made political trials,
except in the most extreme cases, almost inconceivable. They mean that
the questions raised must be fought out and settled in a different and
more genuine way, and that law feels itself out of place when called to
interfere in them. As all parties have failed in turning the law into a
weapon, and yet as all parties have really gained much more than they
have lost by the odd anomalies of our ecclesiastical jurisprudence, the
wisest course would seem to be for those who feel the deep importance
of doctrinal questions to leave the law alone, either as to employing
it or attempting to change it. Controversy, argument, the display of
the intrinsic and inherent strength of a great and varied system, are
what all causes must in the last resort trust to. Lord Westbury will
have done the Church of England more good than perhaps he thought of
doing, if his _dicta_ make theologians see that they can be much better
and more hopefully employed than in trying legal conclusions with
unorthodox theorisers, or in busying themselves with inventing
imaginary improvements for a Final Court of Appeal.

III

PRIVY COUNCIL JUDGMENTS[4]

[4]
_A Collection of the Judgments of the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council in Ecclesiastical Cases relating to Doctrine and Discipline;
with a Preface by the Lord Bishop of London, and an Historical
Introduction_. Edited by the Hon. G. Brodrick, Barrister-at-Law, and
Rev. the Hon. W.H. Fremantle, Chaplain to the Bishop of London.
_Guardian_, 15th February 1865.

The Bishop of London has done a useful service in causing the various
decisions of the present Court of Appeal to be collected into a volume.
There is such an obvious convenience about the plan that it hardly
needed the conventional reason given for it, that "the knowledge
generally possessed on the subject of the Court is vague, and the
sources from which accurate information can be obtained are little
understood; and that people who discuss it ought in the first place to
know what the Court is, and what it does." This is the mere customary
formula of a preface turned into a rhetorical insinuation which would
have been better away; most of those who care about the subject, and
have expressed opinions about it, know pretty well the nature of the
Court and the result of its working, and whatever variations there may
be in the judgment passed upon it arise not from any serious
imperfection of know