The Speaker, in addressing the Manchester Unity of Odd- fellows
at Leamington on Wednesday, gave a very interesting account of the three maces to which successive Houses of Com- mons have paid such deference. On the execution of Charles L, the first of these maces disappeared, and apparently has never since been heard of. The second was the " bauble" which Cromwell ordered to be taken away, and of which the Speaker tells us that a trace has been discovered in Jamaica, or if not of the mace itself, at all events of some fac- simile of it. The third is the mace which was made in 1660, on the restoration of Charles II., and which he himself now sees before him "almost night and day." And of this mace he said enthusiastically, that "he hoped it would not disappear from the table of the House, and would have a long and glorious career before it." That is indeed an idolatrous kind of speech. If the Church Association would but pursue the Speaker for fetishism, instead of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's for encouraging idolatry, there would be, we think, a more plausible case before them. If a mace is to have "a long and glorious career," it is obvious that the mace must be regarded as susceptible of glory as well as of life ; besides, do not Members of the House bow to the mace, while, so far as we blow, the Church Association has never yet got proof that even old women bow to the sculptured figures in St. Paul's Cathedral? Mr. Peel is nearer idolatry than any one whom
the Church Association has as yet found it possible to press into its service. And is not idolatry to a mace even worse than idolatry to an image ?
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