There was an odd incident at the conclusion of the
debate, when Mr. Hubbard (junior), M.P. for Buckingham, brandishing a large and highly gilt Prayer-book, as if it were a sort of enchanter's wand with which to appease the tumult and violent impatience of the House, put "a solemn question" to the Recorder, to this effect, as we understood him, whether he was not bound by the Prayer-book,—itself part of an Act of Parliament—to wait for the Rubrical revisions of Convocation, before enforcing the existing Rubric by a new Act of Parliament ? The Recorder of London did not give his young friend much satisfaction, answering rather contemptuously that Parliament must act quite independ- ently of Convocation; after which Mr. R. Gurney turned with much bitterness on Mr. Gladstone, and accused him of having, in writings not very old, lent his authority to the rebellious clergy who refuse to acknowledge the authority of our State-appointed Courts of Ecclesiastical Law. The Bill was then read a second time, with- out a division, in a full and very excited House, its critics and opponents clearly perceiving that the less the formal resistance
e to it, the more hope there would be of modifying its most Objectionable provitiott in Committee.
