Untitled - Electric Scotland

258 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. xi.
his legal power of veto. This opinion was disputed by
Mr. Edouart s advisers, but he decided to abstain from any
formal veto, and to throw upon the Bishop, as he said, all
the responsibility for the mischief which must inevitably
follow :
"But though I thus retire," he wrote, "yet I continue to
object to these services, and again appeal to your Lordship as
my Diocesan to maintain the order and constitution of the
Church."
The correspondence was made public at the time, and
the Bishop s final reply, dated July 30, 1858, was the sub
ject of much criticism among
fashioned of his friends.
the more timid or old-
"
I think," he said,
"
that you have come to a wise determina
tion in resolving not to move further in the question of the
Exeter Hall services. You are aware that I have all along been
of opinion that it was only in a technical sense that a great build
ing like Exeter Hall intended for the use of London gener
ally could be held, in its character of a place of public meeting,
to be included in the Parish of St. Michael s, Burleigh Street,
and therefore subject to you. ... I readily concur in the
opinion of your friends that you can in no way be held respon
sible for these services, and need have no apprehension lest you
be compromised by ceasing to take any further steps against
them. . . . On
me must devolve the responsibility, if zealous
efforts on the part of my clergy to enable the Church to do mis
sionary work in the midst of our overwhelming population, be
allowed to interfere with sound doctrine or the due discipline of
the Church. ... I do, indeed, most earnestly desire that the
Gospel may be preached to the poor, and that the clergy of our
Church may be the means of preaching it but I am not ; insen
sible, on the other hand, to possible dangers of disorder, and am
quite ready to interfere, if in the exercise of my discretion in the
discharge of the duties of my office I come to think that any
interference on my part is desirable."
The excitement aroused by the Exeter Hall addresses
had at least one happy result: it strengthened the Bishop s