Yesterday week the Lord Chancellor delivered the judgment of the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on the dispute whether or not a Wesleyan minister is entitled to describe himself as " Reverend " on a tombstone in an English churchyard ? Lord Cairns made short work of it. The question was whether the in- eumbent's objection to applying the title of " Reverend " to -71Yealeyan minister was an objection sufficient to justify is refusal to issue a faculty for the erection of the tombstone. The Court was clearly of opinion that it was not. ' Reverend ' has, in old times, been applied to women, and to laymen who had no spiritual functions at alL The judgment assumed, without arguing, that there is no discretion vested in the clergyman, such as Sir R. Phillimore supposed, to refuse such a faculty, without assigning adequate reasons for re- fusing it. The only point to decide was whether any such adequate
reason was given or not, and it decided this in the negative. In short, the effect produced by Lord Cairns' brief and pithy decision was that of a cobweb disappearing before a good sound broom. Before you could rub your eyes, the clerical gossamer had vanished.
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