MR. MACKONOCHIE.* LITERARY skill is hereditary in the family of
Sir Henry Taylor; and his daughter, Mrs. Towle, has written a very attractive bio- graphy. It puts the reader in a position where he can judge for himself of a remarkable character which has been a good deal misunderstood. Alexander Heriot Mackonochie was born, of Scotch extraction, at Fareham, in Hampshire, in 1825. He lost his father; who had been an officer in the East India Company's service, when he was only two years old, and he
• Alexander Heriot Mackonochie: a Memoir. By "B. A. T." Edited by Edward Francis Russell, MA., St. Alban's, Holborn. London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trailer, and Co. 1890.
was brought up, fondly but strictly, by his widowed mother. There was Presbyterian blood in the boy's veins, and the tone of his home was profoundly and practically religious, and rather bitterly Low Church. Though he subsequently became one of the strongest of men, he was delicate in boyhood ; and he was educated, as a day-boy, at schools at Bath and Exeter, and at the University of Edinburgh. Thence, in January, 1845, he proceeded to Wadham College, Oxford.
The Tractarian movement was then on the ebb. Dr. Newman had withdrawn from Oxford, and the High Church influence in the University was chiefly wielded by Dr. Pusey and Mr. C. Marriott. To the religious teaching of these two men, Mr. Mackonochie seems to have been at once and naturally attracted. We find no trace in his severely restrained corre- spondence of any marked or violent change in his religious opinions. His undergraduate contemporaries seem to have regarded him as an Evangelical. This was probably due to the extreme regularity and strictness of his life ; his punctilious attendance on religious duties ; and his careful avoidance of idleness, extravagance, and almost all forms of amusement. Still, it seems that all the time his opinions were shaping themselves in a churchward direction. He renounced no part of the constructive theology in which he had been bred, but he formed a definite notion of the ecclesia docens, of her constitution and authority, and of the purport of her teaching. He emerged from Oxford a pronounced High Churchman, firmly wedded to those views of doctrine the formal assertion of which was destined to be the work of his life.
He was certainly not a very clever man, and he had been badly taught, but his astonishing powers of " grind " did what clever idleness so often fails to do, and he obtained a second class in Classics in June, 1848. From a child he had looked to Holy Orders as his profession, and he was ordained in Lent, 1849, to the curacy of Westbury, in Wiltshire. The ministry which he now began was in all essential respects identical with that in which he persevered to the latest day of his working life. He devoted himself wholly to the duties of his office. He chose the " separate " life of celibacy ; he practised a severe asceticism ; gave all his time, thought, and studies to priestly work ; and bestowed the whole of his income, beyond what was required for the bare necessities of life, in charity. His preaching was remarkably clear, practical, and direct, though entirely devoid of eloquence or rhetorical skill. He excelled in method and organisation, and in dealing with individual souls his patience and sympathy were inexhaustible, and his counsels definite and practical. From Westbury, Mr. Mackonochie moved to Wantage, where the present Dean of Lincoln was his Vicar, and Dr. Liddon one of his fellow-curates. While at Wantage, he had serious thoughts of giving himself to missionary work in Newfoundland ; but his call was to a less romantic, but, as it proved, a not less arduous enterprise, nearer home. In 1850 he left Wantage, and joined the mission at St. George's-in-the-East. The storm of Pro- testant violence and mob-tyranny which soon afterwards broke upon St. George's, attracted the attention of Churchmen to the devoted priests who were the objects of it. Among these, Mr. Mackonochie was a prominent figure ; and his work and character were noted by that munificent son of the Church of England, Mr. J. G. Hubbard, M.P., afterwards Lord Addington. Mr. Hubbard was just about to build and endow (on a site given by Lord Leigh) the beautiful and famous church of St. Alban's, Holborn, and he offered the incumbency to Mr. Mackonochie, who had previously declined the important vicarage of St. Saviour's, Leeds. In view of subsequent events, it is necessary to bear in mind that Mr. Mackonochie, before accepting the living, urged Mr. Hubbard to consider his advanced views of doctrine and ritual, and only consented to undertake the charge on the condition that he was to be completely unfettered by any understandings except those which bound him as a priest of the Church of England. St. Alban's Church, built on the site of a thieves' kitchen, and standing in the centre of a squalid slum inhabited chiefly by the criminal classes, was consecrated in 1863. From the opening of the church, the services were conducted on a " ritualistic " plan, and ceremonial was developed as years went on. The outward pomp of worship was accompanied by spiritual and philanthropic work of the highest value, and the physical