MR. GLADSTONE'S ECCLESIASTICAL OPINIONS.
In April, 1856, Mr. Greville writes of a conversation he had with Graham:
'He began talking over the state of affairs generally. He says there is
not one man in the House of Commons who has ten followers--neither
Gladstone, nor Disraeli, nor Palmerston . . . that Gladstone is certainly
the ablest man there. His religious opinions, in which he is zealous and
sincere, enter so largely into his political conduct as to form a very
serious obstacle to his success, for they are abhorrent to the majority
of this Protestant country, and (I was surprised to hear him say) Graham
thinks approach very nearly to Rome.'
While absorbed in politics, or literature, or society, Mr. Gladstone
never forgot to do his duty to the best of his ability as a loyal son of
the Church of England. In 1842 there was a fight at Oxford University on
the choice of a Professor of Poetry for the University. One candidate
was dear to the High Church party, the other to the Low, or Evangelical,
of which Lord Ashley was the head. Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Sandon,
urging him to entreat Lord Ashley to avoid, for the Church's sake, the
scandal of a contest. But Lord Ashley was on the winning side, and his
candidate was returned at the head of the poll.
In 1843, in the debates on the Dissenters' Chapel Bill, Lord Ashley
writes: 'That inexplicable Mr. Gladstone contended that all Dissent was
semi-Arian, and that a vast proportion of the founders were, in fact,
Unitarians.' When, in 1845, Mr. Ward was condemned at Oxford for his
book, 'The Ideal of a Christian Church,' Mr. Gladstone was one of the
_non-placets_. In a letter to his friend Bishop Wilberforce in 1844, Mr.
Gladstone writes: 'I rejoice to see that you are on the whole hopeful.
For my part, I heartily go along with you. The fabric consolidates
itself more and more, even while the earthquake rocks it; for, with a
thousand drawbacks and deductions, love grows warmer and larger, truth
firmer among us. It makes the mind sad to speculate on the question how
much better all might have been, but our mourning should be turned into
joy and thankfulness while we think also how much worse it might have
been. It seems to me to be written for our learning and use: "He will be
very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when He shall hear it,
He will answer thee. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity
and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a
corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: and thine ears
shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it."'
About this time Mr. Gladstone seems to have taken a leading part in the
establishment of the High Church College, Glenalmond, instituted for the
purpose of turning Presbyterian Scotland from the errors of its ways. At
that time Mr. Gladstone was still in bondage. He argued for the
maintenance of the Established Church in Ireland. Mr. Gladstone had not
advanced beyond his party, and belonged to the school immortalized in
'Tom Jones.' 'When I mention religion,' says the Rev. Mr. Thwackum, 'I
mean the Christian religion, and not only the Christian religion, but the
Protestant religion, and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church
of England.'
In opening the Liverpool Collegiate Institution, he pleaded earnestly for
Christian teaching. 'If you could erect a system,' he said, 'which
presents to man all branches of knowledge save the one that is essential,
you would only be building up a tower of Babel, which, when you had
completed it, would be the more signal in its fall, and which would bury
those who had raised it in its ruins. We believe that if you can take a
human being in his youth, and make him an accomplished man in natural
philosophy, in mathematics, or in the knowledge necessary for the
profession of a merchant, a lawyer, or a physician; that if in any or all
of these endowments you could form his mind--yes, if you could endow him
with the power and science of a Newton, and so send him forth, and if you
had concealed from him--or, rather, had not given him--a knowledge and
love of the Christian faith, he would go forth into the world, able,
indeed, with reference to those purposes of science, successful with the
accumulation of wealth for the multiplication of more, but poor and
miserable and blind and naked with reference to everything that
constitutes the true and sovereign purpose of our existence--nay, worse
with respect to the sovereign purpose than if he had still remained in
the ignorance which we all commiserate, and which it is the object of
this institute to assist in removing.'
But Mr. Gladstone was moving. When Lord John Russell brought in a Bill
to admit Jews to Parliament, Mr. Gladstone supported it, though at one
time against it.
