particular line, will, as we believe, happen in any future
same length will echo ba,ck, so a State in a different phase year in which the view of Church property put forward by of political or constitutional life will ignore revolutionary Mr. Talbot becomes identified with the cause of Church or reactionary passions which a State in a similar phase Defence. The question is not,—Were the endowments of of political or constitutional life will take up and reproduce. the Church of England given her by the State ? To that The French Revolution of 1789 rather exerted on English question Mr. Talbot's answer and ours would be the same. opinion and feeling an opposite and repellent influence It is,—Will Parliament, whenever the occasion arises, act than one of the same order and tendency. But no sooner as though the endowments of the Church of England had did the French movement pass into a less profoundly revo- been given her by the State I We do not know how Mr. lutionary phase, than it began to reflect the tendencies of Talbot would answer this question. Perhaps he may contemporary English feeling, and in its turn to stimulate persuade himself that Parliament will regard the Irish changes in England like its own. The Orleanist Revolu- Church Act as a warning, not as an example, and will dis- tion of 1832 was partly the consequence of the English tinguish between Disestablishment and Disendowment. Reform movement, while partly it furnished a new stimulus For o-urselves, we have no such hope. The danger, as to that movement. In 1848, again, the revolution in France we read the horizon, is that, in case of Disestablishment, caused a very profound agitation in England, and the less favourable terms would be given to the Church of reaction which followed when the third Empire was England than were given to the Church of Ireland, and the proclaimed, unquestionably led to a sensible Conserva- reason why we deprecate such a line of argument as that tive reaction in England also. Germany reflected still we have been considering, is that it is calculated to make more clearly the French and Italian nationalism which this danger greater. To claim more than the Church of sprang into existence after the Crimean War, and Ireland got, would be, to our minds, the surest way of culminated with the French intervention in Italy in getting less. 1859, and Garibaldi's movement in 1860. And, again, When Mr. Talbot speaks of " the admission that the the triumph of the American War against Secession Church of England is not one and continuous," he mis- in 1865, and the German imperialism which sprang understands, we think, what we meant to convey. Holding, out of the Franco-G-erman War in 1870, did a good deal as we do, that the State will certainly, if ever Disestablish- to stimulate the English national feeling of that period, ment comes, treat the property of the Church as its own, and to extinguish what was once called the Manchester we were anxious to find some plea which would differentiate School of Politics. Indeed, we think we may say Disendowment from simple robbery. We wished to make with some confidence that Mr. Blight's keen sympathy out as good a case as we could for the English nation. with American Unionism exerted more influence on And we found this plea, as we thought, in the posi- his attitude towards the agitation for Irish disim- tion that where a religious body has undergone great tegration, than even any feeling of merely English changes, it is impossible to say what view of these patriotism. From the time of his great speeches in changes would have been taken by the men who favour of the Northern States of the Union, we may originally endowed it. Whatever other sins the dis- date the growth of Mr. Bright's vivid national feeling, endowing State may be guilty of, it -will not necessarily just as from the outbreak of the Irish national sympathy do injustice to the wishes of the Pious Founder. Let with the Southern States on the one hand, and with Pio us suppose that the Convocations of Canterbury and York Nono and the Papal army under Lamoriciere on the other, have solemnly agreed that the constitution of the Church we may date the more rapid growth of the Irish eager- should for the future be Presbyterian, and that this ness for the dissolution of the Union. Nothing seems resolution has been sanctioned by Parliament, the Church of to us clearer than that the springing-up of sympathy England would still be "one and continuous ; " but Mr. with foreign movements often determines the course of Talbot's descendants might reasonably doubt whether their serious movements at home. The anti-Napoleonic feeling While France and England were in those absolutely repulsion than of attraction. Till Germany began to feel INTERNATIONAL CONTAGION, a certain pride in Prussia as the leading State which influenced by popular movements in Europe, as to see such a bullet transform itself into organic tissue, and thrill with the vibrations of the nerves.
But to go back to our starting-point, we believe that the notion of " contagion " is much less true to the facts of international sympathy as we so often see it in political movements, than the less organic figure of speech which we derive from acoustics when we speak of the liability of one tuning-fork to be set in vibration by the vibration of a neighbouring tuning-fork of the same length. In a case of infection or contagion, there is some new process of organic change set up in the body which interferes in the most serious manner with the natural functions of that body ; but in agitations of this kind, there is only the awakening of an emotion in one people which has already showed itself in a neighbouring people of more or less similar history and aspirations. When Brazil fell to pieces, a sort of galvanic shock spread through South America. All the Republics began to tremble with a sense of the frail character of the outward order by which their affairs were regulated, and all the paralysed limbs began to thrill with a new pulse. Doubtless the immediate effect will be more or less one of disturbance, not to say anarchy. The consciousness that there is hardly a State anywhere in South America for which it is possible for the people to feel a genuine loyalty, is not a consciousness likely to lead to calm acquiescence in a regime so unstable. But this liability to a thrill of common dissatisfaction, this common effort to test the extent of our power of adjusting our life to our wishes, is not an organic disease imported from out- side, but only an awakening to the failure of nervous force and directing purpose within. Probably the various South American States in which this restlessness at their own weakness, and eagerness for some more adequate expression of the popular feeling, spring up, will soon find that without great moderation and patience they may easily go from bad to worse, and that the best remedy would be the finding of able dictators to whom they could trust the guidance of affairs. But in any case, the spread of the restlessness is not a disease ; it is merely the dis- covery of weaknesses of long standing which cannot be remedied without being discovered, and cannot be dis- covered without that sense of dismay with which a man comes to the knowledge that his limbs are numb, and that they hardly obey the directing power of his own will.
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