.We have said something in another column of the rather
un- satisfactory tone adopted by some of the Clergy in discussing the programme of the Disestablishment party. We must, how- ever, wholly exempt the Archbishop of Canterbury from any reproach of the kind. In his Visitation address, on Wednesday, he struck the very note for which we have hitherto been listening almost in vain. He did trust, he said, "that of whomsoever it might be true, it would not be true of Churchmen, that they tried by any oppression or misstatements to command votes which they had no right to coramand." He told a story of some clergyman's wife who, on her visits, found all the agricul- tural labourers in favour of Disestablishment, but disinclined to give their reasons, -till at last, in the fourth or fifth cottage, the reason came out, the labourer saying, innocently," Well, mum, I know it is a pity, but it would be very convenient to have a cow, mum ; we do want a cow, mum." "But," said the Archbishop, "let no misconceptions, let nothing whatever induce Church- men to wring a vote out of any man improperly ; let them tell the truth, and nothing but the truth; and, above all, let them cultivate in all men the spirit of honesty and the spirit of knowledge." "There were some things which a clergyman ought not to enter upon, and which he could not enter upon without seeming to be a self-seeker and a lover of loaves and fishes." If the Archbishop had but added that the Clergy ought to enforce in the pulpit the moral wrong of trying to wring votes from others, he would have made what he said on this subject quite complete.
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