nevertheless. will tell seriously against him. Both candidates are well supported at public meetings, and the contest promises to be an exceedingly close one. On behalf of Mr. Edgar, Messrs. Mackenzie, Cartwright, and Huntington are enlisted, and Mr. Gibbs has engaged the services of Sir John A. Macdonald, Dr. Tupper, and Mr. Thomas White, jr., of Montreal. It would be difficult to foretell the result in these two elections; but we should not be surprised if the South Riding, at any rate, were wrested from the Government. No stronger evidence could be afforded of the degrading influence of party politics than is given here. It seems hardly possible to conceive of a lower depth yet to be sounded than that already reached. In the old Roman times, the noblest tribute that could be paid to a citizen was the Senate's resolution, that he had deserved well of his country; nowadays, in Canada at least, the surest passport to success a public man can hope to give is the paltry declaration that he has deserved well of his party. Without desiring to speak disparagingly, we may safely assert that both Messrs. Edgar and Gibbs have been chosen, not so much because of their abilities, public services, or political principles, as because each has suffered for his party. It is on this account that the chiefs of both factions are mingling with the fray and furbishing up all the rusty weapons" in their old curiosity shops. The same well-worn themes are again dilated upon; the trite platitudes re-appear, as if they were novelties, and the old scandals are served up, without even a change in the gravy. It is saddening enough, but there seems no remedy for it, so long as politicians will fight without knowing what they are contending for, unless it be place and power.

The annual religious gatherings last month were, in the main, quiet and successful. The Methodist Conferences and other ruling bodies met and dispersed with their wonted order and good feeling. Even Ritualism was allowed to sleep for the time, if we except a slight brush at Toronto, and a more effective movement at Montreal. A canon was introduced in the latter Synod to enforce obedience to a late decision of Lord Penzance-a very moderate proposal certainly. In Canada, there appears to be little danger of any outbreak of the Mackonochie fever to any alarming extent. The clergy are not extra

vagant in their views, and our young ladies are not much affected with religious hysteria, so that some latitude should be permitted to differing tastes and temperaments. Mr. Gladstone's plea for comprehension in this regard has much greater force here than in England. So long, therefore, as a minister does not offend against the canons and the rubric, he ought to be let alone. In any case, the diocesan is the calmest and most capable judge. The Bishops of Toronto and Ontario are, we believe, High Churchmen, and their brethren of Montreal and London, Evangelicals; yet, in spite of differences in theoretical opinion, they would probably differ little in practice. It is all important to secure peace, so long as this may be done without sacrificing principle, and this may be said without at all sanctioning the servile principle of episcopal infallibility. We entirely sympathize with the Church Association in the good work it is doing, and in some of the embarrassing contests in which it has been involved; at the same time, charity and moderation are virtues not so common in the Christian world that a word in their favour is ever out of place.

If the sessions of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada were ordinarily to be as long as that held in June, the Union would seem to have entailed a serious burden upon the Church. There were, however, exceptional circumstances which protracted the sitting, which it is to be hoped will not occur again. The ordinary business was transacted without unnecessary delay, and the prosperity and zeal of the United Church must have been exceedingly gratifying to those who promoted the Union. In point of numbers the first Protestant Church in the Dominion, its progress must be a matter of interest to all the sister churches; and the Bishop of Toronto performed a graceful act when he congratulated the Assembly upon the Union. There was only one speck upon the azure, and that, as it appears to us, should never have been there. The Macdonnell case might have been settled in Presbytery or Synod, and yet, after many days spent upon it in the Assembly, it is hardly settled now. The democratic form of Church government has certainly many advantages, but, in cases of this sort, it is neither expeditious nor satisfactory. A large Assembly, unaccustomed to regularly and well-ordered debate, is sure to

wander off, "in endless mazes lost." Where every unit-we were going to say molecule -is a centre of force, acting under no natural laws, such as prevail in the material universe, the inevitable result is confusion and delay. In the Assembly, motion was piled upon motion till the clerk's table must have groaned under them. Vain repetitions of suggestion and counter-suggestion followed upon each other's heels furious and fast. Theological hair-splittings, such as would have done credit to the soldiers of Loyola, served to show what the order of the Jesuits would be but for the mailed hand of the Superior. What must have been the state of Mr. Macdonnell's brain and pulse, while he was being drawn under the harrow day after day, it is is hard to conjecture. Perhaps the process of being "badgered," as Professor Mowat called it, had at last a benumbing effect, similar to that produced on a soldier's back after the first fifty.

