The Henson Journals

[191]

Monday, May 12th, 1919.

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The salient feature of the ecclesiastical situation is the virtual capture of the Liberals by the neo–Tractarians.For example, the 'Church Reform Union' originally founded by Liberals of the type of Fremantle (1870) is now prominent in support of the Enabling Bill, & was recently headed by Bishop Gore. Having secured the citadel of sacerdotalism, & reserved everything that really matters to the clergy, they bustle to the front as 'democrats', & will abolish privilege everywhere. The genuine advocates of Liberty are driven into the invidious position of championing everything in the Establishment which is least consonant with 'democratic' ideas e.g. the ex officio elements in the Convocation, the freehold of the parson, the Crown nomination of bpks &c. The public is very ignorant, and easily captured by 'catch' phrases. "Life and Liberty" is precisely such a phrase. And the familiarity with sect–organisations predisposes the multitude to favour "autonomy" in the Church of England. The case of the Salvation Army may serve to show that autocracy can commend itself to a modern democracy, and the still more impressive example of the Papacy points in the same direction. Constitutional government, the only guarantee of genuine liberty, is unwelcome and indeed unintelligible to modern democracies.

[192]

I walked to Westminster, and saw Mr Downing about the grant for All Saints. Hereford. Then I had an interview with the dentist. After lunching at the Deanery I wrote letters. With some difficulty we managed to get a taxi, & so got off to Holborn Viaduct, where we took the train to [Birchington] and arrived in due course about 7 p.m.

Mrs Spooner was at lunch, and I had some conversation with her. She says that the Archbishop is "working himself up" into a belief in the policy which he has been hustled into making his own. She agrees with me in thinking that he is extremely sensitive to the latest influence, and that he has been really 'captured' by Temple, & his crew. The gossip about Ralph's being appointed to the Bishoprick of Oxford had reached her. She professed to think that it was undesirable that he should be on the Bench as his deafness would make still more terrifying the aloofness which his temperament & habit of life have always emphasized. The appointment of Winfred Burrows to the see of Chichester is announced in the newspapers. It will serve well enough as that diocese is a very nest of extreme "Catholicks". He will come to them with the illuminating commendation of a prosecution in which he is already engaged. An Evangelical might, perhaps, be sent to Truro, where the people are incorrigibly Nonconformist.

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