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    nceuvres of screw-ships of the line , led " by a Ifapier , cannot "be known without trial ; and how many of our impatient folks , who hourly talk about the remissness of Ministers in not at once battering Sebastopol and Cronstat to pieces , will venture to suggest that it should be attacked rashly ? It has yet to "be proved that steamers can do anything against «» 4-AvhA ww *« Hm Anw ^ fsMvAllvr ^ rr « t ~ r » TnA / IOWl fViinTUMnr a

    Bt / UllO WtUlH , OBLJCUltfcUJ' w * imj xuuuuxu g uuuoicij , on the other hand , it is not impossible that some of these grim-looking pieces at Sveaborg and Cronstat may be unserviceable , and it is certain thai ; the Russian seamen are very bad marksmen . Besides , generals of Foot command the fleets ; and marine officers of a certain rank wear spurs . Russia actually produces Horse-marines ! There can be no doubt but that the Northern

    sively that ure are contending , but for European civilisation . The modern Attila must not succeed as his precursor did ; the South and West must repel the Northern hordes this time ; upon that subject there must be no sort of doubt . Therefore , what means will accomplish this we are bound to resort to ; neither overlooking the Poles and Fins on one flank , nor the Circassians on the other . The conflict predicted by

    Napoleon may or may not have arrived , that Europe should be Republican , or Cossack ; but that conflict has begun in downright earnest which shall determine whether Europe is to be European or Russian , whether we " Western peoples shall exist as a free community of powers , shamefully imperfect as that community is , or whether , plus existing imperfection , one power shall domineer over all the others .

    Sueh being the nature of the contest , it is obvious that we must neither overrate our present strength , nor neglect such aid as can be had for the asking ; nor enter into rash enterprises ; nor , while we scrutinise our commanders and look keenly into the doings of our Ministers , must we expect too much from the former , or cultivate that spirit of vulgar impatience which betrays a want of grave self-reliance upon ourselves .

    hedgehog will roll up and make itself as troublesome as possible . But there are more ways of inducing that impolite animal to " open up" than by employing the ungloved hand in the operation . If you bundle your hedgehog into the water he rapidly opens up and exposes his weak points . At present Russsia turns her bristling batteries upon us , and trust ' s to her casemates ; but she , too , has her weak points . Behind those batteries , on either side , are the disaffected Fins and the disaffected people of the Baltic provinces .

    Why not bundle Nicholas into the troubled waters of rebellion , and make hhn open up ? Fins have something to remember—a civilisation , a constitution , laws , literature , nay , even a history . They are the weak points of our spiky friend of ; the casemates . In the eame way , and in a brief space , the people of Courland , Esthonia , and Livonia , if invited , may , perhaps , eome to revolt . And if these people- are too far gone in slavery , or too hard pressed by the soldiery of the Czar , there is still Poland—heroic Poland—whose burning nationality no power can quench , and whose readiness to rise no one can . question .

    Still , it must be admitted that it is not at the outset of a war like the present that we can look for insurrections—if at all ; and that so long as Austria and Prussia stand by armed , ready to strike at insurrections , especially , the former in the east and south , the latter in the north , it is doubtful whether England is in a position to call forth the Poles . The same objection , however , does not apply to the Fins , who might not only win their former importance at the point of the sword , bub man our fleets if we want men .

    The main thing to be kept in mind in this war is not to expect too much , especially from the fleets . In the Baltic , at least , aa we have shown above , there are a few difficulties . Still difficulties are things to be overcome ; and we can by no means admit that , whatever be its strength , it is inipossible-to take St . Petersburg . Will any one say , for instance that , if adequate terms were offered , a British company would not contract to

    seize St . Petersburg and deliver it up in a given , time ? Russia is strong , but not so strong that the most powerful of modern nations cannot reduce her to reason . If the real object of the war be to destroy the " blasting influence" which , Lord Clarendon says , sweeps like a pestilence from the shaking bog of St . Petersburg over the nations of

    central Europe ; if wo be resolute to teach the barbarian to know his frontiers , and to arrest the course of the monarch who bullies Europe from behind his casemated batteries , then it is absurd to say that wo cannot find the means . Should Napier and Parseval-Deschfmes fail , as fail they may , Sweden , Norway , and Denmark must bo called upon to lend their aid . If wo need

    more , Germany can furnish a popular contingent , to say nothing of Italy . Kemember , it ia not for Franco or oven England exclu-

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    to doubt whether at any period the faith of England has been uniform ; but certainly the compromise of the sixteenth century , instead of resulting in uniformity , has introduced that boundless diversity of creed which renders every sect whatsoever a minority surrounded by an adverse and multifarious major ity . Jt was inevitable that the overturning of aa authority claiming implicit obedience on the score of Apostolic succession should give a freedom to opinion which

    could not consistently stop short of the absolute right of private judgment . The compromise which tried to arrest the current from the centre of absolute authority to the circumference of open judgment , and half to admit individual opinion while hflif retaining Apostolic authority , has been a failure in practice as well as in strict logical reason . The nation does not belong to the " Church of England ! ' - . - :

