gated by contrarient' enactments of Parliament. Canon 99, for instance, so far as it directed proceedings in the ecclesiastical courts to annul unlawful marriages, was repealed by Lord Lyndhurst's Act (1835), which made such marriages ipso facto void without any proceedings. The Dean of the Arches was of opinion that the Act of 1907, having regard to its emphatic reference to the 'civil contract,' affects only the civil side of marriage; and that this language was used in the Act so as to leave the 99th Canon untouched.* It must, however, be admitted that this view was not shared by several of the Judges in the Prohibition proceedings; and that their dicta, if they are to be accepted as giving an interpretation of the statute binding on the ecclesiastical courts, seem to put such a construction upon it as to make it entirely destructive of the Canon. If it be so, this rather formidable result is another untoward outcome of the zealous interference of the English Church Union.

But, while the complexity of these legal and historical problems might well have made Canon Thompson and his Bishop pause before attempting coercive action against the Banisters, and should certainly have rendered impossible such full-mouthed maledictions as those of Mr Puller, the general position of the Church of England as rejecting marriage with a deceased wife's sister is unquestionable. It may fairly be said that Parliament, in making 'God's law' the test of the prohibited degrees, was adopting the one standard, the acceptance of which by the reformed English Church could properly be taken for granted; and that both Church and State were then agreed that God's law' prohibited these marriages. Further, the difficulties with regard to the 99th Canon, however formidable when the matter is submitted to a court with a view to enforce the Church's rule in a specific case, do not prevent the canon remaining as valuable evidence, which the consciences of Churchmen will respect, of what that rule is.

Canon Thompson having determined to take action, the form adopted is not surprising, however much it may be regretted. If the issue could have been raised by the Bishop in a suit dealing with the direct question whether

*Law Reports' (Probate), 1908, p. 389.

the Banisters ought to have been excommunicated, permanently or for a time, it would have been better. The almost irrelevant matters which vitiated the course actually pursued and have prevented a decision of the real point would have been avoided. But neither the Bishop nor Canon Thompson can be fairly blamed for not reviving an almost forgotten jurisdiction, which they were perhaps advised was hopelessly obsolete, and the resuscitation of which in this particular case undoubtedly presented technical difficulties.* At any rate Canon Thompson did not try to deal with the matter thus, but repelled Mr and Mrs Banister from Communion as 'open and notorious evil livers.' The Banisters were not slow to initiate a suit nominally to punish Canon Thompson but really to assert their own rights. The defence to this suit failed, but-this is generally forgotten-not because Canon Thompson was wrong in his view of the Church law of prohibited degrees, but because he asserted it in a wrong way. His contention was twofold. He argued (1) that the marriage had made the Banisters 'evil livers' in fact; and (2) that, at any rate, he could so treat them under the Act of 1907, which in substance provides that no clergyman shall be liable to censure for anything done in the performance of his ministerial duties which would not have been censurable before the Act. The construction of this ill-drawn statute is difficult, but the Dean of the Arches held, and the Judges have decided rightly, that the Act does not really create a condition of hypothetical evil living which could, at the option of any clergyman, carry with it the disabilities inflicted on the Banisters.'

The contention that, although lawfully married, they were on account of their marriage open and notorious evil livers' offends against common sense and charity, and applies language descriptive of execrable immorality to conduct which, however gravely censurable, is not of that character. As already stated (p. 191) the Dean of the Arches defines an evil liver' in this context as a person whose course of life is condemned by the common

6

* For example, 27 Geo. III, ch. 44, sect. 2, prohibits suits in the ecclesiastical courts for fornication 'at any time after the parties offending shall have lawfully intermarried.'

