2 JULY 1898, Page 2

The Times of Monday publishes a letter from Canon Knox

Little, which may serve as a useftil warning to Sir William Harcourt against trying to make political capital out of ecclesiastical disputes. The Canon threatens the Liberal party with the secession of all Liberal clergymen indignant at Sir William Harcourt's statement that thousands of them are false to their ordination vows. He gives Sir William the "lie direct," and adds :—" I will not go the length of my friend, Lord Halifax, as he is reported, and say that Sir William Harcourt said what he knew to be untrue '; I am not so. sure of that. The right hon. gentleman is plunged in such a depth of abysmal ignorance, he has got into the habit for so- long of saying what he thinks may politically pay,' that have no doubt the lines between truth and falsehood are so deplorably blurred in his mind on such subjects that he really does not know what is true and what is not true." How theological controversy spoils men's manners! It transforms Sir William Harcourt from a polished, though pugnacious, advocate into a bully ; it turns good Mr. Samuel Smith into an honest Titus Oates—if that is thinkable—and it makes- Canons as sardonic as if they were Archbishops of Canterbury-