LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNEsaid, he desired to offer a personal explanation to their Lordships on a matter that had arisen out of the debate of last night, that the Question on his Motion was put so quickly that he had no opportunity of replying to the right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Winchester) who charged him with making a tissue of mistakes. With every respect for the right rev. Prelate, he must deny having done so. What he stated with reference to Mr. Maguire was, not that Mr. Maguire had been licensed by two successive Bishops of London to deliver lectures in his church — which he, of 386 course, knew to be unnecessary—but that he delivered the lectures with their sanction. The two Prelates referred to were present last night, and did not contradict this statement, and he believed it to be correct. He stated also, not that the right rev. Prelate (the Bishop of Winchester) inhibited Mr. Maguire, but that he forbade Mr. Curling to allow Mr. Maguire to deliver these Protestant lectures in St. Saviour's Church. He (Lord Oranmore and Browne) believed this also was entirely correct, and he hoped the right rev. Prelate would allow his official communications and the correspondence to be published, that the public might judge what had really occurred.
THE BISHOP OF WINCHESTERMy Lords, I do not apprehend that in what the noble Lord has just stated there is the slightest contradiction to what I said yesterday. I found fault with the noble Lord's assertion that I had inhibited a gentleman who wanted to deliver certain lectures in my diocese. I stated that, being applied to by one of the church-wardens on behalf of the other of the two vicars, I told the vicar who had given the permission that he must not allow those controversial lectures to be delivered in that church. I accompanied that intimation with a statement that I acted from no sort of difference as to the nature of the lectures or from disapprobation of them, but invited him, as there was a public hall not far off suitable for such occasions, to deliver them in another place in the diocese. When, therefore, this was invidiously cited, after the lapse of a year, to represent that I had some dislike to anti-Roman lectures being delivered in my diocese, it was a mis-statement not of a very ordinary character, and I think I was justified in characterizing the statement as a tissue of mistakes. I repeat that the ground of my action was an ecclesiastical objection which had nothing whatever to do with the nature of the lectures. That a gentleman of another diocese, against the will of one of two vicars, and against the will of the laity as represented by the churchwardens, should come and deliver lectures in a church without my permission, is contrary to ecclesiastical régime, and as such I prohibited it, and would prohibit it again to-morrow. The noble Lord wants me to publish correspondence with my clergy. Now, I never will correspond with a 387 clergyman in my diocese who is corresponding with me in order to send the letters to the newspapers. There would be an end to all the very useful power possessed by a Bishop in his diocese if he once allowed it. The intercourse between me and my clergy is confidential and affectionate—filial on the one side, fatherly on the other. If letters written in that spirit are at any moment of irritation to be thrown into what are called the "religious newspapers," and the world be brought in to criticize every single word of them, there must be an end to all that open, kindly, free correspondence upon which a Bishop's influence for good depends. I therefore—not in this instance only, but in every instance—refuse to communicate, except through my secretary, with any gentleman whose appetite for print is of that voracious character that he writes letters in order to publish them in the newspapers, and I refuse to break my rule in this instance. I have to complain of the noble Lord for saying it was some tendency towards Roman doctrines that had led me to act. That is a most serious charge—as serious an imputation as to charge an officer in the Army with disloyalty to his Queen. I hate and abhor the attempt to Romanize the Church of England, and I will never hear anyone make such a charge without telling him to his face that he is guilty of gross misrepresentation; especially when such charges come from one who has been endeavouring to his utmost in Ireland to get the Prayer Book of the Church of England altered in order to make it suit his views.