Mr. Kirkman Hodgson, at Bristol, on Tuesday, went further in
relation to the future, not BO far in relation to the past. He bad not opposed the Public Worship Bill, as he regarded it as a pro- posal to simplify legal procedure ; but he would sooner see the Church disestablished and disendowed at once, than admit the heavy yoke of the State in the form of a vote of the House of Commons as to what he was to believe. That is not very logical of Mr. Hodgson, for the proposal for next Session is, in form, just as much of a proposal touching the simplification of legal procedure, and nothing else, as that of last Session's Act. In effect, no doubt, both measures really go far beyond a form of legal pro- cedure, and are intended to burnish up and rivet anew an indefi- nite number of obsolete fetters. But Mr. Hodgson rightly discerns that what may possibly, though not probably, prove unimportant in relation to ritual, must prove very important in relation to doctrine. And like a good many other Members of Parliament, he is dismayed at what is before them, and inclined to appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober,—from the House of Commons in a mood of bluster, to the House of Commons after it returns from consulting its constituents in the frigid intervals of a remarkably dead long vacation.
Previous page
