The late Lord Derby's story of an Irishman to whom
he had promised an appointment, which be inadvertently gave away to another, and whom he tried to appease by offering him subsequently another office in its place, with only this result, that the Irishman replied : " Thank you, my Lord,— bat I prefer the grievance," has recurred to our minds many times in reading the long and angry letters written to the Times by Protestants, who are a great deal more indignant that Roman Catholic Archbishops in the United Kingdom do not now take a vow to persecute heretics and schismatics, than their ancestors ever were when they did take such a vow. They have been swindled out of a grievance, which they greatly resent. The attitude of most of the critics towards the Roman Catholics might be briefly thus expressed : You always were intolerant., and are still intolerant at heart; and you shan't slip out of that frame of mind unless you put on a white sheet and do formal penance for it.' Is not that the very intolerance of dogmatic tolerance ? Would it not be a good deal more dignified to make it as easy as possible for a perse- cuting Church to evacuate silently a false position, instead of compelling its dignitaries to defend it?
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