24 
times called ( i.e . those which are partly of individual, but also 
of general interest), will illustrate this at once. As to Marriage 
and Education, to go no further, the State has to consult its 
own requirements, and also to satisfy the Personal convictions 
of individuals. This is attempted in many ways. It is com- 
paratively easy when the members of the State are all of one 
Religion ; as that may furnish a common basis of law and 
practice that may be insisted on for all. Where 
ap^oSS the religions are many, as in our own country, 
ideai a a tS al there is danger of a State being jostled into hope- 
less confusions full of peril to civilization itself. 
Whatever be the political settlement arrived at, it will be but 
an approximation to what the responsible agent would re- 
quire, at least in a large number of cases. 
43. The familiar form assumed by this subject at 
utSSiDg 7 the present in all Christendom, is that of an inquiry into 
^gious con. the relations of the Church to the State ; the Church 
being a Society nf conscious agents in which the 
individual consciousness of right, and sense of responsibility, 
finds voluntary expression. In Mr. Gladstone's recent and 
most remarkable exposition of his own thoughts as a states- 
(a chapter man, and of the political position, the question is 
°phf U p°sQ) ra ' thus delineated with his striking skill and accuracy : 
Are we to say, with Lord Macaulay, or with 
Paley, e government is police ? 3 33 On which Mr. Gladstone 
thus comments : — 
“ It seems to me that in every function of life, and in every combination 
with his fellow-creatures, for whatever purpose, the duties of man are 
limited only by his powers. It is easy to separate, in the case 
cognfzed Ct that a § as company or a chess club, the primary end for which it 
government is exists, from everything extraneous to that end. It is not so 
more than . jo 
mere police. easy in the case of the State or the family. If the primary end 
of the State is to protect life and property, so the primary end 
of the family is to propagate the race. But around these ends there cluster 
in both cases a group of moral purposes, variable indeed with varying circum- 
stances, but yet inhering in the relation, and not external or merely 
incidental to it. The action of man in the State is moral, as truly as it is in 
the individual sphere ; although it be limited by the fact that as he is com- 
bined with others whose views and wills may differ from his own, the sphere 
of the common operations must be limited, first to the things in which all 
are agreed ; secondly to the things in which, though they may not be agreed, 
yet equity points out, and the public sense acknowledges, that the whole 
should be bound by the sense of the majority.” 
44. Every one will recognize in this, a just recoil from the 
