THE INTERIOR OF CONVOCATION.
EXTERNALLY the Lower House of Convocation is one of the most picturesque of English institutions. Meeting in the old oak-wainscoted Jerusalem Chamber, and meeting always in full costume, the scarlet cloaks of the Doctors and the crimson hoods of the Masters of Arts dot the academical dress of the assembly with frequent and brilliant spots of colour, while the religions character of the subjects usually debated, and the air of combined culture and practical authority which so many of these ecelesiasties—who are usually, no doubt, justices of the peace, and not unfrequently constitutional sovereigns of their various parishes—carry in their faces, give to the assembly, small as it is, a distinction of ensemble much beyond that even of the House of Lords. There is something at first a little medireval both in the Chamber itself—which is not, however, very ancient—and the assembly it contains. The general expression and cast of countenance, while usually those of country gentlemen, have in them much more of the abstract than belongs to the faces of country Squires in the House of Commons or country Peers in the House of Lords. There is the mark of rather cut-and- dried ideas, no doubt, but still of habitual familiarity with ideas, on almost all present. Dictatorial rather than opinion- ated, with the rigidity of expression caused by the reiterated inculcation of a limited number of specific truths not chosen by them, but chosen for them, the majority of the faces in Convocation exhibit at once the deep fixed lines expressive of a doctrinal foundation for their duties, and also the practical decision and petty authority of men who are daily accustomed to inquire after old Sally's rheumatism, to scold Thomas for his visits to the public-house, to keep an eye on the glebe and church repairs and the management of the school, and to sentence poachers and other offenders against established authority. In one face the dogmatic ground-plan of the character is more prominent, in another the administrative practical habits, but nowhere does the general impression that a clergyman is midway between men and women strike with less semblance of truth than in the general aspect of the Lower House of Convocation. Dry authority is perhaps the most prominent feature in the type of faces there assembled,—dry authority sometimes mixed with a certain wist- ful perplexity, sometimes, too, with sacerdotal pride, or with a thin-lipped accuracy of culture ; sometimes, again, but rarely, with a large and genial face of benevolence, but scarcely ever alloyed with that obvious and superficial coarseness of nature which seems so common in both Houses of Parliament, Peers and Commons alike. The impression of "grave and reverend signers,"
more dogmatic than potent, but with the air of saying to one in- ferior, 'go,' and to another, 'come,' is the first impression they pro- duce. They strike you as a class, and a class of which the mem- bers are closely assimilated by common influences and occupations, —a cultivated class,—a class with certain fixed lines of thought graven deep into them, a class with something abstract at the bottom and much concrete simplicity of life at the top,—but not a meditative class, a class not giving many signs of pliant and elastic intellectual sympathies,—a class in the midst of which a mobile, sweet, and anxious face like the Dean of Westminster's, that seems to vibrate with every modern influence, looks insulated and strange.
Yet in connection with this general impression of close similarity of conditions and of a strong common character about the clergy of the Lower House of Convocation, which both the effective costume and the expression of the clerical faces give, nothing strikes a new observer more than the looseness of texture in the assembly, the independent and highly individualistic character of the atoms which constitute the body. Sometimes, as in the House of Commons, and, in a less degree, in the House of Lords, elements
exceedingly various in origin, and exceedingly different in kind or type, seem to make up an organic whole, while in other cases, as in Convocation, elements of very similar origin, and very near each other in kind or type, make up no organic whole. In fact, the chemical affinity between elements of different nature is usually closer than the mechanical cohesion of elements of the same nature. And the absence of any feeling of corporate unity in Convocation is no doubt partly ace ounted for by the specially didactic duties of those who compose it. Teachers seldom fall easily together into a body of any kind. They are accustomed to be heads of other bodies, and a plurality of heads are not easily united in any single organization. In Convocation each man speaks for himself, and for himself only, and though there is often a parallelism in the thoughts which are spoken, there is no convergence, no combination, no sense of working together for a common purpose. Even the speaking itself shows this. The speaking is often very good, but the more eloquent it is, the more like a great public speech, the more unnatural it seems. There is not enough common life and purpose in Convocation to make any great speech seem the expression of that life and purpose. There is an effect of cold-bloodedness about oratory in Convocation. A man must either excite himself, or be calm, sensible, judiciou.s. When a reverend gentleman talks of the invitation of laity to as Anglican Council as "stabbing his mother to the heart," and that sort of thing, the effect produced on the mind is like that on Mrs. Poyser by a dog sitting up on its hind legs to beg with no human being by to see. It sounds unnatural ; there is no excuse for it; no one is moved by it ; the applause, if there be any, is mechanical, as of ecclesiastics performing a duty ; and every one is relieved when somebody else gets up, and begins to talk practically and cautiously, with conversational familiarity. Theme prepared explosions of eloquence are as artificial as Burke's melodramatic cast- ing of a dagger on the floor of the House of Commons, or Mr. Dis- raeli's first affected and theatrical address to it, which came to so untimely an end. Convocation has no sufficient corporate life to render it possible for any one man to interpret the thoughts and purposes of the majority so as to get a proper basis for eloquence. All the speakers of any tact have a sort of instinct, as they shift their crimson hood uneasily on to their shoulder from which it has a tendency to fall, that they are speaking for themselves only, and that they cannot easily so catch the mood of a great many rather stiff-minded teachers as to interpret the hearts of their audience.
