[26] 'Civil Correspondence of the Duke of Wellington' (Ireland), pp. 28 and 627. [27] 'Shooting Niagara,' p. 12. [28] 'De Tocqueville,' vol. i. [29] Rudd's 'Aristophanes,' 'The Knights.' [30] Ecclesiastes ii. 18, 19. [31] Dryden. [32] Creasy 'On the Constitution.' Hallam's 'Middle Ages,' vol. ii., p. 319. [33] Stephen's 'Blackstone,' vol. ii., p. 361. [34] 'All's Well that ends Well.' [35] 'Essays,' p. 45. ART. V.--_The Genius of Nonconformity and the Progress of Society._ Archbishop Laud, in his conference with Fisher, the Jesuit, when he was Bishop of St. David's, sets forth the ample basis and justification of Nonconformity. It is impossible that the platform can be laid for our principles and action more broadly and firmly than by this highest of High Churchmen in the following admirable and explicit words:-- 'Another Church may separate from Rome if Rome will separate from Christ. And so far as it separates from them and the faith, so far may another church sever from it.... The Protestants did not get that name by protesting against the Church of Rome, but by protesting (and that when nothing else would serve) against her errors and superstitions. Do you but remove them from the Church of Rome, and our protestation is ended, and the separation too. The Protestants did not depart, for departure is voluntary; so was not theirs. I say, not theirs, taking their whole body and cause together.... The cause of schism is yours, for you thrust us out from you because we called for truth and the redress of abuses. For a schism must needs be theirs whose the cause of it is. The woe was full out of the mouth of Christ, ever against him that gives the offence, not against him that takes it, ever.... It was ill done of those, whoever they were, that made the first separation. But then A. C. must not understand me of actual only, but of causal separation. For, as I said before, the schism is theirs whose the cause of it is. And he makes the separation, that gives the first just cause of it; not he that makes an actual separation upon a just cause preceding.'--(Works, vol. ii. sec. 21.) We cordially adopt the definitions and allegations of the great Anglican. He describes perfectly the necessity which has constrained and the spirit which has animated the great party, which seems at length to stand on the very borders of that Canaan of religious liberty and equality towards which for three centuries it has been struggling through the wilderness, and in which it hopes to find rest and the free play of its life at last.