But, as is equally well known, beyond the choosing the site and demolishing the houses upon it, and selecting a plan to be modified periodically, nothing was done for many years. In due course the Royal Palace of Justice was completed and opened in November, 1882. Greenwich Hospital was also reformed in this session. A Public Schools Bill was brought forward, but postponed. This year was a quiet one in the religious world. In the course of it several interesting measures relating to religious tests and subscriptions were brought into Parliament; and though in the end little or nothing was done towards a practical settlement of the questions raised, force in matters of opinion and belief has been minimised, and the reformer knows well that his only trustworthy support lies in the gradual accumulation of thought and opinion in his favour. Thus regarded, as steps in an inevitable road, even abortive Reform Bills, and Test Bills lost in the Commons, have a lasting interest and value. The University Tests Bill of 1865 was introduced by Mr. Goschen, then one of the members for the city of London, and the motion for the second reading was seconded by Mr. Grant Duff-both men who have since won for themselves distinction in official life, and the latter a most eminent writer upon contemporary European politics. The bill, said Mr. Goschen, did not propose to admit Dissenters to the governing body of the University, although it might lead to that result eventually, but to enable degrees to be conferred without reference to religious tests. The Universities were not ecclesiastical corporations designed for the benefit of a portion only of the people. On the contrary, they were lay corporations, in which the ecclesiastical element had been accidentally introduced, and it was never contemplated that the clergy should assume the sole control and authority. If tests and subscriptions were done away with altogether, he did not believe that the University would be revolutionised, or the Established Church at all endangered. The change he proposed was large and substantial. It would give a degree independent of any theological test. It would also go beyond the Cambridge Act, and give a vote in Convocation; whilst it would admit to certain privileges and emoluments, to obtain which under the present system the degree of Master of Arts was an essential qualification. He could not believe that these concessions would lower the tone or impair the prestige of Oxford. So far from injuring the University, they would rather widen its basis and make it more useful and acceptable to the country, for he was convinced that no system could flourish which practically excluded one half the population from their traditional seat of learning. In a short effective speech, Mr. Grant Duff gave three reasons for his support of the bill: (1) That it would be beneficial rather than hurtful to the Church; (2) that it was an act of simple justice to the Dissenters, who had been from the beginning of their history altogether excluded from the higher education of England; (3) that it would be useful to the University, by enabling it to understand more fully its duties to the nation and the proper scope of its influence and training. But the time was not yet come for the admission of the principle upon which these arguments were based. Lord Cranborne and Mr. Gladstone, alarmed by certain conclusions advanced in Mr. Goschen's speech—such as, "We could not do better than copy the Universities of Germany in the matter of religious tests;" and " that our Universities and Colleges were national institutions not connected with any particular form of religion,"-and persuaded that the effect of the bill would be to give over the government of the University to Dissenters, offered a warm opposition to it. The promoters of the bill, said Mr. Gladstone, openly avowed their desire to separate education from religion, and that was a principle to which he was resolutely opposed. How resolutely, the conduct of his Government with regard to the Education Act of 1870 has amply shown. Mr. Gathorne Hardy and Mr. Henley followed suit. According to Mr. Hardy, "the generalisation of religion was a dream of philosophers; there must be something definite and dogmatic in religious teaching; and the connection of the Church of England with the Universities was essential to their existence as teaching bodies." Mr. Henley thought that "simple indifference or downright unbelief" would follow the introduction of the proposed change into the Universities. Finally, Lord Cranborne's amendment-that the bill should be adjourned for six months-was negatived by 206 votes to 190. But it was felt that with so small a majority it was useless to push the bill any farther. If such was the temper of the Commons, it was well known that the Lords would make short work of it, and the measure was temporarily abandoned. The Roman Catholic Oaths Bill again brought forward the subject of religious tests, only, however, to afford another triumph to religious conservatism. The object of Mr. Monsell, its introducer, was to alter the form of the oath required from Roman Catholic members of Parliament under the Relief Act of 1829, and to substitute for it the simple oath of the Queen's supremacy. The oath as administered under