September 20, 1902. LORD HALIFAX1 AND DR. CLIFFORD.2

Sir, – Dr. Clifford has not only given admirable expression to the general disapproval of the Education Bill; 3 he has done something which is deeper and better; he has shown that there is some fight left in English politics. Apart from the hundred and one distinctions which that eminent Liberal can always claim, it is an infinite relief and benefit to most of us to see any opposition, Puritan, Jacobin, or Doukhabor, 4 effectively interrupting the sleepy reign of that snobbish political orthodoxy which is now called Imperialism. There is, therefore, I trust, no element of disrespect in my remarks if I venture to suggest to Dr. Clifford that he is making a great mistake in one matter; I mean in that insistence on the “Romanising” character of the English clergy and the Protestant duties of the English Church which is expressed in his correspondence with Lord Halifax. 5 Surely we are, as a party, blundering badly if we if we tie ourself to any theological or ecclesiastical section. Our case against the Government Bill is that it violates an elementary liberal principle in not equalising contribution and control. 6 It is, I conceive, an elementary rule of controversy that it is tactically bad to base a case on disputed principles when we could base it on undisputed principles. The principle of taxation and representation is an undisputed principle. The principle that the English Church Union is Popish, or the principle that it ought to be Protestant, are not only disputed, but are, pace Dr. Clifford, highly disputable propositions. They are historical propositions about which we most of us know little or nothing. To decide whether the English Church is Catholic, as Bishop Gore 7 says, or Protestant, as Prebendary Webb-Peploe 8 says, we ought to be familiar with Bulls and judgments, with Councils of the Fourth Century, with statutes of the sixteenth century, with the controversies about the use of Sarum 9 and the Statute of Praemunire. 10 Most of us, as a matter of fact, have not read even the introduction to the Prayer Book. It is one of the hardest things in human history to say exactly what happened in England at the Reformation. Liberalism is not concerned in the matter at all. It may admit that the Protestants have very likely a good case; but it will also admit that the English Church Union Catholics may have a very good case. And, as everyone knows who has even a glimmer of knowledge of the problem as a specialist problem, they have a very good case. Dr. Clifford wants us publicly to base our case against a Bill promulgated here, and now upon the position that to be a Catholic in the English Church Union sense is to be Papistical. He might as well ask us to base our Liberalism on the theory that the Roman title of Imperator retained a Republican meaning until the time of Nero, or on the theory that some particular French gentleman was the man in the Iron Mask. Lord Halifax may be right or wrong in his historical and ecclesiastical theories; what have we to do with them? If the Education Bill is bad, it is bad whether the sect it endows preaches Popery or Protestantism, or the English Catholicism it professes to preach. Dr. Clifford&s;s “No Popery” plea does nothing whatever, except offer an implied discourtesy to a number of very loyal and genuine Liberals, who happen to differ from him on a historical problem that has nothing in the world to do with Liberalism, High churchmen like Mr. G. W. E. Russell 11 or Canon Scott-Holland. 12 Dr. Clifford, as I have suggested, is making the mistake of basing his edifice on a doubtful and volcanic ground instead of on the solid rock of civic needs, on which Papists and Protestants and the English Church Union stand alike. It is as if, instead of merely saying that Lord Milner was a failure in South Africa, he said that everyone who was a University man must be a failure, or as if, instead of saying that Jabez Balfour 13 was a swindler, he said that being a Nonconformist he was bound to be a swindler. We all know that Lord Milner is a failure, and that the Education Bill is full of faults; but we are not all prepared to maintain that the English Universities are a fraud, or the High Anglican Church is untenable.

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