Baron Pollock also pointed out that Mr. Cowgill had virtu-
ally been deprived of the living for sets which, if they had been brought before an Ecclesiastical Court, would not, in the first instance at least, according to recent usage, have involved de- privation, but only a monition to abstain from them. He also implied, if we rightly understand the judgment, that Mr. Cow- gill's mere refusal to answer the Bishop's questions, could not have been made a lawful ground for refusing to institute him ; but that the true ground was his persistent breach, as curate, of the ecclesiastical law, as laid down in recent judg- ments of the Court of Appeal, and the presumption so set up that he would continue in the same course of conduct. On this view, the questioning was regarded only as opening up to the Bishop a chance of escape from the assumed duty of refusing to institute Mr. Cowgill, and not as constituting the ground of refusal. Bat however much the significance of the scrutiny which resulted in the refusal to institute Mr. Cowgill may be minimised by Baron Pollock's lucid judgment, there cannot be a doubt, as we have elsewhere pointed out, that the judgment may give a very dangerous sanction to the practice of cross- examining on their preferment the numbers of clergymen who, on some point or other, now habitually ignore the ecclesiastical law,—Bishop Fraser himself is one of them,—and so compelling them to give evidence, as it were, against themselves, and there- by to justify the ecclesiastical authority in refusing to confirm their preferment.
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