if it did not correct, certainly lessened, the evil of the separation between the rulers and the governed. Now, this separation being admitted, and its limits and countervailing influences determined, let us next inquire how the church governed, in what manner it acted upon the populations subject to its empire; what it effected, on the one hand, for the development of the man, for the moral advancement of the individual, and, on the other, for the amelioration of the social state. To speak the truth, I do not believe that, at the era in question, the church concerned itself greatly about the development of the individual. It endeavoured to inspire the powerful in the world with milder sentiments, and to induce them to act with more justice in their relations with the weak; and it taught the oppressed to lead a moral life, and to indulge in sentiments and hopes of a loftier order than those to which their immediate destiny condemned them. Yet for individual development, properly so called, for imparting value to the personal nature of men, I do not believe that the church then did much, at least so far as laymen were concerned. What it did was confined to the ecclesiastical society itself; it made great exertions for the development of the clergy, for the instruction of priests; for them it had schools, and all the institutions which the deplorable state of society allowed. But they were ecclesiastical schools, appointed for the instruction of the clergy alone, and, with their exception, the church acted indirectly, and by very slow means, towards the progress of ideas and manners. It doubtless gave a stimulus to general mental activity by the career it proffered to all those whom it judged capable of serving it; but that was pretty nearly all it did, at that period, for the intellectual development of the laity. It had a greater influence, and acted in a more efficacious manner, towards the amelioration of the social state. It resolutely struggled against the great vices of the social state--for example, against slavery. It has been often asserted that the abolition of slavery in modern Europe was exclusively owing to Christianity. I think that is saying too much. Slavery long existed in the heart of the Christian society, without greatly exciting its astonishment, or drawing down its anathema. A multitude of causes, and a great development in other ideas of civilisation, were required to eradicate this evil of evils, this iniquity of iniquities. {109} Yet it is indubitable that the church employed its influence in restraining it. There exists an unquestionable proof of this fact. The greater part of the formulas of enfranchisement, made out at different eras, are founded upon a religious motive; it is upon the invocation of religious ideas, of hopes of eternal bliss, and of the equality of men in the eyes of Heaven, that the enfranchisement is almost invariably pronounced.