Imatges de pàgina
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sobriety, and prudence at this moment. Their faces are set in the right direction, but their steps are uncertain, wavering, and distracted.'

How entirely we agree with this writer in every word and sentiment we need hardly say, since the whole tendency of this article is to urge similar views in the interest of the Japanese themselves, and in that of the whole civilised world in relation with them. We believe one of the greatest dangers to Japan in its present progressive state, eagerly seeking to assimilate all the stimulating food supplied them by the more advanced civilisation and ideas of the Western world, lies in one direction and springs from a single root-and that is Corruption. In spite of the very general spirit of patriotism among the Japanese as a nation and a love of Fatherland' which no German can vie with, they are infected from top to bottom with this canker worm of corruption. This, which it is painful to think has in no sense diminished by foreign intercourse-but rather the contrary, must be extirpated with uncompromising severity. Those who have lived the longest with the Japanese, best know how universal and all-pervading is this vice; and they alone, perhaps, are in a position to fully appreciate the difficulty of dealing with it, and the impossibility of regenerating the country and its administration without it can be banished from the public offices and Government. Especially is great care required in the administration of public works and of finance. There is a great deal of reckless expenditure at present which is pregnant with danger to the new order of things, and difficult to separate from this national vice of corruption.

Nearly all the useful work hitherto done in Japan has been carried out with the assistance of Englishmen, and is mainly if not exclusively due to their aid. Railways, telegraphs, mint, lights and lighthouses, have all been the work of English hands and in great part of English capital. We do not quarrel with the wish of the Americans to be regarded by the Japanese as their best friends. We may safely leave the Japanese to find out for themselves who are their best friends among the nations or governments of the West. Our desire should be, that they will find good and reliable friends among them all. The great fault of the Japanese character, as we have already shown, is their conceit; and a certain flightiness and want of steadiness in following out any course. They are subject also to sudden fits of distrust and suspicion-all of which tends to a certain unreliability in everything they undertake. This comes out in a hundred shapes, and ridiculously enough in the difficulty the authorities at home have in keeping their students

in foreign countries under sufficient control. This is partly due to the conceit of the youths, no doubt; but greatly also to a want of intelligence on the part of the Government in the arrangements they make for their education and the supply of the funds required. Where these are not under good control there can be no discipline or regularity maintained, and without it much of their time is likely to be wasted. The number of students now educating in various countries, and the high rank of some, makes it a subject of great importance that their time should be well spent, and that the knowledge they take back with them is not of the superficial kind which is most apt to find favour with them. In the present state of the country and the position they will be likely to hold on their return, it is to the last degree important that they should gain a solid education, for a little knowledge may well prove a dangerous gift in such circumstances.

The approaching revision of the treaties will test the sincerity of the Mikado much better than ceremonial speeches, and also the soundness of the knowledge acquired as to the wants of Japan and the means of meeting them while taking into account the wants and the interests of other countries. We cannot here enter on so wide a subject as the revision of treaties. But it is clear that what foreign countries want of Japan is something more solid than empty privileges. Liberty of travel will probably be no longer withheld, but there is more need of improved Customs administration. Nothing can well be more imperfect than the present, or more corrupt. Improved Courts of Justice are much wanted. There is nothing yet in the country deserving the name or into which foreigners can carry any cases. A civil code seems not less required. A settled currency free from all tampering, such as has hitherto occurred, is a primary necessity. There is still a remnant of the old vexatious system of official surveillance and interference with foreigners to be got rid of. Some check to the wide-spread and deep-seated corruption of all the official classes, to which we have already alluded, is much to be desired. If to these general heads be added encouragements or facilities for the introduction of foreign enterprise, as in the working of mines and for the increased production and improvement of silk, tea, and other articles of export, we shall have enumerated all the leading points regarding which we may hope in the forthcoming negotiations, it may be possible to secure real and substantial progress. Of one thing we may be certain, that it is the interest of every treaty Power with commercial relations and desiring the

development and progress of Japan in the new path it has chosen, to instruct their representatives at the Court of the Mikado to use whatever influence they may possess in high places to set before the Ministers of the Mikado the advantages of steady progress rather than of undue speed. It should not be difficult for Sir Harry Parkes on his return to his post, to convince them of the impossibility of adopting at once, in a country like Japan, the institutions of a foreign land which have been evolved by a slow and natural process from European minds, and probably therefore are in no sense adapted without great modification to Japanese character and wants. These institutions, which it has taken European nations many centuries to work out and establish, cannot without great danger be suddenly transplanted in their full exotic growth to the soil of Japan. We can only hope that Japanese statesmen will profit by a careful study of the history of European Constitutions and attempts by revolution to suddenly establish other systems, and steadily refuse to be hurried recklessly on to uproot everything that is ancient and to plant in their place without preparation or adaptation the institutions of other countries, even though they should be certified as the last new thing from the most advanced nation of the West, or the most valuable developments of modern civilisation and the science of Government. We sometimes make mistakes ourselves, and do not find it easy, or always safe, to step from the foundations of one century to those of another, without a good deal of preliminary preparation. Neither is there such perfect agreement among legislators and political economists in respect to the best forms of government and systems of administration as to justify foreign representatives in assuming that it rests with them to say for the guidance of an Eastern people in a stage of transition, what is either wisest or best. Constitutions so created or imposed by foreign influences, never take root in any soil.

