TifF1 BISHOPS AS POLITICIANS.
IT is long since the Bishops have had anything like a fair trial as politicians. They have usually abstained,—far more than we think was right,—from expressing their views of ordinary political measures in the House of Lords. Upon the question whether or not it is wise to give the Overseers of the Chuich a seat in the House of Lords we express at present no opinion. But we have always contended that whatever duties any special ecclesiastical rank may bring with it, it cannot strip any man of his ordinary rights and duties as a citizen, and that there is something utterly unmanly in the theory which compels an ecclesiastic to abdicate practically his convictions as a politician, in order to discharge his duties as a minister of Christ. We are all equally, laymen and clergymen, Bishops included, ministers of Christ, though some of us have one class of special duties, and others of us another. If laymen do not, by their position as laymen, abdicate their duties as members of the Christian Church,—nay, even as theologians and critics,—it cannot be right that clergymen of any rank should abdicate their duties as ordinary citizens in order to increase their influence as clergy- men. It is the ridiculous notion that the clergy ought to be something less than men on one side, in order that they may be more than men on another, which has so greatly emascu- lated many of them, and, by emasculating them, has justly reduced their general influence in the nation. We hold that what it is right for a layman to say in expressing his political convictions, it cannot be wrong for a clergyman holding the same convictions to say also ; and we believe that if the clergy had temperately but firmly asserted their rights in this direction against the unmanly conventionalism which forbids them to meddle with any political questions except those on which they are least of all likely to be impartial, they and their superior order, the Bishops, would be held, and deserve to be held, in far greater general esteem in England than they now are. It is, therefore, in no way against the present policy of political action by the clergy and the Bishops that we are intending to protest. We would far rather indeed have seen the clergy and Bishops asserting their right to express their political convictions on the subject of Reform, than on the subject of the Irish Church, for on the former we should have been convinced that they were not in danger of mere panic as to the interests of their order ; on the latter, we can see clearly that they are in danger of this,—nay, that they are not even guarding themselves against the danger, but yielding to it with an almost perfect unanimity of pusillanimous terror. Still, we should think, not better but worse of the clergy and their leaders than we do, if they had been able to hold themselves quite aloof from the question of the Irish Church, and to withhold all expression of feeling about it. It only shows the vice of the conventional etiquette which prevents the clergy from exercising their political judgment on ordinary subjects on which they feel no undue bias, that now, when a great question comes up on which it would not be in human nature for them to keep silence,
they naturally come to its discussion with the unpreparedness„- and consequently the violence, of untrained politicians. We ought to make, and wish to make, great allowances for poli- ticians so undispiplined in the proper conduct of battle as- the clergy and the Bishops,—men who come, moreover, into the thick of the conflict with reference to a subject on which their minds are peculiarly unfitted to judge impartially, because it affects, as they conceive, the selfish interests of their order. Still, when one bishop,—and he the most eminent, sober, statesmanlike, laborious, and self-denying of his order,—sets the bad example of imputing the vulgarest motives to his oppo- nents,—motives which he would be ashamed as a Christian to impute to any opponent in private life,—and when his example- is at once followed by his brother Bishops, we do think it full time to point out how dangerous it is for the Church that its rulers should begin their political career, not by infusing the- spirit of their faith into the world, but by invoking the worst. spirit of the world to come to their aid and defend the- privileges of their faith.
In the meeting against the separation of Church and State held a fortnight ago in St. James's Hall, the Bishop of London—of whom we can never speak without respect,—set this unworthy example of accusing the Liberals and their leader of taking up the Irish Church question at the present. time not from disinterested political conviction, but as a con- venient stalking-horse for place-hunting and party passion.. We could scarcely believe the reporters when we found Dr. Tait embarking in this dangerous and, to him, unnatural course, of padding out an exceedingly weak argument with.
