"You perhaps know that the Liberals at Oxford are likely to side with Ward against the Heads. I do not see what else they can do; and I devoutly hope that the tangle will be irremovable except by abolishing subscriptions. Price of Rugby is all in a bristle about it. I much admire his spirit. Baden Powell protests in toto against the statute."
"6th Nov., 1845.
"My dear Nicholson,
* * * * *
"Your news about the potatoes unfortunately is no matter of private information, but rings through our ears, and I am increasingly doubtful whether we are to hope for open ports. I believe the League is right in saying that Sir Robert's next move will be for an absolutely free trade; but when that next move is to be must depend in part on his colleagues; and the country must perhaps suffer much before they come over, or he gains boldness to defy their opposition….
"If you have been reading the New Prospective, I dare say you will guess that the article on 'Church Reform' is mine. I was not sorry to get it printed, even in such a quarter—(though I know no other periodical that is free enough to dare to print it. The Westminster Review is not enough in religious circles),—because I want to send it to Churches of various grades, and get their opinion. I fear I have expressed myself too sanguinely of Dissenting Co-operation. They seem to say they will support nothing that does not go to length of alienating the whole Church property to secular uses."
On 16th April, 1846, politics are touched on again.
"16th April, 1846.
"My dear Nicholson,
"I have sent one or two 'Leagues' of late to my brother-in-law in Devonshire, thinking that they had in them matter of instruction to him…. Does not Peel appear of late to have made himself as little as of old? Yet I rejoice in his obstructing a mere Whig ministry of the orthodox kind; and although his course has heaped misery on Ireland, nothing less severe, I imagine, would brace England up to the stringent remedies which alone can save that country;—nor are we yet screwed to the point!…