27 JUNE 1868, Page 10

THE LAWN SLEEVES OF SPEECH.

THE Record, which has long been really stupid,—without any sign of either good or evil passions,—has warmed up into quite a wholesome rage with ourselves for presuming to think that in a particular case a bishop (of what it thinks the right way of thinking) had shown himself a goose. Dr. Waldegrave, Bishop of Carlisle, had, as our readers know, cited what Cardinal Panzani did in Charles I.'s time as a warning of the dreadful power of the Jesuits in England at the present moment,—which we venture to think and call decidedly silly,—since, even if the Jesuits be the same, they have got so very different an English world to act upon, that their power now is probably not greater here than the power of the Evangelical Alliance, or even perhaps the power of the Record itself. (We wrote carelessly, by the way, but only on recurring to Dr. Waldegrave's foolish remark last week, of the right reverend prelate as Bishop of Durham, instead of Carlisle, a slip of the pen which the Record regards as proving that we cannot "cloak our ignorance of bishops or the dullness of our malignant prejudices I" Is it a "malignant prejudice" to confuse the bishopric of Durham for a moment with the bishopric of Carlisle ?) However, we do not return to the subject to de- fend ourselves against the rage of the Record, which always seems to as healthier and more natural in a rage than when it aims at the unmeaning sobriety it has affected of late. We know nothing at all about Dr. Waldegrave except this particular speech of his, and for anything we know he may be,—barring that speech, —as wise as the Record supposes him. But we do want to know why it is thought flippant to pass a very obvious criticism on a bishop, which no one would think for a moment flippant if passed on any other equally well educated man, say, a barrister or a jour- nalist. If we had said of any barrister who had split hairs to no purpose after the fashion of a special pleader, that he had spoken like a barrister and a goose,' no one would have held up horror- stricken hands over our levity ; nor would any one have dreamt that we meant to intimate that all barristers were geese. Or, if criticizing a journalist's insane reliance on that abstract power called 'public opinion,' any one had said that such and such a writer spoke ' like a journalist and a goose,' no one would have supposed for a moment that any disrespectful description of the whole class of journalists had been intended. But either there is some special sensitiveness as to the calibre of men chosen for the Episcopal Bench,—or, and this is, we suppose, the real gist of the matter,—there is an idea that a bishop should be officially exempt not, perhaps, from folly, but from any liability to have his folly commented upon ; that his words and actions are sacred from all fresh and natural criticism, —that his is a consecrated life, which should be protected by its lawn from all the accidents of rapid or caustic discussion.

For our own parts, we think that any office at all protected by precedent in this way from the natural sharpnesaes of straight- forward impressions, is in a very unhappy position, and that this is especially the case where the office is one of moral and religious influence. The Record says frankly (or rather does not say as frankly as it should, but with that circumbendibus which does not soften the meaning and does dilute it) that the present writer is a goose—" we will not assert " (i.e., we will) " that the writer argues like a Spectator and a goose,"—and we should be very sorry indeed not to be liable to sharp assaults of this sort from papers which we respect much more than the Record. It is liability of this kind which, to some extent, curbs the "quack-

