CIVIL   SERVICE  IX   GREAT  BRITAIN. 273

ruption,  tinder  the  form  of  pensions,  has  departed  with  the
prostitution  of  the  appointing  power,  and  that  the  reasons  for
the  use  of  $6000  a  year  in  pensions  are — ^if  the  principle  of
granting  pensions  at  all  is  conceded — of  a  kind  as  fit  to  be
approved  by  a  republic  as  by  a  monarchy  ;  except  in  so  far
as  the  right  of  pensioning  on  political  grounds  may  be  covered
by  the  phrase  '^  pei^nal  services  to  the  crown  ;"  and  we  may
accept  the  declaration  of  Mr. May  that  ^'  the  names  of  those
who  receive  the  royal  bounty  are  generally  such  as  to  com-
mand respect  and  sympathy. "  *

But  of  all  the  authority  conferred  by  the  British  Constitu-
tion, in  excess  of  what  is  allowed  under  the  Constitution  of
the  United  States,  that  which  has  been  the  most  grossly  per-
verted for  the  purposes  of  coercion  and  injustice  in  adminis-
tration is  the  authority  over  religion  and  a  state  church. It
would  require  a  volume  to  set  forth  the  disastrous  conse-
quences which  have  flowed  from  the  forced  relation  between
religion  and  politics,  as  disclosed  in  British  liistory. ^'  In
the  sixteenth  century  the  history  of  the  church  is  the  liistory
of  England. In  the  seventeenth  century  the  relations  of  the
church  to  the  state  and  society  contributed,  with  political
causes,  to  convulse  the  kingdom  with  civil  wars  and  revolu-
tions." '  Having  already  given  adequate  illustration  of  the
great  fact  that  authority  in  ecclesiastical  affairs  has  been  as
unscrupulously  prostituted  as  authority  in  civil  affairs,  there
are  only  a  few  important  considerations  to  be  added  in  this  con-
nection. The  British  king,  as  the  supreme  head  on  earth  of
the  Church  of  England,  has  been  held  to  have  not  only  the
right  to  convene,  prorogue,  and  regulate  all  ecclesiastical  syn-
ods and  conventions,  but  also  the  right  of  nomination  to
all  vacant  bislioprics  ;  and  through  that  supreme  power  he
has  had  a  similar  facility,  for  interference,  intimidation,  and
control  in  regard  to  all  subordinate  nominations  and  all  official
action  in  the  lower  spheres  of  ecclesiastical  life,  to  that  pos-
sessed by  a  President  of  the  United  States,  or  by  Senators  and
Governors  in  their  own  States,  to  meddle,  without  constitu-
tional warrant,  with  every  subordinate  nomination  down  to  that

»  1  Const. Hist,  p. 214. 