THE KENSINGTON PROPAGANDIST CONTROVERSY.
[To THE EDITOR OF TRH " SPECTATOR."] SIB,—May I call your attention to a fact which you seem, in part at least, to have overlooked in your article with the above heading in the Spectator of November 13th ? You speak as though the secrecy of the wife's admission were the one grievance of the "Staunch Churchman," and you term the Cardinal's letters "shifty," and say that they "do not meet the main issue, but slide off into generalities of very little relevance to the case." May I point out that, although in his published letter to the Globe the " Staunch Churchman " is content to dwell almost exclusively on the secrecy observed in the matter, in the corre- spondence submitted to the Cardinal there are clearly two grievances,—(1), his wife's reception without his sanction ; (2), the secrecy observed? The first and second questions in his first letter to Mr. Moore, and the second question in his second letter to the Cardinal, deal exclusively with the first-named grievance. The Cardinal's replies, then—" no father or husband can take away the liberty of conscience which God gives to us all," and " no human will could come between her conscience and God "—far from being, as you term them, "irrelevant abstractions " or "propositions " which no one " denied," were statements of principles which the " Staunch Churchman's " first grievance clearly denied, and were direct answers to his ques- tions. No doubt the Cardinal might have said, simply and bluntly, "Your sanction is not required ; " but because he preferred the less aggressive method of stating the common-sense principle on which this view is based, it seems strange to call his course " shifty." We do not always consider it " shifty " to prefer persuasion to violence. As to the second grievance, again, how was he evasive ? He plainly condemned secrecy as a.rule, but refused, without fuller information, to give a final judgment in the particular case. Surely the degree of secrecy and the degree of tyranny exercised by the husband—questions as to which the correspondence told the Cardinal little or nothing—had to be considered before he gave an opinion which must necessarily be carefully formed from the weight attaching to his ecclesiastical position ? Is is not folly rather than frankness to give a decision which is to some extent final, when only half the facts of the
case are known F—I am, Sir, &c., WILFRID WARD.
[We believe the term " shifty " was much too strong, and withdraw it. But we cannot admire the generalities by which a direct reply on the question of secrecy was evaded.—ED. Spectator.]
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