The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1874-08-11 00:00:00

nowt Conatti (Express.

TUESDAY. AUGUST 114. IML

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

The first session of the Disraeli administration
has closed, and the legislative outcome has not
belied the small promise of its beginning; but
in one particular the few last days of Parliament
were strangely in contrast with the expectations
formed of it. Instead of tranquility and suavity
there was the bitterest controversy and personal
I hostility : Mr. Disraeli most incisively jeering
at his noble colleague, the Manjuis of Salisbury,
and the late Solicitor-General (Sir W. Harcourt)
attacking Mr. Gladstone with unwonted virulence,
and provoking a scornful and brilliant retort.
The utter separation between the late Premier
and his Solicitor-General is indicated by the
pointed laudation with which Sir Wm. Harcourt
referred to Mr. Disraeli as "a leader proud of
the House of Commons, and of whom the
House of Commons is proud." All these
"gibes, and flouts, and sneers" came of the
Bill to put down ritualism, which has, however,
passed, although shorn of the important
amendment giving an appeal to the Archbishop.
The measure has caused dissension in the
Cabinet, the Marquis of Salisbury and Sir
Gathorne Hardy being at issue with the Premier
in his championship of the Protestant faith.
So much so is their disagreement that the
revived whitebait dinner, which was to have
been a jubilant feast before breaking up for the
holidays, became a token of strife, neither Mr.
Disraeli, the Marquis of Salisbury, nor Sir
Stafford Northcote, being present ; and it is said
Cabinet changes are imminent.

- - -
The Tones says that by the negligence of Mr.
Disraeli, and the imprudence of some of his
colleagues, the Opposition has, in the latest days
of the session, been unexpectedly gratified by a
glimpse of possible return to power; yet some
excuse joust be made for the want of preparation
which was inevitable from the sudden change of
Ministry. The session of 1875 will more
accurately test the capacity of the Government
and of the Conservative party for the administra-
tion of public affairs. The Daily Telegraph
speaks of the session as a memorable satire on
the peaceful hopes of the Conservative party,
and on the expectations entertained by the
clergy when they gave a strong majority to a
Minister whose mission is to "put down Ritual-
ism." And the Daily News cannot help thinking
that the session of 1874 has sown the seeds of
controversies and political commotion!' well
calculated to stimulate soon into activity the
embryo statesmanship, if there be any such,
' which is hereafter to guide the councils of the
country.
The Divine right of kings to tax their subjects
willy-nilly was settled more than 200 years ago,
the king getting irretrievably worsted; and the
ecclesiastical legislation of the Conservative
Ministry seems likely to determine the Divine
right of Bishops of the Church of England to
act independently of Parliament in an equally
salutary though less violent way. The theory
of the Divine right of our Bishops was pleaded
by Mr. Gladstone, but the notion was univers-
ally scouted, and especially by the lawyers.
"To assert that the jurisdiction of Bishops is not
jam hurriarto ,but jterednimo (said Sir \V. Harcourt),
and to hear the authority of Lord Holt quoted in
support of such a proposition, is enough to make on
think that the axis of the world is turned back, and
that we are living again in in the Middle Ages.
Jurisdiction is not divine. Jurisdiction is essentially
human, for I have never yet heard of a bishop,
whether by dvine right or not, who enforced his
behests by a pew romilatids of angels. He has
recourse to the civil power to enforce his jurisdiction,
and therefore I advise him to reganl his jurisdiction,
it he wishes it to have any effect at all, as human.
Whatever bishops may regard themselves as—and that
is a matter on which they must exercise their own
discretion—Parliament regards them as overseers of
, the Church which has been established by the State
I and which is subject to the laws of the State. They
I hold their offices on term, prescribed by Parliament and
by the State. It is not by divine right that an eminent
clergyman, however excellent and however learned
he may be, occupies Farnham Palace or a line house
in St. James's-square. It is not by divine right that
a prelate has £B,oco a year secured by Act of Parlia-
ment. It is not by divine right that the bishops sit in
the House of Lords. They sit there, as we all know,
by barony, and a barony is not of divine right."
And this was the view taken by Mr. Russell
Gurney :
" It is not by the dirinsiat," said the Recorder,
"that the rights and authority of Bishops in this
country are determined ; but by the Common Law
and the Statute Law.

And to prove this proposition against Mr.
Gladstone, Mr. Gladstone's own Solicitor-
General took a pile of his law books into the
House of Commons, and spent an hour and a
half in reading passages from Blackstone, from
Burn's Ecclesiastical Law, from Strype, from
Ayliffe's l'arergok, and from Lord Chief Justice
Holt. Mr. Gladstone declined to argue the
question, contenting himself with hinting that
in his opinion it is the duty and wisdom of the
State so to adjust its laws as to make them com-
patible, wherever it can properly be done, with
those ppinciples inherent in the constitution of
a religions society, which undoubtedly do not
invest it with any right of overriding the State,
but which may affect the practicability of what
is called a national establishment or the union
of Church and State: in which the chief point to
be noticed la its undertone of menace.

Mr. Gladstone is clearly feeling his way round
to the position of champion of disestablishment
in England. Vaguely this has tong been believed
of him by some. Others have ruled it impossible
that Mr. Gladstone could over, considering what
he has written and said, join the Nonconformists
in separating Church and State in England; yet
what else do the following words mean, uttered
with eolcum care by Mr. Gladstone in that last
debate on the Public Worship Regulation
Bill :

lam quite convinced (he said), and let my words
be marked, it is well foi this House to consider
whether it desires or does not deshe to maintain the
national establishment of religion in ibis country. If
it is desired to maintain that establishment of rcligion,
then I say moderation in act and temper and mildness
in language are absolutely necessary for those who
undertake to guide the House in this difficult and
perilous question ; hut if the tone, language, and
temper of my hon. and learned friend (Sir William
Harcourt, the late Solicitor-General) are to be taken
as the standards which in future are to govern this
ecclesiastical discussion, I say, whoever may be right
and wrong here, whoeVer luay have a majority or a
minority, there is one result which si ill overtake us
and pass by as, and it is that the national establish-
ment of religion will give way under The strokes that
will be dealt it by its most ill-advised defenders—
(cheers),
Mr. Gladstone's appeal from the law of
England to ecclesiastical authorities in the
recant disoutsions was applying in a small way
the principle ho will presently be prepared to
apply generally ; and it seems likely that ex-
tremes will yet MtAtt in Nonconformists and
Ritualists uniting against the liatablishment.