nations arrive at a higher point of development, for such a union will increase the power of both in geometrical ratio. We should not, however, be deceived, for as yet nothing is prepared for it, and the Pedrist intrigues of 1854 were quite premature. There are hardly two capitals in Europe, which have so little intercourse with each other as Lisbon and Madrid. When the frontier is cut by half-a-dozen railways it will be very different, and ere that time may we not hope to see a really free and good Government in both countries? At present, Portugal is politically much in advance. With regard to Gibraltar, we have not the space to discuss the question of its transfer either from the English or the Spanish point of view. Many years may pass before it becomes a question of immediate interest, but no reasonable man can doubt that it must one day be such; and we only trust that both Governments may have the good sense to set about its discussion, when the proper time arrives, with a due respect for themselves and for each other. In the meantime, it is desirable that writers and speakers should from time to time bring the matter before the attention of this country, in order that the public mind may not be unprepared. Spain would have made a very great step towards prosperity, if she could only understand, that all intelligent Englishmen wish that she should rise to a point of national wealth and real power, such as she has never as yet attained. They are quite aware that, in the present condition of the world, Spain cannot be prosperous without being enlightened, peaceful, and industrious, and they well know that the transformation of the Iberian Peninsula into an enlightened, peaceful, and industrious state, would not only be a great blessing to mankind, but would add enormously to the wellbeing of their own country, which is becoming every day more and more the workshop and the entrepôt of the world. Nor will the complete regeneration of Spain be less important to us in an intellectual than in a material point of view. Consider what she did when she was enslaved to a faith only less bloody than that which she overthrew in Mexico, a faith at which all intelligent Romanists now shudder; then judge what she may do when the fine intellects of her people are freed from the bondage of ignorance, and she has her fair share of the knowledge of those facts of the universe, which are now acquired for humanity. So surely as a new product of any value is discovered, it soon finds its way to England. So surely as a new idea is born into the world, it soon finds its way hither also, and no nation can now become rich or wise without largely contributing to the increase of our riches and wisdom.

ART. IV.—1. A Plea for the Abolition of Tests in the University of Oxford. By GOLDWIN SMITH. Oxford: Wheeler and Day. London: Hamilton & Co.; 1864.

2. An Answer to Professor Goldwin Smith's Plea for the Abolition of Tests. By Rev. H. R. BRAMLEY, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of St. Mary Magdalen College. London: Rivingtons. WITHIN the last few years it has become almost a platitude to remark how different in character are the questions now rising into importance among us from those which were the objects of public attention and political warfare during the last two reigns. Some may think that, along with the more definite recognition of a policy of non-intervention abroad, there has come a more resolute concentration of interest upon domestic matters. Others may declare the phenomenon only the result of the indifference to sweeping political changes which it is natural that a period of great material prosperity should produce. Others again, penetrating deeper, will seek its causes in the spirit of an age, which, self-complacent and self-indulgent as it may appear, is yet restless, inquiring, and filled with a belief in progress. But whatever be the cause, the fact is certain. In each succeeding session of Parliament more and more time is consumed in debates upon projects of social and religious change; parties are beginning to reconstruct themselves upon the basis of new beliefs and new cries; the confidence of the nation is given to those statesmen chiefly in whom is recognised the zeal and the wisdom to deal successfully with questions of social improvement.

Among such questions, those relating to education hold a front place; and among those relating to education, there is none more important than that of University extension and reform. Strictly speaking, this is not a political matter at all, for little can be done in it by direct legislative interference. A wise and happy policy has left the Universities both of England and Scotland far more independent than their sisters in other European countries; and it is from their own decisions and their own free action that we have most to hope. However desirable it may be that the two great academies of England should exercise a greater influence in the education of the whole country; that they should be more easily accessible to the less wealthy classes; that room should be found in their curriculum for branches of knowledge as yet imperfectly recognised, but which to be studied rightly must be studied philosophically, these objects cannot be attained by the sudden enactment of any single scheme, but must be left to the slowly working influences of frequent discussion, of individual example, of enlightened public opinion.

To this principle there is, however, one exception, an exception itself important, but still more so because a change therein is the necessary precondition of every other change. In the matter of religious tests nothing can be done but by the direct aid of the Legislature. Here, and here only, has the law stepped in to restrain the freedom of the University, by imposing, sometimes directly, sometimes through the medium of commissioners, certain subscriptions and declarations of religious belief or conformity, and it is accordingly by the law only that these can be removed.1 This question is one of immediate practical moment; it has already been brought forward in Parliament, and it is likely to engage for several years to come no small measure of the attention of the Legislature. We may add, that it is a question affecting in the most serious way the interests of Scotland, though its bearings are unfortunately and unaccountably very little known among us here.

Before entering on the subject, one remark cannot be omitted. The discussion of the merits of these tests, as tests, has nothing to do with any discussion of their truth. Those who have attacked them, being often themselves sufferers, have sometimes appeared to rest their case upon the latter ground, and have mixed up an invective against the doctrine with an invective against the test. We do not propose to enter upon any such line of argument. If a test is as a matter of fact disbelieved by many persons, that, though it may be a very good reason against imposing it, can evidently have nothing to do with its abstract truth; and everybody knows that the legal establishment of both these and other formularies of doctrine has been and is condemned by many whose own orthodoxy is above suspicion.