that Act required a Roman Catholic member to swear that he renounced, rejected, and abjured the doctrine that princes excommunicated or deposed by the Pope or any authority of the See of Rome might be deposed or murdered by their subjects or by any person whatever;-that he disclaimed, disavowed, and abjured any intention to subvert the Established Church; and that he would never disturb or weaken the Protestant religion, or the Protestant Government in the United Kingdom. Such an oath, it was argued, was not an anachronism; it was a grievance and a degradation. It was apt to give rise to all kinds of strained interpretations, with which those who subscribed to it were liable to be harassed whenever it suited their opponents. For instance, some people had been found to declare that the terms of the oath ought to prevent Catholic members from voting on any Church question, and it might become a serious difficulty, whenever the question of the Disestablishment of the Irish Church should be raised, as men saw it must be raised sooner or later. Why, said Mr. Monsell, are Roman Catholic members alone required to take such an oath ? Were they the only members who regarded the principle of the English Establishment as erroneous, and the Establishment itself a thing to be got rid of? Were they or the Dissenters most likely to subvert the present Church Establishment? Was it not, at least, a monstrous thing, that the oath should not be imposed in the one case, while it was required in the other? And of what real use to a Government is the imposition of oaths? (Here Mr. Monsell quoted from Mr. Speaker Onslow.) "A Government is never secure of the hearts of the people but from the justice of it, and the justice of it is generally a real security. When men habituate themselves to swear what they do not understand, they will easily be brought to forswear themselves in what they do understand. The like danger is from the frequency of them, which always takes off from the awe of them, and consequently from their force." The oath was, indeed, a remnant of the state of things before Catholic emancipation, and there could be no doubt that the just and liberal course would have been to oblige all members of Parliament, without exception or variation, to take a uniform oath. A strong and finally successful opposition, however, was advanced. Mr. Whalley's and Mr. Newde. gate's Protestant consciences took the alarm; “in the interests of social and political order and the peace of families," they felt themselves bound to resist the A.D. 1865.] DEATH OF CARDINAL WISEMAN. measure. Sir George Grey, who supported the bill, was taunted with his Ultramontane leanings; and, according to Mr. Whiteside, the proposed change affected the Constitution, the Church, and the property of the country! However, by the help of Government support, given, said the Opposition, from electioneering motives, the bill was read a second time, and successfully maintained in committee. Substantially unaltered, it was sent up to the Lords, where, however, a night's debate disposed of it. Lord Derby made a long and powerful speech, appealing to every Tory cry and every Tory prejudice, till the measure assumed such formidable proportions that it frightened even its supporters. Lord Harrowby, Lord Chelmsford, and others followed suit, and, in spite of the efforts on the Liberal side, the bill was lost on division by twenty-one votes. A word of notice is called for by some other Parliamentary discussions which took place this year on ecclesiastical matters; but as none led to any practical result, they may be dismissed with a word. Mr. Dillwyn's motion about the Irish Church has been already mentioned; it called forth, as we have said, an emphatic declaration from Mr. Gladstone, and to that declaration is to be traced, in a great measure, his rejection by Oxford University. Mr. Newdegate attempted, but without success, to substitute a rate of twopence in the pound on real property for the existing Church rates. In the House of Lords, Lord Lyttleton, with the approval of most of the Bishops, proposed a resolution in favour of an increase of the Episcopate—a subject always dear to the High Church party, but considered by the Evangelical party to be of less importance than a development of the parochial system. The dioceses of Exeter, Winchester, and London were pointed to as those which ought to be relieved by the creation of new bishoprics. The resolution, however, was not put to the vote, nor had it any legislative result. This year saw the death of the first Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster. Cardinal Wiseman died on February 15th, and was buried in the Roman Catholic Cemetery at Kensal Green, amid a display of religious pomp and ceremony such as had not, perhaps, been accorded to any Roman Catholic dignitary in England since the Reformation. With one exception, he was the first English Cardinal buried in English soil. The chapel in Moorfields, where the coffin, surrounded with lights, lay upon a bier, covered with velvet and cloth of gold, was filled with a crowded congregation, most of the Roman Catholic nobility, and the French, Spanish, and Belgian Ambassadors, being present. One Archbishop, twelve Bishops, besides many minor dignitaries, and upwards of