THE NEW ERA.THE NEW ERA.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IV, Issue 57, 10 March 1869, Page 2

THE NEW ERA.THE NEW ERA.

We take, the following review of the past year, from an English periodical : — Time rolls smoothly, and events easily fit themselves into their destined places. There is^'inarvellous power of assimilation inline human mind by which incidents the most -start! ing, changes the ?^gt revolutionary,* such as we should. -shrin^ from the contemplation of, become, wheik they have actually taken ! plac£,; j natural; and familiar, and, in a very short time;; cease to create any sensation. It is bibljjv

in this way that we can explain the little impression which the events of the past few years make upon us. We. use the words " democratic," " revolutionary," and such phrases, as portending something that would be, if it were to occur, very serious and alarming, involving a change in the whole face of society; and yet we do not see that we are now, and for some time past have been, liviug through a state of things as revolutionary, or tending in a direction as democratic, as anything that has occurred since the era of the Reformation. It requires an effort to realise the thought how much aud how decisively the face of the world has been changed within the last eight or ten years. We are living in a state of society and among a class of institutions altogether different from an epoch of so much of yesterday as the days of the Crimean War; and yet the events have been so gradual, and we have so readily adapted ourselves to the changes they produce, that we are almost inclined to affirm that things were always as we now witness them. It cannot be good for us, however, to settle down into this slothful habit of taking changes as they come. It is well that we should, from time to time, survey their full extent, estimate their true bearings, and endeavor from them to forecast the future ; for of course the importance lies not so much in what they are in themselves as in the effect they are likely to have on those institutions that yet remain. Every change has a loosening aud disintegrating effect upon those things it leaves unaltered, and renders them more exposed to the next shock. We live in an era of revolutions, and though we have already experienced many shocks cf the political earthquake, we have no reason to believe that the explosions, either in number or iu urgency, have spent \ their force. Why did the Emperor of the French interfere iu the affairs of Italy ? What cause had he to declare war against Austria on her behalf? Various answers, more or less plausible, may be given to this question; but all we have seen appear to us to assign motives inadequate to the occasioo. If Louis Napoleon could have foreseen that the threads of events were so soon to pass out of his hands, aud that he would be reduced to the condition of a puppet where he aspired to pull the strings, we may be sure that Austria would have held her position across the Alps unquestioned to this very hour. The matchless craft of Cavour, and the singleminded valor of Garibaldi, were equally too much for him; and Italy, which he wished to see a bundle of provinces, became a nation. And before men had done wondering at the transformation, the quarrel of Austria" and Prussia over their spoil of the Elbe provinces issued in the seven days' campaign, and the disappearance of i Austria from Venetia, and, what was still more wonderful, from Germany ; while Prussia, to the further chagrin of France, suddenly occupied the position of a neighbor and a rival, controlling and wielding the whole military and political force of forty millions of people. And, lastly — for in this hurried summary of events we merely glauce at facts which our readers will realise for themselves— when these changes had, it seemed, wholly spent their force, and all had proved powerless to make any impression upon Spain, the most backward of European countries, suddeuly, iu a time of profound peace, the Peninsula awoke from her lethargy; the monarchy of centuries disappears like a vision of the night; and, while we write, her most influential citizens are unable to make up their minds what the nature of her new Government shall be. Englishmen have much cause to be thankful for their escape from the fury of that revolutionary storm which has thus burst upon the rest of Europe. But it was not possible that it should pass over the world without our feeling some of its effects, and though they were milder in their operation than elsewhere, they are not likely to be less permanent. We have had our own political revolution, and we are entering upon our ecclesiastical one. It is but as yesterday since, politicians on both sides spoke of household suffrage in whispered words and with solemn faces, as if, whether for good or for evil, it was a question not to be lightly touched. We have now received a household franchise, received., it, too, at the hands of a Conservative Government; and having just gone through a general election under its operation, the most timid Conservative is now ready to admit that we are not much the worse for it. It is to be remembered,

however, that the suffrage is as yet new and strange in the hands of the claBS to whom it has last been entrusted, and they have not yet learned all the uses to which it may be put.. But leaving.. this for the present, let us look at our English revolution in its ecclesiastical aspect. , . We . do not simply refer to the project now on foot for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Irish Church. That ie, no doubt, the question of the hour; and as such, it fills a large space in the eye of the community ; but we cannot help regarding it, after all, as only the part of a large whole, a step in that process of disintegration of all our ecclesiastical systems which has been quietly at work for the last 10 years. The principle of a Church Establishment has had two enemies, the avowed Voluntaries and those members of its own body who, filled with a sense of sacerdotal power, chafe at and resent the yoke which an alliance with the State imposes on them. To them the Royal appointment of bishops, the powerlessness of Convocation, and all the thousand and one ways by which the lay members of the Church, acting through the Crown and the Parliament, assert their rights, is simply the bondage of Egypt. We confess, however, we have been rather scandalised by the inconsistency of this party in the matter of the Irish Church. We certainly expected that they would have hailed the prospect of one free Church being set up in these realms as a model and encouragement for all the restInstead of this they are the foremost defenders of the Irish Establishment, the loudest in their outcries against spoliation. We shall not stop to comment on this, but simply to remark that, whether the principle of an establishment be preserved or not, it is hardly possible that the Churches should escape some redistribution of their revenues. In other countries, we see that tbe laity have taken the Church endowments iuto their own hands, and in many cases have devoted them to the exigencies of the State. We happily got over that rough part of the work 300 years ago, and we may well feel thankful that it is not to be done again. But we may be assured of this, that no superstitious notion of sanctity will divert our new rulers from looking into the question and settling it, not as the clergy, but as the laity see right. Both parties in the State are pledged to more than this in the case of the Church of Ireland; less than this they will not be content with in the Cl.urch of England. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that these changes will affect only the Established Churches of this country. Many a Dissenter, who now little dreams of it, will find his pet theory of Church and State rudely shaken before many months are over. And assuredly the need of a wholesome shaking is not more in the one body than in the others. There are uneudowed Churches that are as hide-bound in. their formalities, as much fastened down to their old traditions, as fearful of the least breath of change, as if they were tied to them by the force of 50 Acts of Parliament. To all this the new era that is upon us will put an end, and will prove a day of searching into persons, institutions, states, and Churches.