In 1850 Mr. Gladstone wrote a letter to Bishop Hampden, which threw a
good deal of light on his mental working. He wrote: 'Your lordship will
probably be surprised at receiving a letter from me. The simple purport
of it is to discharge a debt of the smallest possible importance to you,
yet due, I think, from me, by expressing the regret with which I now look
back on my concurrence in a vote of the University of Oxford in the year
1836, condemnatory of some of your lordship's publications. I did not
take actual part in the vote, but, upon reference to a journal kept at
the time, I find that my absence was owing to an accident. For a good
many years past I have found myself ill able to master books of an
abstract character, and I am far from presuming at this time to form a
judgment on the merits of any proposition then at issue. I have learned,
indeed, that many things which in the forward precipitancy of my youth I
should have condemned are either in reality sound or lie within the just
bounds of such discussion as justly befits a University. But that which
(after a delay due, I think, to the cares and pressing occupations of
political life) brought back to my mind the injustice of which I had
unconsciously been guilty in 1836 was my being called upon as a member of
the Council of King's College in London to concur in a measure similar in
principle with respect to Mr. Maurice--that is to say, in a condemnation
couched in general terms, which really did not declare the point of
imputed guilt, and against which perfect innocence could have no defence.
I resisted to the best of my power, though ineffectually, the grievous
wrong done to Mr. Maurice, and urged that the charges should be made
distinct, that all the best means of investigation should be brought to
bear on them, ample opportunity given for defence, and a reference then
made, if needful, to the Bishop in his proper capacity of layman, as the
Council were inexorable. It was only, as I have said, after mature
reflection that I came to perceive the bearing of the case on that of
1836, and to find that by my resistance I had condemned myself. I then
lamented that on that occasion, now so remote, I had not felt and acted
in a different manner. I beg your lordship to accept this, the
expression of my cordial regret.' Dr. Hampden had published certain
lectures which afterwards were strongly objected to by the Tractarian
party, whose triumph led to a good deal of bitterness, hard to understand
now.
Again, in March, 1865, when Mr. Dillwyn moved that 'the present position
of the Irish Church is unsatisfactory, and calls for the earliest
attention of Her Majesty's Government,' Mr. Gladstone replied that they
were not prepared to deny the abstract truth of the former part of the
resolution, while they could not accept the resolution. The Irish Church
as she then stood was in a false position. She ministered only to one
eighth or one ninth of the community. The debate was adjourned, and not
resumed during the remainder of the session; but the speech of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer caused great excitement, and Mr. (afterwards
Chief Justice) Whiteside promptly denounced it as fatal to the
Established Church of Ireland. Sir Stafford Northcote wrote: 'Gladstone
made a terrible long stride in his downward progress last night, and
denounced the Irish Church in a way that shows how by-and-by he will deal
not only with it, but the Church of England, too . . . was evidently
annoyed that his colleagues had decided on opposing Dillwyn's motion. He
laid down the doctrine that the tithes were national property. . . . It
is plain that he must hold that the tithe of Wales, where the Dissenters
are in a minority, does not properly belong to the Church; and by-and-by
we shall find that he will carry the principle a great deal further. It
is sad to see what he is coming to.'
Tory suspicion soon found a vent; an election was at hand, and Mr.
Gladstone's seat for Oxford University was in danger. As early as 1861
the question of his retirement had been mooted. In that year he wrote to
the Rector of Exeter College: 'I have never forgotten the ties which bind
me to my kind and good-natured supporters in the University, and no
prospect elsewhere could induce me to quit them, unless I could think
that at a juncture like this they might, with every prospect of success,
support a candidate who would fill my place to their full and general
satisfaction. . . . To quit Oxford under any circumstances would be to
me a most sad, even if it ever became a prudent and necessary, measure.'
