cornful hatred, not
surpassed by the most Jacobinical language of the French Revolution in
the year 1792. And, if this movement had not been checked by
Parliament, and subsequently by the executive Government, in its
comprehensive provision for the future, by the measure we have been
reviewing, we cannot doubt that the contagion of the shock would have
spread immediately to England, which part of the island has been long
prepared and manured, as we might say, for corresponding struggles, by
the continued conspiracy against church-rates. In both cases, an
attack on church property, once allowed to prosper or to gain any
stationary footing, would have led to a final breach in the life and
serviceable integrity of the church.

Of the Factory bill, we are sorry that we are hardly entitled to
speak. In the loss of the educational clauses, that bill lost all
which could entitle it to a separate notice; and, where the Government
itself desponds as to any future hope of succeeding, private parties
may have leave to despair. One gleam of comfort, however, has shone
out since the adjournment of Parliament. The only party to the bitter
resistance under which this measure failed, whom we can sincerely
compliment with full honesty of purpose--viz. the Wesleyan
Methodists--have since expressed (about the middle of September)
sentiments very like compunction and deep sorrow for the course they
felt it right to pursue. They are fully aware of the malignity towards
the Church of England, which governed all other parties to the
opposition excepting themselves; and in the sorrowful result of that
opposition, which has terminated in denying all extension of education
to the labouring youth of the nation, they have learned (like the
conscientious men that they are) to suspect the wisdom and the
ultimate principle of the opposition itself. Fortunately, they are a
most powerful body; to express regret for what they have done, and
hesitation at the casuistry of those motives which reconciled them to
their act at the moment is possibly but the next step to some change
in their counsels; in which case this single body, in alliance with
the Church of England, would be able to carry the great measure which
has been crushed for the present by so unexampled a resistance. Much
remains to be said, both upon the introductory statements of Lord
Ashley, with which (in spite of our respect for that nobleman) we do
not coincide, and still more upon the ex