proper and efficient may fail to bring the offender to repentance. Then a second step is pointed out. The aggrieved is to seek the same result as before, in connection with " one or two more." Rules better fitted to prevent any necessity for the public action of the church, in respect to discipline in such cases, could not be devised. But when such a necessity does occur, as it sometimes will, no rules could better prepare the way for public action.

The spirit in which every effort to give efficiency to church discipline should be made, has been incidentally brought to view. It is not a suspicious spirit, ready to believe ill of a brother. It is not an envious spirit, taking pleasure in evil reports. It is not a fault-finding spirit, sharp-sighted to detect faults where none exist. It is rather a spirit of Christian charity, "that rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth;" that "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." It is not a haughty self-righteousness, but rather a meek humility, that "doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil."

In accordance with the whole bearing of this discussion, we regard the final act of severance from church ordinances and privileges as a disciplinary and not a penal measure. Its purpose is not to inflict punishment, but to secure repentance. The idea of penalty in connection with this act comes from the papal theory of excommunication, which is the pronouncing of a ban or curse upon the separated member — a literal consignment of him over to the devil as a child of perdition. But we do not so understand the apostle nor Christ. The church does not take this judgment into her hands. She does not so cut off from her sympathies and responsibilities her erring ones. Cut them off from her holy communion she may be obliged to; but even in thus making them "as a heathen man and a publican," the church should not consider them as beyond the reach of Christian care and labor, for their restoration to penitence and duty. If they even now repent, they are to be forgiven. It is wholly wrong to cast them loose from the fold of Christ in this spirit of abandonment to Satan. They are entitled, at least, to as much solicitude, prayer, entreaty, as

those who never professed religion. To be glad to get rid of them in the feeling of retributive justice, of personal ill-will, is utterly unchristian. God has not called us here to cursing, but to blessing. The effect of a sentence of exclusion from the church should always be watched, as such sentence should always be pronounced, with the tenderest manifestation of desire for the spiritual good of the offender.

Securing to its members the beneficial influence of such a culture and discipline, the church is the school of Christ in which his people are trained for usefulness, happiness, and heaven. Let these entertain enlarged views of the nature and objects of the discipline of the church. Let them remember whose work it is; let them adopt its method and imbibe its spirit, and our churches would become more effectually nurseries of piety. Less frequently would alienations occur among brethren. Less frequently would these fall into heinous sin. Less spiritual sloth would prevail. Again should we hear the old Hebrew song chanted to a richer Christian melody: "Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion !"

ARTICLE V.

THE ENGLISH PEASANTRY.

IN the autumn of 1850 we came, in a fine, fast-sailing packet, from London to New York. The company in the steerage was very large, embracing a variety of nationalities, and constituting an amusing Babel of tongues. Most of them were as merry and careless as they could have been if assured that a farm was awaiting their occupancy in Wisconsin or Iowa, ready stocked, with a cottage full of comforts. There was one man among them, pale, sober, thoughtful-looking, tidy in his dress above the rest, and seeming to live apart from them. He was a Yorkshire peasant, who had left his wife and children with her father, and was going to Canada in quest of a new home, to

which, if he should be successful, wife and children would follow him in due time. The best arrangement in his power to make for those he had left behind, hardly allowed him to hope that they would be comfortably fed in his absence. For himself he had contrived to raise five pounds to pay his passage, and a guinea for incidentals, with a slender stock of provisions for the voyage. A few days before we reached New York these facts became known. It was found that his small stock of provisions had been consumed, his guinea had melted away till only eighteen pence was left with which to make his way to Canada. Something had been bestowed in charity by his fellow-passengers, almost as poor as himself, and still he had been suffering for lack of food. The cabin passengers made up a generous purse for him, and sent him on his way rejoicing.

He must have been a man of much more than ordinary courage and enterprise to undertake so great an affair at all. For it had been all he could do to maintain himself and his family in the humblest way, by constant industry and careful saving. It is much more than most English peasants can do to bring a sufficiency of the plainest comforts to their families with all their toil. To talk to them about emigration, therefore, as a way of deliverance out of their miseries, is to mock them.