As a further illustration of Mr. Gladstone's Liberal opinions, and his
unfitness for Oxford, I quote from a letter of his to Bishop Wilberforce
on Mr. Hadfield's proposal in the House of Commons to abolish the
declaration made by Mayors that they would not use their office against
the Established Church. 'As I apprehend the matter, no one is obliged to
take this declaration at all. I took it myself last year, as Elder
Brother of the Trinity House, in which I have no duty whatever to
discharge, except, I believe, to appoint an "almsbody" once in five or
ten years. As Chancellor of the Exchequer I have not taken it. An
annual Act of Indemnity passes with your consent to dispense with it, and
all who choose avail themselves of the dispensation. I put it to you
that this declaration ought not to be maintained upon the Statute Book.
If it is right to require of certain persons that they should declare
something on behalf of the Established Church, the law, and not the
individual, should define who those persons should be. An established
legal _praemunire_ of self-exception is fatal to the law. If you are
right in saying (which I have never heard elsewhere) that men wish to
escape the declaration in order that they may carry their municipal
paraphernalia in state to Dissenting chapels, it is plain that they can
do it now, and therefore the declaration cannot be maintained on the
ground that it prevents them, for it does not. If I am told that the
mere abstract existence of such a declaration, counteracted as it is by
the indemnity, deters the flesh and blood of Dissenting Mayors from such
a use of the _paraphernalia_, such a reply appears to me fanciful. In
short, if this Bill is not to be supported, it appears to me better to
profess thorough-going exclusiveness at once, and to say that nothing
shall be yielded except to force, for that is what the whole matter comes
to. . . . It is quite obvious that if the consideration of these
measures is to be approached in such a frame of mind, we shall be doing
in our day simply what Eldon and Inglis did in theirs. I must say that
is not my idea of my stewardship.'
Again, he writes to the Bishop: 'The policy of the Church as an
establishment to my mind is plain. She should rest on her possessions
and her powers, parting with none of them, except for equivalents in
another currency, or upon full consideration of _pros_ and _cons_; but
outside of these she should avoid all points of sore contact with
Dissenters. Each one of them is a point at which she as a dead mass rubs
upon the living flesh, and stirs the hostility of its owner. It is no
less due to her own interests to share them than it is to justice as
regards the Dissenter to surrender these points--if surrender that is to
be called which is so unmixedly to her advantage.'
In 1865 the Oxford University election resulted in the loss by Mr.
Gladstone of his seat. The opposition to him was headed by Archdeacon
Denison, on account of his conduct on the Education Question. Mr.
Gladstone was defeated by Mr. Hardy, but he was defeated by those members
of the constituency who had the least interest in education. Nearly all
the professors, tutors, and lecturers voted in the minority, but were
outnumbered by the country clergy. 'Of course,' writes Bishop
Wilberforce to Mr. Gladstone, 'if half of these men had known what I know
of your real devotion to our Church, that would have outweighed their
hatred to a Government which gave Waldegrave to Carlisle, and Baring to
Durham, and the youngest Bishop on the Bench to York, and supported
Westbury in denying the faith of our Lord. But they could not be made to
understand the truth, and have inflicted on the University and the Church
the gross indignity of rejecting the best, noblest, and truest son of
each, in order to punish Shaftesbury'--supposed to be Palmerston's
Bishop-maker--'and Westbury. You were too great for them.'
Mr. Gladstone's reply was as follows:
'Do not conceal from yourself that my hands are very much weakened. It
is only as representing Oxford that a man whose opinions are disliked and
suspected could expect or could have a title to be heard. I look upon
myself now as a person wholly extraneous on one great class of questions;
with respect to legislative and Cabinet measures, I am a unit. I have
had too much of personal collision with Westbury to be a fair judge in
his case, but in your condemnation of him as respects attacks on
Christian doctrines do not forget either what coadjutors he has had or
with what pitiful and lamentable indifference not only the Christian
public, but so many of the clergy--so many of the warmest
religionists--looked on. Do not join with others in praising me because
I am not angry, only sorry, and that deeply. . . . There have been two
great deaths or transmigrations of spirit in my political career--one
very slow, the breaking of ties with my original party; the other very
short and sharp, the breaking of my tie with Oxford. There will probably
be a third, and no more.'
