ents are peculiarly fitted to conduct the education of
their children, and that education is the principal end of a parental
relation, lead us also to think that parents ought to be allowed to use
punishment, if necessary, for the purpose of forcing children, who are
incapable of judging for themselves, to receive religious instruction
and to attend religious worship. Why, then, is this prerogative of
punishment, so eminently paternal, to be withheld from a paternal
government? It seems to us, also, to be the height of absurdity to
employ civil disabilities for the propagation of an opinion, and then to
shrink from employing other punishments for the same purpose. For
nothing can be clearer than that, if you punish at all, you ought to
punish enough. The pain caused by punishment is pure unmixed evil, and
never ought to be inflicted, except for the sake of some good. It is
mere foolish cruelty to provide penalties which torment the criminal
without preventing the crime. Now it is possible, by sanguinary
persecution unrelentingly inflicted, to suppress opinions. In this way
the Albigenses were put down. In this way the Lollards were put down. In
this way the fair promise of the Reformation was blighted in Italy and
Spain. But we may safely defy Mr. Gladstone to point out a single
instance in which the system which he recommends has succeeded.

* * * * *

But we must proceed in our examination of his theory. Having, as he
conceives, proved that it is the duty of every government to profess
some religion or other, right or wrong, and to establish that religion,
he then comes to the question what religion a government ought to
prefer; and he decides this question in favour of the form of
Christianity established in England. The Church of England is, according
to him, the pure Catholic Church of Christ, which possesses the
apostolical succession of ministers, and within whose pale is to be
found that unity which is essential to truth. For her decisions he
claims a degree of reverence far beyond what she has ever, in any of her
formularies, claimed for herself; far beyond what the moderate school of
Bossuet demands for the Pope; and scarcely short of what that school
would ascribe to Pope and General Council together. To separate from her
communion is schism. To reject her traditions or interpretations of
Scripture is sinful presumption.

Mr. Gladstone pronounces the right of private judgment,