[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
was glad to find, in the Spectator of July 26th, that Mr. Stephens had raised a voice of protest against what seemed to me the strange inaccuracies of your article on Lord Hartington's "Church Extension" speech ; and if you will forgive me for plain speaking, your second article, in answer to Mr. Stephens, appears to me to contain a repetition of the fallacies of the first, without much attempt at answering your correspondent. I have a great respect both for Lord Hartington and the Spectator, because I believe both to have the courage of their convictions, and not to hesitate to avow them, even when that avowal involves the hardest trial of political life,— a breach with ancient friends and allies. But I cannot there- fore subscribe to fallacious views of history, even when propounded on such authority.
Your arguments in the article of July 26th are mainly these :—(1.) That the Irish Church Act has changed the con- dition of things as to Church endowments. (2.) That it is better to admit that the endowments of the Church come from the State, because on that hypothesis the State is less likely to deal roughly with them. Added to which there is the un-
historical argument (as I venture to call it) that endowments given to the unreformed Church cannot be safely claimed by the reformed Church as her own ; also that endowments given by "old State and Church men" might not have been given to the existing Church of England. Surely, Sir, the answer to all these arguments is that they are not founded on fact.
No Act of Parliament can alter historical truth, and if, as we believe, the endowments of the Church of England were not given her by the State, no amount of Irish Church Acts can prove that they were so given.
The Irish Church Act may have been right, or (as I believe) wrong, but it cannot make that true which was untrue. And then surely it is a strange contention for such a paper as the Spectator, that we had better accept what we believe to be a false view of history, lest we should suffer the loss of wordly goods. In addition to which, it would not appear that the pre- cedent of the Irish Church was very encouraging to the sacri- fice of historic truth.
Lastly, the admission that the Church of England is not one and continuous, is surely as dangerous as it is inaccurate, and Churchmen who would make such an admission would deserve to suffer defeat at the hands of the Liberationists. I feel the less scruple in putting these views strongly before yourself and your readers, because I have the assurance that the view I take of the position of the Church of England is the view which has been publicly taken by men so far removed from Tory bias. as Mr. Gladstone, Lord Selborne, and Professor Freeman.—
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