Dr. Magee, the Bishop of Peterborough, in an annual confer-
ence of lay and clerical representatives of his diocese held last -week at Northampton, made an attack on the Bill for permit- ting occasional lay sermons to be delivered in ouvehurches. He said that if a Dissenter, differing from him on any vital point, should ask to be allowed to speak in his pulpit, such a request would be an insult to his (the Bishop's) understanding. And he illustrated the uselessness of this kind of " conciliation " to Dis- senters thus :—if a person had an estate, and was unfortunate enough to have a " claimant " for it, and he wrote to "the claimant" that he would not give up his estate, but that by way of "-conciliation" he would be glad to have him to dine once a week in the servants' hall, that would be very much the sort of concilia- tion proposed in the Bill. Very jocose, no doubt, but as the object of the Bill was not in any sense to " conciliate " Dissenters, except by making the Church more popular, and the pulpit more effective, we don't see the wit. The Dissenting" claimant" to the estate is formidable only through the not infrequent incapacity of the existing owner to do his duty by the tenantry. If under these circumstances, the owner, instead of showing a nervous feeling, borrows efficient help, whether from amongst his own kith and in or the kith and kin of the claimant, on behalf of his tenantry, we think the owner would take a great deal more by the move than "the claimant." Nor can we see here any insult to the Bishop's understanding, unless his understanding be .as easily =insulted as a member of the French Assembly.
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