_not_ be bigotry, change of position may
show it under a new aspect. But still upon that, which once was _called_
bigotry, Lord John must now take his stand. Neither will _ratting_ a
second time avail to set him right. These things do not stand under
algebraical laws, as though ratting to the right hand could balance a
ratting to the left, and leave the guilt = 0. On the contrary, five
rattings, of which each is valued at ten, amount to fifty degrees of
crime; or, perhaps, if moral computations were better understood, amount
to a crime that swells by some secret geometrical progression
unintelligible to man.

But now, reader, pause. Suppose that Lord John Russell, aware of some
evil, some calamity or disease, impending over the established Church
of England--sure of this evil, but absolutely unable to describe it by
rational remarks or premonitory symptom, had cast about for a channel by
which he might draw attention to the evil, and, by exposing, make an end
of it. But who could have dreamed that he would have chosen the means he
has chosen? What propriety was there in Lord John's addressing himself
upon such a subject to the Bishop of Durham? Who is that Bishop? And
what are his pretensions to public authority? He is a respectable Greek
scholar; and has re-edited the Prosodiacal Lexicon of Morell--a service
to Greek literature not easily overestimated, and beyond a doubt not
easily executed. But in relation to the Church he is not any official
organ; nor was there either decorum or good sense in addressing a letter
essentially official from the moment that it was published with consent
of the writer, to a person clothed with no sort of official powers or
official relation to the Church of England. If Lord John should have
occasion to communicate with the Bank of England, what levity, and in
the proper sense of the word what impertinence, it would be to invoke
the attention--not of the Governor--but of some clerk in a special
department of that establishment whom Lord John might happen to know.
Which of us, that wishes to bring a grievance before the authorities of
the Post-Office, would address himself to his private friend that might
happen to hold a respectable situation in the Money Order or in the Dead
Letter Office? Of mere necessity, that he might gain for his own
application an official privilege, he would address it to the
Postmaster-General through the Secretary. Not being so addressed, his
communication wou