In the Lower House of Convocation yesterday week a resolution
was passed by the immense majority of 56 to 9 against admitting within the consecrated burial-grounds of the Church any rites -other than her own. In the House of Commons, on the other hand, on the same evening, Mr. Osborne Morgan's very strongly worded resolution in favour of such rites was only rejected,—and -then only as a consequence of the official resistance of the Government,—by a majority of 15 (242 against 227). This division shows near 200 absentees, the majority of whom no doubt are Conservatives. And amongst the majority who gave their votes to the Government were many, like Mr. Bal- four (Hertford), Mr. Grantham (East Surrey), and Sir John Xennaway (East Devonshire), who openly advocated a com- promise all but equivalent to Mr. Osborne Morgan's. Indeed, -besides those who may be said to have spoken one way and voted the other, there were no less than thirteen Conservatives who voted for Mr. Osborne Morgan,—five English, four Scotch, and four Irish Conservatives. Such a division really means that in the House of Commons, no less than in the House of Lords, the clerical position is surrendered, though the Govern- ment will not yet admit it. The worst folly of which the clergy have been guilty for many generations back, is the obstinacy with which they cling to this dog-in-the-manger policy of shutting out Dissenters from religious duties which they neither wish nor choose to undertake themselves, for fear some- thing or other—the ground, they say, or, as Mr. Walter more reasonably suggested, the air—should be desecrated. Would they regard a telephone as " desecrated " which had been used by a Dissenter for religious communications ?
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