The Sun.
London, England, 1859-03-24 00:00:00

THE REV. ALFRED POOLE'S CASE.

Mr. Poole has at length arrived at the result for
which he has long been striving; that is, an
emphatic condemnation, by the highest ecclesiastical
authority, of his peculiar views upon the subject
of Confession, and a formal confirmation of the
sentence by which his licence was revoked. There
is not another word to be said against the manner
in which these final proceedings have been con-
ducted, although undoubtedly, the Archbishop of
Canterbury had been misled in the first instance by
wrong advice. It was a monstrous thing that Mr.
Poole should have questioned women in a locked
vestry upon their violation of the Seventh Com-
mandment. It was almost equally monstrous that
he should be condemned unheard. The Court of
Queen's Bench has put the archbishop right, and
the archbishop has put Mr. Poole right, and the
matter is now brought to a satisfactory conclusion.
Henceforward let us hope that the archbishop and
his successors will not visit curates with so severe a
penalty as the revocation of a licence implies with-
out giving them a full opportunity of defence ; and,
further, that curates will abstain from walking in
the steps of Mr. Poole in this particular matter. It
is but fair to that gentleman to state that the Bishop
of London, after due investigation, seems to have
arrived at the conclusion that he had not addressed
to his penitents the filthy questions of which we
have heard so much. Of this he stands fully
acquitted ; on the other hand, it seems to be equally
clear, upon his own admission, that he had interro-
gated women 'won the matters referred to, and that
he justified his conduct as consistent with the
rubrics and doctrines of the Church of England.
The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of
London now tell us that this is not so ; that the
views of Mr. Poole on the subject of Confession
generally, and especially upon Confession where a
violation of the Seventh Commandment is at issue,
are of a dangerous tendency, and calculated to
bring scandal on the Church.
It is curious to mark how numbers of excellent
people, simply by dwelling for a length of time
exclusively upon one idea, can arrive ultimately at
conclusions which they would have spurned before
the process of intellectual and sentimental incuba-
tion began. Here is Mr. Poole, now—we doubt
not a most excellent and moral man—who, after a
due course of the one-idea fever, found himself
locked up with a woman in the vestry of St. Bar-
nabas, putting searching questions to her on the
subject of her unchastity. Be it most clearly
and broadly understood that we do not mean
to suggest the faintest shadow of an infer-
ence against Mr. Poole's personal morality. We
quote him but as an example of an excel-
lent but simple young man whose brains had
got muddled on the point of Auricular Confession,
just as Don Quixote's wits were turned on the sub-
, ject of chivalry. Could the Knight of La Mancha,
when in his sober senses, and before he took to his
library of romance, have seen a picture of himself
charging the windmills or stabbing the wine-skins
he would surely have said, " Why, that's the pic-
ture of a madman !" In the same way, had Mr.
Poole, before his head was addled by the perusal of
such little volumes of nonsense as the one which
Mr. Gresley has given to the world upon this
particular subject—had he, we say, seen himself
' locked up in the vestry of St. Barnabas and con-
' ferring with a Pimlico Magdalen upon the Seventh
Commandment, he would have deemed himself a
fit inmate for Bedlam. Granting -7,as we are fully
prepared to grant—that he himself was pure as the
topmost drift of snow on the crown of Mont Blanc,
would it be so with others ? Was this a practice
which would be tolerated in the British Islands—
save by the Roman Catholic portion of the popula•
tion—in the year 1859 P There is no doubt that
step by step a man may ascend the ladder of mental
delusion until he has forgotten how far he has left
the solid earth, upon which human beings must be
content to walk, beneath him. Ordinary men of
our time, however, have no sympathy with these
acrobats of imagination. As was well remarked
by an old divine, though not one of Mr. Poole's
school, " True religion is the 'most common sense
thing in the whole world." When you arrive at
such conclusions as Mr. Poole deduced in the ves-
try of St. Barnabas, there is something false in your
premises or your reasoning. Your conclusion is a
practical absurdity, and therefore some or all of the
steps by which you reached it are false.
The subject is so delicate an one that we almost
fear to remark upon it at all; yet surely it cannot
be wrong that an independent voice should be up-
lifted somewhere to warn these excellent young
gentlemen that they really must abstain from cross-
examining English women upon such subjects.
With the great bulk of the middle classes they can
do but little harm, for there they have to deal with
occupied and educated people. The sect to which
Mr. Poole belongs may be fashionable for a season
in Belgravia and other polite quarters, but it came
in like crinoline, and like crinoline it will go out.
In those regions its success is based upon the idle-
ness and ennui of the population, and generally of
that graceful and interesting section of it which is
composed of young ladies under twenty-five years
of age. With the humbler classes the evil is greater,
for with regard to them, no doubt, the priest has
the advantage of knowledge and position, as op-
posed to ignorance and no position at all.
The machiiery of charities, and doles, and cus-
tomers and employers, and lady-visitors, too, can
be thrown into gear for their benefit with
startling effect. It is just the old story of
electioneering oppression as applied to matters
' of religion. Certain of the humbler classes are at
the mercy of their employers and patrons, and these
persons choose to establish a religious test as the
price of their favours. We must in justice to the
High Church say that instances of a similar system
' of oppression committed by the other side have been
brought under our notice. Such and such an Evan-
gelical minister, again, has before now been as much
the spiritual inquisitor of his flock (and the crooks
of these gentlemen have been pretty long ones) as
any. Anglican priest who ever laboured at the Con-
fessional. It does not signify much, if the inquisi-
torial process is to take place at all, whether the
penitent be standing, sitting, or kneeling. It is not
a question of a posture, but of a fact, and the fact
is the abuse of priestly power. The abuse of this
power has been brought very offensively before the
public in this case of Mr. Poole, but we are far
indeed from asserting that cognate abuses do not-
! take place on the other side. The matter must be
left, after all, to the discretion of the heads of
families. It is their business—indeed, one of their
highest duties—to guard all persons under their
authority from such dangerous delusions. In case
of abuse it only requires that the fact should be
L made public, and publicity will soon supply a
remedy sharper than any in the laboratory of bishop
or archbishop.— Times.

