13 AUGUST 1881, Page 3

So far as we understand. Lord Beauchamp's "Discharge of Contumacious

Prisoners' Bill," as he now prefers to call it, we think it one, as we have elsewhere explained, for the advantage of a particular man, and for the disadvantage of the Church. If this Bill passes, and makes it easier, as it may, to leave the Public Worship Act unrepealed and marevised, it will benefit Mr. Green, but injure the cause for which Mr. Green appeared.- to be so willing to suffer. To our mind, a martyr, particularly one of this rather mild kind, should stick to his guns till he gets the reward of his martyrdom; and in this case, the reward of Mr. Green's martyrdom would have been the breaking-down of the system which imprisoned him—a thoroughly consciec- Cons and hard-working Ritualist, who had his congregation -cordially with him—for observing the rubric of Edward VT. in spite of the decision in the Ridsdale- case that that rubric is now illegal. If'the scandal 'be removed by the present Bill, one of the most telling arguments against a very mischievous statute will be lost.