In a subsequent letter Mr. Gladstone states to the Bishop his fixed
determination never to take any step to raise himself 'to a higher level
in official life; and this not on grounds of Christian self-denial, which
would hardly apply, but on the double ground, first, of my total
ignorance of my capacity, bodily or mental; and secondly, perhaps I might
say specially, because I am certain that the fact of my taking it would
seal my doom in taking it.' The Bishop and Mr. Gladstone seem ever to
have been on the most confidential terms.
In a subsequent debate on Church rates Mr. Gladstone, while opposing an
abstract resolution on the subject, declared that he felt as strongly as
anyone the desirability of settling the question. The evils attending
the present system were certainly enormous, and it was a fact that we had
deviated from the original intention of the law, which was not to oppose
a mere uncompensated burden on anyone, but a burden from which everyone
bearing it should receive a benefit, so that while each member of the
community was bound to contribute his quota to the Church, every member
of the Church was entitled to go to the churchwardens and demand a free
place to worship his Maker. The case then was, especially in towns, that
the centre and best parts of the church were occupied by pews exclusively
for the middle classes, while the labouring classes were jealously
excluded from every part of sight and hearing in the churches, and were
treated in a manner which it was most painful to reflect upon.
Sir George Lewis predicted that the death of Peel would have the effect
upon Gladstone of removing a weight from a spring, and the worthy Baronet
judged correctly. 'He will come forward more and more, and take more
part in discussion. The general opinion is that Gladstone will give up
his Free Trade and become leader of the Protectionists.' It was not so;
Mr. Gladstone had been a puzzle and wonder to his contemporaries. It
puzzled the gigantic intellect of a Brougham to understand, not why Mr.
Gladstone gave up office when Sir Robert Peel proposed to increase the
grant to Maynooth, but Mr. Gladstone's explanation of his conduct. Mrs.
Charlotte Wynne, no superficial observer, wrote: 'Mr. Gladstone has been
given two offices to keep him quiet, by giving him too much to do to
prevent his troubling his head about the Church; but,' adds the lady, 'I
know it will be in vain, for to a speculative mind like his theology is a
far more inviting and extensive field than any that is offered by the
Board of Trade.' This trait of his character especially came out when he
opposed the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, hurried through Parliament in a
panic because the Pope had given English titles to his Bishops in
England. Mr. Gladstone ever loved to talk of theology, and in 1870 we
find him in Dr. Parker's pulpit in the City Temple describing
preachers--especially Dr. Newman, who, with his deep piety and remarkable
gifts of mind, he described as an object of great interest, and Dr.
Chalmers. Their very idiosyncrasies, Mr. Gladstone argued, were in their
favour. In 1870, when Mr. Gladstone went to Mill Hill to address the
scholars at the Dissenting Grammar School there, he ended with an appeal
to the lads above all things to strive after Christian growth and
perfection. Early Mr. Gladstone learned to give up his prejudices
against Dissenters. Often has he confessed that they are the most
efficient supporters and source of strength. Miss Martineau was a
Dissenter, yet he went out of his way to offer her a pension which she
declined. To hear Mr. Gladstone read the lessons, all the country round
flocked to Hawarden Church when the owner of the hall was at home.
