TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE CONFESSIONAL AGITATION.

IT is becoming one of the most curious branches of the mental economy of the English people, this platform work of the Parlia- mentary recess. During the session much of the intellectual fer- mentation which is peculiar to such a stage of society as the one we have reached, is either held in check or guided into a particu- lar channel by the absorbing interest that attaches to the doings of the Legislature. But with the dissolution come the saturnalia of all the small fanaticisms, and of all the hobbies. And so loud becomes the babel of the cries of the showmen, each of whom en- deavours to attract the public to his particular nostrum or raree- show, that it is difficult in the extreme for the critic of passing events to discover amid the confusion any one voice more worthy of attention than others ; and to pursue truth or examine the tendency of public opinion is just as though one were to study to make harmony out of the cries of the market-place.

The meeting against the confessional which took place last Monday is a choice example of the spurious form of agitation. The principal characteristic of this remarkable product of the human mind in this latter stage of its progress is, that it first cre- ates in imagination a gigantic crisis in the world's history, and proceeds to deal out proportioned; magniloquence of threat and profession. Here are a set of most respectable and worthy trades- men, who have managed to persuade themselves that the Church of England, and the general religious liberties of the country, are in as great danger in this year of grace 1858 as ever they were : that a large section of the clergy is engaged in a dark and Jesu- itical plan of betraying the citadel of a Protestant Church to the great Papal enemy : that the times are so serious that nothing will serve for remedy save a recurrence to the precedents of a revolu- tionary time and the deeds of a revolutionary hero. But the world at large knows of no late moving cause for all this tremend- ous emotion, save the proceedings of two unhappy and absurd cu- rates, who have been properly and summarily, perhaps, in the case of one of them, too summarily exorcised. If it were possible to treat such a meeting as that of Monday last as a serious fact, in- dicating a settled purpose, and threatening continuous agitation of a kind likely to set the Church on fire at its four corners, it would have to be treated in a far more serious strain than the one we are adopting. But happily there are no signs about the " demon- stration" in question which need alarm those who believe that peace is one of the first of the Church's necessities. Vague and furious denunciation is no means of religious progress, and even, in this day, in England no means of religious disturbance. or is it likely that a community like that of England, with its complex spiritual needs, and vast variety of classes and tenden- cies, aristocratic, scholastic, mercantile, and popular, will very soon or willingly substitute for existing historical solutions of church difficulties a " simple plan" devised by the joint-stock wisdom of the churchwardens of the realm.

But although this particular movement or outcry is not likely to lead to serious consequences, it would furnish an excellent op- portunity for considering some aspects of the controversy with the Papal power as it exists, or should. be practised in England at the present day. The most important question arising out of such an examination touches the wisdom, or justice, or effectiveness of that mode of procedure, which has the high authority of Lord John Russell, of endeavouring to weed out the " unworthy sons of the church," who are suspected or convicted (it is too often the same thing) of what is called Romanizing. We cannot but entertain a strong opinion that, as these attacks are usually conducted, and considering who it is generally stands forward. to conduct them, the cause of Rome frequently turns out to be on the whole the gainer by them. To the class of morbid minds, which are generally bitten by Romanist tendency, there is no argument more strong in favour of the Church towards which they turn their eyes. th:..‘ 'mixture of rancour, tyranny, and vulgarity with which the self-elected and superfluous champions of Pro- testantism accompany their onslaughts. There is no controversial agency so powerful, so invincible as sympathy. And the os- tentatious rejection of a sincere though misguided body of fellow Christians, which is so favourite a practice with our denunciation- mongers, tends to nothing but mischief and misery. It is one thing to resist to the death an established spiritual tyranny, threatening the life of the soul ; and quite another to stone out of the community of free English thought those who have a specu- lative tendency to a rigid ecclesiastical system. The one is to follow the pattern of the noble army of martyrs ; the other to tread in the footsteps of the ignoble herd of slanderers.

