THE S. P. C. K. GRANT TO THE COLONY OF
NATAL.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR-"] SIR,—You will have seen that the result of the meeting of the Christian Knowledge Society has placed a grant of 2,000/. practically at the disposal of the Bishop of Capetown. On the one side the action was organized, the expenses of voters, I was told by one who said he knew it, paid, the whip applied unspar- ingly. On the other, there were a want of union and no previous concert.
I do not wish to speak of the decision thus arrived at. I may regret, as many others do, that the Society should seem to be com- mitted to one side in a quarrel with which it has no right to inter- fere; but the Society is not the Church of England, and we may believe that the money thus granted will not be productive—spent, as one may hope it will be, in churches, schools, and books—of unmixed evil. But after three hours of painful endurance, I am anxious to be allowed to enter a protest against the machinery by which these victories are obtained. About a fortnight ago I attended a meeting of Trades' Unions at Leeds. Some two or three thousand working men were present. I am obliged to confess, with shame and regret, that their sense of order, their self- restraint, their manliness and gentlemanliness of feeling were miles above anything that I could find in the clergy and excited young laymen who flocked to Lincoln's Inn Fields this afternoon. Interruptions, shouts, a clamorous refusal to listen to any one on the other side, the most entire absence of auy recognition of the ordinary rules of a public meeting, broken windows, and vehement gesticulations,—these were the features of a meeting of the venerable Society. It was simply a tumult like that at Ephesus, and there was no "town clerk" in the chair, with power to " appease " and courage to " dismiss " the assetubly.—I am, Sir, OUTIS.
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