Je termine en vous priant de me croire toujours
Votre bien affectionné,
LOUIS-PHILIPPE D'ORLÉANS.
From the Dean of St. Paul's
Deanery, St. Paul's, June 19th.
My Dear Reeve,—Your article [Footnote: 'The National Church,' which appeared in the Edinburgh Review of July.] I think admirable. I have ventured to make one or two verbal suggestions, but on the main of your argument I am fully with you. There are only two points which I should propose for your reconsideration. I do not quite see the bearing of your argument about the Cardross case, and do not quite understand the decision of the Scotch judges. [Footnote: The Free Church minister of Cardross had been deposed by the Church Courts for drunkenness. He applied to the civil court for redress, and was thereupon summarily ejected from the Free Church. The Court of Session decided that the defenders—the Church Courts—'are invested with no jurisdiction whatever, ecclesiastical or civil.'] Surely every corporation, or, indeed, every club, has, and must have, the power of excluding—excommunicating is only the theologian's term for the same thing—any member who flagrantly violates its rules and first principles. If a member of the Athenaeum were to get roaring drunk and disturb the place, and endanger the character of the club, the committee or a general meeting might eject him, though he would have some plea in his vested right in the property of the club—the house, library, &c. If the mistake in the Cardross case was that the culprit was ejected without trial, that, I think, should be distinctly stated. If the flaw is that it was done by the Church officers, without the general consent or sanction of the Kirk, this also should be made clear. I rather demur to the division of the ecclesiastical property now held by the Irish Church, according strictly to the proportion of its members to the rest of the population. Possession, and possession for three centuries, ought, I think, to be taken into account. But this is a question rather of detail than of principle. But the real difficulty you have stated fairly and clearly: On what terms, and under what character, is the Protestant Church, when disestablished, to hold the property—the churches, parsonages, &c.—which is to remain to her? The Church must have a constitution—I do not see why not ratified by Act of Parliament—by which the trustees which represent her will legally hold that property. She must not be exposed in a few years to a Lady Hewley's charity case. [Footnote: Sarah, Lady Hewley, at her death, in 1710, left landed property in trust for the support of 'poor and godly preachers of Christ's holy Gospel.' The original trustees were all Presbyterians; but in the course of a hundred years the trust had got into the hands of Unitarians, and the case was brought to the notice of the Charity Commissioners. After a prolonged litigation, it was finally decided by the House of Lords (August 5th, 1842) that, by the terms of the bequest, Unitarians were excluded from participating in the charity.] I suggested to the Archbishop of Armagh—a good-natured, but not a very powerful, man—that the Irish Church, when in one sense free, should yet retain, of its own will, the advantages of the supremacy of the Crown and of the law. She should take, as the fundamental tenet of her constitution, conformity to the Articles and Formularies of the Church of England, which the majority of the English hold, in their meaning and interpretation. On this principle she might retain a jurisdiction, amenable to law, over her members; her members be protected against episcopal tyranny, against that which is now the great danger, parsonocracy, which I rejoice to find that you repudiate as strongly as I or Stanley. Ever very truly yours,
H. H. MILMAN.
From Lord Cairns
July 23rd.—Many thanks for the copy of your article on the National Church. I had begun to read it with great interest in the 'Edinburgh Review,' not knowing that it was directly from your pen, and I shall now continue the perusal with increased pleasure…. I will enclose with this, in exchange for your paper, a copy of my speech on the Irish Church—a Diomedean exchange; the value of ten oxen for a hundred.
During all this spring Reeve had suffered a great deal from gout, so, by the advice of Sir Henry Holland, who spoke strongly of the necessity of change of air and of rest from all work and effort, he and his wife started for the Continent on July 24th. Passing through Paris, and staying a few days at Fontainebleau, they went on to Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne, and to Royat, then newly come into vogue as a health resort. After about three weeks of the baths and the mountain air, Reeve was so far recovered as to be able to walk a little; and on August 18th they passed on to Geneva, where they were joined by their friends the Watneys, with whom they went on to Evian, and thence by the Valais to the Bel Alp, an hotel 7,000 feet above the sea-level, commanding magnificent views. 'Christine,' wrote Reeve in his Journal, 'went up the Sparrenhorn with Binet,' whilst, according to Mrs. Reeve, 'Henry and Mrs. Watney, not being moveable bodies, sat at windows and pooh-poohed the energetic use of legs.' From the Bel Alp, Reeve, still very much of a cripple, 'was carried'—the expression is his own—to Brieg. Thence, by the Furca, to Hospenthal and to Zurich, the falls of the Rhine, Bâle, and Paris, where they stayed a few days, and returned to London on September 10th.