(Late Serjeant-at-Arms.)
PRAYERS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
(Conducted by Canon Wilberforce, the Present Chaplain.)
This may partly be due to the fact that we have not, for many years, passed through political crises in which the hearts of men have been so powerfully stirred as they were in the times of the first Reform Bill; or in the early struggles of the Irish party; or in the debates on the abolition of the corn laws; or during the thrilling incidents of the Crimean War. In these days speeches are shorter, less formal, less ornate, less impassioned. But if the passions of men should again be stirred as they were by those anxious issues, doubtless the same stormy eloquence might once more be evoked. In those days the hearts of millions beat like the heart of one man. One or two historic incidents may serve to illustrate the intensity of national feeling.
While the great issues at stake in the first Reform Bill were filling the thoughts of all, only one Bishop, Dr. Philpotts of Exeter, voted (I believe) in favour of the Bill. The consequence was that the whole bench of Bishops was for a time overwhelmed with national hatred. The late genial and kind-hearted Duke of Buccleuch told me that he had been severely hurt in an attempt to protect the Bishops from popular insult as they came out of the House of Lords. The Bishops had to sign a common protest that they were no longer able to carry out their legislative duties because they could not attend the House of Lords with safety. Even in Canterbury, when the kindly Archbishop Howley visited his metro-political city, he was assaulted by the mob in the streets, pelted with mud and dead cats, prevented from dining at the Guildhall, and was only saved by two or three courageous gentlemen from being dragged out of his carriage and brutally ill-treated. Lord Macaulay's celebrated description of the scene which took place in the House of Commons when the Bill was passed by a very small majority proves how much less inflammable is the present state of the political atmosphere.
ARCHBISHOP HOWLEY ASSAULTED BY THE MOB.