Mr. Gladstone has been delighting provincial audiences by the power,
clearness, and grace with which he enabled them to un- derstand their awn purpose and course of action. The meetings were convened by the local branches of the Society for the Pro- pagation of the Gospel, at Liverpool and Mold ; and the orator showed them how the gospel is propagated by the world-wide migration of the Anglo-Saxon race. The history of the Society furnished a curious illustration of ecclesiastical economy. So long as the Society depended upon Parliamentary patronage, it obtained an annual grant of 16,000/., and collected 60001. from their own members : when the grant was withdrawn, the Society collected 60,000/. The withdrawal of the "Queen's letter" -will probably be a new stimulus to the increase. Again, the Canadian clergy are obtaining more from their own countrymen than they drew from the State. In short, if Mr. Gladstone did not roundly proclaim his adhesion to "the Voluntary principle," he proved historically the efficacy of the Volunteer principle. The view is remarkable as establishing on Colonial ground, sur- veyed from the position of the Society for Propagating the Gos- pel, the same conclusion which we had worked out, by an ex- haustive process, for the Church of England at home.
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