† 7 Ed. VII, ch. 47, sect. 1.

consent of Christendom.' In other words, by 'evil living' is meant, not every breach of Church law, but such wickedness as is generally recognised to be gross. Mr Puller, in a passage of (even for him) unusual violence, denounces this definition as if it treated the moral code of the civilised world and the Church's own standard of living as identical. They are, of course, intended to be contrasted. But Mr Puller seems to be too angry either to understand the words he condemns, or to measure his own. A large committee of Bishops at the gathering of the whole Anglican Episcopate in 1908, while regarding these marriages as ecclesiastically irregular, reported that, where the secular law recognised them, the parties could not be branded as open and notorious evil livers.† In other words, the moral effect of the change of the law cannot be ignored. Before the Act a man marrying his deceased wife's sister knew that she would have none of the rights of a wife, and that her children would be bastards. After the Act, by marrying thus he undertakes the legal responsibilities of husband and father. It cannot be reasonably maintained that, if before the Act he would have been an evil liver, he must be so now. The change of the law has greatly modified his moral status without necessarily rendering him blameless.

Canon Thompson, having failed in his defence, practically disappeared from the scene. He resigned his living, and the Banisters ceased to reside in the parish, long before the recent appeal to the House of Lords. Nevertheless, the English Church Union, using Canon Thompson's name, doubtless with his consent, set to work with new counsel and solicitors to attack the decision of the Arches in the secular courts. Its intervention has been unsuccessful, but it has also been disconcerting, because, although the aim of the Union has hitherto been to vindicate the Church's spiritual independence, its attitude has now been different. Prohibition was the proper method of challenging Sir Lewis Dibdin's reading of the proviso in the Act of 1907 to which we have referred; but the English Church Union also sought the decision of all the secular courts in succession upon the other ground relied on by Canon Thompson, namely, the

*Op. cit., pp. 126-129. † Encyclical Letter, etc. (S.P.C.K.), p. 143.

meaning of the words 'open and notorious evil liver' in the rubric. No one has ever before claimed that the interpretation of the Prayer-book is part of the duty of the civil courts. It is startling to find this contention now raised by an organisation whose raison d'être has been rejection of the judgments of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council because of its secular origin. But notwithstanding attempts, after the hearing in the Court of Appeal, to disown it, the argument was again presented in the House of Lords.

Scarcely less strangely inconsistent has been the effort of the English Church Union to obtain such a reading of the Act of Parliament as would allow every clergyman to usurp a bishop's jurisdiction over excommunication, and, at his own discretion, to receive or repel certain communicants. Again, it is well that the Union has failed to persuade the Judges that this revolutionary change in the conditions of admission to Holy Communion has been or could be made by Act of Parliament. Excommunication, as a very rare and sad necessity, will never wholly disappear from the English Church, and has perhaps been too much forgotten in recent times; but, unless justice, charity and respect for Church order govern its exercise, religion will not be helped, it will be grievously hindered, by its revival.

* See letter from solicitors to E.C.U., 'Times,' February 9, 1910.

Art. 10.—THE NEW PACIFICISM.

1. The Great Illusion. By Norman Angell. London: Heinemann, 1911.

2. Memories and Studies (Essay on Peace and War). By William James. London: Longmans, 1911.

3. The Passing of War. By the Rev. W. L. Grane. London: Macmillan, 1912.

4. War and its Alleged Benefits. By J. Novikow. London: Heinemann, 1912.

5. Modern Wars and War Taxes: a manual of military finance. By W. R. Lawson. Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1912.

WHEN a book, which was first published in November 1909, has already gone through five editions and been translated into ten languages, it might be regarded as unnecessary to restate at length its author's thesis before examining his contentions. The Great Illusion,' however, has suffered so much from friends and enemies through misunderstanding and misstatement both of its theory and of its conclusions that perhaps it is as well to set forth briefly Mr Norman Angell's point of view, before proceeding to appraise his exposition of a subject of such importance as the place of war in the modern world, and his judgment on a question so momentous. Mr Angell tells us that

'he sets out to prove that military and political power give a nation no commercial advantage; that it is an economic impossibility for one nation to seize or destroy the wealth of another, or for one nation to enrich itself by subjugating another. . . . The idea that addition of territory adds to a nation's wealth is an optical illusion of like nature, since the wealth of conquered territory remains in the hands of the population of such territory. . . . International finance has become so interdependent and so interwoven with trade and industry that the intangibility of an enemy's property extends to his trade.

...

'In the second part-"The Human Nature of the Case "the author shows that human nature is not unchanging; that the warlike nations do not inherit the earth; that warfare does not make for the survival of the fittest or virile; that the struggle between nations is no part of the evolu