and moral improvement in the parish was marked and continuous. But the type of the services and the tone of the doctrine aroused the angry bigotry of a Puritan section wholly unconnected with the parish, and it was determined to test the legality of the ritual used at St. Alban's. The difficulty was to obtain a prosecutor, for the great majority of the parishioners were devoted to their church and clergy. At worst they were indifferent ; no one was hostile. The real prosecutor was the notorious Church Association, and pro- ceedings were taken in the name of a certain Mr. Martin, a resident in St. George's, Bloomsbury, whose sole connection with St. Alban's was that his name stood in the parish rate- book for some schools of which he was secretary. A suit against Mr. Mackonochie for illegal practices in divine worship was opened in the Courts of Arches in 1867, and the process of litigation thus begun continued, with only slight 'intermis- sions, and with varying results, till 1882. Then Archbishop Tait, discerning on his death-bed the true character of the Public Worship Regulation Act, for which he had been so largely responsible, and the ends for which it was employed, suggested to Mr. Mackonochie that, in order to bring the proceedings to an end, he should resign St. Alban's. This, with great reluctance, and solely from a sense of duty and a desire to serve the peace of the Church, he did, ex- changing livings with Mr. Suckling, Vicar of St. Peter's, London Docks. But even at the new parish the Church Association would not let him alone, but began a new prose- cution. Broken down by long persecution, wearied in body and exhausted in mind, he resigned St. Peter's, and betook himself with all humility to the work of a curate in his old parish of St. Alban's. Then came a period of increasing failure and distress, which lasted till the 15th of December, 1887, when be was lost in a snowstorm in the Mamore deer-forest, near Ballachulish, Argyllshire, where his body was found two days later, wreathed with the mountain snow, and guarded by two dogs belonging to the Bishop of Argyll, which had accompanied him on his fatal walk. Such are the few and simple events in the life of a man who in his time, by no choice of his own, attracted a vast amount of public notice, and played a determining part in the recent development of the Church of England. Those who would learn the secret of his strange power over those who came under his influence, may be safely referred to Mrs. Towle's fascinating biography.
THIRTY YEARS OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.* AT no period in the history of any country, ancient or modern, has so dignified and agreeable a career been open to the public servants of a State as that of a Governor of a British Colony in the nineteenth century. The satraps of Persia and the proconsuls of Rome could rarely hope to enjoy a second term of office, and, indeed, counted themselves fortunate if at the close of their first government they found themselves with their heads still upon their shoulders. But almost the very worst that in these days a Governor of a British Colony has to dread is a mild expression of some difference of opinion from the Colonial Office, merely affording the opportunity of a more lengthy despatch than usual, which the unlucky Secretary -of State is obliged to study attentively from beginning to -end. The Queen's representative passes from one Colony to _another until he chooses to retire, feted on his arrival for the good he is going to effect, and at his departure for the little harm he has done. In the meanwhile, he has merely to keep any opinions he may have strictly to him- self, maintain an impartial attitude, like that of Royalty itself in the Mother-country, between political parties, be hospitable, accessible without losing dignity, even-tempered, and careful in the execution of his social duties. Above all, he should know how to make pleasant speeches, and write despatches in the style dear to the Colonial Office.
That Sir George Bowen possesses all these qualities, the volumes before us, which present the record of his official -career, a')undantly prove. The son of an Irish Protestant rector, he was born nearly seventy years ago, and made his mark at Oxford in 1844, where he took a first-class in classical honours, together with the present Deans of Westminster and Wells. Shortly afterwards he undertook the task of reorganising the Ionian University, founded some thirty years previously by the Earl of Guildford„—a labour which Dr. Liddell described as one of "great and hyperborean felicity." Acquiring Italian and modern Greek, he fitted himself for • Thirty Years of Colonial Government. A Selection from the Despatches and Letters of the Sight Hon. Sir George Ferguson Bowen. G.O.M.G., Am, Governor successively of Queensland, New Zealand, Mauritius, and Hong Kong. Edited by Stanley Lane-Poole With Portrait. 2 vols. London : Longmans. travel in Greek lands, and among the fruits of his excursions was the Handbook for Greece, one of the best of Murray's well- known series. In 1848 he was at Vienna, and witnessed its capture by Windischgriitz and Jellachich, of whom and of their victory a curious and interesting account is given.
