MR. MACKONOCHIE AND ARCHBISHOP TAIT.
THERE is something very touching in the correspondence between Archbishop Tait and Mr. Mackonochie. The picture it gives of the Archbishop's thoughts, as he grew less and less able to fix them steadily on public matters, dwelling mainly on the Ritual pivsecutions and the troubles and diffi- culties arising out of them, is one which those who loved him will be glad to have associated with the last memories of his long career. Smaller and weaker men than the Archbishop would have tried to forget these prosecu- tions. They had been, in a great measure, his own crea- tion, and the recollection that he had himself contributed in so large a measure to bring these troubles upon the Church, is one that a sick man might be excused for putting away from him. But the Archbishop knew that if he, more than any one else, had made the work of the Church Association easy in the past, so he, more than any one else, might make that work difficult in the future. The Archbishop was not earning the blessing of a peacemaker cheaply. Men in high positions will sometimes make fair-seeming proposals which they know will not he accepted,—which, perhaps, they would hardly make, if they thought that they would be accepted. But the Archbishop was not asking something that he could count upon Mr. Mackonochio's refusing. At any time, Mr. Mackono- chie would probably have hesitated long before rejecting such a request from " the supreme representative of our Lord Christ in all things spiritual in this land ;" but as the last prayer of an Archbishop who longed to do in death some part of what he would have done on a larger scale if he had lived, the suggestion came with exceptional force. Con- sequently, the Archbishop was well aware that what he asked would almost certainly be granted, and that when granted it would make his own legislation a dead-letter. A smaller man, we say, would have turned his mind away from the subject, in- stead of allowing it to dwell there. He would have pleased himself with the recollection that the burden of dealing with the Ritualist controversies might fairly be handed on to his successor, and that in his state of health he was no longer bound to set right with his own band mistakes which had been honestly made. The Archbishop did not so read his duty. Sickness only quickened his desire to undo his own error, and in the feebleness of approaching death that de- sire possessed him more and more. When the doctors had given him up and the outside world had become to him almost as nothing, he still daily asked Mr. Davidson whether there was any letter for him from Mr. Mackonochie, and when that letter came, it gave him a " feeling of thankfulness to God " which he could no longer express, except by the words as well as by the hand of another. Probably the last letter he dictated on pub- lic affairs was the letter to the Bishop of London in which he commended Mr. Mackonochie to his consideration, as having shown his readiness to promote " the highest interests of the Church, by sacrificing his individual feelings." That is not an exaggerated description of Mr. Mackonochie's part in the trans- action. To a man of his stern and resolute temper, there can be nothing so distasteful as even the appearance of surrender. Left to himself, be would, without doubt, have resisted Lord Pcnzanoe to the last, have proved the estimation in which he held his jurisdiction by suffering any penalty that he could inflict, and have borne deprivation with the same indifference with which he bore suspension. To be separated from St. Alban's and from the congregation which had stood by him so stoutly, not by the sentence of what he held to be a•usurping Court, but his own deliberate act, can be no light pain
to Mr. Mackonochie. He has not, as men so often do, put what he fancies due to himself, before the restoration of peace to the Church of England. What is the precise extent and nature of the respite which has thus been secured ? Until the Ritual Commission has made its report, it is complete. It not only disposes of the most famous of the prosecutions actually in progress, but it makes it certain that no other prosecution will obtain the necessary Episcopal consent. If Mr. Mackonochie's resignation had stood alone, it would have simply put an end to the par- ticular suit in Which he was engaged, He could have been prosecuted afresh, in what new parish he might have gone to ; and his successor at St. Alban's might have been prosecuted, if he had used the same ritual as he found there. It was not with Mr. Mackonochie only that the Archbishop had to deal. It was equally necessary that he should win over the Bishop of London, for without the consent of the Bishop of London, the Archbishop's search after peace might have borne no real fruit. A new prosecution might have been begun against Mr. Mackonochie at St. Peter's, London Docks ; and, to make things even, Mr. Suckling might have been prose- cuted at St. Alban's, Holborn. It is quite certain that in both churches the law will be disobeyed in the future, as in the past, and Lord Penzance would have had no choice but to pass sentence of deprivation on both offenders. But the Archbishop knew well enough that the Bishop of London's consent would not be given to any further prosecutions, and that without that consent no further prosecutions can be instituted. The Church Association is henceforth powerless in the Diocese of London. More than this, it is, in all probability, powerless in every diocese. This consequence follows upon the peculiar condi- tions under which the Archiepiscopal request was made. If the Archbishop had made it when he was in full health, or if ho had rallied again after making it, a Bishop might have held himself bound to take note of it only so far as he himself approved the transaction to which it pointed. Bishop Ryle, for example, would certainly not have refused to consent to a prosecution in Liverpool, because Bishop Jackson had refused his consent to a prosecution in London. It is a different matter when the Archbishop's last earthly act was, in substance, to request the Bishops to consent to no more prosecutions until some serious attempt has been made to bring the Ecclesiastical law into harmony with Ecclesiastical facts. A Bishop may doubt the propriety or the expediency of thus making the law of none effect, but he will hardly carry his scruples so far as to fly in the face of Archbishop Tait's last wishes. He may chafe under the obligation which they impose on him, but he will not openly repu- diate it. There will be no more Ritual prosecutions, until the circumstances of the situation have once more completely changed.
Nor will there, it is safe to say, be any more of that anti- Ritualist legislation with which Mr. Forwood vainly sought to tempt the Orangemen of Liverpool, when Episcopal consent to Ritual prosecutions is no longer to be had.; the only course that it will be open to the Church Association to pursue will be to apply to Parliament for such an amendment of the exist- ing law as shall enable them to dispense with such consent. It will not be difficult to construct a very plausible argument in defence of this proposal. Parliament, it may be said, could not have intended that the Bishops should be able to oppose an impassable barrier against all attempts to vindicate the law. It meant them to take into account any special reasons that there might be for thinking a prosecution unnecessary or vexatious— such, for example, as that the points in dispute had already been raised by another case then pending—but not to come to a general resolution that it was not desirable that the law should be enforced. Ordinarily speaking, a common-sense argument of this kind would be sure to be listened to. But the notion of Ritual peace being secured by a few words dictated from the dying-bed of an Archbishop of Canterbury, is just the thing to seize the public imagination. No Government will now be likely to give a Bill to facilitate Ritualist prosecutions any help which they can deny it ; and if by some unexpected chance such a measure should slip through the House of Commons, it would certainly be shelved at the instance of the Bishops in the House of Lords. We do not say, indeed, that this singular and irregular state of things can go on for ever. But there is no need that it should go on for ever. The Archbishop's own letters fix a term after which the whole question can be reviewed,—the conclusion of the labours of the Ecclesiastical Courts Commission. The report of this body may not itself contribute much to the final settlement of the controversy. But it will give the Bishops an opportunity of honestly addressing themselves to the pro- blem how to make the Church of England so comprehensive
as to itclude Ritualists and non-Ritualists, while giving each adequate guarantees against encroachment on the part of the other. To this end a truce was necessary, before all things. Much might be done, if fresh deprivations, with all the mischiefs that must follow from them, could be staved off. Nothing could be done, if they were to go on. Archbishop Tait, by his last conscious act, has brought about this indispens- able prelude to a settlement. We believe that this will one day be recognised as forming his best and most lasting title to public gratitude.
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