n the House of Commons, the conservative
speakers accused the petitioners of wishing to set up a new school of
theological belief and criticism. Mr. Gladstone made a speech, full of
grace and an even vigor, to the effect that he could not conceive of
religion disconnected from definite statements such as those which the
Church possessed; the idea was to his mind as absurd as to conceive of
manifestations of life without a body. Mr. Goschen, the new member from
London, made his maiden speech on this occasion. It was very earnest and
liberal, and reminded one of American styles of speaking, being less
even and conversational than the style which Englishmen admire. His
opinion was, that all tests should be abolished, and that inclusion was
safer than exclusion: meaning that the Church ought to keep herself so
organized as to absorb the best vitality of every generation, instead of
turning it out to become cold and hostile. The phrase which he used is
the very essence of a republican policy. It represents the tendency of
the people of England, as distinguished from its ministers and the
traditions of its government. That phrase will one day be safely driven
clear through the highway where the omnibus is now lying; but for the
present, the abolition of tests and church-rates, the recognition of
every shade of dissent, and the graver political reformation which waits
behind all these are held in check by the _vis inertiae_ of an
Establishment that lies across the road.

During the exciting anti-church-rate contests of 1840, the Church party
in Rochdale, which had been defeated in an attempt to levy a church-rate
where for several years none had been collected, held a meeting to try
the matter over again. It was adjourned from the church to the
graveyard. The vicar, as chairman, occupied one tombstone, and John
Bright stood upon another to make one of his strong defences of the
rights of Voluntaryism. In the course of the discussion, the vicar's
warden rendered an account of the dilapidations of the building which
the proposed rate was to repair, and stated, with great simplicity, that
"the foundations were giving way,"--a significant remark, which the
meeting, though held in a grave place, received with shouts of laughter.
Such a statement may well be taken as symbolical of the condition of the
Establishment, when liberal criticism, represented by Colenso, Stanley,
Jowett, Baden Powell, and a respectable minority, is silently