DR. COLENSO-" ESSAYS AND REVIEWS." a critical examination scarcely started any question that had not been discussed, and, one way or another, settled long before. The impression made on a great many people was that if the bishop had devoted more attention to previous discussions, now almost dismissed into the limbo of barren topics of inquiry, he might never have written the book at all. As it was, the people who did not read it, and those who did read it, and were as unconscious as the bishop seemed to be of its consisting chiefly of thrice-thrashed straw, were alarmed, not so much at the result, as at the source of the heterodox conclusions. The Lower House of Convocation found the book to contain errors of the gravest and most dangerous character, and presented this declaration to the Upper House, who declined to interfere because the work was about to be submitted to the judgment of an ecclesiastical court, but affectionately warned those who might not be able to read the convincing answers which had been published, of the dangerous character of the book. The result of a reference to the ecclesiastical court was that though Dr. Colenso was tried and condemned by his metropolitan the Bishop of Cape Town, and two of his suffragans sitting with him as assessors, their sentence of deprivation of his see was reversed by the committee of the privy-council, inasmuch as it held that the crown had no power by law to constitute a bishopric or to confer coercive jurisdiction within any colony possessing an independent legislature; and that the letters patent which purported to create the sees of Cape Town and Natal were issued after these colonies had acquired such legislation, so that neither bishop was, in the eye of the law, bishop of his see, and neither of them had any jurisdiction whatever. Nobody called in question the character, the piety, or the honesty of Dr. Colenso, and his supporters in London soon started a fund whereto about £3300 was subscribed before he returned to his charge, a bishop without a legal see or jurisdiction, but all the same the Bishop of Natal. There was another difficulty to overcome, and to meet this the funds subscribed were required. Acting on the judgment of the privy-council the trustees of the Colo 205 nial Bishoprics Fund had withheld payment of the bishop's salary of £362. Dr. Colenso, therefore, filed a bill against Mr. Gladstone, Vice-chancellor Wood, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and others who were trustees, calling upon them to set aside £10,000 out of the fund for securing the income of the Bishop of Natal, and also to pay his salary. The defendants contended that by the judgment of the committee of privy-council Dr. Colenso had never been a bishop at all in the sense contemplated by the founders of the fund. Against this Lord Romilly, who tried the case, defined what he conceived to be the duties and functions of a bishop, and pointed out how the letters patent of the crown had failed in enabling the bishop to perform those duties, what were the objects for which the funds were contributed, and the nature of the contract entered into by the trustees with both the crown and the plaintiff. The judgment was for Dr. Colenso, and the trustees had to pay the costs. Essays and Reviews, the name of that book which once raised such a ferment, is now seldom mentioned, or is spoken of with no very definite sense of its doing serious mischief. Some of the authors of that unassuming volume of speculative or critical essays are still famous, and will be remembered when the book itself has been almost forgotten. The volume was made up of seven essays having no special or necessary connection, nor any very obvious agreement, and each was signed with the name of the author. It may be said without much doubt that this collection of papers was not primarily intended to convey the settled opinions or convictions of the writers; but that the essays were examples of critical and speculative thought, and the reviews, as their name implied, the written results of an examination of certain books in the views of which the writers were intellectually interested, and with which probably they to a considerable degree accorded. In the first of the essays the human race was personified as an individual whose intellectual and religious education or development had been proceeding through the beliefs and ex periences of successive ages and was proceeding still. The idea was not altogether new, and could scarcely be called impious, except from the point of view that unless it were subjected to strictly metaphorical limits it would be opposed to certain orthodox doctrines. The next paper was a review of some biblical criticisms and rationalistic conclusions of Baron Bunsen, a man who had been the admired and esteemed friend of most of our eminent statesmen and scholars, but whose heterodox opinions, though tolerated in society where his learning and his character had made him welcome, could not be regarded with complacency when they were issued with the apparent endorsement of a reverend principal or professor at either of our colleges or universities, or were upheld by professed members of the Established Church. The others papers which made up the volume included an application to the Old Testament history, of the principles adopted by Niebuhr in his inquiry into the history of Rome, objections to the Mosaic account of the creation, and contentions that the same rules of interpretation and criticism should be applied to the Bible as to any other book. The authors were the Rev. Dr. Temple, head-master of Rugby School, and afterwards Bishop of Exeter; the Rev. Dr. Williams, Viceprincipal of St. David's College, Lampeter; the Rev. Baden Powell, Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford; Mr. Goodwin, a distinguished scholar and Biblical commentator; the Rev. Mark Pattison, tutor and afterwards principal of Lincoln College, Oxford; the Rev. Mr. Wilson, and the Rev. J. B. Jowett, regius professor of Greek at Oxford. Against Professor Jowett there was much opposition in the university, from conscientious motives. Dr. Pusey, who twenty years before had been suspended by the vice-chancellor from preaching from the university pulpit what were alleged to be Romish doctrines, had afterwards with his followers been indebted to Mr. Jowett for friendly intervention between them and the authorities, who would have dismissed them. He now joined with Dr. Ogilvie, one of those who had been his own personal opponents, in the prosecution