submit to Episcopal ordination. Nor is it our intention to propose concessions. Everything in the way of charitable and affectionate intercourse every expression of regret for former differences, which could be made consistently with the maintenance of our own position as the visible Church in Englandwe would gladly recommend. Above all, we would submit to any amount of self-humiliation and self-accusation, on the ground of our manifold sins. But as regards concessions, we believe there is considerable doubt whether the common report of Archbishop Bramhall's having admitted Presbyterian Ministers to conditional ordination is correct. Dr. Hook, in his Life, says that he ordained them in the usual form of ordaining laymen, without any hypothesis, and merely inserted a clause in their letters of orders, to certify that he did it to supply defects. But we think that such overtures, even as regards them, would be graceful and in good taste, and might pave the way for future reconciliation by healing old animosities. They might do more; and that we may be honest as to our intentions, we will not scruple to avow them. We think it not impossible that, in this way, we might by degrees attract many of their body to submit to the claims of the Church, and thus allure the best of them into the stream of our influence. We hear that this is what is now being done, to a very great extent, by the Church in America. And in proportion as we show ourselves equal to our own pretensions, and to the greatness of our vocation, why should it not be hoped that the same result may follow among ourselves? And in regard to the Wesleyan body, we think we might hope for more. We have reason to believe that the old yearning after the Church which Wesley longed to serve, is not yet extinct among them, and that a considerable number of their ministers would accept orders from our bishops without any concession on our part. At least it is worth while to make the attempt; and if made in a friendly spirit, and without an attempt, always so fatal, on the part of the State, to coerce us into concessions which we ought not to make, for the sake of its own chimerical and impracticable schemes, it might have some good effect, especially at a time when that body itself is agitated by internal disunion. At all events we think it cannot be denied that some such overture ought to have been made long ago, and if it be now more difficult it is never too late to do right.'

Having turned to Dr. Hook's Life of Wesley in his Ecclesiastical Biography, after this was written, and just as we were sending it to the press, we find that he has there ventured even to suggest that the existing system of the Wesleyans should be licensed by the Church, on their agreeing, of course, to a reconciliation. We are happy to refer to this eminent authority in support of the opinions we have expressed.

But that on which we mean chiefly to insist is, that the great cause of increased dissent in modern times is the want of an organized system of voluntary discipline within the Church. Whether the means of restoring such a system which we have here ventured to suggest would be effectual or not, we must now leave to others to decide. But if not, we still maintain that we cannot hope to succeed in retaining within our communion the whole body of those whom we educate, or whom we reclaim from ignorance and vice, until we shall have found out some way of supplying to them those incentives to devotion, and that scope and vent to the outpourings of awakened hearts, which we are thankful to believe are indeed now supplied, to some extent, to the educated and intellectual classes, but which require to be extended to all those to whom the Gospel ought to be all in all.

[Since the above was written, we have found it stated in the authorized Life of Wesley by Dr. Cook, that the Religious Societies in the Church of England received him with open arms,- -a statement which confirms all our surmises on the subject.]1

1 The Societies for the Reformation of Manners, which received the support of the Government (?), and the private Societies formed throughout the kingdom by the zeal and strong recommendation of the pious Doctor Horneck and others, undoubtedly gave a check to that dissipation of spirit, that practical Atheism, and that perfect looseness of morals, which had so entirely pervaded the whole land. Many of these Societies remained in being in the year 1738, and received Mr. Wesley with open arms when he entered on his most extensive sphere of action.' -Cook and Moore's Life of Wesley, pp. 6, 7. 1792.

220

ART. VII.-Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the existing state of the Corporation of the City of London, and to collect information respecting its Constitution, Order and Government, &c., together with the Minutes of Evidence and Appendix. Presented to the Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1854; fol. pp. 913. IN the year 1853 it had become clear that it was impossible any longer to resist a searching inquiry into the affairs of the Corporation of London; and such an inquiry it was evident would result in suggestions for its comprehensive reform. There is nothing either wonderful or blameable in the fact that it had stood unreformed so long; and that great tenderness and consideration were evinced for so many years_towards the privileges and administration of the Corporation. It is, perhaps, a more legitimate subject of surprise that the issuing of the commission of inquiry excited so little opposition, and that the recommendations of the commissioners, important and sweeping as they are in their character and scope, should have occasioned so little unfavourable comment.

