From Lincolnshire :

'People are under the impression that if they build they will not be fairly dealt with and therefore invest in other quarters out of the reach of unfair taxation.'

From Lancashire :

'The banks, which previously to the Budget were in the habit of advancing large sums, at present decline to advance on this kind. of security. The result is that though there is a keen demand for houses there is a slump in building.'

From Yorkshire :

'Capitalists with money to invest will not put their money in property because if they should happen to make a profit the Government want 20 per cent. of the profit. They are therefore putting their money into other kinds of investments where the profit they make will be all their own.'

Quotations of this character could be made indefinitely. They show how enormous is the mischief that can be done by ill-considered legislation. The Liberal Government, first, by an insane system of taxation destroys the industry of the private builder, and then proposes to embark the credit of the State on the highly speculative business of cottage building. The financial prospects are appalling. The cottages built by the Government will certainly cost more, and probably very much more, than those put up by private builders or building companies. Directly the Government attempts to ask a rent sufficient to cover the cost of building and the cost of repairs, insurance, and rates, there will be a political outcry, and every Liberal candidate will be asked why English labourers should pay 5s. or 6s. a week for a cottage, when Irish labourers can get a cottage at the expense of the British exchequer for Is. a week. The result will be a lowering of rents, heavy loss to the exchequer, and further discouragement to private builders.

The problem can be solved without State action if the politicians will be content to remove obstacles instead of creating them. The first requisite is the repeal of the land value duties. Their worst features would have been repealed by the Revenue Bill of last session, which the Government first proposed and then abandoned at the bidding of the single-taxers. If the speculative builder is allowed fair play

he is quite capable of meeting the requirements of the people, except in the more remote districts. Here the work must be undertaken by landowners and other persons of means, who from a sense of public spirit are willing to accept a low rate of interest on part of their capital in order to provide for their poorer neighbours cottages which will be a credit to the countryside. It is infinitely better to appeal to this widespread sense of public obligation than to create a vast Government Department for building and controlling the homes of the people.

Looking upon the new programme as a whole, it is impossible to resist the conviction that the one purpose underlying it is to buy votes. If it were not so, if the men who have devised these loud-sounding projects were really anxious to secure at once reforms which they allege to be urgent, they would not postpone their schemes till after a general election. The Unionist Party has offered no general opposition to the proposals of the Government. Many members of that party are quite as eager to play for the socialist vote as Mr. Lloyd George himself, and the party as a whole, having abandoned the agricultural interest so far as tariff reform is concerned, would certainly not dare to oppose any measure that could be even plausibly represented as advantageous to agriculture. If the real purpose of the Government were land reform and not electioneering, they would bring forward their proposals --which they say they have fully thought out-in the very next session of Parliament, so that the nation might receive the promised boon at least two years earlier.

EDITOR.

No. CCCCXLVIII. will be published in April.

The

Edinburgh Review

APRIL, 1914

No. 448

THE ISSUE OF KIKUYU

I. Ecclesia Anglicana. For what does she stand? An open letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, EDGAR, Lord Bishop of St. Albans, by FRANK, Bishop of Zanzibar. Longmans, Green.

1914.

2. The Kikuyu Conference. A Study in Christian Unity, by J. J. WILLIS, Bishop of Uganda, together with the proposed scheme of Federation embodied in the Resolutions of Conference. Longmans, Green. 1914.

3. The Missionary Conference in East Africa. The Archbishop of Canterbury's answer to the Formal Appeal' made by the Bishop of Zanzibar. February, 1914. Macmillan.

4. Kikuyu. A Sermon by G. NAPIER WHITTINGHAM. Society of SS. Peter and Paul. 1914.

5. The Miracle of Christianity. A plea for 'The Critical School' in regard to the use of the Creeds. A letter to the Lord Bishop of Oxford from Professor BETHUNE-BAKER. Longmans, Green.

THE

1914.

HE rapid expansion of the European Powers in Africa and Asia, made possible by facilities of intercourse which have had the effect of annihilating distance and bringing all the habitable globe within easy striking range,' is telling potently and in strange ways on the Christian Churches. Of these the most interesting, and the most interested, is the All rights reserved.

VOD. CCXIX. NO. CCCCXLVIII.

Church of England. The controversy which has arisen in East Africa between Anglican Bishops, and has created so considerable a ferment in this country, really turns on the necessity, suddenly disclosed in Africa and coming to be realised in England, of deciding whether the Church of England is, or is not, a Protestant Church.

Two tendencies have been gathering force within the Church of England for some years past. Partly, as a consequence of the imperial expansion which has marked the last century, and, partly, as the proper effect of a genuinely religious revival, a keen interest in the evangelising of the non-Christian world has been present in all the non-Roman English Churches, and notably in the Mother Church, from which all the rest proceeded. Along with this evangelising tendency has gone the Tractarian movement of revolt against those conditions of the Church's life which were created by the Reformation, and especially against the legal Establishment which the Reformation made possible, and in a sense compelled. These two tendencies are now in collision, not indeed because there is necessarily any conflict between evangelistic enterprise and sacerdotalism, but because, in the actual circumstances of Christendom, a choice has to be made in the Mission Field between the methods of the Reformed and those of the Unreformed Churches, and because, however successfully the issue can be evaded at home, it must be faced abroad since there the Anglican Missionary finds himself facing the heathen alongside of Protestants who hail him as a brother, and of Papists who denounce him as a schismatic.

The same issue emerges from another source. Ever since the unity of medieval Christendom was shattered by the Reformation, the shame and weakness of religious anarchy have pressed heavily on the consciences of good Christians. Within recent years special circumstances have arisen to emphasise the desire for a restoration of external union. So rapid and so far-reaching has been the revolt of the modern world against the tradition of Christian Faith and Life, that Christendom appears to be threatened by a formal apostasy, the disastrous consequences of which it is impossible to contemplate without horror. This de-Christianised version of European civilisation has been transferred to the non-Christian

populations of Asia and Africa, and is beginning to affect them in modes and measures which must needs stir many forebodings in thoughtful and well-informed minds. The Churches therefore perceive a new urgency in the missionary task to which they are all committed, because there is apparent danger that, if this task be postponed or feebly undertaken, the native populations will be captured by the Secularism which is overtaking the nominally Christian nations of Europe and America. But an effective conduct of foreign missions presupposes unity among the missionaries, and this compels the Churches to realise their situation with respect to one another. In a word, the 'great divide' of the Reformation has to be faced, and the basis of union has to be determined with respect to it. The Church of England, just because the circumstances of its reformation mitigated the shock and half-disguised the fact of the breach with medievalism, finds itself menaced by the sharpest internal conflict when it attempts to determine its course, and to realise its character.

Along quite another road the same necessity of realising the Church's character is plainly arising. The revolt against the traditional Christian theology, which in the Church of Rome has found expression in the movement of the 'Modernists,' proceeds universally in Christendom, and markedly in the Church of England, which is in profession, feeling, and system, a National Church, drawing to its membership, and retaining therein, a larger proportion of educated Englishmen than any other religious community. The controversies stirred by Bishop Colenso, and by the authors of 'Essays and Reviews' more than a generation ago, resulted, thanks to the action of the civil courts, in the triumph of theological liberty, but there are reasons for thinking that the same issue will shortly again be raised, and that in circumstances which are by no means so favourable to freedom as might be supposed to be the case. Biblical criticism, now applied less to the Old than to the New Testament, seems to affect the very central beliefs of the Church, and tells directly on the authority of the Creeds, which are commended to Anglican acceptance on the precise ground that they may be 'proved by most certain warrants of holy Scripture.' No Church can escape the necessity of determining its course with