Perhaps there never was a more curious illustration afforded than by the meeting of last Monday of the way in which this gossi ping go Lemouche domestic controversy makes the partisans of religious liberty forget the real enemy, and the real struggle of the world's spiritual freedom. Europe is at this moment in full astonishment, which has not yet had time to kindle into indigna- tion, at one of those acts on the part of the Romish Church which show that it retains in an unmitigated shape that habit and even necessity of stupid and terrible tyranny, which makes it the very enemy of mankind. Not all the fire and sword with which she

desolated the world in the sixteenth and seventeenth oenturies was so horrible in principle as the theft of the child. of Mortar

the Jewish inhabitant of nologna ; a theft, moreover, which rena'

ders dangerous in the highest degree every sort of intercourse be- tween Romanist and Protestant households. It would have been

to say the least satisfactory, if any single speaker at the meeting on Monday had shown a sufficiently keen sense of the great can of spiritual freedom which it was ostensibly convened to • _ tain, to remember and protest against the most salient example of its violation which any age has afforded. One would have thought that it was scarcely possible for men who were standing

up to maintain the religious freedom of mankind to forget such a

case so utterly. It is no answer to say that the meeting was con- vened for other and specific purposes. Its whole course was that

of a general demonstration on behalf of religious liberty as threat- ened by avowed and secret Papists : but not a man remembered the child of Mortara. Certainly such an oblivion teemspptirsitthoef

observation which on other grounds would not be without its justice, that the speakers exhibited. more of the spirit of the ferret than of the mastiff; more of the narrow egotistic the gossip than of the bold determination which animated the old combatants for the world's freedom.

The attentive consideration of this fact may lead the mind to some sound general conclusions upon this subject. Religious ty-

ranny will never be effectually combated with weapons borrowed from the domestic scold ; nor will speculative tendencies towards systems which favour superstition and tyranny ever be effectually

quelled by meeting them on the ground of speculation. It is more Christian and more practical to deal with such tendencies as morbid, and, as long as they do not ripen into overt and unmis-

takeable public mischiefs, to treat them with curative sympathy and forbearance. The proper objects of attack are those overt unmistakeable public mischiefs. To worry a large party out of the Church of England, because it is feared. that a certain senti- mental ritualism may, in some conceivable state of circumstances, grow into a priestly despotism, would be absurd. in the extreme. But there is no way in which such tendency to this despotism as may exist at home can be counteracted. so effectually, as by fas- tening with indignation upon those of the doings of the great despotism of Rome, which admit of reversal and check. The general principle which we are anxious to enforce is, that Rome and her partisans should be fought in this day on the ground of practical resistance, rather than of speculative controversy. Nor can it be said that the case of the young Mortara is one with which England has nothing to do. Independently of her position

as the European power which is most responsible for the growth of civil and religious liberty in the world, her special relations to

France, the state which is virtually upholding the Papacy as a secular power, throw a special responsibility upon her. If the Anglo-French. alliance is not to be interpreted as giving to Eng- land something more than a bare right to request, that the power of France should not be used to abet acts that lay the axe to the root of civil and religious liberty, of all society indeed, surely it is high time that this country should consider whether it means anything but turning England into a catspa* in ordinary for Imperialism. Indeed, as we have more than once said, the whole position of England in relation to France, will require the most careful attention from English public men, It will never do for this country to persist in retaining the name and pretence of alli-

ance with a power which is identifying. itself with the champion- ship of every cause abhorrent to the mind. of Englishmen There can be no intimate fellowship with the arch-patron of Papacy and slave-trade.

If the " churchwardens " will turn the streams of their healthy indignation into such channels as these, they will do good service

to the country. But they may rely on it that these are no times for a religious agitation at home, based upon such slender facts as they allege. The attempt to represent the aristocracy of the

country as peculiarly engaged in this semi-Papistical conspiracy, the " Belgravian-boudoir ' cry, may be provisionally regarded as a somewhat sorry jest. For the time, we are willing to believe these patriots of the Church not altogether in earnest in using language calculated to set class against class in so serious a matter as this of religion : and for reasons so trumpery as those advanced. But such language cannot be used even in Jest without committing a grave error. And it behoves those who are in any way re- sponsible as public teachers to warn the gentlemen who give utterance to it off ground which, fortunately, can now be danger- ous to nobody but themselves. Whatever be the religious evils which this country suffers under, they are, in the judgment of dispassionate thinkers, due far more to the middle than to the aristocratic class. There is really no question at this hour of religious freedom and Protestantism. With the exception of the small and "morbid" minority, all England is agreed, in theor9 at least, as to those points. But when we come to the real qnes- tion and problem with which the Church has at this day to deal, the spiritual condition of the great masses of the community, it is difficult not to conclude that the narrow, spurious, despotic

Puritanism which is so rife among the middle classes of a this country is the greatest obstacle that stands in the way of spiritual and intellectual progress. There is no eontroversi l path out of these difficulties. The best hope of deliverance would be to fall back energetically on the performance of those duties which be- long to us as a nation. The discharge of them will bring us mutt of suffering perhaps : but also more of truth and peace.