For, in truth, the ancient history of the Corporation is one which, upon the whole, may be regarded with justifiable pride and satisfaction. Its present immense wealth, and consequent political power, are the legitimate results of an early history, creditable to themselves, and to the national institutions and character, of which they were a chief production and example. Wealth has brought with it corruption; exclusiveness and selfish policy have naturally engendered weakness; and the existing Corporation of London has become the reproach of this practical and economical country, and has been the object of obloquy, perhaps a little exaggerated, and of attacks certainly somewhat ill-directed. The history, however, for many centuries of corporate cities in general, and emphatically that of London itself, is by no means a subject for either obloquy or attack. They were the sole homes of freedom in Europe, the only places of refuge from the tyranny and oppression of the sovereign and his armed nobility. Great and wise kings, in almost every European country, seem to have felt the absolute necessity of creating and protecting the liberties of these incorporated towns; perhaps as some mitigation of feudal rigours, possibly also from the selfish yet politic desire of finding some support for them

selves against the overwhelming power which the barons could exert even in England if united, and which in foreign countries was often possessed by a single great feudatory. It is likely enough that on the part of the cities, privileges were often extorted from very mixed motives, and that it was but seldom that an enlightened policy or a wise prescience dictated demands which, in their result, turned out highly valuable and salutary to the community at large. Still, happily, the instincts of the cities were generally to be trusted; even if these anti-feudal and anti-baronial feelings may have been carried in some cases to excess, it was the right feeling for the times, its encouragement was the encouragement of art, and commerce, and education, and independence; it was the spirit which has made England one of the greatest empires of which history takes note, and certainly the freest country in the world. We can understand, perhaps sympathise with, the indignation of a baron who had lost his Gurth or Wamba, and who found that he had fled, very likely had been enticed, into the City of London, had been concealed there for a year and a day, and had now become a free citizen, entitled to snap his fingers at his lord. But this was one of the ways through which feudal slavery was first mitigated, and gradually disappeared; and no one who reads the middle age Chroniclers will be apt to think hardly of any means, however indirect, which raised the value of the lower classes in the eyes of their superiors, or pointed out to the serfs and vassals a way for their escape from under those iron footsteps which trod them heedlessly into the dust, and crushed their very lives out with contemptuous disregard. There is nothing so painful in perusing records of the age of chivalry,' as the utter scorn and cruel selfishness of the gentlemen of those days towards all below, or out of the pale of their own chosen class. The sneers of Horace, and the remorseless exterminations of Sulla, are hardly more indefensible in principle than the tone in which Froissart records the massacre of a multitude of common people, or the defeat and death of Philip van Artevelde.

Against this spirit it was a matter of course that the City of London should struggle; and it had power, as far as its own interests were concerned, to struggle successfully. Even before the Norman conquest, London had asserted its independence, and its right to be governed internally by its own laws; and was certainly not at that time, nor for some time previously, in demesne like so many other cities. The citizens obtained from the respect or fear of the Conqueror, who might have heard of their inflexible and successful resistance to the great Canute, brief but pregnant charters, which in effect confirmed them in the enjoyment of all their essential privileges; exempting them in

particular from the hated jurisdiction of the king's justiciars, who were imposed upon the rest of the kingdom as foreign judges, administering an alien system of justice in a language which the people did not understand. In the time of Stephen, and again in the reign of John, they contended with vigour and success against the harsh despotism of the Empress Matilda, and the meaner tyranny of the king; and although they suffered often and greatly during the long and troubled reign of Henry III., their power and splendour on the whole greatly increased, and at the same time their authority in the country (sufficient more than once to decide the issue of a civil war), and their determination to maintain their freedom. They even ventured into conflict with so great a sovereign as Edward I.; and although they had sometimes to buy their privileges of him at a heavy rate, they did buy them, and boldly defied the king when he attempted to invade them. In the time of Richard II. the feeling of the citizens for freedom, but for freedom regulated by law, was notably displayed. They resisted Wat Tyler and his 100,000 men, and the lord mayor killed him: but they could not tolerate the wanton oppressions of the king; and their hearty adhesion to the cause of Henry IV. seated the house of Lancaster on the throne. They uniformly supported this politic king in his contests with his barons; on one occasion almost alone defeating a powerful combination of the discontented nobility. The wars of the Roses afforded many opportunities, not neglected by the citizens of London, for increasing their own privileges; and as they had been found on the side of Henry IV. against Richard II., so on the other hand they were steadily in favour of the house of York, throughout all the contests of the reign of Henry VI. Thrice did Edward IV. owe his crown to the citizens of London. He repaid them with lavish grants, with genial and steady patronage. Their support deserved his gratitude, and although, as we have suggested, it is likely enough that selfish motives mingled with nobler ones in directing their policy, so it was, that the kings who trusted most to their parliaments, appealed most to their people, curbed most vigorously the turbulence of their barons, met with the firmest and most powerful support at their hands.

An imperious and high-handed race of kings followed upon the brief usurpation of Richard III., who himself almost professed to base his claims to the crown upon an election by the city. Under the Tudors, the City of London, like the rest of England, abated somewhat of its free and haughty spirit. Yet glimpses of the old temper flashed forth from time to time. The city withstood Wolsey and Henry VIII., and absolutely refused to comply with an illegal tax; and Mary owed the complete defeat