People laughed when Lord Beaconsfield on a memorable occasion declared
that he was on the side of the angels. When Mr. Gladstone spoke on
religious topics, people listened to him with respect, because they felt
that in all his utterances he was sincere. Of his Christian liberality
of sentiment we have a further illustration when he and his son went to
hear Mr. Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher. The event is thus
recorded; it took place in the beginning of the year 1882: 'On Sunday
evening last Mr. Gladstone and his eldest son were present at the service
in Mr. Spurgeon's tabernacle, and occupied Mrs. Spurgeon's pew. Both
before and after the service these distinguished gentlemen were together
in the pastor's vestry. Mr. Gladstone shook hands heartily with the
elders and deacons present, and expressed himself highly delighted with
the service. The visit was strictly private, and Mr. Gladstone and his
son walked back to Downing Street.' Many were the varying comments on
the event. In the chief Opposition paper a writer recalled the fact that
many years ago Mr. Spurgeon expressed a wish that the Church of England
might grow worse in order that she soon might be got rid of. He then
argued that if Mr. Gladstone's sympathy with Mr. Spurgeon is what his
presence at the Tabernacle would imply, we have a satisfactory
explanation of the unsatisfactory character of Mr. Gladstone's
ecclesiastical appointments. Mr. Spurgeon is a foe to the Church; Mr.
Gladstone goes to hear him, therefore he is a foe of the Church. Mr.
Gladstone, being a foe of the Church, appoints as Bishops, Deans and
Canons the men who will do the Church most mischief. Of course, the
_Saturday Review_ did its best to make Mr. Gladstone ridiculous in
connection with the affair. 'Some jealousy may be aroused in rival
Bethels by this announcement, which is, we believe, the first of its
kind. But it may possibly be that Mr. Gladstone is going to take a
course, and that he will distribute the steps of that course equally
among the various tabernacles of his stanchest supporters. The battle of
the Constitution is to be fought out in the precincts of Ebenezer, and
Ebenezer must be accordingly secured. Mr. Gladstone's plan is
unquestionably a wise one.' The _Saturday Review_ wanted to know what
made Mr. Gladstone shake hands so heartily with the deacons. 'A
proceeding somewhat similar to Mr. Perkes's plan for winning an
election.' Perhaps it is in one of Mr. Gladstone's letters to Bishop
Wilberforce that we get a clear idea of his view of the Church of
England. In 1857 he wrote: 'It is neither Disestablishment nor even loss
of dogmatic truth which I look upon as the greatest danger before us, but
it is the loss of those elementary principles of right and wrong on which
Christianity must itself be built. The present position of the Church of
England is gradually approximating to the Erastian theory that the
business of the Establishment is to teach all sorts of doctrines, and to
provide Christian ordinances by way of comfort for all sorts of people,
to be used at their own option. It must become, if uncorrected, in lapse
of time a thoroughly immoral position. Her case seems to be like that of
Cranmer--to be disgraced first and then burned. Now, what I feel is that
the constitution of the Church provides the means of bringing controversy
to issue; not means that can be brought at all times to bear, but means
that are to be effectually, though less determinately, available for
preventing the general devastation of doctrine, either by a positive
heresy or by that thesis I have named above, worse than any heresy.
Considering that the constitution of the Church with respect to doctrine
is gradually growing into an offence to the moral sense of mankind, and
that the question is, Shall we get, if we can, the means of giving
expression to that mind? I confess that I cannot be repelled by fears
connected with the state of the Episcopal Bench from saying Yes. Let me
have it if I can, for, regarding the Church as a privileged and endowed
body, no less than one with spiritual prerogatives, I feel these two
things--if the mind of those who rule and of those who compose the Church
is deliberately anti-Catholic, I have no right to seek a hiding place
within the pale of her possessions by keeping her in a condition of
voicelessness in which all are entitled to be there because none are.
That is, viewing her with respect to the enjoyment of her temporal
advantages, spiritually how can her life be saved by stopping her from
the exercise of functions essential to her condition? It may be said she
is sick; wait till she is well. My answer is, She is getting more and
more sick in regard to her own function of authoritatively declaring the
truth; let us see whether her being called upon so to declare it may not
be the remedy, or a remedy, at least. I feel certain that the want of
combined and responsible ecclesiastical action is one of the main evils,
and that the regular duty of such action will tend to check the spirit of
individualism and to restore that belief in a Church we have almost
lost.'