    Tests , of course , cannot ; cause the existence of belief ; but the attempt to enforce unifprp tests with penalties on the one hand , atnet reward on the other , has had the effect indicated by the Morning Chronicle , said h& 9 divided the immense majority of Dissenters into two great divisions . One division of -I-v « j __ . ¦ j _ « j in f ' . ' j * . '"¦ 'i * « CE § 3 sSC " Dissenters itself from the

    separates ^ Stg ^ repudiates all State payment , and J |^^ a stantly endeavouring to * drag down ^ j |^^ au thorifcy of the State in matters pert Ȥ d | i ^ religion . After the contests or Sei ^ yyEilward , Mary , and Elizabeth , with the rapid changes of creed represented in history ^ b y those four sovereigns , dissent mingled w ; th political insurrection , and became an established institution of this country * , . i :

    DISSENT JN THE UNIVERSITIES , The contest which is carried on in the House of Commons , for the purpose of opening Oxford University to the Dissenters , ia not likely to have any effect unless it should have that of postponing for some time longer the admission of more Dissenters into the University . JTor we agree with the Morning Chronicle in thinking that the Oxford Bill does not exclude Dissenters ; and we might cite the same authority for confirming our statement , frequently repeated , that the

    University itself does not exclude them . The Oxford Bill does not deal with the subject at all , but by introducing a much more liberal organization of the University , and by extending its machinery throughout the country where Dissenters are the vast majority , it certainly prepares the way for an ulterior measure which would have the effect of openly admitting Dissenters so called . " We point with satisfaction , to the testimony of the Morning Chronicle as to the inefficacy of tests for restraining the members of the University to one particular faith : —

    " Ia spite of the tests , Oxford has been the perpetual scene of conflict between parties differing , in the most radical and fundamental manner , on those very questions which the tests affect to settle , and on which the mind of eveiy matriculated member of the University is supposed to be entirely at rest . In spite of the tests , Oxford produced those writers who were the fathers of modern infidelity both in England and elsewhere . In spite of the tests , the University was torn , by dissensions between the High Churchmen who imposed one-half of them , and the

    Puritans who imposed the other . In spite of the tests , speculations have leen pursued , and opinions have been matured , which have convulsed the Church of England to its foundations—which have oast Oxford m-en on every shore of infidelity and dissent—and which have furnished simultaneously the most formidable assailants of Christianity , and the most formidable advocates of the Church of

    Rome . That man must be sanguine who thinks that all this ferment , which began the instant that intellectual activity revived , and which ia only part of a great European movement , will subside again into a secure and calm acquiescence in the compromise of the sixteenth century . Yot , unless such a result is anticipated , to keep up the tests ia to keep up a great academical hypocrisy , at the expense of a great national wrong ; . "

    Yea , testa would be juat if the nation at largo actually agreed iu one form of faith , and if it dosired to render those seminaries for ita Church , its aristocracy , and its higher professions in harmony with that national faith , freed from exceptions . Thoro is reason

    " It now claims half the natio n * It has outgrown toleration . Ton . cannot ' , tolerate hajf tfce peopl Equal justice , and equal particip * tiitra M all natioiilil rights and institutions , is now 'ttiSS ^ clfljiinitfe ^ Otherwise we shall have a nation- WitShtoi ^ 1 ^^ 0 n 4 * ial&ij resentful , and aggressive . Xt tt «> a ^^^ nf (^ h ^ that the commercial and manufacturing c ^ i |^^ most wealthy , intettigenti a ^ d Mtiv ^ ^ o ^ ion jOf r | he population—should have nb ^ p « &itoVtue great pllcc

    of national education ; that they shduW regard Oxford and Cambridge , Eton and "Winchester , as insti tutions whose greatness is their degradation . . The manufacturing districts have grown up with a religion , with politics , with a social philosophy , "with ideas and aspirations almost' entirely their / owiu Between Manchester and Lambeth there ' ii ^ Hpaf ^ wider , probably than ever divided two portions of the same free nation . " .

    There are , however , much m 0 re than " , two portions , " and dissent claims more than . " ~ hp | i the nation , " for the testa have had an effect besides that of establishing uniformity . Tr ailing to compel belief , which was , of course , impossible , they have purchased profession ; as open dissent is punished , and as conformity is rewarded , a large proportion of ' the Dis * senters call themselves members of the Qhurcli

    of England , subscribe the Thirty-nine Artides , and thus become admissible at once to the Universities and to good society . But thej remain Dissenters still ; they are Baptists , Wesleyans , Platonists , Atheists , Spiritualists , Indifferentists , and members of a hundred other denominations , but they call themselves members of the Church , subscribe its articles can enter a university , and caa share the

    property of the Church . They are Dissenters bribed to pretend that they are members of a national Church ; they obtain positions where they may embezzle the property of the Church for the purpose of muffled dissent ; and thus , reinforced by Dissenters , who agree to wear its uniform , the Church of England is able to seem as if it were the Church of half the

    country , to keep up appearance , to preserve its monopoly , and to prevent the property shared by the Corporation of Soothsayers from being openly confiscated , to the State . The tests , liowever , do soniethinfT more than aid that hypocrisy ; they positively assist in promoting non-religion , or rather anti-religion . Condemning the religious ia-

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    May 6 , 1854 . THE LEA D E JEL 4 sri

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), May 6, 1854, page 421, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2037/page/13/