or and sought after most, was not
their mechanism, though on that too he set its value, but the living
spirit within the institution. In church and state alike he moved
cautiously and tentatively. In both alike he strove to unite order,
whether temporal order in the state or spiritual order in the church, with
his sovereign principle of freedom. Many are the difficulties in the way
of applying Cavour's formula of a free church in a free state, as most
countries and their governors have by now found out. Yet to have a vivid
sense of the supreme importance of the line between temporal power and
spiritual is the note of a statesman fit for modern times. "The whole of
my public life," he wrote to the Bishop of Oxford in 1863, "with respect
to matters ecclesiastical, for the last twenty years and more, has been a
continuing effort, though a very weak one, to extricate her in some degree
from entangled relations without shock or violence."

(M45) The general temper of his churchmanship on its political side during
these years is admirably described in a letter to his eldest son, and some
extracts from it furnish a key to his most characteristic frame of mind in
attempting to guide the movements of his time:--

_To W. H. Gladstone._

_April 16, 1865._--You appeared to speak with the supposition, a
very natural one, that it was matter of duty to defend all the
privileges and possessions of the church; that concession would
lead to concession; and that the end of the series would be its
destruction.... Now, in the first place, it is sometimes necessary
in politics to make surrenders of what, if not surrendered, will
be wrested from us. And it is very wise, when a necessity of this
kind is approaching, to anticipate it while it is yet a good way
off; for then concession begets gratitude, and often brings a
return. The _kind_ of concession which is really mischievous is
just that which is made under terror and extreme pressure; and
unhappily this has been the kind of concession which for more than
two hundred years, it has been the fashion of men who call (and
who really think) themselves "friends of the church" to make.... I
believe it would be a wise concession, upon grounds merely
political, for the church of England to have the law of church
rate abolished in all cases where it places her in fretting
conflict with the dissenting bodies.... I say al