UNITED SERVICE INSTITUTION,

WHITEHALL- YARD.

On Friday, March 18, a lecture was delivered in
the theatre, Major-General Stanhope in the chair,
by Lieut.-Colonel E. Hawley, R.A., on " Frederick
the Great's Campaign in 1757." The lecturer de-
scribed the general nature of the operations in this,
one of Frederick's most famous campaigns, and
sought by means of its incidents to illustrate
some of the principles of war. It begun by a sketch
of the geographical features of the Prussian province
of Silesia and the frontier between it and Moravia,
the Austrian province through which lay the most
direct route to Vienna. Though this was, in the
abstract, the most eligible territorial line of
operation, yet, in 1756, Frederick justly
considered that it was better to begin with pos-
sessing himself of the secretly hostile country of
Saxony, which lay between his hereditary domi-
nions in Brandenburgh and the Austrian army
in Bohemia. In 1757, Saxony being in his
power, there was no longer objections to
the territorial line of Moravia, yet Fre-
derick chose to operate in Bohemia, which
line offered far greater difficulties to his enterprise.
He commenced with a double line of operations from
Lusatia and Saxony, converging on Prague. The
defects in the Austrian dispositions, whether for
attack or defence, were shown, and Frederick's
mode of passing the mountains, and effecting a
combined movement on Prague, was contrasted
with that of Napoleon in 1800, showing the great
superiority of the latter as a strategist. The
use of interior lines against a double extension
line was illustrated—and it was shown how the
Austrians, instead of availing themselves of
their advantageous position, suffered the Prussians
(notwithstanding their erroneous system of attack)
to combine before Prague.
After the defeat at Kollin, Frederick retreated from
Bohemia before the superior forces of Austria. The
French, too, now threatened him, coming from the
Maine ; but in these difficult circumstances all his
genius and energy were called forth. Applying the
principle of interior lines, against the double lines
of the French and Austrians, he prevented them
from uniting till he had overwhelmed the former in
the famous battle of Itosbach, when, marching to
the aid of his lieutenant, who, opposed to the
Austrians, had been defeated by them, from act-
ing on a line too widely extended, he joined
his forces to the beaten Prussian arm;', and by a
second brilliant victory, over greatly superior
numbers at Leuthen, recovered Silesia, and forced
the Austrians back within their own frontier.'
The lecture concluded with an enumeration of
the faults committed by the Austrians, and a sum-
mary of Frederick's characteristics as a great
general.