At the Manchester Diocesan Conference, a sitting was de- -voted
to the discussion of the course taken by the Bishop (Dr. Fraser) in relation to Mr. Green, the imprisoned Ritualist. From the Bishop's statement, it appears that Mr. Green acted most injudiciously. When the Bishop placed before bim the charges brought against him, he " absolutely declined," says the Bishop, 4` to look at the charges in the representation, and declined to place himself in my hands, or give up his practices." Smart- ing under the mortification of this very irrational "Non possum," the Bishop appears to have held it his duty to let the ease go forward to the legal tribunal, without concerning him- self for a clergyman who would not even take Unarm:hie to state his own case f ally to his own Bishop. And in the ordinary
way, that would, we think, have been a reasonable course. Under the peculiar circumstances of the case, however, when the three complaining parishioners did not, in point of fact, exist at all in Mr. Green's parish till one had been specially introduced for the occasion,—when, in fact, there was virtually a complete unanimity in the parish in Mr. Green's favour,—we think the Bishop made a mistake, and might well have been more generous and just to Mr. Green than Mr. Green was to himself. But Mr. Green's ostentatious display of ecclesiastical rigidity, just when he should have been most frank and confidential, furnishes the Bishop with a very telling excuse for what seems, nevertheless, a serious mistake.
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