On Monday night, the Archbishop of Canterbury moved an address
to her Majesty asking her to appoint a Royal Com- mission to "inquire into the constitution and working of the Ecclesiastical Courts, as created or modified under the Reforma- tion Statutes of the 24th and :15th years of Henry VIII., and any subsequent Acts." It did not appear very clearly from the Archbishop's speech what he hoped that this Commission might result in. He had no intention, he said, of bringing back "the Roman Mass, or any of the things characteristic of Rome," but "they were still anxious that there should be no undue want of toleration as to things which were perfectly innocent, and which the folly of certain heated partisans might mistake 'for a return to things as they existed before the Reformation." Lord Oranmore and Browne made one of his foolish speeches against the Commission, and the Bishop of Peterborough a very able one in its favour, on which we have said enough elsewhere ; bat it is obvious that the chief use of the Commission is to gain time, and to obtain a fair excuse for stopping prosecutions against Ritualists till after the Commis- sion reports. Whenever it does report, unless a strong Ad- ministration be in office, and be willing to take the matter into its own hands, things will revert to their present confused con- dition.
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