In England it is easy to point to several institutions, once quite new and having the character of innovations, which the spirit of conservatism immediately adopted and has since defended quite as resolutely as if they were of immemorial antiquity. The most wonderful of these is the Church of England. The more one learns of the temper of aristocracies, the more astonishing it seems that a great aristocracy can ever have changed the outward form of its religion. Try to imagine the French _noblesse_ becoming “evangelical,” or think in our own day of the utter hopelessness of any project for converting the English gentry to Wesleyan Methodism! Such transformations are unthinkable, yet the fact remains that the English nobility and gentry did once go over _en masse_ to the new communion, and that they have been as conservative of it ever since as if it were still the faith of their ancestors. Anglicanism is every whit as strong in England as the older Church is in France, though Roman Catholicism is a natural growth formed by the evolution of the religious sentiment through ages. The strength of Anglicanism as a social and political institution is proved by nothing more clearly than this, that in our own day, in many individual cases, it actually outlives Christianity. I mean that in these cases all dogma is rejected or explained away, whilst the Anglican name and customs are preserved. [Sidenote: Catholic Emancipation.] [Sidenote: English Conservative Sympathy with French Catholics.] Catholic Emancipation was most vigorously resented by English conservative sentiment in the third decade of the present century. In its ninth decade not only are Catholics on a footing of political equality with their fellow-subjects, but their superior clergy are treated with a deference and a consideration never given to Protestant Dissenters. The most venerated ecclesiastic in England is a Cardinal. Whenever the Catholic party in France is in conflict with the State it is sure of conservative sympathy in England.[31] Any attempt to replace Catholics under the ban would now be resented by the upper classes. [Sidenote: The Revolutionary Monarchy.] [Sidenote: Revival of Divine Right.] The revolutionary monarchy has now been so loyally adopted in England that we only remember its revolutionary origin when historical students remind us of it. For the common people, especially for the religious, Her Majesty reigns by divine right. There seems to be a shade of impiety and even a perceptible odour of treason in the crude assertion that she reigns simply by Act of Parliament. [Sidenote: Permanent Nature of Popular Gains.] [Sidenote: Little Reaction in England.]