Mr. Bell Cox was discharged from prison yesterday week, on
the very technical ground that he was not imprisoned as a punishment for contempt of Court generally, but for disobeying the sentence of suspension for six months which had been passed upon him ; and that as, in consequence of various delays in deciding upon his contumaciousness, the six months had expired, he was no longer to be held contumacious, since the sentence was no longer in force. On this very narrow ground, which settles nothing as regards the right or wrong of imprison- ment for disobeying a ritual code which almost every clergyman and Bishop in the English Church disobeys with impunity, Mr. Bell Cox has for the present been released from his unjust con- finement, but without the smallest security that the very next ritualist,—be he Mr. Bell Cox or another,—who acts as he did, will not be treated just as he was treated, to the great scandal of the public and the great injury of the Church. Indeed, the law will not be changed eo long as there is no urgent scandal to compel us to change it.
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