PERSECUTION AND PROSECUTION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1
SIR,—It may strengthen your argument in contention with Canon Liddon, if you will permit me to give a direct reply to his statement,—" The proceedings by which Mr. Voysey was deprived of his benefice must at the time have appeared to Mr. Voysey himself in the light of a persecution." I say at once that I never once regarded those legal proceedings in that light, nor felt myself aggrieved at the very natural and justifiable action which was taken against me for heresy. There was, however, one solitary exception to this acquiescence. It was when, by a manifest stretch of the terms of the Act, the Arch- bishop of York inhibited me from performing divine service, pendente lite, —an extreme act of severity never before exercised but in cases of flagrant immorality. This " numbering " of me " with the transgressors " I did feel to be an act of persecution ; yet, nevertheless, I yielded without a word, much less a kick, against episcopal authority. But while I call this " persecution," I must say further, I felt no resentment towards the Archbishop, because I knew that he had been goaded into it by the English Church Union and the Church Association conjointly. I desire to point out to Canon Liddon that, instead of resisting and trying to evade the legal processes against me, I did all I could to facilitate them, and to save my prosecutors needless expense. And I did so entirely in order not to bring discredit on the cause for which I had placed myself in jeopardy. To me it would have been disgraceful to misbehave myself as a citizen, and to treat the law of the land even with disrespect.
I cannot too warmly thank you, Sir, for making so prominent the real state of the case as regards Mr. Dale's imprisonment.
This is not a case of conscience, but of bad citizenship. The same vast machinery which gives protection and safety to Mr. Dale and his family has ordered him to abstain from certain acts as a clergyman. So long as he claims its protection, it is his duty to God to obey its plain directions. At a time like this, when lawlessness is seething amongst our people, and has burst forth in dangerous force over in Ireland, it is simply shocking, and not to be endured, that clergymen should be setting the law at defiance, and exhibiting before the eyes of the disaffected examples of open rebellion. If ever my own history comes to be written, modern persecution in some of its worst forms will be set forth in its true colours; but never will it be said by me, or any of my friends, that a legal prosecution, conducted and executed in a perfectly legal manner, was, in any true sense of the word, "persecution."
I am sorry Mr. Dale is in prison ; I am still more sorry that no good method has yet been devised to confine sacerdotal pre- tensions to the harmless sphere of words, and to prevent men from acting under the absurd delusion that the priest is above the King, and the Church above the State.—I am, Sir, &c., Camden House, Dulwich, November 16th. CHARLES VOYSEY.
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