One of the most effective side-hits of Mr. Winterbotham's Educa-
tion speech was his illustration of the indignities to which Dis- senters were liable at the hands of the Established Church, taken from two charges of the Bishop of Winchester, —then Bishop of -Oxford,—whom he took care to describe as an eminent Bishop, -"recently promoted under a Liberal Government, and at least in dais own opinion a model prelate and a model Churchman." Dr. Wilberforce had described, according to Mr. Winterbotham, the -three great obstacles to the religions education of the people as -consisting in beershops, Dissent, and overcrowded cottages. Was it in human nature, he asked, for Dissenters not to resent such -contemptuous expressions ? Dr. Wilberforce replied to the charge in Friday's Times, and, as we had ventured to conjecture -elsewhere, familiar as we are with the peculiarities of that prudent prelate, the charge turns out to be very far from -accurate. There was no such grouping of Dissent along with the other two obstacles at all,— nor was Dissent described as -an obstacle to religions education, but only as a " hindrance " which the clergy of the diocese had assigned as impeding them in their ministry. We confess that we think Mr. Winterbotham had almost unfairly overstrained the obvious meaning. Would any -clergyman have thought of complaining if an eminent Dissenting minister had instanced the unfortunate belief in episcopacy pre- valent in his neighbourhood as a great 'hindrance' to his own usefulness? Sectarian jealousy, whether Church or denominational,
is apt to create the food on which it lives. Only, Church jealousy is the more cold and arrogant, and Dissenting jealousy the more irritable and suspicious.
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