Further, the question of University Subscription is wholly distinct from that of Clerical Subscription in the Anglican Church. Reasons have already been given in this Review for believing that a relaxation of that subscription is to be desired in the interests of the English Church herself,-reasons many of which apply to the case of the Universities also, for they tend to show that subscription is a broken reed in any hand. But seeing that both the persons subject to the test, and the circumstances differ wholly in the two cases, each must be argued and judged apart; nor will the decision in the one necessarily involve a similar conclusion in the other. The argument most frequently advanced for clerical subscription, that since the Christian Church rests upon dogma, and the clergyman's chief duty is to teach dogma, a statement of his dogmatic belief is necessary as a security to the laity, has obviously no application to the case of the 1 Some of these restrictions are matter of statute, others only of academical law, but practically the intervention of Parliament would be as necessary in the latter case as in the former.

Universities. Anything which affects the fortunes of the greatest ecclesiastical institution of Britain must always be to every thoughtful man, be he Churchman or Dissenter, Englishman or Scotchman, a matter of the profoundest interest. But without any disparagement to the question of English clerical tests, it may fairly be said that the question before us is a wider, if not a deeper one; for it affects not one body of Christians merely, but the whole nation; and it is interwoven with many other projects of reform in which neither religion nor the English Church has any direct concern.

We shall therefore make no apology for considering the subject of University Tests, apart from any theory as to the desirability of theological standards for the ministers of a religious body, seeing that it is at once a wider, a more practical, and above all, a far simpler question.

It will be in the remembrance of our readers, that in the sessions of 1862 and 1863, two petitions were presented to Parliament, praying for relief from certain academical tests. One of these

that of 1862--was signed by seventy-four fellows of Colleges at Cambridge, and sought for a repeal of that part of the Act of Uniformity which requires heads and fellows of Colleges to make on their admission a declaration of conformity to the Liturgy of the Church of England. That of 1863 came from Oxford, and was directed against the existing tests generally. The names of one hundred and six present and former fellows or tutors of Colleges and professors were appended to it, including a large proportion of distinguished teachers and writers. Upon these petitions were founded the two bills introduced into the House of Commons in the sessions of 1863 and 1864 respectively. Mr. Dodson's, which proposed to abolish at Oxford the requirement of subscription to the Articles on taking the degrees of M.A., D.C.L., and D.M., was carried on the second reading by a majority of twenty-two, after a spirited debate in which many leading politicians took part; was carried again, on the proposal to go into committee, by a majority of ten; carried a third time, against Sir W. Heathcote's amendment, by a majority of ten; read a third time by the casting vote of the Speaker; and finally rejected, on the question " that this bill do now pass," by a majority of only two, in the midst of an excitement only second to that of the Danish debate which followed. Mr. Bouverie's bill,2 to make it lawful for Colleges to relax, if they should think fit, the requirements of the Act of Uniformity, by admitting Dissenters to fellowships, came on for discussion rather later in the

1 It was stated in the House of Commons at the time that thirteen professors had signed, and that out of 131 first-class men who were fellows of Colleges, 56 had signed.

2 Introduced first in 1863; then in a modified form in 1864.

session, and, from whatever cause, met with a less warm reception. It was rejected on the second reading by a considerable majority. Both measures, however, found an amount of support, and excited an amount of hostility, which must have surprised their authors themselves; and the commotion raised by them in Parliament, which has already found an echo in the country, proclaimed that they had fairly entered the sphere of political, it may almost be said of hustings' questions. To understand clearly what they proposed to do, it may be well to give an exact statement of the existing law, distinguishing those enactments which relate to the University as a whole from those which concern the several Colleges. And first, as to the Universities.

In Oxford, up to the Act of 1854, subscription to the Thirtynine Articles was required from all students at matriculation; to the Articles and the Thirty-sixth Canon in taking any degree whatsoever. That Act abolished the subscription at matriculation and in taking the degree of Bachelor in any of the lay faculties, leaving it subsisting in the case of the higher degrees. Thus at present, every one who proceeds to the degree of Master of Arts, or Doctor of Laws or Medicine, must sign the Thirtynine Articles, and the three articles of the Thirty-sixth Canon, in the second of which the subscriber declares, "willingly and ex animo," that the Book of Common Prayer and of the Ordering of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, containeth in it nothing contrary to the Word of God, and that it may lawfully be used, and that he himself will use, the forms in the said book prescribed, in public prayer and in the administration of the sacraments.1 Only persons having so subscribed are admitted into the Houses of Convocation and Congregation and the Hebdomadal Council, -the three bodies by which the University is governed, and to whose members almost all academic power and privilege belongs.

At Cambridge no subscription is now (since the Act of 1856) required in the taking of any lay degree whatsoever. But no one is admitted into the senate or governing body of the University, until he shall have declared himself a bona fide member of the Church of England. Of course, the degree of M.A., stripped of all rights of government, is a mere barren title, or rather a humiliating badge of inferiority; and the condition of things at Cambridge differs from that at Oxford chiefly in this, that the above declaration of membership is generally found to be less distasteful than a signature to the Articles.

Secondly, as regards the Colleges.

In both Oxford and Cambridge, every head and fellow of a College is required by the Act of Uniformity to make, on his admission, a declaration before the Vice-Chancellor that he will

The latter part of this declaration has evidently no meaning except as applied to clergymen.