Yesterday week the House of Lords, after a sharp preliminary
squabble all round as to the right of making a speech when you are only putting a question, passed without a division the second reading of the Bill for repealing that dead-letter Act called the Ecclesiastical Titles' Act, passed by Lord Russell in a panic, and now defended by him, as we understand his remarks, deliberately. Lord Russell remarked that if the Bill passed, "Archbishop Man- ning would say, 'Now I have been acknowledged by Parliament, I shall assume the authority to which I believe I am entitled, and your remedy must be against the Pope.' Of course we could enforce no remedy against the Pope, but we had a remedy against the assumption of a title by the Archbishop of Westminster." Of course we have, if we choose to use it. But what can be more childish than to object to any number of Episcopal Churches dividing the jurisdictions of their bishops by territorial limits, so long as no practical inconvenience arises from any two of them taking the same name ? Does Archbishop Manning enforce any more " authority " when he calls himself Arch- bishop of Westminster, than he does when he calls himself Archbishop Manning ? Or shall we prohibit him from calling himself " Archbishop " at all, and insist on his using
some other designation? The Irvingites call some of their officers "Angels," which might perhaps give offence to higher powers than Anglican bishops, if angels were as touchy as lords. We wonder the House of Lords is not ashamed to remind men of that English folly of 1851 which has so long defaced the English statute-book, and does not repeal it in silence. Names are not things. When they are, it will be time to legislate against them.
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