Now, if there had been any important principle at stake, after the ample concessions made by Mr. Macdonnell, the case would have been different. Those who protracted the discussion were, no doubt, conscientiously convinced that there was, and their convictions are entitled to all respect. But to ninety-nine per cent. of onlookers, there appears a woful waste of conscience somewhere. Sir Arthur Helps has observed that " our brother man is seldom so bitter against us as when we refuse to adopt at once his notions of the infinite." Now, there certainly was no "bitterness" manifested against Mr. Macdonnell in the Assembly; far otherwise. Principal Caven, Professor McLaren, and other prominent members were studiedly courteous and considerate. But then, on the other hand, there was no question of heresy involved in the discussion at all. Mr. Macdonnell, as explicitly as it is in the power of words to express anything, protested that he held no doctrine at variance with the standards of his Church. He admitted that he was perplexed by doubts; but doubt is not heresy, or there would be few thoughtful men who are or have not been heretics. He repudiated every known form of heresy on this dogma,-restorationism, universalism, and annihilation, and "adhered to the teaching of the Confession of Faith in regard to it, expressed as it is almost entirely in the language of Scripture" But this declaration was no sooner

made than Mr. Macdonnell's censors fastened upon the last clause of the sentence, and urged that it indicated an intention of appealing from the Confession to the Bible. The rev. gentleman went so far as to repudiate any design of that sort. On the other hand, the clause seemed to be an intimation that, since the language in both rule and standard was substantially the same, the doubts which were founded on the statements in the one equally arose even out of the dogmatical definitions of the other. This is true; but then Mr. Macdonnell might have taken the same ground, without inserting that clause at all. In fact, he virtually did so, when he protested his adherence to the Confession and, at the same time, admitted that his "difficulties and perplexities" remained as strong as in September last. With regard to the sermon, Mr. Macdonnell expressed his regret for having delivered it, and his belief that it was no part of the duty of a Minister of the Gospel to hold out a hope, &c. He even consented to bow down to the seventeenth century fetish, and extended his palinode so far as to confess that he had "said very foolish words about the Confession of the Faith; very silly words indeed." Could Nebuchadnezzar have demanded more when he set up that golden image on the plain of Dura? Could self-abnegation-we had almost said humiliation-go further? In his desire to conciliate his brethren and make every possible concession to the majority, Mr. Macdonnell surrendered everything, save his doubts, and they are troublesome companions for an earnest man-obtruding themselves unasked, and not so easily shaken off. "But, then, what business has a man to doubt," some one may ask; "doubt is always the mark of self-conceit or vanity. I have lived for fifty years and never was troubled with a religious perplexity in all my life." Very likely; and if the self-sufficient objector, who has never devoted ten minutes to the duty of searching the grounds of his belief, lives thirty years longer, he will die, carrying with him another pride of a baser sort. Doubt, however, is not heresy, and, after the ample explanations and concessions made by Mr. Macdonnell, and a pledge not again to proclaim his difficulties from the pulpit, the matter might have been allowed to rest. A very disagreeable apple of discord would have disappeared, and the peace and harmony of the Church

might have been restored. It was proposed that no further proceedings should be taken, but that Mr. Macdonnell, after a careful reexamination of his doubts, should hold himself in readiness to give additional explanations, if called upon by the Assembly to do so next year. This, however, seemed to be equivalent to dropping the matter altogether. An amendment was therefore adopted by two to one that the rev. gentleman should report to the Assembly next year, without being called on to do so. It is thus ensured that, if the supreme body shall have become tired of the subject or lukewarm, it will be forcibly reminded of its duty.

Mr. Macdonnell's doubts were not shared by any of the speakers, but he received the sympathies of a number of them. The venerable Dr. Cook, whose opinion on creeds and confessions was very plainly given in a sermon at St. Andrew's Church, justified these doubts in a sketch of the Calvinistic scheme with the doctrine of eternal punishment as an element in it. He then submitted two pertinent queries :-"Did it not appear a ground for doubt and difficulty that under such a Divine constitution man should be sent to a state of eternal torments for the ages he had described, according to Foster? Was it wonderful that any individual man who took these matters into consideration, and connected these dogmas with one another, should have doubts and difficulties ?" One gentleman called Dr. Cook's speech "the language of a heathen;" but the sting of these crucial questions is drawn from the Confession, and the difficulty can only be got rid of by throwing overboard hyper-Calvinism and the Confession together. The two Mills and many more have been made "heathen" by this creed, and it has not yet done all its deadly work.

