subject, without some knowledge of what they present to our attention.

After the revolution of 1830, in which Marmont commanded, and was foiled by the stupid obstinacy of the legitimate Bourbons as much as by the great gallantry of the French people, he left France and sought refuge in Vienna, where he remained some years in idleness and peace; but feeling that he retained vigour enough of constitution to undertake some useful and interesting work, in 1834 he set out upon his journey into the Levant, attended by an amateur painter and a physician, Count Brazza and Dr Seng; aud this book contains the account of their travels.

Hungary was the country first visited by him; and his observations on that kingdom are in some particulars worthy of attention. He somewhat sharply reproves the Hungarians for their inconsistent desire of improvement by means of public works,

* Since this artictle was written, an able and distinguished officer, Sir F. Smith of the Royal Engineers, has ably abridged and commented on the work, in one small volume.

joined with their determination on no account to pay the taxes necessary for carrying them on. Thus, there is nothing more wanting than roads-the primary condition, as the Marshal says, of improvement and civilisation; accordingly, the Hungarians of all classes cry out lustily for them, and as lustily cry out against any thing like tolls to make or to repair them. They plead the ancient privilege of being free from taxes; but the Marshal very justly remarks, that in Hungary men have not as yet discovered that the only reasonable privilege is not to beg for what we have never consented to receive; and that, in order to obtain an increase of wealth and of enjoyments, we must learn to pay for them. We have in our own country some symptoms of the same inconsistency; -highly cultivated as our people of all ranks are in every kind of knowledge connected with taxation, by a long and very extensive and various experience. The 'Bull family' delight in many expensive luxuries, and in none more than in foreign meddling wars, expeditions, gazettes of victories, bonfires, and illuminations; yet no sooner comes in the bill for payment, than a most bitter reluctance is invariably felt to pay it; and the good folks who were loudest in hallooing on their rulers to break the peace, are all astonishment and all indignation at finding that they have any thing to pay for this expensive crime. On a lesser scale, we have lately had something of a like inconsistency and unreasonable captiousness. The Dissenters refuse to pay church rates, and regard the demand of any help towards maintaining churchyards as an encroachment on the rights of conscience, and a breach of religious liberty. But, though they will not pay for the churchyard, they insist on the use of it; and even complain if their own ministers are not suffered to officiate at burials performed in it. The Churchmen have never as yet insisted on having the use of dissenting chapels; but they certainly have just as much right to it as the Dissenters would have to use the churchyard if they ceased to pay the church rates.

We observe the Marshal's notices of feudal law are somewhat less accurate than might be wished. He represents the tenures in Hungary as entirely feudal; and then says that the right of succession in the Crown, after extinction of the family to whom the fief was granted originally, is so extensive (étendu, meaning of course that it reached so long) as to deprive purchasers of all security. No doubt, if the purchaser is only to hold of the original feudatory who sells, he takes but a base fee, and loses his right on the extinction of the heirs of the original investiture; but the feudal law permits transfer so as to hold of the original superior; and no doubt in Hungary, unless all sale of land is as good as forbidden, this holding of the overlord must be allowed.