The Bishops' Resignation Bill was read a second time in
the House of Lords on Tuesday, ensuring at least /2,000 a year to the retiring Bishop, besides all the temporalities and other emolu- ments, and in certain cases the episcopal palaces. Lord Carnarvon -objected to the magnitude of the pension assigned to the retired Bishops not without reason. We remarked last week on the view apparently taken by some of the Bishops of the text, "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when se fail they may receive you into everlasting habitations," and here is another example of it. Church lives, says Mr. Gladstone, are worth 7 per cent. more in the market than other lives. Bishops' lives, if we may judge from certain conspicuous instances, in the diocese of Exeter, Chichester, and others, are probably -worth a still higher per-centage than ordinary clerical lives, And the Bishops won't vote for the Bill unless it secures them, when they fail, not exactly everlasting habitations, but the -episcopal palaces and a good big annuity to keep them up. Really, with every respect for one or two Bishops, is there any great injustice in the yearning one sometimes hears expressed for a live Anglican Bishop, warranted generous, poor, and disinterested both for his order and for himself?
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