Untitled - