accounting for profits. Another clause made Papists incapable of buying land in any shape or under any pretence whatever; whilst another conferred upon the Protestant children of Papists a right to maintenance, according to their degree, out of their father's property.

The 12 Will. III. c. 2 incapacitated Papists from wearing the crown of England, and with this law the maximum point of coercion of churches by the State was reached. The Falck laws of William the Third were the "starkest" of all. No attempt is made here to justify or to oppugn them. They were deemed necessary at the time by those responsible for the State, and they contained no other principles than those to which Catholic Plantagenet kings had subscribed.

Queen Anne's statutes on the subject of religion were few. Protestant Dissenters were, in a half-hearted sort of way, still further relieved, and the execution of the existing law against "sundry Papists and other persons dissenting from the Church of England" was ordered to be more stringent. With George the First came new penal measures. The cause of the Pretender was identified with the Roman religion, and those professing it came in for fresh terrors. From the recital of 1 George I. c. 55, it would appear that the rigours of the existing laws had not been applied, and it is made matter of reproach to the "Papists" that, notwithstanding this fact, they had tried to put the Pretender on the throne. This law

then required all Papists of twenty-one years of age to take the oath of abjuration, the oath oath of allegiance, and the declaration enjoined by 30 Car. II. stat. 2, c. 1. Failing this, they were

1 I, A. B., do swear that I do from my heart abhor, detest, and abjure, as impious and heretical, that damnable doctrine and position, that Princes excommunicated or deprived by the Pope, or any authority of the See of Rome, may be deposed or murthered by their subjects, or any other whatsoever; and I do declare that no Foreign Prince, person, prelate, state or potentate, hath, or ought to have, any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or

to register their names and lands with the clerk of the peace; and failing this, too, any Protestant informing against them was to have two-thirds of the property and get a title from Chancery. The annual rents of Papists thus registered were 384,950l. The array of their names on the register was too great a temptation to be resisted. Not only were they required to pay double landtax, but in the ninth year of the king those on the register were ordered to contribute 100,000l. towards the expenses of suppressing the rebellion, which was alleged to live upon the efforts of their co-religionists.

The descent from the altitude of rigour to which statesmen had screwed up the laws relating to religion, was not of the Avernian kind. Years elapsed before the necessities or supposed necessities of the State permitted the grant by statute of indulgences which yet in practice must have been to a large extent allowed. Oaths of supremacy, of allegiance, and of abjuration, Test Acts and Corporation Acts remained as stumbling-blocks in the way of Roman and Protestant dissenters alike, till far within living memory. Bit by bit, and painfully, were Acts of Toleration wrung from the unwilling hands of Parliament, and from the sensitiveness of the king.

In 1779 Protestant Dissenters, being preachers or teachers, were entitled to the benefits of the Toleration Act by taking the oaths, subscribing the declaration against Popery and affirming their belief that the Scriptures contain the revealed word of God. Such men were, however, still disabled from the headship of a college or other endowed school. It was not till 1812 that Dissenting Protestant ministers and congregations were relieved from taking the oaths and declaration unless required to do so by a justice of the peace, nor

2 The question of the repeal of the Test Acts was first brought before the House of Commons in 1787. It was rejected, and was annually brought forward again till 1792, when Fox, who had had the measure in charge

till 1813 that Unitarians were allowed the benefits of William the Third's Toleration Act. A few years earlier had seen the repeal of the severer restrictions upon Roman Catholics, on condition of taking the oaths prescribed by the relieving acts, and the allowance of assemblies for Roman Catholic worship on condition of registration of their churches at Quarter Sessions. But it was not till 1829 that Sir Robert Peel succeeded in bringing to a climax those efforts to repeal religious disabilities which had been made by Liberal statesmen from the beginning of the century. The Catholic Emancipation Act, which restored civil rights to Roman Catholic Englishmen, was a new point of departure in religious legislation. The conditions under which it was passed have recently been under warm discussion, and the uncompromising nature of the Ultramontane pretensions has revived the memory of that spirit with which framers of English Falck laws have had to deal from time to time. But it was not till 1846 that many old weapons of the State against the nonState churches were finally broken, though they had long since become so rusted with age as to be unusable. Till that date it was still possible to fine all those who did not attend the Established Church, to enforce the provisions of Elizabeth's Act of Supremacy, to forbid any Papist to enter the royal presence, and to compel the forfeiture of lands and chattels by all who converted or were converted to the Romish faith.