In his first volume of the History of England, Lord Macaulay gives a comparative statement of the condition of the peasantry during the reign of Charles II. and at the time he wrote, his object being to confirm and illustrate his idea of progress. With this view, he gives the rate of wages paid to agricultural laborers in the time of Charles, in Warwickshire, in Devonshire, at Bury St. Edmunds, and Chelmsford. The earlier editions of the work included Dorsetshire. It was wise to drop that county, as we shall see before we reach the end of this paper. In the other sections named, he finds the wages paid by the farmers to their men toward the close of the 17th century to have ranged from four shillings sterling to seven shillings a week-the highest sum having been paid at Chelmsford, in Essex. To make his statement clear and conclusive, he should have given the present rate of wages in the same localities. Instead of which, with a careful avoidance of all partic

ular localities, he treats his readers to the following broad and general deliverance:

"At present, a district where a laboring man earns only seven shillings a week is thought to be in a state shocking to humanity. The average is very much higher; and, in prosperous counties, the weekly wages of husbandmen amount to twelve, fourteen, and even sixteen shillings." Vol. I., p. 321.

Now we happen to know, that at the time he wrote, the wages paid by wealthy farmers at Bury St. Edmunds and the immediate neighborhood, in one of the most "prosperous counties" in all England, were just eight shillings a week. We happen to know, that several years later, there were grave apprehensions of a riot among the laborers at Barrow, a village four miles from Bury St. Edmunds, because the farmers talked of reducing their weekly pay from eight shillings to seven, putting it back to within a shilling of the point at which Macaulay says it was fixed by the magistrates of Suffolk in the spring of 1682. We also know, that there were districts in which, at the same time-the middle of the 19th century - agricultural century-agricultural laborers received less than the amount which was declared by Macaulay to indicate "a state shocking to humanity." There were also districts, as he says, where the amount paid was ten, and even twelve shillings, a week. Possibly there may have been a locality where it reached the highest point named — sixteen shillings. Where it was, our author does not inform us, and we should be at a loss to guess.

It would seem that the searching investigations which were made of the condition of agricultural laborers in the time of the great struggle for the repeal of the corn law, from 1840 to 1848, and the exposure of their sufferings through the press and in numerous public meetings all over the land, must have been working gradually for their relief. We are very glad to have it in our power to state on reliable authority, that since Macaulay wrote the first volume of his history, there has been a gratifying advance in the rate of wages in the localities to which he refers. Thus, in the neighborhood of Warwick, the average pay of a man for the last two years, has been twelve shillings a week, ($3.00,) with the addition, in some instances, of two quarts of beer a day during the summer months, May to

September inclusive. During the harvest month, in the same locality, a man receives twenty shillings a week and beer, or twenty-five shillings without beer. In the neighborhood of Bury St. Edmunds, and for ten or twelve miles around, the rate for some time past has been ten shillings a week, which sum is raised to twelve shillings when the price of wheat is very high, say 808. per quarter, and reduced to eight when it is as low as 408. During the harvest month men receive twentyseven shillings and sixpence and half a bushel of malt. At Tiptree, Essex, and the neighborhood, during the last summer and winter, men received eleven shillings a week; and in the month of harvest, twenty-seven shillings and sixpence, with seven shillings and sixpence for beer. If the harvest season is wet and protracted, as is not unfrequently the case, all these extra advantages are lost a most bitter disappointment to the poor men and their families, as they depend on the harvest to pay their rent and the shoemaker's bill.

We have no disposition to reproach England for the low remuneration and miserable condition of her peasantry, though we mean to affirm that they receive far less than its actual value for their labor, and that their condition, consequently, is extremely miserable. We are well aware that the matter is regulated there as in New England, and everywhere else, mainly by the law of demand and supply, and not except to a very limited extent by the price of provisions. No community has the right to throw the first stone at England in relation to this thing, till it has proved that itself has risen above that law, and is paying its work-people higher wages than that law would compel, for the mere pleasure of acting justly and humanely. We are not going to put in a claim for this privilege, on behalf of any American community, that we happen to know. Neither shall we be deterred from telling what we have seen of English peasant life by any considerations of delicacy. Happily England herself has set us at liberty from all such embarrassment by her own very characteristic method of discussing the affairs of outside barbarians in general, and ours in particular.

A day's rapid journey through any section of the agricultural districts of England, will leave you under the influence of only