ehension of the evil
of their own times already flying as it were for refuge to the system of
times past, they were overtaken by the political storm of 1831, and the
two following years. That storm rattled loudly, and alarmed many who had
viewed the gathering of the clouds with hope and pleasure; no wonder,
then, if it produced a stormy effect upon those who viewed it as a mere
calamity, an evil monster bred out of an evil time, and fraught with
nothing but mischief. Farther, the government of the country was now,
for the first time for many years, in the hands of men who admired the
spirit of the age, nearly as much as Mr. Newman and his friends abhorred
it. Thus all things seemed combined against them: the spirit of the
period which they so hated was riding as it were upon the whirlwind;
they knew not where its violence might burst; and the government of the
country was, as they thought, driving wildly before it, without
attempting to moderate its fury. Already they were inclined to recognise
the signs of a national apostasy.

But from this point they have themselves written their own history.--Mr.
Percival's letter to the editor of the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal,
which was reprinted in the Oxford Herald of January 80, 1841, is really
a document of the highest value. It acquaints us, from the very best
authority, with the immediate occasion of the publication of the Tracts
for the Times, and with the objects of their writers. It tells us
whither their eyes were turned for deliverance; with what charm they
hoped to allay the troubled waters. Ecclesiastical history would be far
more valuable than it is, if we could thus learn the real character and
views of every church, or sect, or party, from itself, and not from its
opponents.

Mr. Percival informs us, that the Irish Church Act of 1833, which
abolished several of the Irish Bishoprics, was the immediate occasion of
the publication of the Tracts for the Times; and that the objects of
that publication were, to enforce the doctrine of the apostolical
succession, and to preserve the Prayer Book from "the Socinian leaven,
with which we had reason to fear it would be tainted by the
parliamentary alteration of it, which at that time was openly talked
of." But the second of these objects is not mentioned in the more formal
statements which Mr. Percival gives of them; and in what he calls the
"matured account" of the principles of the writers, it is only said,
"Whereas the