A joint committee appointed by the benches of each of
the four Inns of Court have decided by a majority of one (12 to 11) that ordained clergymen shall not in future be excluded from the Bar.
The great authority in favour of the exclusion was Sir R. Philli- more (Middle Temple), while Mr. J. A. Stephens, of Gray's Inn, argued the question on the liberal side. The change is ahenelicial one in every respect, and may have wider results than we yet see. Sup- pose, in these days in which theology is no longer a monopoly of the clergy, barristers as brilliant as the Attorney-General should choose also to take orders, not for the cure of souls, but for the purpose of occasionally using in the pulpit their great power of discursive argument and practical eloquence. Numbers of men of the world might be impressed by a sermon from a future Sir Roundel' Palmer who would never go to hear one of the clerical caste.
