A great Protestant demonstration was held in the Albert Hall
on Tuesday evening, over ten thousand persons being present. Lord Kinnaird was in the chair, and he was sup- ported by one English and one Scotch Peer and a good number of Members of Parliament,—none of them, however, of any very special distinction except Mr. Samuel Smith. The speeches were conventional, but at its close the great meeting despatched a long telegram to the Queen asking her to give her Prime Minister directions to take the necessary steps in the coming Session of Parliament for suppressing the Romish practices now in vogue in thousands of charches. No doubt the meeting was very much in earnest and very large—the Ritualists could, however, to-morrow get up as large a meeting—but we do not see that it in the slightest degree proves that the country is really roused. If the country were stirred to its depths it would not have been Lord Kinnaird who would have occupied the chair, but some far more typical Englishman, and the men who supported him would have been of a very different calibre. The country is doubtless angry about the spread of Ritualism, and would,like to stop it, but then it remembers the principle expressed by Prince Albert, and, curiously enough, quoted by Lord Kinnaird on Tuesday,— " The only thing which a Protestant State can do is to take its stand upon its own fundamental principle, that of freedom of conscience." That is not an easy principle to reconcile with a large and strenuous scheme for the imprisoning or depriving of High Church clergymen.
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