necessity of amending it more striking, when they are those of
one so earnest for conciliation and peace. But on constitutional not
less than on other grounds, he pronounces the strongest condemnation on
the present formation of the Court of Appeal, which, working in a way
which even its framers did not contemplate, has brought so much
distress into the Church, and which yet, in defiance of principle, of
consistency, and of the admission of its faultiness, is so recklessly
maintained. Feeling and stating very strongly the evil sustained by the
Church, from the suspension of her legislative powers,--"that loss of
command over her work, and over the heart of the nation, which it has
brought upon her,"--so strongly indeed that his words, coming from one
familiar with the chances and hazards of a deliberative assembly, give
new weight to the argument for the resumption of those powers,--feeling
all this, he is ready to acquiesce in the measure beyond which the
Bishops did not feel authorised to go, and which Mr. Gladstone regards
as "representing the extremest point up to which the love of peace
might properly carry the concessions of the Church":--

That which she is entitled in the spirit of the Constitution to
demand would be that the Queen's ecclesiastical laws shall be
administered by the Queen's ecclesiastical judges, of whom the
Bishops are the chief; and this, too, under the checks which the
sitting of a body appointed for ecclesiastical legislation would
impose.

But if it is not of vital necessity that a Church Legislature
should sit at the present time--if it is not of vital necessity
that all causes termed ecclesiastical should be treated under
special safeguards--if it is not of vital necessity that the
function of judgment should be taken out of the hands of the
existing court--let the Church frankly and at once subscribe to
every one of these great concessions, and reduce her demands to a
_minimum_ at the outset.

Laws ecclesiastical by ecclesiastical judges, let this be her
principle; it plants her on the ground of ancient times, of the
Reformation, of our continuous history, of reason and of right.
The utmost moderation, in the application of the principle, let
this he her temper, and then her case will be strong in the face
of God and man, and, come what may, she will conquer.... If, my
Lord, it be felt by the rulers of