THE BISHOP OF LONDON ON PARTY MOTIVES.
70 THE: EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.1
SIR,—Your language concerning the Bishop of Loudon is strong, if be only said that "from some cause or other, which we may divine, but which it would be wrong to mention, a vast number of persons" are all committed in words to the disestablishment, &c. Is this "unjust vituperation and unchristian insinuation "? If so, what are the hard things said of Mr. Disraeli's personal motives in the pages of the Spectator?
You say, " We scorn to attribute selfish and corrupt motives to the men who, like Mr. Gathorne Hardy," &c. But of Mr. Disraeli you say that the present state of things "is due solely to the desire of one man to appear to be for a few weeks longer Premier of England." I am not aware that a religions layman has any more right than a bishop to impute motives. An editor writing anonymously is bound, I suppose, by the same standard of justice and Christianity as a bishop speaking publicly. What is unfair to Mr. Gladstone is unfair to Mr. Disraeli. It is as wrong in a Liberal as in a Conservative "to impute the vulgarest motives to his opponents, motives which be would be ashamed as a Christian to impute to any opponent in private life."
Dr. Tait's language was surely not vituperation. Insinuation is a harsh word for it. If it was unjust, it was unchristian. He believed it to be just. He had reason to believe so. The Roman Catholics of Meath in 1865 said that the agitation against the Irish Church was for party purposes. You say, that "if for party motives at all," it is for the support of the Irish Catholics. And yet you say that "pressure from without" alone keeps the Liberal party to- gether. The pressure surely has been from English Dissenters and Americanizing philosophers, not from Irish Catholics. It seems to me far more venial even in a Bishop to attribute party motives to the united Liberals than to attribute "personal ambition" to Mr. Disraeli ; and I trust that a journal which is so sensitive on behalf of Mr. Gladstone, will not wound the feelings of the Premier's friends by saying anything of him which is not certainly just.—I
am, Sir, &c., J. P. LANGLEY. Olney Vicarage, May 26, 1868.
[If it is improper to attribute personal ambition to Mr. Disraeli, it is improper to attribute it to Warren Hastings, or any other his- torical personage whose character has been judged to be unscrupu- lously ambitious by all men possessing the least capacity for form- ing a judgment at all. The Bishop of London said much more than our correspondent will allow. He said, "We simple men, who are clergymen, and are not mixed up with all the ingenious devices by which party ousts party in the political world, are not able to fathom it" (i.e., how anybody can pretend to regard it "as a matter of sacred conscience to disestablish and disendow the Irish Church"). The Bishop should have known, if he did not, that a "matter of sacred conscience" it was with Mr. Gladstone, and with very many of his most distinguished followers. As for attributing "sacred con- science" at all to Mr. Disraeli, the mere phrase would sound a mockery to men who have studied his career.—En. Spectator.]
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