I think, sir, I need go no further as to proving that all these schemes, and this last just as much as the rest (all except the letting the courts of law settle what is the law, and then abiding by it), agree fully in this one point that they tamper with and alter our Book of Common Prayer.
And all this, over and above the reason and common-sense of the matter, tells us what the next Report of the Ritual Commission will be, unless the Commissioners be duly impressed with the danger of the course which they are pursuing, and the enormous responsibility of trying to carry it out.
And this brings me to a further practical point, which it is very fitting that I should lay before you. I mean the resistance proposed to all alteration in the Prayer Book by means of the public meeting so lately held in London; and the action to be taken in connection with the resolutions then passed as to memorializing the Royal Commissioners upon the subject.
There appears to be a curious piece of evidence that the great meeting in St. James’s Hall has even already not been wholly unproductive of results. That meeting was held on Tuesday, the 19th of November. The _Times_ was singularly quiescent in relation to it for nearly a week: but yesterday, Nov. 26, in an article upon Lord Portman’s questions in the House of Lords touching the Bishop of Salisbury’s Charge—though not dealing directly with the meeting—it yet introduces the following apposite remarks:
“It is alike extremely difficult and extremely dangerous to alter our existing formularies, but it would be perfectly possible, and that, as the Bishop of London said, without any very sweeping alterations, to simplify the course of procedure in our Ecclesiastical Courts. It seems to be generally felt that all classes of the clergy should be more amenable to the public than they have been; and it will certainly be better, as well as more practicable, to attempt in the first place to effect this result, rather by an improvement in the administration of the law than in the law itself.” { 36} Is it straining matters too much to think that we have in this no mean tribute to the justice of the objects and views of the meeting at St. James’s Hall?