Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/28

 20] ENGLISH HISTOEY. [fed.

that many of the concessions obtained from China were over- valued, he expressed his belief that if the policy of the " open door" were accepted by other nations it would act as the most .potent solvent of international rivalries. His most effec- tive criticism, however, was directed against Lord Salisbury's estimate of the value of Wei-hai-wei by evidence of the moral support we had given to China. " The moral support had taken the form of a revolution at Pekin and the deposition of the Emperor of China/' After a few other remarks the amend- ment was withdrawn, its supporters being unwilling to challenge a division.

On the following day (Feb. 9) the crisis in the Church occupied the attention of both Houses. In the House of Lords the Bishop of Winchester (Dr. Eandall Davidson) called attention to "statements lately made respecting the action of the bishops in dealing with irregularities in public worship." According to Sir Wm. Harcourt, he observed, the episcopal veto had been systematically used to cover the most flagrant breaches of the law. As a matter of fact, with three trifling but significant exceptions, no living bishop had in any instance ever exercised that veto at all. Twenty-three years previously a case had been vetoed by the then Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol (Dr. Ellicott) on the ground that the facts which were in dispute were at the moment sub judice in the courts of law ; and the next case was in 1886, when the Bishop of Exeter (Dr. Bicker- steth) exercised his right of veto in a case which, as far as the records showed, seemed to have been of a somewhat insignificant character. The third case in which the veto was exercised was by the Bishop of London (then Dr. Temple) in the case about the reredos in St. Paul's Cathedral. The matter had been already, he considered, decided in a court of law, and further litigation was undesirable. It had also been said that, short of exercising the veto, the bishops had come to an agreement to allow no case to go forward. There had been no such agreement, though he admitted that one bishop (Dr. Ryle of Liverpool) had expressed his intention never again to sanction a prosecution. In truth prosecutions had ceased because the Church at large — Low as well as High — was against them.

Lord Kinnaird, who had presided at the Albert Hall meeting, declared that some action on the part of the bishops was necessary, and gave a number of figures in support of his con- tention that illegal practices were greatly on the increase, and contended that the only subjects of the Crown precluded from seeking redress from the law were the aggrieved members of the Church of England. The Bishop of London (Dr. Creighton) thought Sir Wm. Harcourt's letters more amusing than instruc- tive. The picture they drew was that of a Church which was entirely riddled by the insidious treachery of a traitorous crew, which was mismanaged by a body of craven and feeble-minded bishops, while in the middle of this universal disaster there