issue has been raised for the religion of millions, and the political
constitution of a great nation. Men who are not lawyers seem to have
thought that, by taking a lawyer's view, or what they considered such,
of the Reformation Acts, they had disposed of the question for ever. It
was, indeed, time for a statesman to step in, and protest, if only in
the name of constitutional and political philosophy, against so narrow
and unreal an abuse of law-texts--documents of the highest importance
in right hands, and in their proper place, but capable, as all must
know, of leading to inconceivable absurdity in speculation, and not
impossibly fatal confusion in fact.

The bulk of this pamphlet is devoted to the consideration of the language
and effect, legal and constitutional, of those famous statutes with the
titles of which recent controversy has made us so familiar. Mr.
Gladstone makes it clear that it does not at all follow that because the
Church conceded a great deal, she conceded, or even was expected to
concede, indefinitely, whatever might be claimed. She conceded, but she
conceded by compact;--a compact which supposed her power to concede, and
secured to her untouched whatever was not conceded. And she did not
concede, nor was asked for, her highest power, her legislative power.
She did not concede, nor was asked to concede, that any but her own
ministers--by the avowal of all drawing their spiritual authority from a
source which nothing human could touch--should declare her doctrine, or
should be employed in administering her laws. What she did concede was,
not original powers of direction and guidance, but powers of restraint
and correction;--under securities greater, both in form and in working,
than those possessed at the time by any other body in England, for their
rights and liberties--greater far than might have been expected, when
the consequences of a long foreign supremacy--not righteously maintained
and exercised, because at the moment unrighteously thrown off--increased