unjust vituperation and unchristian insinuation. He at. least ought to have known that Mr. Gladstone personally has made a very great sacrifice in the course he has taken on this question, has laid himself open to the charge of inconsistency, and has really forfeited not a little- in the way of personal friendship in consequence of a, change of conviction extending over a long series of years, the course of which he has marked from time to time with characteristic candour. Dr. Tait has clearness of intellect to perceive that if it came to a comparison of personal dis- interestedness between himself and Mr. Gladstone in this matter, no impartial critic would think his own position so- clear of selfish bias as Mr. Gladstone's. Dr. Tait is defending an= order, earning popularity with all his own caste, and if rumour- be true, is earning also the favour of his Queen. Mr. Gladstone- is perhaps reuniting his party by his boldness ; but almost• half of that party are following him most unwillingly, and only following him at all, thanks to the pressure- from without ; and they are probably registering vows of re- taliation even while they submit to their destiny and vote- with their leader. If he succeeds, it will be at the cost of a painful political responsibility, which will entail upon him the most difficult and thorny of legislative and administrative- duties immediately on his return to office. He is undertaking what exposes him to taunts on all sides, and what is in itself so difficult that no Liberal statesman of this century has dared to face it. And he does all this, if for party motives at all, for the support of a party notoriously as capricious as. the wind,—the Irish Catholics, who are quite certain to repay his service at an early day by some notable- act of desertion. Who that knows Mr. Gladstone,.—unless it be a bishop,—can doubt for a moment that he is discharging a difficult and painful duty because he believes it to be his- duty ? Who can say as much for Dr. Tait's policy flit defending the State Church in Ireland, supported as it was by anything but logic or principle, little, indeed, except cavils- and sneers ?
But Dr. Tait stands deservedly so high that any line of attack, however unworthy, which he adopts is sure to be. imitated by less eminent brethren. Dr. Jeune, the Bishop of Peterborough, was quite worthy to have inaugurated the line- of attack which he has really only followed. What cannot but cast some shadow on the great reputation of the Bishop. of London, would scarcely have cast any on that of the Bishop. of Peterborough. Still, even a bishop should not be allowed practically to alter the precept, " Judge not, that ye be not. judged," into the form, "Judge, in order that you may not in your turn be brought to the bar of those whom you are judging," without a protest. We do not wish the Bishop& to be tried by a higher religious standard than ordinary men, but we should at least not try them by a lower one. In this matter they are fighting, as they assert, and suppose, for their own interests ; and really, if they choose to deal in unworthy imputations, they must expect tc. have such imputations recoil upon themselves. Dr. Jeune is said to have uttered the following sentences in a speech at Welling- borough on "Church and Queen" :—" I have said that what we now drink is Church and Queen,' a united Church, endowed and established. But do not imagine that if even in the recklessness of political gambling it is found that that branch of the United Church of England and Ireland established in this kingdom is as available a card to win the stakes as that branch of the United Church which is established in Ireland,— do not imagine that the Church will cease to exist, or that our children will not be able to say, though in a somewhat different sense, Church and Queen '—on account of the love and veneration we have for the Sovereign who bears the sword committed to her by a higher authority." From which we may see how cheerfully the Bishop of Peterborough has taken Dr. Tait's hint to blacken the Liberal leaders by imputing their action to reckless party gambling, and has also taken Mr. Disraeli's hint to identify his Sovereign's name with one party in the battle. Indeed, Dr. Jeune goes on to intimate not obscurely that the Church and Queen must stand and fall together :—" We once had a House of Commons, a thoroughly English House of Commons, a great House of Commons, which took upon itself to govern. They began with the best intentions ; they ended with murdering the King and destroy- ing the Constitution. May that awful omen be averted ; may our children be always able to say Church and Queen,' not a despot, not a tyranny, but Church and Queen,' a constitu- tional Queen with a constitutional representation, each keep- ing its own place in that grand Constitution which has made England the great Empire which it is !" Is it possible to conceive a clearer proof of the political degeneration of the clergy than their tendency to fight this great question of prin- ciple,—the establishment of the religion of a small minority on the property of the vast majority,—by such artifices as these,—moral insinuations against the political purity of the noblest and most religious statesman of his day, and a cowardly attempt to shelter an unpopular and unsuccessful Establish- ment behind the Throne, by dark threats that any policy which assails the one will be revolutionary enough to overthrow the other ? We say that Bishops who set such an example to their clergy are doing their best to bring that clergy into political contempt. For our own parts, we scorn to attribute selfish and corrupt motives to the men who, like Mr. Gathorne Hardy and Lord Claude Hamilton, and the majority of the Irish prelates and clergy themselves, openly avow that their
attachment to the Protestant creed imposes on them the duty of maintaining it in Ireland. We believe them to be mis- taken, and most mischievously mistaken, in their view, but we do not charge them for a moment with base party motives in maintaining it. Nor do the ablest and most courageous of these ever think of charging such motives on their Liberal opponents. They leave it to the effeminate spite of Bishops to defame the motives of the Liberal leaders, and to try and entrench a discredited Establishment behind the skirts of their Royal Mistress. Indeed, such manceuvres on the part of great English prelates alarm us for their own future, far more than any strength of prejudice they may evince. Those who are readiest to disparage political virtue cannot but undermine their own religious influence ; and those who seem to think that it is less wise " to trust in the Lord than to put confi- dence in Princes," are not likely to work any miracles by their faith.
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