CANON RASHDALL'S REPLY TO LORD HUGH CECIL [To THE EDITOR
OF THE " SPECTATOR:'] S12,—As my letter to you upon the proposed Church Council was accused of haste, I have taken time to consider my reply to the ex- tremely temperate and reasonable letter of Lord Hugh Cecil. During this interval I have made some inquiries as to the methods of the House of Commons in dealing with enactments of subordinate authorities such as the proposed Council. I have consulted Sir Courtenay Ilbert's book on Legislative Methods and Forms, and I have had the advantage of advice from a very high authority. The result has been to confirm my worst suspicions. I quite appreciate the impossibility of getting small detailed pieces of ecclesiastical legislation embodied in Acts of Parliament, and I should be prepared to welcome some method of indirect Parliamentary control ; but I desire—and am sure that most laymen and a very large number of clergy desire—that that control shall be real and effective. I understand that the question whether it is easy or difficult to get up an effective opposition to a measure which has been " laid upon the table for forty days " depends upon the exact wording of the Act under which it is laid : the wording of such Acts varies considerably in different cases. The subject is too compli- cated to be discussed in detail. The words used in the enabling Act put forth by the Committee would apparently (as is pointed out by your correspondent " A. A. B.") make it by no means easy to oppose a Canon of the proposed Council : measures might slip through after 11 p.m. which were quite opposed to public opinion. I hope, therefore, that, if the proposals of the Committee ever come before Parliament, the friends of liberty will see that words are used which will make the control real and effective. Moreover, certain large questions, such as the abolition of the Judicial Committee's jurisdiction or a reconstruction of the Ecclesiastical Courts, should be put wholly beyond tho possi- bility of such indirect legislation. By the proposed enabling Act, as it stands, even that Act itself might be modified to any extent without any express legislative action on the part of Parliament.
In his remarks upon the proposed " Ecclesiastical Committee of the Privy Council," Lord Hugh appears to have forgotten that, where the Committee itself decides that the Canon will not contradict existing statute or common law, it will become law without even lying upon the table. (There seems to be nothing about this most objectionable feature of the proposal in the " enabling Act.") Whether the Canons are in this case to bind the laity or not would, I suppose, depend upon the words of the enabling statute ; but certainly this is what is con- templated by the eminent theologians to whose views the Committee have given an exclusive prominence. The Bishop of Oxford claims that the Church (apparently without the consent of Parliament) is to have the power of determining who is to be admitted to the Sacraments, and might therefore enact that a layman who has married his deceased wife's sister, or written an heretical book, or frequented a Nonconformist chapel shall be deprived of his present right to communicate in the National Church. Dr. From makes very similar claims. If the Report excites undue " suspicion " in my mind or that of others, surely the Committee has only itself to blame for publishing these documents by two of the ablest exponents of the cry for a narrower Church without anything to balance them from representatives of a more liberal Church. manship. To show that I am not hopelessly prejudiced against some such scheme as that of the Committee, I may add that I years ago advocated a scheme on very similar lines in a friendly review of a book called Essays in Aid of Church Reform, edited by the present Bishop of
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