two hundred priests took part in the service; and as the procession passed round the bier, chanting softly and slowly the Requiescat in Pace, the effect was such as only the Roman Catholic Church knows how to produce. Cardinal Wiseman had indeed proved himself her faithful and energetic son. He was born in 1802, of Roman Catholic parents, under the shade of the orange-groves of Seville. His parents sent him to England while still a child, and he was brought up principally at the Roman 111 Catholic College of Ushaw till the age of sixteen, when he was transferred to the English College at Rome, then just founded. Here he became a diligent reader in the Vatican, and laid the foundations of a really wide knowledge of Oriental languages. His zeal and learning attracted notice, and when only a boy of eighteen he was invited to preach before the Pope. In 1827, having taken the degree of Doctor in Divinity, and received holy orders, he was nominated Professor of Oriental Languages in the Roman University, and seven peaceful years followed, employed by him in exploring further the treasures of the Vatican, and in gathering in a quiet harvest of scholarship, of which he was to make ample use in after years. In 1835, he returned to England, and he was soon felt by the Roman Catholics to be a power amongst them. A series of controversial lectures on the doctrines and practices of Rome, delivered by him in St. Mary's, Moorfields, attracted considerable attention, and he followed them up by a theological controversy with Dr. Turton, then Bishop of Ely, which ended, as such controversies generally do, in the hardening of opinion on both sides. In 1840, Dr. Wiseman was made head of St. Mary's College, Oscott, near Birmingham, with the dignity of Vicar-Apostolic. During his stay there what is known as the Oxford movement took place, and English Catholics watched it eagerly, persuading themselves that it meant great things for their cause, and thankful for any break in what they considered the dead Evangelical level of the Establishment. English Churchmen of all parties have good cause to regret the final issues of this movement-the loss of John Henry Newman, Mr. Ward, and other earnest though less brilliant men, to the side of Rome; and the moderate Churchman, in tracing back to it the extravagancies of modern Ritualism, is apt to make a sad comparison between the large-heartedness and candid, sensitive mind of a Newman, and the narrow externalism which too often governs men who have caught his watchwords without inheriting his spirit. Cardinal Wiseman took a warm interest in the wave of thought which finally brought Dr. Newman to his side, of which his "Strictures on the High Church Movement in Oxford," and "Letter to the Rev. J. H. Newman on the Controversy relating to the Oxford Tracts for the Times," may be taken as proofs. In 1848, Wiseman was made Bishop; he might by this time be considered the most prominent of English Roman Catholics, and it was upon his shoulders that the brunt of English wrath fell when Pope Pius IX. took that extraordinary step popularly known as the "Papal Aggression," by which the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England was restored, and Wiseman was made at once Cardinal and Archbishop of Westminster. All the world knows what a storm that step raised in England; how it took shape in that most hasty and absurd of all bills, the Ecclesiastical Titles Act; and how at last, like a ghost story that has been cleared up, people became ashamed of the bugbear which had frightened them-the Act was repealed, and Wiseman came out of the hubbub Archbishop, having published during the uproar "An Appeal to the Reason and Good Sense of the People of England," one of those bits of amiable policy for which he was had been able to command the consecration of a bishop, an Act of Parliament had always been resorted to to confer upon him ecclesiastical jurisdiction and the power of exercising episcopal functions. The letters-patent, therefore, could not be sustained in the appointment of Dr. Gray as Metropolitan Bishop. Secondly: Still less would they confer upon him any coercive legal jurisdiction, such as would have given him the power of deposing Bishop Colenso. The Crown cannot create a new court with a new jurisdiction with. out an Act of Parliament, and the ecclesiastical law of England could not be considered to hold good in a colony which had no Established Church. famous. From that time till his death he was known to the general world as an able controversial writer in various reviews, and as holding that place in London society which was due to one "so wise, fairspoken, and persuading." He gave frequent lectures in the metropolis on popular subjects, and always gathered a large and attentive audience. His aim seemed to be to show that Roman Catholicism against Protestantism must henceforth be an open fight fought with weapons common to both; he took up the cries of the opposite party-the Bible, Free Thought, Natural Science-and worked them so cleverly, that English Protestantism felt rightly that he was a more formidable antagonist than a dozen fanatics could have been. He was elegant, versatile, accomplished; he had begun life on Roman Catholic premises, and this limited him on all sides; but, as far as