of the Greek professor. Dr. Pusey, and his co-prosecutors of Professor Jowett in the chancellor's court at Oxford, could not carry on the case because of the protests entered by the defendant's proctor, which contained objections that the court had no jurisdiction in spiritual matters, was unfit to do justice in the case, and had no power over a regius professor. There were of course other ways of pronouncing sentence against the essayist, and when a proposal was made to increase the endowment of the Greek chair-which remained at its original amount of £40, although that sum was admitted on all hands to be utterly inadequate - considerable opposition to the scheme was evinced. This opposition was overcome, however, so far at least as the resident members of the University were concerned, and a plan for increasing the endowment was agreed upon, with the understanding that no approval was thereby given to the opinions of the existing professor. The scheme had to be submitted to the vote of the whole body of graduates of the university, resident and non-resident, and was rejected by a considerable majority, made up principally of non-residents. The lord-chancellor then proposed to accomplish the object in view in another way, and brought a bill into the House of Lords enacting that in future a stall in one of the cathedrals should be assigned to the occupant of the Greek chair, and providing that the first stall which became vacant should be thus appropriated. The proposal, though at first received with considerable approl, was ultimately rejected by their lordships. mainly on the ground that it is the duty of the university properly to endow the chair, in consideration of certain privileges and advantages-some of which are of great value in a pecuniary point of view-granted to it by the crown. The lower House of Convocation at their meeting, and the Archbishop of Canterbury in reply to a deputation of 800 clergymen, decided to take no action against the authors of the heretical book, but to wait for the refutation of the opinions which it contained by replies which would be sure to be published. The Bishop of Salisbury then commenced a suit. LORD WESTBURY'S BLISTERING WORDS. This case which was brought by the Bishop of Salisbury against the Rev. Rowland Williams was tried in the Arches Court, where the judge rejected all the charges but those contained in two articles. On the charge upon these two, the defendant appealed to the judicial committee of the privy-council, and the Lord-chancellor Bethell (Lord Westbury) was strongly in favour of a reversal of the sentence of suspension pronounced by the Court of Arches on account of the two articles, which his lordship moved should be rejected as the rest had been. The charges in an action against another of the essayists (Mr. Wilson) he also said should be withdrawn. The lord-chancellor was evidently on the side of freedom of opinion, and distinctly declared that Mr. Williams's expressions were not to be interpreted in the way put forth by the promoter of the action, and that Mr. Wilson's representations could not be said to be plainly contradictory to, or inconsistent with, the articles or formularies of the church to which the charge referred. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York did not concur in this judgment, and issued pastoral letters on the subject. A few days afterwards an address said to have been signed by 137,000 members of the Church of England, thanking them and supporting the decision they had taken, was presented to them at Lambeth Palace. Essays and Reviews was afterwards condemned in Convocation; but, upon the reports of the committee of the Upper and Lower House, when that decision was brought down to the Lower, amendments were moved which, though they were not carried, showed that opinion was not unanimous. There was yet to follow a sharp discussion in the House of Lords, where Lord Houghton asked the government questions as to the powers of the convocation of the province of Canterbury to pass a synodical judgment on books written by clergymen or laymen; as to the immunity of members of that body from proceedings at common law consequent on such judgment; and as to the form in which judicial power must be exercised if it belonged to that body. The opportunity was too good for the lordchancellor to lose, and he replied in terms, of 207 which the archbishop said, he tried to produce ... that been the work of one hand the sentence might have had some effect; but, seeing that the volume was only two covers holding together separate essays, and seeing that the sentence did not attribute any offence to anything but the volume containing these separate writings, not one of the authors was condemned, and each one of them might say, "This thing that is condemned is not mine; it belongs to you." In this way the volume and the sentence which condemned it might be handed round from one to another, and the application of the sentence be repudiated by all the authors. The bishops might meet together as a debating club and express their opinion whether this or that law was a good or a bad one; but even that was not a very small nor a proper thing, for they might thereby involve themselves in great peril. He brought before them the predicament in which any individual member of the episcopal bench might stand. The upper house might come to a particular determination; but, supposing the author of one of these essays were presented to a living or any other piece of ecclesiastical preferment, and supposing that one of the bishops who had been a party to those proceedings were called on to institute. The bishop would naturally say, "How can I institute a man whose work I have joined in condemning?" but, in declining to institute, the bishop might possibly become liable to a præmunire, or be involved in the consequences of another hard word, duplex querela. This was the strain in which the reply was made, and it concluded by assuring the mover of the question that it was not the intention of the government to take any further steps in the matter. The Bishop of Oxford replied with dignity, and not without effective rebuke of the tone of the lord-chancellor, saying that if he had no respect for himself, he ought to have had respect for the audience before which he spoke. Probably few persons could have defended the manner of the reply made by Lord Westbury; but the matter of it was subject for very serious consideration, as people have found out since, and especially now that another party in the church