Lord Carnarvon has lost his Bill for granting greater facilities:
to public worship. It had passed the Commons, but though supported by both Archbishops, it was thrown out in the Peers. by68 to 52. With a little amendment it would have remedied. the main grievance of the Church, the inability of a large parish affronted by the preaching of a Ritualist, an Evangelical, or a dotard, to elect a clergyman of their own, and with the Bishop's consent, institute him in a chapel of ease,—all, of course, at their own expense. There seems no real objection to the Bill, except the number of applicants to be considered sufficient. This Lord Carnarvon fixes at 25, whereas it should certainly not be less. than a fifth of the Church-of-England men in the parish or dis- trict, but that might have been amended in Committee. As a matter of fact, the Bill would only have worked in extreme cases, as Church-of-England men dislike paying their clergyman, but it is in those extreme cases it is wanted. Lord Shaftesbury, how- ever, being well aware that Evangelicals get most of the great churches, saw in the Bill the forerunner of disestablishment, and succeeded in throwing it out. The simple consequence is that discontented parishioners build a chapel of their own, call them- selves by a distinct name, and are lost to the Church thence- forward for ever.
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