[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—As your columns of last week were as much crowded with letters on the Voysey Judgment as those of the Guardian with letters on the Purchas Judgment, it may be worth while to ask the attention of your readers to a letter which I have written to the Guardian this week, on the latter judgment, which, mutatis mutandis, applies equally or rather with still greater force to the former judgment. Whatever difficulty exists in carrying out the Purchas judgment, exists to at least as great a degree in the Voysey judgment. Archbishops, bishops, deans, canons, clergy are affected by one as by the other, if any of them are affected by either ; and I cannot but suppose that, framed as these two judg- menta are, the general effect is equally limited in both cases.
And the practical influence in both cases is not to attempt to overthrow the Court of Appeal or the Church of England, which secure a far larger amount of liberty on these matters (see that remarkable book lately published, "Reasons for Returning to the Church of England," by a distinguished Roman Catholic) than could be secured elsewhere or by other means, but to infuse a wide and deeper sense of the absurdity of such legal prosecutions in matters which are either too deep or too trivial to be reached by mere technical deci- ons such as those which have called forth
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