his creed would allow, he was an educated man and a scholar. In society he was always welcome; and though he had few of the qualities of the prophet, and little of the religious unction and nervous feeling which made men like Frederick Faber famous, he had gifts of manner and powers of conversation, which he well knew how to" that the proceedings taken by the Bishop of Capetown, use, and when he died the Roman Catholics rightly felt that one was gone who had given a powerful impulse to their cause in England. He was succeeded in the Archbishopric of Westminster by a man of rarer fibre than himself-Archdeacon Manning. This record of important events in the religious world would not be complete without a reference to the judgment delivered by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, in the case of the Bishop of Natal, the well-known Dr. Colenso, versus the Bishop of Capetown, Dr. Gray. Dr. Gray, like many other members of the Church of England, having been much scandalised by the publication of certain writings which bore Bishop Colenso's name, and which were thought to contain matter contrary to the doctrines of the Church, took it upon himself, in virtue of the Queen's letterspatent conferring upon him the dignity of Metropolitan Bishop, with coercive authority over the two suffragan Bishops of Grahamstown and Natal, to depose Dr. Colenso from his bishopric, forbidding the clergy to render him any further obedience, and appointing substitutes to do the work of the diocese. Against this judgment Dr. Colenso appealed, and the case was finally referred to the Lords of the Judicial Committee, before whom it was argued by counsel on either side in December, 1864. Their judgment was delivered on the 20th of March in this year, to the effect : First That the royal letters-patent quoted by Bishop Gray, as appointing him Metropolitan Bishop, and creating a metropolitan see or province in South Africa, were null and void in law, because, after the establishment in the colony of the Cape of Good Hope of legislative institutions, the Crown stood in the same relation to the colony as to the rest of the United Kingdom, and had no power by virtue of its prerogative alone, without the intervention of Parliament, to create a bishopric or assign any ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the colony. In other cases of colonial bishoprics, while the Crown Thirdly Their lordships considered, with regard to the oath of canonical obedience to Dr. Gray taken by Dr. Colenso, that it was not legally competent to the Bishop of Natal to give, or to the Bishop of Capetown to accept, any such jurisdiction as was afterwards claimed by Dr. Gray, and that the oath therefore could not be pleaded in Dr. Gray's behalf. Their decision, therefore, after a careful review of the circumstances of the case, was and the judgment or sentence pronounced by him against the Bishop of Natal, are null and void in law." This judgment gave rise to much comment and discussion, into which we need not enter. Its importance can hardly be overrated, for it clearly defined, on the authority of the highest tribunal in the country, the legal position of the Church of England in the colonies, and indirectly affected very sensibly the position of the Church of England at home. To those who prefer that ecclesiastical offenders should be subject to the law of the land, and to that only, the judgment was very acceptable, whatever may have been their opinion of Bishop Colenso's teaching. To those, on the other hand, who long for a special organisation of Church tribunals for Church offenders, under which the clergy shall be supreme over the legal status of their erring brethren— in other words, for the High Church Separatists—it was a great stumbling-block. CHAPTER XI. The Edmunds Scandal: Its Origin: The Lord Chancellor's conteo- THE end of the session of 1865 was troubled by certain transactions which caused great tribulation to the Government of Lord Palmerston, and proved fatal to the career of one of the highest officers of state. These transactions are commonly grouped together under the name of "the Edmunds scandal." Their details are complicated, and can only be told shortly here; the cir cumstances are such as no Englishman can read of with pleasure, and yet there is a kind of consolation in the fact that so much was made of them at the time, and that the principal persons concerned were so severely visited. Irregularities will occur even in high places; but Parliamentary government, whatever its faults, has the merit of resenting irregularities, and of a readiness to call their authors to account. The name of the Edmunds scandal" is not quite properly applied; for, strictly speaking, there were two sets of transactions-the one referring to Mr. Edmunds, the other to an appointment in the Leeds Bankruptcy Court. The case of Mr. Edmunds was as follows:In 1833, Lord Brougham, at that time Lord Chancellor, had appointed Mr. Leonard Edmunds to the post of Clerk of the Patents, at the small salary of £400 a year. In 1852, the Patent Laws were amended, and a new body called the Commissioners of Patents, consisting of high legal officials, was formed; and in October, 1852, Mr. Edmunds was appointed their clerk. This brought him in an additional salary of £600 a