Contemporary Evolution t 



to this, that the actual or apparent majority of Germans 

 claim the power to dispose absolutely and without appeal 

 of the minority ; to dictate to them their mutual voluntary 

 relations, determine the amount of their locomotion, or 

 even their very residence within the land to fix for them 

 the dogmas of their creed and their mode of worship, and 

 to enforce the education of their children in a belief 

 directly contradicting that of their parents. 



Yet the Times has gone the length of asserting that 

 Prussia has the right to do this now, because of what we 

 did three hundred years ago in England, as if no progress 

 had taken place within that period, even were the circum- 

 stances the same, which they manifestly are not. 



Yet the Times would hardly venture to approve of the 

 passing of a "bill of attainder" against a political oppo- 

 nent of the English sovereign of to-day, or the summary 

 decapitation of any illustrious lady whose existence might 

 be personally inconvenient to some future chief ruler. 



But the circumstances are manifestly not the same. 

 They are not so, because the bishops and clergy generally 

 may, in the absence of conspicuous protests to the con- 

 trary, be fairly taken as the representative of the religious 

 opinions of those to whom they minister. Now in England 

 the great majority of the clergy submitted to the change 

 which Henry VIII. introduced. The act of his legislature 

 which abolished State recognition of papal supremacy in 

 England did not violate the rights of citizens in anything 



