Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/109

 1899.] The Church Discipline Bill. [101

bishops to a lay tribunal, that legislation would be strenuously and uncompromisingly resisted. Lord H. Cecil went on to illus- trate with great force, by appeal to the language of the Prayer- book, the utter incompatibility of the procedure contemplated under Mr. M'Arthur's bill with the view of the office of a bishop which commended itself to the authors of the reformation settlement in this country. Neither was it conformable to the idea of the royal supremacy. The true remedy for present troubles was to be found in an appeal to an authority which the whole High Church party looked to — the authority of the bishops. That authority was being exercised, and with no common measure of success, against what was illegal. He believed the archbishops, in the tribunal they had set up, would come to a wise and an independent decision, and he had not the leastf doubt the overwhelming mass of the High Church clergy and laity would defer to that decision whatever it might be. Sir Wm. Harcourt did not add much help to either side by his speech ; but he admitted that the bishops were or ought to be before all others the guardians of the law of the Church ; the question was whether they had done their duty in that capacity. He did not find much evidence to answer that question in the affirmative. The bill before them contained a good deal in which he could not concur at all, but at all events it asserted the necessity of action, and it had the merit of providing a cheap form of procedure. He cordially agreed, too, in the necessity of removing the veto or, at all events, limiting it to the repression of merely trivial and vexatious prosecutions. If only because the bill did that much he should vote for the second reading.

Mr. Balfour wound up the debate with an appeal to the House to reject the bill by an overwhelming majority. He defended the bishops from the charge of doing nothing to vindi- cate the law or to establish harmony in the Church, and he anticipated good results from the Lambeth tribunal. The action of the bishops would, he hoped, render further legislation unnecessary. There must, he admitted, be a court of law some- where in the background, for no spiritual organisation could possibly flourish on litigation. " Of this," he continued, " I am sure, that if time should show that the existing organisation of the Church cannot secure that obedience which exists in the body of every communion, whatever its character, and if the remedy is such as to destroy the practical episcopal character of the Church, then I think that will be the beginning of the end of the Church of England/ ' He did not, however, anticipate any such results, but believed, on the contrary, that the existing law, as administered by the present episcopate, would be found sufficient. Mr. Balfour ended his speech by an eloquent declara- tion that if the Church was to remain the Church of the great majority of Englishmen, it must also remain the institution that was . purified and remodelled at the reformation. The House then divided, and although both the tellers were from the