We need only say, in conclusion, that to all who take any interest in Japan, or in following in all its phases one of the strangest revolutions in history, the work which has been placed at the head of this article will well repay perusal. It supplies interesting information, and the essays of the students, constituting the second part, give many glimpses of the influence of European ideas on the Japanese mind, and the peculiar form which these take in passing through the medium of Asiatic traditions and habits of thought. We have had nothing like it, in this point of view, since the Memoirs of Hagi Baba' delighted the world some forty years or more ago.

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ART. IX.-1. The Substance of the Argument delivered before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council by Archibald John Stephens, LL.D., Q.C., in the Case of Sheppard v. Bennett (Clerk), with an Appendix containing their Lorships' Judgment. London: 1872.

2. Judgment of the Right Honourable the Lords of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on the Appeal of Sheppard v. Bennett from the Court of Arches: delivered 8th June,

1872.

'DURI URING the last twenty years we have witnessed within the Church of England three tremendous conflicts of opinion. The first of these was the endeavour of the High Church party to suppress the Evangelical school in the struggle between Bishop Philpotts and Mr. Gorham. The second was the combination of these two parties to suppress the Liberal theologians as represented in "Essays and Reviews." The 'third was carried on between a large section of the High Church party and the Evangelical school on the subject of Ritualism.' So we wrote in 1866. On each of these conflicts we had expressed our opinion. We had pointed out in each the origin and growth of the controversy. We had in the two former instances defended, with all the earnestness and power of which we were capable, the wise and just course which the Supreme Court of Appeal had taken in pronouncing (to use the language of the old Roman law) vindicias secundum liber'tatem.' At the time when we touched on the third controversy, the contending parties had not yet come to a pitched battle in the courts of law.' That pitched battle has now been fought--and decided.

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On June 8, 1872, a Judgment was pronounced by the same high tribunal, on the case of an impetuous controversialist of the High Church party, Mr. Bennett, Vicar of Frome Selwood, who for various statements respecting the Real Objective Presence in the Eucharist,' had been prosecuted by an association of the Evangelical school formed with the view of suppressing such opinions. This Judgment constitutes so natural a sequel to its two predecessors, and involves such important consequences, that we cannot but consider it accordingly. We shall therefore proceed, as before, first to indicate the history and nature of the controversy which led to the proceedings, and then describe the results, direct and indirect, of the Judgment itself.

I. The controversy is that which concerns the Nature of

Christ's Presence in the Eucharist, described as the Real Presence of Christ in that Sacrament.

It might have been thought that in a religion like Christianity, which is distinguished from Judaism and from Paganism by its essentially moral and spiritual character, no doubt could have arisen on a subject of this nature. In other religions, the continuance of a material presence of the Founder is a sufficiently familiar idea. In Buddhism, the Lama is supposed still to be an incarnation of the historical Buddha. In Hinduism, Vishnu was supposed to be from time to time incarnate

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in particular persons. In the Greek and Roman worship, though doubtless with more confusion of thought, the Divinities were believed to reside in the particular statues erected to their honour; and the cells or shrines of the temples in which such statues were erected were regarded as the habita'tions of the God.' In Judaism, although here again with many protestations and qualifications, the Shechineh' or glory of Jehovah was believed to have resided, at any rate till the destruction of the ark, within the innermost sanctuary of the Temple. But in Christianity the reverse of this was involved in the very essence of the religion. Not only was the withdrawal of the Founder from earth recognised as an incontestable fact and recorded as such in the ancient creeds, but it is put forth in the original documents as a necessary condition for the propagation of His religion. It is expedient for you that I go away.' If I go not away the Comforter 'will not come unto you.' Whenever the phraseology of the older religions is for a moment employed in the Christian Scriptures, it is at once lifted into a higher sphere. The Temple' of the primitive Christian's object of worship, the 'Altar on which his praises were offered, was not in any outward building, but either in the ideal invisible world, or in the living frames and hearts of men. There are, indeed, numerous passages in the New Testament which speak of the continued presence of the Redeemer amongst His people. But these all are so evidently intended in a moral and spiritual sense that they have in fact hardly ever been interpreted in any other way. They all either relate to the communion which through His Spirit is maintained with the spirits of men-as in the well-known texts, 'I am with you always; Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them;'I will come to you; Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy 'laden or else they express that remarkable doctrine of Christianity, that the invisible God, the invisible Redeemer,

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