It is even so with the resolutions of the Alliance. We see a profusion of declaratory, but not one effective proposition, as if something like a sensitive dread had come over them, and they but hovered along the margin of the field with trembling and uncertain footsteps, but would not dare to enter it. All around this margin their trumpet blows most uncertainly gives a most uncertain sound-so that we know not how to prepare for the business or the battle. The very idea of a battle seems to agitate and terrify; and in the strictures on such a proposal out of doors, we have met with the singularly inept and inapposite remark, that their object is not war but unity and peace. Unity and peace, but among whom? Why, among ourselves; and such a unity, too, as a fearless encounter with the dangers that surround us, will only serve the more to cement and to confirm-just as when a country is threatened all round with invasion, party differences are suspended, and all unite in rallying around the standard of a common patriotism. Peace among ourselves most assuredly. But does that imply peace with the world-peace with Poperypeace and acquiescence in the heathenism of our city multitudes? and peace in regard to this last, lest we should disturb the jealousy of those of the national clergy who are friendly to our Alliance, but would dislike any intromission on the part of sectaries with their own parishes? If such there be, then, notwithstanding a certain vague and sentimental liking for its object, they should keep aloof from the Alliance. They may have the doctrinal, but they have not yet the moral qualifications for entering it. The spirit of a true, Catholic, Christian philanthropy, has not yet got hold of them-that affection for human souls, and more especially for the souls of their own parishioners, which would lead them to rejoice in every successful effort for their well-being, by whomsoever it was made.

But even the proposal made at Birmingham was not altogether to our liking—a proposal for inquiry first, and for action afterwards. Now the objects were such that there was no need of inquiry, or for gathering in a great

body of statistics, ere they should proceed to action. There is a field of immediate action which lies pointedly and directly before us. The danger of Popery is, to all sense and in all certainty, imminent and undeniable; and as palpably so is the spiritual destitution of millions among our own countrymen. There is an instant call for action, and no call for an inquiry of months or years ere it should be entered on-a most unnecessary postponement this, and to issue, with all likelihood, in a total prevention or nullification of the object. This is just what happened with our famous Bicentenary of 1843 in Edinburgh, when there was a proposal for immediate co-operation among ministers of various name in a certain work; but this was set aside for a scheme of magnificent inquiry, which came to nothing. The same, we apprehend, was the result, on a smaller scale, of a proposal made two years ago in the Town Council of Edinburgh for a like co-operation, followed up, not by instant deeds, but by schedules and circulars, which, also, came to nothing. The like result took place, notoriously, with the Parliamentary Commission of about ten years back, for ascertaining the amount of Religious Instruction in Scotland, and this with the professed object of providing for the deficiency, which turned out, what Windham would have called, a commission or committee of oblivion; and so the object, the real practical object, was taken up by these said Commissioners, and carried forward by them most decently and re spectfully to its grave. We should have stood in dread of the very same result had only the Birmingham proposal been adopted in London, and inquiry, but without action, had been all the effect of it. No doubt it would have carried the semblance of a first step, but we fear nothing more-even the semblance, however, has been cancelled and done away. The step taken, or at least proposed to be taken, at Birmingham, has been retracted in London; or, in other words, our famous Alliance has stepped back from a Do-little to a Donothing Association.

But indeed it would not have been necessary for the Alliance to do much.

It would at least have satisfied the whole of our demand in the matter about which we are now writing, had they adopted the following resolution. "That whereas it mightily conduces to the extending and the perfecting of union among the disciples of our faith, that they should walk together and work together in all the matters on which they are agreed, it is earnestly recommended to the members of this Alliance in their respective vicinities, that they should study, as much as in them lies, the habit of co-operation in all good and Christian undertakings; and, among other things which might be specified, it is suggested that a common resistance to the advances of Popery, and the common prosecution of Home Missionary labour throughout the families of our heretofore neglected population, are objects respecting the goodness and desirableness of which there should be no difference of opinion among the adherents of our body. And therefore would we express our hope, that, in conformity with this resolution, we shall be furnished with reports of its having been acted upon, and having taken effect in many neighbourhoods; and so be enabled at our Anniversary Meetings to satisfy the religious public of the blessed fruits which result from our Association, and of its healing and harmonizing influence on the various Churches and Denominations of our land." Only conceive that under the impulse of such a recommendation, so many as twelve or twenty ministers of different name in Edinburgh had resolved to take each a district of the town, in which, through the agency and means of his congregation, a busy operation was carried on for the moral and educational good of the inhabitants, and that these ministers met periodically in each other's houses for mutual counsel and encouragement. Would not the report of this at headquarters, and of similar doings in other quarters, open, and perhaps more than anything else, the eyes of our countrymen to the worth and the practicability of our great cause?