Times have changed, and men have changed with them, and the need appears to have passed away for the interference of the State with religious opinions. Unless religious opinions should become interwoven with political actions, it is probable that such interference will never again be imposed. But should the occasion arise here, as it has done in Germany, to arm the State with powers of self-pro

tection against a politico-religious body, it is useful to know not only that the State can constitutionally at any moment guard itself by new laws, but that there are powers remaining under the old laws, whereby such protection may be obtained. Mr. Disraeli said on the 10th of June last, when questioned as to the non-exercise of the clause in the Emancipation Act which made it a misdemeanour for Jesuits to reside in this country, that no prosecution had ever taken place under that section. "At the same time," he added, "I beg it to be understood that the provisions of the Act are not looked upon by the Government as being obsolete; but, on the contrary, as reserving powers of law of which they will be prepared to avail themselves if necessary." 1

FRANCIS W. ROWSELL.

1 It is clearly possible that these reserved powers may be called into action should any subject of Her Majesty, who is "in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as temporal, in her dominions supreme," put in practice any of the teaching which Father Liberatore, so lately as 1872, promulgated with approval. The following extracts are from a review, inter alia, of his book, La Chiesa e lo Stato, which appeared in the Quarterly Review for January last :

"The State must understand itself to be a subordinate sovereignty, exercising ministerial functions under a superior sovereignty, and governing the people conformably to the will of that lord to whom it is subject.

"That lord is that Sovereign Pontiff, 'the visible monarch' of 'God's realm on earth,' to whom every baptized person is more strictly subject than to any temporal ruler whatever." The Church has clearly the right to remedy and cancel whatever may have been appointed wrongly and immorally in the temporal order of things.

..

"The Church is empowered to amend and to cancel the civil laws, or the sentences proceeding from a secular court, whenever these may be in collision with spiritual want; and she has the faculty to check the abuse of the executive and of the armed forces, or even to prescribe their employ, whenever the requirements for the protection of the Christian Faith may demand this. The jurisdiction of the Church is higher than the civil."

CHAPTER I.

66 YOU DEVIL!"

THERE was a great silence in the schoolroom. A young girl of sixteen or seventeen, tall and strikingly handsome in figure, with abundant masses of ravenblack hair, dark eyes under darker eyelashes, and proud and well-cut lips, walked up to the schoolmistress's table. There was scarcely anything of malice or mischief visible in the bold carelessness of her face.

The schoolmistress looked up from some accounts she had been studying.

Well, Miss North ?" she said, with marked surprise.

"I have a question to ask, if you please, Miss Main," said the handsome young lady, with great coolness and deliberation (and all the school was now listening intently.) "I wish to ask what sort of society we are expected to meet when we go abroad, and whether foreigners are in the habit of using language which is not usually applied to ladies in this country. Half an hour ago, when we were having our German conversation with Dr. Siedl, he made use of a very odd phrase, and I believe it was addressed to me. He said You devil!' I only wish to ask, Miss Main, whether we must be prepared to hear such phrases in the conversation of foreigners."

The schoolmistress's thin, grey, careworn face grew red with mortification. Yet, what could she do? There was

nothing openly rebellious in the demeanour of this incorrigible girl-nothing, indeed, but a cool impertinence which was outwardly most respectful. You may

return to your seat, Miss North," she said, rising. "I will inquire into this matter at once."

Miss Main, who was the proprietor as well as the head-mistress of the school, was greatly perturbed by this incident; and she was quite nervous and excited when she went into the room where the German master still sate, correcting some exercises. When he saw her enter, he rose at once; he guessed from her manner what had happened. The young man in the shabby clothes was even more excited than she was; and why? Because, two years before, he had left his home in the old-fashioned little fortress of Neisse, in Silesia, and he had bade good-bye then to a young girl whom he England hoped to make his wife. was a rich country. A few years of absence would put money in his pocket; and he would return with a good English pronunciation, which would be of value. So he came to England; but he did not find the streets paved with gold. It was after long waiting that he got his first appointment; and that appointment was the German masterAt the ship at Miss Main's school. present moment he believed he had forfeited this one chance.

He came forward to her; and she might have seen that there was some