have alike denied the authority, and practically tried to defy the power of a legal tribunal, and have refused to acknowledge the duty of obedience to ecclesiastical superiors. It may be remarked here that in the matter of subscription to the articles of the church Dr. Pusey had in the early part of his career, and while he was liable to suspension from the university for alleged Romish tendencies, refused to accept the articles except with the liberty of interpreting them according to his views of their meaning in the ancient church. The subscription to the clerical oaths had, it is almost needless to say, become liable to as elastic an application, and at length a royal commission was appointed to inquire and report on the subject, with the result that in July, 1865, Lord Granville brought a bill before parliament for relaxing the subscription to certain clerical oaths. The effect of this was that in place of the old form pledging his "assent and consent" to everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer, the declaration as proposed by the bill to be made before ordination was: "I assent to the Thirtynine Articles of religion and the Book of Common Prayer and of the ordering of bishops, priests, and deacons. I believe the doctrine of the united Church of England and Ireland as therein set forth to be agreeable to the word of God; and in public prayer and administration of the sacraments I will use the form in the said books prescribed, and none other except as far as shall be ordered by lawful authority.” This measure passed through both houses of parliament. A few words must be said of Sir Richard Bethell (Lord Westbury), the profound and accomplished lawyer, of the bitter tongue, who took so prominent a part as a law reformer and in these ecclesiastical trials. The close of 1865 saw his sudden and almost unexpected resignation. He was just 65 years old, for he was born in 1800. His father was a physician at Bradford, and was said to have descended from an old Welsh family named Ap-Ithell (whence Bethell). His education began at the Bristol Grammar School. At the age of thirteen he left that seminary and studied with THE PROPOSED NEW REFORM BILL. his father for one year, and then proceeded to Wadham College, Oxford, where he found some difficulty in matriculating on account of his extreme youth. This difficulty overcome, he was elected scholar in the following year; and in 1818 (before he was eighteen years of age) he took his degree, with the honours of a first class in classics and a second in mathematics. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1823, and made a queen's counsel in 1840. He was first returned for Aylesbury in 1851 as a Liberal Conservative, and sat for that place till 1859, when he was returned for Wolverhampton. He had held the office of vice-chancellor of the county palatine of Lancaster, and was appointed solicitor-general in 1852 in Lord Aberdeen's ministry, and attorney-general in 1856, and, with the exception of the brief interval of Lord Derby's second ministry, had been in that office till in July, 1861, he became custodian of the Great Seal of England. His wit was acute, his language, as we have seen, so caustic that it has been called vitriolic; though he mostly spoke in a lisping drawling manner which was far from being oratorical, and made the words he used all the more startling when the listeners came to think of them. It will easily be understood that he was beloved neither by those members of his own profession who were opposed to his innovations and simplifications of the law, nor by persons on whom he had turned his unsparing powers of derision or of refutation. Perhaps many of his enemies were waiting for an opportunity to pay off old grudges, and though they may not have had much hand in settling the score, the opportunity came in a manner which must have pained even those among his opponents who admired his abilities and believed in his honour. It appeared that his real disposition in private life was indulgent, and to some extent unsuspicious, and he had used his influence or patronage in placing two of his relatives in official positions, where one of them was afterwards accused of holding or using the public money for his own purposes, and another of some other proceeding which could not be passed over with propriety. He had been foolishly lax, and had remained silent rather than be VOL. IV. 209 tray his relative, but it was distinctly stated that his silence was from no improper or unbecoming motive. The charge was brought against him, however, in the House of Commons instead of before a judicial tribunal, and it was made use of for an attack against the government, so that a vigorous "whip" brought up a large attendance, in which the opponents of the lord-chancellor were more numerous than his supporters. "Laxity of practice and want of caution, whereby great encouragement has been given to corrupt practices, and which, even in the absence of improper motives, are, in the opinion of the house, highly reprehensible and calculated to throw discredit on the administration of the high offices of state," was the resolution which was accepted by a small majority. Lord Westbury resigned his office with dignity, and not without some calm and almost pathetic words, accepting the decision of the house without saying a syllable against it except that he hoped after an interval calmer thoughts would prevail. He pointed out the work which had been accomplished-the plans of reform and improvement which had been carefully arranged under his direction-mentioned that on his retirement there would only be a single appellate judgment in arrear, and that the same could be said of the Court of Chancery. "It is very possible that by some word inadvertently used-some abruptness of manner-I may have given pain, or have exposed myself to your unfavourable opinion," he said to the House of Lords in conclusion. "If that be so, I beg you to accept the sincere expression of my regret, while I indulge the hope that the circumstance may be erased from your memory." It was like an official dying speech. But Lord Westbury lived to do useful work as a "law lord" in deciding appeals and as arbitrator in some delicate and difficult commercial questions-duties in which he was employed till his death in July, 1873. The session of 1866 commenced with much interest and with no little expectation. For the first time since the death of the princeconsort the queen opened parliament. The appearance of her majesty in public was the 77 |