But could not this good work be prosecuted apart from, and irrespective of, the Evangelical Alliance? Yes, it might and ought. But the Evangelical

Alliance, in refusing to have connection with it, puts away a mighty engine for the advancement of its own object

whereas, by such an express sanction as we have ventured to recommend, it would not only expedite its own peculiar object, but give a powerful impetus to the direct and proper object of all the Home Missions everywhere, which should either spring up or be set agoing under its auspices. It would thus achieve a double blessing, and become the promoter as well as patron of two good things instead of one. And as to its effect on missionary work, there is one most important law in the dynamics of human society, which may not have been often adverted to, but which explains the rationale of the influence that we would fain bring to bear upon this high department of Christian usefulness. The influence we mean is that of a right testimony when given forth by a central and commanding body, and this though it should have no governing power by which to enforce its proposals, but in virtue of the mere position which it occupies. To illustrate our meaning, we ourselves laboured for twenty years in our own individual capacity for the multiplication of additional churches to meet the wants of the country; when, between our own direct efforts and by correspondence with others, we could not accomplish beyond the straggling number of somewhere about half-a-dozen. We at length, however, obtained the sanction of our General Assembly for the object, of which, too, they gave us the charge, and in about four or five years, when thus backed and authorized, there sprung up two hundred Extension Churches. In like manner, in the winter of 1842-3, we also in our own individual capacity, and by correspondence with others, worked hard for weeks to get up local associations by which a fund might be raised to meet the necessities of the coming disruption, and yet only succeeded in the formation of one. With much ado, however, a few were at length prevailed upon to assume the name and undertake the functions of a presiding committee for the whole of Scotland-when in less than two months eight hundred associations were fostered into being. We did hope, wè fondly

hoped, that from the great Convention in London there might have emanated an influence in favour of local missions to be felt and acted upon over all the land. We attempted to draw attention to this object; and in proportion to the strength of our desires and our hopes, has been the mortification of our failure.

We are not aware of any movement which can be named, more fitted to impress the lesson of our substantial unity on those who are the objects of it, than a vigorous and well sustained mission to the families of our outfield population. They know nothing of our differences. They stand at too great a distance from Christianity in the whole, to be at all sensible of the manifold parties and distinctions into which the Church is broken up. Did all those parties but agree in the one measure of doing what they could within their respective spheres for the elevation of the working classes, this would serve as the one great characteristic by which they would be recognised throughout the bulk and body of our common people. They would only be known by the general denomination of missionaries; nor would the community fail to acknowledge the common principle by which they were actuated, and the strength of that common affection by which they were bound together in the prosecution of their high and holy walk. In this the noblest of all philanthropy, the world at large would then see them to be one-the very exhibition which our Saviour predicts will convert and regenerate the world. (John xvii. 21

23.) And thus it is that the direct effort to Christianize men, and the accompanying influence which lies in the very aspect of unity given forth by it, meet together with a conjunct and augmented force, to speed on the great work of evangelizing our race. Never then were two objects more appropriately in keeping with each other than an Evangelical Alliance and a universal Home Mission as forming together the very instrumentality by which the objects of both might best be realised.

The inductive precedes the deductive. A few well ascertained cases lead to the establishment of a general law; and when once that law is proclaimed and acted on, then might the cases be multiplied a hundred-fold. Have we attempted the deductive too soon?

Certain it is that hitherto we have failed to deduce aught like an influence in favour of Home Missions from the great fountain-head of the metropolis. This throws us back again upon the inductive in the provinces ; and in your next Number I may offer a few suggestions as to what might be done in Edinburgh for the furtherance of the precious interests which our argument involves. Meanwhile we do hope that nothing has been said which can justly offend any leader or member of the Evangelical Alliance.

"If severe in aught The love we bear to union is in fault."

I am, dear sir, yours truly,

THOMAS CHALMERS.

If this volume had no other value, it would be curious and interesting as a most remarkable exposition, or exposure, of what much of the thing called History really is. The term, like many others, indeed, has almost lost its original acceptation. It signifies properly the investigation and ascertainment of facts; and the first historians were so designated in reference to this their primary qualification and duty, as it was then regarded. The talent of recording or relating was held to be of only secondary importance. It was assumed, that, generally, the man who had made himself most completely master of the facts would relate them best. If this was an error, it was yet an honest and simple-minded one-one that might almost be said to lean to virtue's side. The instinct of those early ages would have been alarmed and shocked by the opposite error, into which men in our day have generally fallen, of considering the special faculty and province of the historian to be the art of narrative. If history then meant any one thing more than another, it meant, and was universally understood to mean, the truth; and with that the art of narrating had no necessary connection whatever. It was an art quite as likely, or rather much more likely, to be employed in the service of fiction and falsehood. Hence the poet, the rhetorician, the orator, were regarded as narrators; to have distinguished the historian by any term of that import would have seemed as outrageous as it would seem to us to call the judge in a court of justice the declaimer, or the clergyman who, with earnest voice, addresses a silent and listening audience from the pulpit, the vociferator or the bawler.

Mais nous avons changé tout cela. We now think of history as meaning principally, or almost exclusively, narration. The original idea of investigation has almost escaped altogether from

the modern understanding of the word. It is a remark of Coleridge, that a false use of a word never becomes current without ere long producing some practical ill consequence, often of considerable moment. The ill consequence in the present instance is nothing less than, that research in the historian and truth in the history have come to be regarded as only subordinate requisites, and that by a great historical writer we now understand merely a brilliant narrator, ---one who excels in the disposition of his facts, and who usually gives himself very little farther concern about them. Instead of being pre-eminently the truth-teller, the historian has become simply the teller, and sometimes nearly indifferent, as it would seem, whether what he tells be true or false. The volume before us, as we have said, contains the exposure of an illustrious exemplification of this modern manner of writing history.

