The Archbishop of Canterbury, in his address to the Diocesan
Conference of Canterbury last Saturday, was far too vague in what he said on the subject of the ritual prosecutions. What we want in our Archbishops and Bishops are leaders of Church opinion, not commentators who skilfully elicit the opinions of others. But this is just what our Archbishops and Bishops mostly are. His Grace of Canterbury is as genial and gracious a head of our Church as the Church ever had or could have ; but he is not as yet what we want, a Church statesman who listens to opinion only in order to guide it, and who is even prepared to sacrifice something of the universal esteem and liking with which he is regarded for the sake of giving to the Church clear counsels which may secure its future and its services to the people bolder and more effectual. On this question, for instance, of ritual prosecutions, the Archbishop hedges. He intimates that there should be more explicit com- prehension of different schools, in one sentence, and condemns by implication those who will not obey the law as it is, in the next, without suggesting either how far the limits of compre- hension should he extended, or where the sin of individual self- will in clergymen begins.
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