Of colonial Bishops Mr. Gladstone had a high admiration. In 1876 he
wrote: 'It is indeed, I fear, true that a part--not the whole--of our
colonial episcopate have sunk below the level established for it
five-and-thirty years ago by the Bishops of those days. But how high a
level it was! and how it lifted the entire heart of the Church of
England!'
Here it is as well to give some further particulars as to Mr. Gladstone's
action with regard to Church matters. In 1836 Mr. Gladstone left the
Church Pastoral Aid Society, of which he had become one of the
vice-presidents, in consequence of an attempt to introduce lay agency.
At all times he was ready to guard and vindicate the religious character
of his alma mater. On one occasion Lord Palmerston had expressed a
reasonable dislike of a system which compelled the undergraduates 'to go
from wine to prayers, and from prayers to wine.' Mr. Gladstone, in
reply, said he had a better opinion of the undergraduates who had been so
lately his companions. He did not believe that even in their most
convivial moments they were unfit to enter the house of prayer. Mr.
Gladstone was one of a committee which met at the lodgings of Mr.
(afterwards Sir Thomas) Acland in Jermyn Street, which led to the
formation of Boards of Education for the different dioceses, and to the
establishment of training colleges, with the double aim of securing
religious education for the middle classes and the collegiate education
of the schoolmasters.
Mr. Gladstone's ecclesiastical leanings soon brought him back to
Parliamentary life, in connection with Archbishop Tait's Public Worship
Regulation Bill. The grounds of his opposition he affirmed in the
following resolutions:
'1. That in proceeding to consider the grounds for the Regulation of
Public Worship this House cannot do otherwise than take into view the
lapse of more than two centuries since the enactment of the present
rubrics of the Common Prayer-Book of the Church of England; the multitude
of particulars combined in the conduct of Divine service under their
provisions; the doubt occasionally attaching to their interpretation, and
the number of points they are thought to have left undecided; the
diversities of local custom which under these circumstances have long
prevailed; and the unreasonableness of proscribing all varieties of
opinion and usage among the many thousands of congregations of the Church
distributed throughout the land.
'2. That this House is therefore reluctant to place in the hands of any
single Bishop--on the motion of one or more persons, however
defined--greatly increased facilities towards procuring an absolute
ruling of many points hitherto left open and reasonably allowing of
diversity, and thereby enforcing the establishment of an inflexible rule
of uniformity throughout the land, to the prejudice in matters
indifferent of the liberty now practically existing.
'3. That the House willingly acknowledges the great and exemplary
devotion of the clergy in general to their sacred calling, but is not on
that account the less disposed to guard against the indiscretions or
thirst for power of other individuals.
'4. That this House is therefore willing to lend its best assistance to
any measure recommended by adequate authority, with a view to provide
more effectual security against any neglect of, or departure from, strict
law which may give evidence of a design to alter, without the consent of
the nation, the spirit or the substance of revealed religion.
'5. That in the opinion of this House it is also to be desired that the
members of the Church having a legitimate interest in her services should
receive ample protection against precipitate and arbitrary changes of
established customs by the sole will of the clergyman and against the
wishes locally prevalent amongst them, and that such protection does not
appear to be afforded by the provisions of the Bill now before the House.
'6. That the House attaches a high value to the concurrence of Her
Majesty's Government with the ecclesiastical authorities in the
initiative of legislation affecting the Established Church.'
In moving these resolutions, Mr. Gladstone's speech was of the highest
interest and importance; 'but never, perhaps, in his long career,' writes
the biographer of Archbishop Tait, 'did his eloquence so completely fail
to enlist the sympathy even of his own supporters, and the resolutions
were withdrawn.' The Bill, opposed by Dr. Pusey on one side and Lord
Shaftesbury on the other, was carried in a modified form. Eye-witnesses
have described the debate on the second reading: 'The House, jaded with a
long and anxious sitting, was eager to divide. A clear voice was heard
above the clamour. It was Mr. Hussey Vivian, an old and tried friend of
Mr. Gladstone. He rose to warn him not to persist in his amendments; not
twenty men on his own side of the House would follow him into the Lobby.