It was not, however, until 1854 that his true career began. In that year he was made Chief Secretary of the Ionian Islands, under the Lord High Commissioner. When Mr. Gladstone was sent out as "Lord High Commissioner Extra- ordinary" (in 1858), to report upon the advisability of ceding the Ionian Islands to Greece, the Chief Secretary advocated the retention of Corfu and Paxo, as being rather Italian than Greek in language and sympathy. This, however, was not to be, despite Sir George Bowen's appeal to the naval value of Corcyra in classical times ; and, in fact, such a policy would have wholly neutralised whatever good attached to the cession. We are rather surprised, by-the-way, to find a scholar like Sir George Bowen advocating the modern Greek pronunciation of the language of Homer and Thucydides, as if, shortly after they first used an alphabet, the ancient Hellenes could have employed six or seven different letters or digraphs to represent the one sound of )7. In relation to this, Sir George Bowen tells a good story of Lord Palmerston, to whom he had been explaining that the Greeks pronounced itzeis-, we, and i./.4E-4-, you, exactly alike. " Ah! they confound we and you, do they, do they?" said Lord Palmerston, who was no Philhellene. "I fear that is not the only way in which modern Greeks confound melon and taunt."
In 1859, the Ionian Chief Secretary, already a K.C.M.G., was promoted to the Governorship of Queensland, then just separated from New South Wales. He had practically to organise the administration of the new Colony throughout, and he accomplished the task with a success that in 1860, when he was still under forty, won him the Grand Cross of the order. Lord (then Sir Edward Bulwer) Lytton was Colonial Secretary, and of his letter announcing the appointment, which Mr. Lane-Poole has wisely printed, a copy should be hung up in the library of every Colonial Governor, as a sort of code of official conduct. For a man so unpractical in his own affairs, it is a singularly practical, though brief, treatise on the duties of those Viceroys whose business, like that of their Sovereign, is rather to reign than govern. Sir George Bowen's tenure of the Queensland Governorship, which was prolonged two years beyond the ordinary term of six—a very special and rare mark of approval —afforded a proof of the hollowness of the enthusiasm with which the advent of a new Governor is usually hailed. In 1867, the Colonial Government proposed to issue inconvertible Government notes, and to make them a legal tender for the purpose of financing the railway system of which the failure of the Agra and Masterman's Bank had stopped the construction. Of course the Queenslanders would have taken the earliest opportunity of showing their loyalty by paying as many of their British debts as possible with bits of paper, and the Governor was plainly bound to veto any such measure. He told his Cabinet so, and they at once resigned. The result was a series of " indignation " meetings, at which the Governor was denounced in the most violent terms, and threatened with personal violence. Of course the Colony had to give way, but the episode shows how easily a totally immoral policy may be taken up by a democracy, and carried out in the absence of constitutional methods for ensuring reconsideration and reflection.
From Queensland, Sir George Bowen was transferred to New Zealand in 1868, and there brought to a close the Maori War, which, smouldering or active, had lasted as long as the Siege of Troy. Its course had been marked by a succession of massacres, of which the most terrible was that which took place on the shores of Poverty Bay shortly after the Governor's arrival; but its most curious feature was the success with which it was waged for years against a numerous and well- appointed British and Colonial army. It was not, in fact, until friendly clans were brought into the field that the Maori rebels, with whose system of bush-war the regular troops could not adequately deal, finally succumbed. The visit of the United States ship Kearsage ' at this time brought to light a bit of history which Sir George Bowen has done well to pre- serve. The Captain informed his host that after the ',Alabama' was sunk, its commander, Semmes, was seen floating in the sea with the help of a life-belt. He could
easily have been captured, but it was thought better to let him be saved by a passing British vessel, since, if taken to America, he would probably have been hanged, and the officers of the Kearsage ' wished to save a gallant enemy from such a fate.
