The new Archbishop of Canterbury received yesterday week a deputation
bringing up the address against the Affirmation Bill, signed by nearly 14,000 of the Clergy, but his Grace's reply was 'very guarded. He reserved the chief part of what he had to say . •on the ground that he should probably have to speak his mind in another place. He observed, nevertheless, that he could see no abstract irreligion in substituting an affirmation for an oath, and he pointed out that it was by a simple declaration that the clergy now _repudiate the crime of simony, and by a declaration that they give their assent to the Articles and the Book of Common Prayer. The Archbishop intimated that if any change were made, it should be made on religions grounds, and ought not to be open to the sort of interpretation to which the deputa- tion had alladed,—the interpretation, we presume, that an Atheist was, somehow or other, to be got into the House of Commons. The ArChbishop's remarks were cautious but not unsatisfactory so far as they went. But we should like to see our clergy openly admitting that there is a religious motive in doing plain political justice, even to a man whose morale and whose scorn for religion we heartily detest and repudiate.
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