MR. GLADSTONE, MR. MAURICE, AND DR. HAMPDEN.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—You call upon all Liberals to admire and be satisfied with the recently published letter of Mr. Gladstone to Bishop Hampden. I do admire that letter, and wish that there were many more such, not only from Prime Ministers, but from bishops and archbishops. But,—if you will allow me for a moment to look a gift-horse in the mouth,—you must permit me to remark that Mr. Glad- stone's letter suggests another reflection, not quite so agreeable. That penitence—so forcibly and eloquently expressed—not for an unjust act, but for an unjust intention conceived nearly twenty years before, has it borne corresponding fruits in later years?
When Mr. Gladstone signed an address to the two Primates of Canterbury and York in 1864, of the vaguest, most ambiguous kind, as a protest against " Essays and Reviews," it is curious that he should not have remembered the strict analogy of that act to the one which he had meditated, but not perpetrated, in 1836.
If Mr. Gladstone was so deeply moved by the semblance of injustice towards Professor Maurice as to raise from its grave the ghost of his intended misdeed against Dr. Hampden, may it not be asked whether in after years there has been no occasion on which be might have redressed the wrong done to that eminent and excellent man, who is still living and still working in comparative obscurity ? It is for these reasons that I must remain
A LIBERAL NOT ALTOGETIIER SATISFIED.
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