Of course one great reason of this general want of vitality and corporate unity about Convocation, is that there is so little that is distinctly practical in the ends for which Convocation meets. It is like a parliament with no legislative powers, with nothing but consultative functions. There are no party organizations in Convocation, no Conservative and Liberal benches. The Jerusalem Chamber is full of chairs, on which the clergy sit as at a public meeting, without any party division at all. The Prolocutor— now, we believe, Archdeacon Bickersteth (Archdeacon of Buck- inghamshire)—is not so much a speaker as a mere chairman. Round the green table before him a good many dignitaries sit, some writing, others reading,—some, perhaps, openly reading the
Times,—while the debate goes on, and this in a limited room, where the proceedings of any one person are important enough to exercise a certain influence over the proceedings. What gives corporate life to Parliament is the national importance of its legis- lative proceedings. The House of Commons, in spite of its party divisions, has certain great ends in common, such as the enforce- ment of order and liberty in the Queen's dominions. Each of the two great parties, again, have common ends peculiar to itself.
There are ties which create a public opinion for the House, and, again, interior public opinions for each party in it. But there is no trace of this in Convocation. It is almost purely a debating society minus its rhetorical character, without any practical ends to organize it; and a debating society with but little interest in intellectual display and no sense of practical power, is not capable of a very vital organization. It may be said of course, that the com-
mon spirit of unity in Convocation is a common desire to advance the interests of our Church, and that the subordinate parties in it might be organized according to the various conceptions of the best schemes,—Liberal or Conservative,—for effecting this. And so it might be if Convocation had any legislative authority of , the slightest value. But as every one knows that the Church will be just the same whether a particular gravamen is agreed to or not, and the chance of advancing its interests in particular ways will not be sensibly increased by the number of opinions in favour of or against any special view (say) concerning the constitution of the Apostolic Council of Jerusaletn,—the result on the crystalliza-qta tion. of parties is just the same as it would be on Parliament, if the Houses of Parliament never debated any subjects more practical than Mr. Disrasli's resolution that no class ought to be prepon- derant in the representative assembly. This want of any practical end it is which makes the speaking in Convocation so loose and straggling, so much interrupted by speculative criticisms, so little supported by party cheers. In the House of Commons speeches are cheered in proportion as they seem likely to bring about the end wished for by those who cheer them. Both Conservatives and Liberals constantly cheer arguments entirely inconsistent with their own private beliefs, if the drift of those arguments is towards the practical end they desires But in Convoca- tion scarcely any end of practical importance is possible at all, and hence all the criticism, like the dissertation, is of a specu- lative kind, being determined not by common purposes, but by theoretic agreements or differences. Men speaking in favour of the same motion, but on wholly different grounds, get supported by wholly different persons,—f or here the interesting thing is not, after all, the vote at the end, but the opinions, the °biter dicta which the speaker supposes to be those which determine his vote. The vote itself is rarely of any importance. The opinions expressed have,..at least, a dogmatic interest. Hence the Prolocutor has, naturally enough, far more difficulty in determining what is spoken to the question and what is not, than the Speaker of the House • of Commons. The other day, when a rather popular Archdeacon was discoursing away with much vigour on the effect of Lord Romilly's judgment in the Natal case, 21 propos of a motion to invite the Bishops to an Anglican Council, some hostile clergy- man called out "Question, question," on which the Prolocutor said that the speaker was probably in order, but only on the verge of it, since it might be possible to connect,—though the speaker had not yet connected,—the difficulties in Natal with the reasons in favour of a Council of Anglican Bishops. In point of fact, there is so little that is really practical in the acts of Convocation, that its ablest members get into the habit of saying anything they want to say, it propos of almost any motion whatever. Hence the difficulty of anything like organization in Convocation. It will constantly happen that a speaker is more heartily approved by those who are going to vote against him than by those who are going to vote with him,—for the former agree in his views, while Weaving them together so as to lead to a different conclusion, but the latter differ from his views, though, by an accident, they agree in his conclusion. When in any corporate body theoretic opinions go for more than practical objects, it is impossible to develop any strong corporate spirit or any defined party com- binations.
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