In the Edinburgh Review for October 1841, there appeared an article on Mr Gleig's "Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings," which was known at the time to be from the pen of Mr Macaulay, and which has since been reprinted by that gentleman in his own edition of his collected "Critical and Historical Essays," 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1843. In this article the following, among other statements, are made :

Among the associates of Hastings, when at Westminster School, was Elijah Impey. "We know little about their school days. But, we think, we may safely venture to guess that, whenever Hastings wished to play any trick more than usually naughty, he hired Impey with a tart or a ball to act as fag in the worst part of the prank."

By what is called the Regulating Act for the government of India, passed by the English Parliament in 1773, a Governor-General, to be assisted by four councillors, was appointed to exercise a

control over all the possessions of the Company, and a supreme court of judicature, consisting of a Chief-Justice and three inferior Judges, was established at Calcutta. Hastings was made Governor-General; the four councillors were Mr Barwell, already in India; and General Clavering, Mr Monson, and Mr (afterwards Sir Philip) Francis, who were sent out from England. "The Chief-Justice was Sir Elijah Impey. He was an old acquaintance of Hastings; and it is probable that the Governor-General, if he had searched through all the inns of court, could not have found an equally serviceable tool."

In 1775, a Hindoo of high rank, the Maharajah Nuncomar, was brought before the supreme court on a charge of forgery, was tried by Impey and his three associates, was found guilty by the verdict, of course unanimous, of a jury of Englishmen, was sentenced to death by the Chief-Justice, and was actually executed. The following are some of Mr Macaulay's assertions in reference to this affair :

"It was then, and still is, the opinion of every body, idiots and biographers excepted, that Hastings was the real mover in the business.-The law which made forgery capital in England was... unknown to the natives of India. It had never been put in execution among them. . . . A just judge would, beyond all doubt, have reserved the case for the consideration of the Sovereign. But Impey would not hear of mercy or delay. The excitement among all classes was great. Francis, and Francis's few English adherents, described the Governor-General and the Chief-Justice as the worst of murderers. Clavering, it was said, swore that, even at the foot of the gallows, Nuncomar should be rescued.

The feeling of the Hindoos was infinitely stronger.. The Mussul. mans alone appear to have seen with exultation the fate of the powerful Hindoo.

Of Impey's conduct it is impossible to speak too severely. We have already said that in our opinion he acted unjustly in refusing to respite Nuncomar. No rational man can doubt that he took this course in order to gratify the Governor-General. . . . It is therefore our deliberate opinion that Impey, sitting as a judge, put a man unjustly to death in order to serve a political purpose."

Afterwards, taking up another subject. Mr Macaulay says:

"The authors of the Regulating Act of 1773 had established two independent

powers, the one judicial, the other political; and, with a carelessness scandalously common in English legislation, had judges took advantage of the indistinctness, and attempted to draw to themselves supreme authority, not only within Calcutta, but through the whole of the great territory subject to the Presidency of Fort William.. A reign of terror began

omitted to define the limits of either. The

of terror heightened by mystery; for

even that which was endured was less horrible than that which was anticipated. No man knew what was next to be expected from this strange tribunal... It had already collected round itself an army of the worst part of the native population, informers, and false witnesses, and common barrators, and agents of chicane, and, above all, a banditti of bailiffs' followers, compared with whom the retainers of the worst English spunging-houses, in the worst times, might be considered as upright and tender-hearted. Many natives, highly considered among their countrymen, were seized, hurried up to Calcutta, flung into the common jail, not for any crime even imputed, not for any debt that had been proved, but merely as a precaution till their cause should come to trial. There were instances in which men of the most venerable dignity, persecuted without a cause by extortioners, died of rage and shame in the gripe of the vile alguazils of Impey.. The harems of noble Mahommedans were burst open by gangs of bailiffs, &c., &c. . . All the injustice of former oppressors, Asiatic and European, appeared as a blessing when compared with the justice of the Supreme Court. Every class of the population, English and native, with the exception of the ravenous pettifoggers who fattened on the misery and terror of an immense community, cried out loudly against this fearful oppression." And so forth.

But Hastings" was seldom at a loss for an expedient; and he knew Impey well. The expedient in this case was a very simple one, neither more nor less than a bribe. Impey was, by act of Parliament, a judge, independent of the government of Bengal, and entitled to a salary of eight thousand a-year. Hastings proposed to make him also a judge in the Company's service, removeable at the pleasure of the government of Bengal; and to give him, in that capacity, about eight thousand a year more. It was understood that, in consideration of this new salary, Impey would desist from urging the high pretensions of his court... The bargain was struck; Bengal was saved... and the Chief Justice was rich, quiet, and infamous. Of Impey's conduct it is unnecessary to speak. It was of a piece with almost every part of his conduct that comes under the notice