6 JANUARY 1883, Page 9

The Council of the Church Association have openly .06n= demned

the Bishop of London for his share in the arrangement which has transferred Mr. Mackonochie to St. Peter's, London Docks, and Mr. Suckling to St. Alban's, Holborn, and by implica- tion, of course, they condemn the late Archbishop of Canterbury for having on his death-bed initiated that arrangement. We can- not say that, from its point of view, the Church Association is wrong. That the whole transaction was one intended temporarily to evade the provisions of the ecclesiastical law as it has been laid down of late years, no candid man will deny. All that we say is, that when the injustice of that law is forced so strongly on the mind of so manly and simple a Broad Churchman as Archbishop Tait that all his dying thoughts were concentrated on the best way of escaping its provisions till there should be more chance of rectifying them, there must be a very strong primd facie case for the real existence of that injustice. We find no fault with the Church Association for persisting in its old view, in spite of Archbishop Tait's virtual recantation of all sympathy with it; but we do wish that those .who applaud Bishop Fraser for what he has lately done would openly condemn the late Archbishop and the Bishop of London for yielding to the con- viction that the Ritualists have been hardly dealt with, and ought to be protected, even by virtue of an evasion of the law, till some opportunity can be found for changing the law.