Already deft lieutenants, mournful of aspect, had brought slips of paper
to their chief, fraught, it seemed, with no good tidings. When the
Speaker put the question, there was no challenge for a division. Amid a
roar of mixed cheers and laughter, the six resolutions melted away into
darkness.'
Sir William Harcourt was one of Mr. Gladstone's principal opponents in
the course of the debate. In Committee there was rather an amusing
passage of arms between Mr. Gladstone and his old Attorney-General. Sir
William espoused the Bill strongly, and implored Mr. Disraeli to come to
the rescue. 'We have,' he said, 'a leader of the House who is proud of
the House of Commons, and of whom the House of Commons is proud.' A
provision had been introduced into the Bill which would have overthrown
the Bishops' right of veto on proceedings to be instituted in the New
Court. This provision Mr. Gladstone vehemently opposed, and quoted from
the canonist Van Espero. Sir William ridiculed the quotations, and
accused Mr. Gladstone at the eleventh hour of having come back to wreck
the Bill. Two days after he again attacked Mr. Gladstone, and quoted
authorities in support of his views. Mr. Gladstone's reply was complete.
At this time Mr. Gladstone was much occupied with his favourite
ecclesiastical subjects. In an article on 'Ritual and Ritualism,'
contributed to the _Contemporary Review_, he contended for the lawfulness
and expediency of moderate ritual in the services of the Church of
England. He returned to Church questions in a second article entitled
'Is the Church of England worth Preserving?'--a question which, of
course, he answered in the affirmative. In the course of his remarks he
created a perfect storm of indignation on the part of the Roman
Catholics. To meet this Mr. Gladstone published a pamphlet called 'The
Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance.' One hundred and
twenty thousand copies of the pamphlet were sold in a few weeks, and the
press was filled with replies. Mr. Gladstone returned to the charge in a
pamphlet entitled 'Vaticanism,' in which he contended that in theory the
Papal Infallibility was inconsistent with the requirements of civil
allegiance. In connection with this subject, let it be briefly stated
that in 1880, when Mr. Gladstone returned to power, one of the first
things to be settled was the Dissenters' Burial Bill, a subject first
brought before the House of Commons by Sir Morton Peto in 1861. The Bill
was finally piloted through the House of Commons by Mr. Osborne Morgan,
Judge Advocate. Perhaps by this time Mr. Gladstone had become tired of
ecclesiastical difficulties. In a letter to the Lord Chancellor
respecting fresh legislation on the part of the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Mr. Gladstone wrote: 'The thing certainly could not be done by the
authority of the Cabinet, were the Cabinet disposed to use it, of which
at present I can say nothing.'
About this time a church was built at Stroud Green, near Finsbury Park,
at a cost of 11,000, 8,000 of which was contributed by the parishioners
and their friends. It was an Evangelical or Low church, but when, on the
incumbent's retirement, Mr. Gladstone, claiming the presentation on
behalf of the Crown, thought fit to appoint as Vicar a clergyman whose
antecedents proved him to be commonly known as ritualistic, the
parishioners protested. Petitions against Mr. Linklater's appointment,
signed by 2,300 petitioners and members of the congregation, were
presented to Mr. Gladstone. The following is a quotation from a letter
written by the late Vicar: 'There is a very widespread anxiety through
the congregation that the church which their money has built should not
pass into the hands of one who does not hold the same Evangelical views,
or favour the same simple ritual to which they have been accustomed.'
The Bishop also appealed and remonstrated; all was in vain. On August
23, 1885, Mr. Linklater was inducted to the charge of the parish. A
majority of the seat-holders at once relinquished their seats; others, we
are told, have since followed their example, and some who remained in
hope of better things are obliged to acknowledge that their hopes are
disappointed. The services most prized by the congregation have been
discontinued, and other services introduced which are believed to be
unscriptural, contrary to the laws ecclesiastical, and opposed to the
plain directions of the Book of Common Prayer.