The Deputy Minister of Marine appears to have conducted our case, in the matter of the Merchant Shipping Bill, with vigour, if not with success. His memorandum to Sir Charles Adderley would perhaps have been improved by condensation; but it would be ungenerous to be hypercritical, when a public officer shows evident desire to do his duty thoroughly, faithfully, and well. By a cable telegram from the London correspondent of the Globe, we learn the net results of his mission. The bill was discussed in the House of Lords on

the 23rd ult., and both parties appear to have agreed, so far as Canada is concerned, with singular unanimity. The Deputy Minister complained that the mercantile marine of Canada is "virtually placed at a disadvantage as compared with foreign ships, by being subject to detentions, inspections, and penalties to which their foreign rivals are not subject." The injustice of this discrimination against the Dominion is ably and forcibly stated by Mr. Smith, and his suggestion is that, to redress the balance, Canadian ships should be subject to no obligations other than those required of foreign ships. The justice of this demand will be apparent, when it is considered that the Canadian ship-owner, who has already complied with the inspection requirements of the Dominion, is thousands of miles away from his ship, when it is undergoing re-inspection in a home port. This view of the case, however, has been unanimously rejected in the Lords, and therefore, we must bide our time in patience. The only concession Lord Carnarvon is willing to make, regards deck-loads. In the original draft of the Bill the Canadian provision on this subject appeared, but was afterwards struck out and an absolute prohibition of deck-loads inserted. The Colonial Secretary has promised that the clause shall be restored, and there, for the present, the matter ends.

The constitutional question, which Lord Carnarvon proposes to leave in abeyance, is, of course, the question of Canadian autonomy in general; not the interpretation of the Confederation Act. Now that we have seen the article from the Times on the subject, we are more than ever convinced of the fallacy of its contention. The letter of

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Historicus" (Sir William Harcourt) agrees exactly in its general line of argument, with that urged in these pages last month. The Saturday Review is of the same opinion, and it accuses the Times of having "lately discovered a mare's nest of unusual pretensions." This, however, is a mistake: the "mare's nest "mare's nest" was built at Ottawa by some great constitutional authority or another. The jurisdiction of the Dominion Parliament over "Navigation and Shipping is exclusive, not as against the Imperial Parliament, but as against the Local Legislatures. In Sir Charles Adderley's words: "It is a total mistake to suppose that the Act of 1867 in any way altered the relations

of Canadian subjects to the Imperial Parliament." We possess, in fact, just the same amount of self-government under Confederation as we did before-no less and no more. We agree with the Globe that this point is not of much importance per se; but it is always dangerous to build one's house upon a sandy foundation; and, if injury has not been done by the fallacy-and it is by no means clear that the decision of the Imperial Government has been wholly uninfluenced by the false pretence-it is none the less desirable that it should be exposed and abandoned.

Affairs at Philadelphia have not made much stir in the world during the past month. The Exhibition is yet far from complete, although it is sufficiently so apparently for any ordinary sight-seer's appetite. Great Britain, with characteristic promptitude, was ready with her department and catalogue to the day, but other nations have been sad laggards. Russia and Portugal are still unpacking, although their courts are opened, but Turkey and Tunis have not so much as taken down their shutters. The jurors have now been five weeks engaged upon their arduous duties, and the foreign judges appear to be gratified at the facilities afforded them, and the attentions they have received. The list of jurors includes many famous European names in science and art, but the same care has not been taken in selecting distinguished Americans. It would appear as though party politics were at work even here to mar and disturb everything. Of course the attendance of visitors has not yet attained its full proportions, the largest number recorded being 31,673 on the 8th of June. The success of the Centennial, however, is beyond peradventure, and will gather strength as the summer months roll on.

The National Convention of the Republican party assembled at Cincinnati on the 15th ult. The ballottings were not so numerous as on some previous occasions, but, as often happens, all the prominent candidates of the party have been passed over for a comparatively unknown man. Blaine, Bristow, Morton, and Conkling were all regarded as having the strongest claims on the party, and in the order named they stood after the first ballot, the ex-Speaker being far in advance of his companions.

Conkling, the President's protégé, made very poor running, and can scarcely have received very earnest backing from his chief. During six ballots, eight candidates received votes; but after that a decisive change took place. Morton withdrew; Bristow was withdrawn by Senator Harlan; and the opponents of Blaine concentrated their forces upon Gov. Hayes, of Ohio, who received the nomination. The final vote stood:-Hayes 384; Blaine 351; Bristow 21. Mr. W. A. Wheeler, of New York, was nominated VicePresident by resolution, and the "ticket," thus completed, was received with exuberant demonstrations of enthusiasm, as if it had been expected, and hoped, and toiled for all along.

