POLITICAL INJUSTICE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF TEE " SPECTATOR:] Sin,—When I read Mr. Frederic Harrison's remarkable letter in the Times on the abuse of the powers of Government by a nominally Republican Executive in France, for the purpose of discouraging and persecuting Republicans in every way, and of encouraging those who are openly or secretly, as Legitimists or Imperialists, plotting against the Republic, and above all, when I read his com- plaint of the judicial frauds for political ends, I at once said :— "I can give Mr. Harrison a parallel for everything he has here denounced, and on this side of the Channel too. Only the action affects religion rather than politics, and Ritualists, not Repub- licans, are the victims of deliberately planned injustice."
I will not trouble you now with multiplying instances, but surely here is a sufficiently close analogue of M. Bonnet Duverdier's imprisonment for illegal, seditious language and gestures, on the evidence of a police spy, contradicted by twelve gentlemen of character and position.
After the extraordinary ruling of the Privy Council in "Martin v. Mackonoehie," Mr. Mackonochie obeyed that ruling with precise, literal exactness. He was accused a second time before the Court with having disobeyed its finding, and that on the evidence of common spies and informers, hired for the purpose by the Church Association. I have seen the bill sent in for their services, and am speaking of what I know, not what I surmise. There was fully rebutting evidence, tendered by gentlemen of independent position and unblemished character, who were in St. Alban's Church on the days alleged as those on which the offence was committed. The judgment of the Court was as follows :-1. It had been proved that Mr. Mackonochie had not himself done the acts alleged by the prosecution. 2. There was a conflict of testimony (i.e., between the hired spies and gentlemen in the congregation) as to whether any of the curates had done them. 3. The Court was satisfied that if by any chance the curates had done them, it was inadvertently, and with no intentional dis- obedience. 4. That Mr. Mackonochie be suspended ab officio for three months for sanctioning what he did not do himself, what it was not proved that any one else had done, and what was ad- mitted to have been purely inadvertent and innocent, if it had been done. And the Judge who delivered this decision was Lord Hatherley I I may just add that it is actually made a formal charge in the text of this judgment against Mr. Mackonochie that he had been " scanning " the previous judgment against him with the view of strictly obeying it and no more, instead, 1 suppose, of reading into it all that he might imagine the Church Associa- tion and the Privy Council to have wished by it, and complying with it in that extended form. The parallel is completed when we remember that just as France is now a Republic, and yet Republicans alone suffer from the Government's hostility, so the Church of England, tested by its organisation and its Prayer.. book, is a High-Church body ; and yet it is only those who do try to keep as closely on the lines of the Prayer-book as they possibly can who are persecuted by Bishops and condemned by Judges, while the wildest licence in the direction of free-thought on the one hand, or of Nonconformity on the other, receives absolute impunity, if it be not actually rewarded with high preferment, even to deaneries and bishoprics.—I am, Sir, &c., RICHARD F. LITTLEDALE.
9 Red Lion Square, 'KC., November 18.
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