[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:1
think the writer of the letter on "The Church and the Clergy" in the Spectator of the 26th ult. has exaggerated the degree in which " the clergy and the Church have become inve- terately identified in the popular mind." I suppose the Disestab- lished Church of Ireland must be very like the Established Church of England in most ways, and when disestablishment compelled our Church to provide for its own organisation, the right of the laity to an equal voice with the clergy in all questions of government, discipline, and doctrine was claimed and allowed as a matter of course, without a protest, except a faint one here and there from some eccentric clergyman. Moreover, among us the word churchman, which in the last century meant clergyman, has come to mean church member, and the feminine form church- woman is in use, though it cannot be considered classical. —I am,
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