The Republican nomination somewhat disturbed the plans of the other band of party intriguers at St. Louis; but at the last moment we learn that Gov. Tilden has been nominated by the Democrats on the second ballot. There is greater significance in this vote than in that which elected Hayes on the Republican side. The latter was elected by a bare majority vote; but the Democratic rule requiring two-thirds of the Convention, troublesome as it often is in practice, ensures, on the whole,unanimous action through all sections of the party. The nomination of Mr. Tilden is an aufklärung in American politics. It means a sweeping out of all the cobwebs and dirt of the past eight years, the end of military rule and the return to just principles of government. The Democratic party, being out of power, evidently mean to elevate the standard of purity; their course in power would, we presume, be like that of others who have made war on the same path. The platform deals in some fearfully strong generalities, as, for example, when it says "we denounce the financial imbecility and immorality of the party which, during eleven years of power, has taken from the people in federal taxes thirteen times the whole amount of legal tender notes, and squandered four times this sum in useless expense, without accumulating any reserve for their redemption." And then, speaking on the crucial point, the Democrats say, with needless iteration, by way of preamble, that the dominant party "has made no advance towards resumption," but, on the contrary, "has obstructed resumption by wasting our resources and exhausting all our surplus in

come; and while annually professing to intend a speedy return to specie payments, has annually exacted fresh hindrances." On the platform, as a whole, we shall have some remarks to offer hereafter; meanwhile there is some significance in the fact that the "hard-money" platform was accepted by a vote of 651 to 82. Gov. Tilden's nomination was, after all that has been urged against him, a singular proof of the persistence of moral principle. No party has been tainted so seriously with moral delinquencies as this. It bears on its brow the marks of political and municipal debauchery, and in the crowds belonging to "Boss" Kelly or Controller Green, who travelled as far as St. Louis to fight the reforming spectre, we hope to see the dying struggles of the corrupt time. How far their efforts availed to maintain the control of their party may be briefly told in the record of votes. On the second ballot under the two-thirds regulation, Gov. Tilden received 535 votes, 43 more than were necessary for a choice. Hendricks, the dubious, was left with 60, and Allen, of Ohio, the inflationist, with only 54.

The European nations are in a waiting attitude at present, with eyes turned Eastward, and their internal concerns, therefore, attract but little attention. Everywhere a stagnation in home affairs is coupled with a tense and painful interest in matters abroad. The Imperial Government pursues its humdrum course in careless security, and the Liberal party, under the conservative leadership of Lord Hartington, is still disunited and impotent. Mr. Trevelyan, Lord Macaulay's nephew and biographer, introduced his resolutions in favour of assimilating the county to the borough franchise-a reform which Mr. Disraeli will probably snatch from his grasp in a session or two-and was defeated by a majority of one hundred. Of course the Opposition was all sixes and sevens. Messrs. Gladstone and Bright voted in favour of the resolutions; Mr. Lowe spoke strongly and voted against them; whilst the Marquis of Hartington, leader of the party, and Mr. Goschen absented themselves. Still the Liberals show some signs of life. Lord Granville made a stirring speech when laying the corner-stone of the City Liberal Club, and the meeting of the Political Eco

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nomy Club was important on more accounts than one. In the first place, it showed the vast change which is passing over the views of economists. It is evident that discontent amongst the disciples of the orthodox views is rapidly assuming form. Of the foreigners who have given expression to this dissatisfaction Laveleye, of Belgium, M. Léon Say, Finance Minister of France, and Herr Roscher, of Germany; in England, Mr. Norman, the senior member of the club, Mr. Walter Bagehot, and Mr. Cliffe Leslie. Mr. Bagehot was not there, nor were Stanley Jevons, Bonamy Price, and Henry Fawcett. It is evident that economics are being rapidly revolutionized. Mr. Gladstone delivered a notable speech at this meeting, which, taken in connection with a recent magazine article, would seem to indicate a new departure. In the latter he spoke of "the possibly chilling shadow of national establishments," and in the address he expressed an opinion against endowments. The expression quoted was employed when speaking of the United States and the Colonies, and may merely have been a rhetorical flourish; but his remarks on endowments are capable of a very extensive application. Mr. Gladstone was thinking of Church endowments perhaps, but not of these alone. His scheme would embrace endowments ecclesiastical, charitable, and educational, public or private. This would be disestablishment on a scale not contemplated by the opponents of the State Church, and certainly would not be accepted by them. They would let the Established Church alone, rather than consent to its demolition on terms like these. The new departure, if such it be, would in fact carry Mr. Gladstone clean out of sight.

The Eastern question, which is absorbing the anxious attention of Europe and America, entered upon a new phase last month. The Softas or so-called theological students of the mosques, backed by the army and the chief pashas, dethroned the Sultan or Khalif, Abdul Aziz, and placed upon the throne the heir, his nephew Murad V. It is said that the latter is made of rather poor stuff, and that he was only induced to come out of his cellar by the persuasive eloquence of a pistol. Many causes have been assigned for the deposition of the