year. In two years from this time, a quarrel took place between Mr. Edmunds and Mr. Woodcroft, also an official of the Patent Office, and each charged the other with irregularities, mismanagement, or worse. Two lawyers of position -Mr. Hindmarch and Mr. Greenwood, both Queen's Counsel were appointed to make a full inquiry into the cross-accusations; and their finding was adverse to Mr. Edmunds. They determined that, during the twelve years since 1852, he had been generally extremely irregular in his payments of public money into the Exchequer; that he had in 1853 advanced £500 out of the public money to buy stamps, and that ten years afterwards he had placed to his own credit £500 of public money in pretended repayment; that he had put public money to his own use without accounting for it; that he had sent to the Treasury an incorrect return of his fees, keeping back, in 1852, the sum of £5,190; that, in short, a total sum of £9,617 had been improperly retained by him, and was due to the Treasury. This report was handed to the Lord Chancellor by the two commissioners -Mr. Greenwood and Mr. Hindmarch-with the very natural suggestion that Mr. Edmunds should be at once removed from the Patent Office. The authorities, however, were lenient enough to allow him to resign, on his repaying the sums due to the Treasury. And then arose the question which brought Lord Chancellor Westbury into his unfortunate position. Mr. Edmunds, as well as being clerk in the Patent Office, was clerk in the House of Lords; and it was to his evident interest to resign that post before rumours of his troubles in his other office should reach the ears of the Parliament Office Committee, and defeat his chance of a pension. What immediately followed is obscure, nor is the part played either by Lord Westbury or by Mr. William Brougham, a friend and partisan of Mr. Edmunds, absolutely clear. It is known that Mr. Brougham asked the Lord Chancellor to "help Mr. Edmunds to a pension," and that the Lord Chancellor promised to do "all he could with propriety to obtain him a pension;" adding the significant postscript-"I can with truth certify that Mr. E. has 113 properly discharged all the duties of the office he holds in the House of Lords." So Mr. Edmunds at once addressed a petition to the House of Lords, asking leave to retire from his post of clerk, and begging for a pension, "in conformity with the usage on like occasions." Now the time at which this petition was presented was during the critical interval between Mr. Edmunds' defalcations having become officially known to the Lord Chancellor and their becoming known to the public. That is to say, the Lord Chancellor knew of them, and the House of Lords did not. Nevertheless, the Lord Chancellor himself presented Mr. Edmunds' petition; himself moved that the resignation should be accepted, and that the question of pension should be referred to a select committee, of which he was to be one; and this without one word of reference to the grave charges which were hanging over the head of Mr. Edmunds. The select committee was appointed, and recommended to the House that a pension of £800 a year should be conferred on Mr. Edmunds; and this recommendation the House adopted. Meanwhile, the Chancellor appointed his son, the Honourable Slingsby Bethell, to the post in the House of Lords vacated by Mr. Edmunds. Before long, however, the floating rumours about Mr. Edmunds' conduct in the Patent Office had caught tho public attention, and Lord Stanley expressed the general uneasiness about the affair in some questions which he addressed to the Attorney-General in the House of Commons. Next night, the Chancellor himself took up the matter, and, courting inquiry, moved for the appointment of a select committee to examine all the circumstances. The committee sat; reported that the charges against Mr. Edmunds were fully proved by evidence; and, by a majority of one, gave it as their opinion that the Lord Chancellor had failed in his duty, when he presented Mr. Edmunds' petition without informing the committee of the facts of the case. But, by way of softening their censure, the select committee added, "that they had no reason to believe that the Lord Chancellor was influenced by any unworthy or unbecoming motives in thus abstaining from giving any information to the before-mentioned committee." Upon this, the House revoked Mr. Edmunds' pension, and there apparently the matter ended. The committee had not condemned the Lord Chancellor; his position remained as before; and yet everybody felt uncomfortable. It was known that Lord Westbury was not a stupid man; it was suspected, in fact, that he was the cleverest man in England; and when a clever man makes a blunder it is generally felt to amount to a crime. Hence it was in no lenient mind that the public heard rumours of a fresh scandal, touching the Lord Chancellor still more nearly, in the matter of certain appointments in the Leeds Bankruptcy Court. Mr. Ferrand, member for Devonport-a man whose spécialité lay in troubling the peace of Governments-brought this new scandal before the world in some questions addressed in Parliament to the Attorney-General; namely, whether Mr. H. S. Wilde, Registrar of the Leeds Court of Bankruptcy, had been required by a superior official, by au |