ing " tendency in journalists, from which, we suppose, we are no more exempt than others. Bat if this liability to sharp and at times impulsive criticism is good for one set of moral censors, why not for another? We maintain that if there were any papers which could feel that all their bad arguments were in a manner consecrated, and that no one would take an impatient fling at them, those papers would be the moat unreal and empty papers published. We do not at all admire flippancy,—that is, a deliberate lowering of the tone of dealing with high or earnest convictions. But we do believe that half the value of free speech is lost by the necessity for translating natural and sharp impressions of any class of men's utterances into a ceremonious and deferential form of commentary, which expresses no one's real meaning, and never wakens up any one to defend himself. There is a form of sneer which is really flippant and degrading to controversy ; but there is also a form of genuine impatience at nonsense, or what seems such, which is not flippancy, but of the very heart of sincere discussion. The most intimate friends in the most real arguments never hesitate to use the most natural and lively modes of stripping a mere form of speech of its plausible outside, and the same freedom is (very wisely) used by the different organs of opinion towards each other. Of all other guides of o pinion, Bishops can least afford to be exempted from this sort of natural and straightforward criticism. They seem to most men in peculiar danger of mistaking consecration for a process which invsts their most superficial ideas with a kind of dignity & their own. There is,—except with the wisest and noblest among them,—a sort of rustle of petticoats about their language which deprives it of half its influence, and, what is worse, infects their own minds with a tone of spurious dignity. We are quite aware that there is an opposite danger threatening journalists, to which, it may be, we are ourselves specially liable,—the danger, we mean, of missing real substance and meaning in the too great impatience excited by what seems loretension of form. This is no doubt the real vice of flip- pancy, from which we are very far from claiming exemption. It is quite as -mischievous in its way, no doubt, as the vice of formalism, and perhaps is a greater danger to popular literature, .since a tone of contempt eats away the heart of all high argument. We admit the difficulty of drawing the line between impatience at what seems pretentious and empty verbiage, and real flippancy, which assumes that what really has a good and painstaking mean- ing is only pretentious and empty verbiage. Still even this cha- racteristic danger of journalism is not greater and graver of its kind than the characteristic danger of such a class of moral and religious censors as is formed by the Bishops, and we doubt if they -are nearly as much alive to their danger as we are to ours,— simply for this reason,—that they live a protectedlife, protected by that false conventionalism, as we hold it, which treats their speech as in some measure consecrated,—while journalists, when they are .conceited or flippant, or treat a real and weighty argument with foolish contempt, are set right at once by a chorus of keen critics, who are not in the least disposed to spare them.

Now, we have a very real respect for the Episcopal office, and for a few amongst those who fill it; but we believe nine out of

t en Bishops would be the better for realizing every day that their minds are no more protected against error, and bigotry, and false analogy, and violent prejudice, than the minds of ordinary laymen. Consecration means no more,—except to very High Churchmen,—

t han a special symbol of the divine calling to the duties they undertake, which holds as good for every Sunday-school teacher, and indeed every shopkeeper, farmer, manufacturer, soldier, -editor, or other person who is in earnest in his work, as for the bishop. But only bishops seem to feel as if the emptiest words on their tongue were consecrated, which has in fact the effect of specially diminishing the real consecration of their lives. They half think that ordinary strictures directed .against them are " profane," though if directed against an ordinary lecturer, or a Member of Parliament, or even a Peer, no one would be in any degree scandalized. And not only do they think so, but others think it for them. And hence the profound unreality of so much that bishops do and say. If what we may call in com- parison the familiar ' shirt-sleeve ' language of ordinary journalists is too apt to break down in them the reverence of mind which looks for depth and wisdom in anything that is not very obviously shallow and foolish, the lawn sleeves which rustle about the minds, even more than the persons, of so many bishops, are in the utmost danger of investing their thoughts, however ordinary or less than ordinary, with an oracular weight in their own minds which it is of the utmost importance to the community that they should see to be imaginary and factitious. If we had many

bishops with a real sense of a divine calling,—as distinguished from their magical once,—there would be no danger of this sort. Nothing, as we see in St. Paul, does so much to strip a man's own thoughts to his own heart of any factitious sacredness, as a real belief that some of his thoughts come from above and are higher than any be could have thought without divine help. But this is as true every bit of a politician or a teacher, or even the humblest schoolboy or schoolgirl, who can feel the same profound sense of the difference between their own thoughts and those which are not their own, as of a bishop. What besets a bishop without this strong inward feeling is the special danger of fancying that his office makes all his moat common-place ideas in a manner divine. We submit that the beat bishops are those who are most entirely free from this nonsense, and who would feel it quite as possible that they might, on certain occasions, speak " like a goose," as ordinary men, including the present writer, for instance, would feel. Nobody would suspect the wise, sagacious, practical Bishop of London, or the clear, lucid-minded Bishop of St. David's of fancying that there was any profaneness in attributing to them the same liability to foolish misconceptions into which it is human to fall. There is a false and conventional sort of respect for bishops which is as bad for the order as it is artificial in the public. Nothing really injures the Episcopal Bench more than the sense of being clothed with an entirely imaginary sacredness, which gives pom- pousness instead of earnestness to their manner, and inflates their speech with a windy negligence of sifting, testing, and verifying processes of thought. If everybody would treat bishops as ordinary human beings, bishops would get, because they would deserve, more real respect than the public at present feels for them, though not perhaps more than it affects to feel.