Monday's Times contains a very able letter from the Bishop
of Winchester addressed to Lord Portsmouth in re- gard to an appeal for £20,000, beaded "Protestantism before Politics," and signed among others by Lord Portsmouth. In dealing with the allegation that the people had appealed to the Bishops in vain—i.e., that the Bishops habitually use their veto to stop prosecutions—the Bishop of Winchester states that he is now in the tenth year of his Episcopate, yet "during that time no Bishop in England, to the best of my knowledge or belief, has exercised the veto in any case whatever. Of living Bishops, only three have, I believe, ever exercised it, and one of these cases was a quarter of a century ago." It was not the Episcopal veto, " but the popular opinion of the Church as a whole (an opinion expressed as strenuously by Evangelicals as by High Church- men), which stayed Ritual prosecutions some fifteen years ago." The Bishop ends his letter with an appeal to those who are faithful to the Church's teaching to " unite on the one hand in discouraging disloyalty, from whatever aide it comes, and, on the other, from narrowing the legitimate comprehensiveness which is characteristic of the Church of England, Catholic and Reformed, and the legitimate variety of teaching and usage permissible within her pale." It is of course both easy and popular for partisans on both sides to abuse the Bishops as timid time-servers, and we are quite aware that it is considered a mark of a feeble and lukewarm nature to defend them. Nevertheless, we believe that when the dust of the present controversy has subsided, it will be generally recognised that they have done their duty wisely and well, and under circumstances of no little difficulty.
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