The final Court of Appeal has sustained the Bishop of
London by a unanimous judgment in the exercise of his dis- cretion to stop the litigation directed against the reredos in St. Paul's. Lord Herschell was as confident as the Lord Chancellor, and Lord Bramwell as clear as either of them on the point. Lord Halsbury also stated that Lord Hannen concurred in his judgment, and the Times states that Lord Field also con- curred in it. Lord Bramwell showed that the discretion to stop proceedings was given to any Bishop who was convinced that it was undesirable, in view of the whole circumstances of the case, for the litigation to proceed; but if he were only not sure that it ought to proceed, though not sure that it ought not, then the statute required him to send the case on for judgment. All the Judges concurred in saying that in this case the Bishop of London evidently had used his dis- cretion as the statute intended that be should use it, and that there was not a particle of evidence to show that he had not taken into account all the circumstances of the case which he was bound to consider. Lord Coleridge, therefore, who originally granted the mandamus against the Bishop of London, is placed by a unanimous vote of the final Court of Appeal in the position of having ordered litigation which the Bishop of London had stopped, and had a statutory discre- tion to stop. That is not a feather in the cap of the Lord Chief Justice.
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