The Colony of Victoria was the next to profit by Sir George Bowen's services. Though the most democratic of the Australian Colonies, and though a Parliamentary deadlock of a somewhat ridiculous character took place during his term, the new Governor had no trouble with either Legislature or Ministers. But he got into some trouble with the Colonial Office at home, which seems to have viewed his inactivity on the occasion of the deadlock as not "masterly." The result was a lengthy despatch, which appears to have silenced Sir M. Hicks-Beach, the then Colonial Secretary. With questionable taste, an anecdote is in this connection dragged in about Sir M. Hicks-Beach which sounds as a mauvaise plaisanterie ; and, in addition, his conduct in relation to a detail of Mauritian administration is very disadvan- tageously contrasted with that of his successor, Lord Kim- berley. Condemnations of this kind, where only a bare fact or two of the case are given, are scarcely generous, least of all so when passed upon a former chef who had felt it his duty to administer a reproof, but a most mild one, to the deliverer of the judgment. Sir Geo. Bowen's further career in Mauritius, Hong Kong, and Malta, where he governed as well as reigned, was as successful as in the Colonies, where he reigned without governing. He is clearly as able to do the one as the other, but the record of his experiences in Crown Colonies is not particularly interesting, principally because he tells us but little of what he must have seen, known, and heard. Thus, he was at Hong Kong during the Franco-Chinese War, but on that singular episode of modern French history be throws hardly any light, though doubtless he could throw much. Of course, like all the world, he went to Japan. and was there feted, feasted, and taken about by the Mikado's people, with the result that his observations on Japan are entirely devoid of novelty or interest. He allowed himself to see and hear by other eyes and ears than his own, and brings accusations against English diplomacy in that country that merely repro- duce the medisances of a clique that itself had no knowledge of the time and persons concerned, and only repeated ex-parte gossip which, by those who know, is rightly regarded as devoid of any basis of truth.
These volumes, in reality, constitute a sort of official auto- biography which does not sin by excess of modesty. It is full of congratulatory and valedictory addresses by and to its subject, letters of approval, despatches, speeches, and such- like incidents of gubernatorial life—its common form, so to speak ; but of the deeper springs of Colonial policy, of political and social life in the Colonies—in a word, of their aspirations, tendencies, habits of thought, clifferentim—it gives little in- formation. A Governor is perhaps not in a position to obtain any real knowledge of these things—or to reveal the knowledge if be has it. In the essay on Imperial Federa- tion, which is printed as an appendix to the second volume, Sir George Bowen does not appear to us quite to grasp the true nature of our so-called Colonial Empire. No such federation has ever yet been known. The example of the United States is not in point, not only on account of obvious geographical differences, but on deeper grounds. The Colonies cannot enact their own Constitutions as the American States can. On the other hand, inter-Colonial Free-trade does not exist, inter-State Free-trade does. Nor do the Australian Colonies seem to regard even Australasian Federation, which would undoubtedly consolidate their strength, with much favour ; they are just now more jealous of each other than of the Mother-country, and more anxious to be protected against each other than against the United Kingdom. It is equally the interest of Great Britain and the Colonies that the existing political connection should continue until the latter are amply able to defend themselves against foreign aggression of any kind. But could any system of Federa- tion be devised that would not give England a general hege- mony which would be resented when no longer necessary? We have practically abandoned the whole Australian territory to the Colonies, and given them absolute Home-rule. What more would they get under Federation, what advantage could result to them, or-to ourselves, from their admittance to some measure of control over our relations with India, China, America, and the European Powers ? We are not at all sure
but that the looser the bonds are that unite us, the longer they will last, to be replaced eventually, perhaps, by those of a Pan-British League of independent sovereignties. Imperial Federation is based upon a sentiment highly honourable in itself, but not supported by reason or history; and though as an ideal it may be viewed with a certain longing, we have but little confidence that it is capable of realisation under existing conditions, or under any that are likely to be created in the future.
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