We have already alluded to the reports about the meeting
of Convocation; but it is necessary toplain that the report on the subject is in active controversy. It Rrst disrenctly new light in the columns of the Times on Monday last. Next day the Morn- ing Chronicle repeated the report with reservations and correc- tions, professing to have had a previous knowledge of the inten- tion. From this corrected version, which is not absolutely avouch- ed, it would appear that Lord Derby "has advised the Crown to issue licence to the new Convocation to resume its synodical func- tions"; the deliberation to be confined to a single point—" name- Ty, to devise and recommend a scheme for self-reform and recon- struction according to the altered condition of the Church and society." It is not denied that the plan originated with the High Church or Tractarian party, and it is condemned by every other party in the Church.
The discussion was immediately followed up by the Globe and the Daily News. Yesterday the Morning Herald came out with a furious contradiction, treating the report as a scheme by the Tract- arian party, to force its own doctrine into acceptance. It is ob- Served that the Standard maintains a qualified reserve; and that the Post is silent. The public is mystified. Conjecture has endeavoured. to assign motives for the report, and to guess at its probable truth. That the Times should have been hoaxed is improbable ; but how far Lord Derby is pledged— whether he will retract, or disavow, or avow and fulfil—are ques- tions dictated by curiosity, and unanswered. The whole affair at present is enveloped in mist, and is hardly worth the discussion that has been expended on it ; since no one imagines that Lord Derby, if pledged at all, is really interested in the subject except as a hobby of certain friends whom he might like to conciliate ra- ther than estrange. A much more tangible fact for the week, in connexion with Church affairs, is the final judgment of the Bishop of Rochester on the case of the Reverend Robert Whiston, who had been suspended front his duties as Head Heater of Rochester Grammar School, by the Dean and Chapter, for publishing a pamphlet accusing that body of misconduct in regard to Cathedral trusts. His book is pronounced to he "libellous," but he is excused as having been misled by high legal authority ! He is reinstated, but told that he cannot recover arrears of solar , nor publish any more of his pam- phlet. The, contradictory ju ment is a compromise : the only precedent which occurs to us or such a thing as a judicial com- promise is the halting judgment occasionally dealt out for justice in some of the Police Courts.
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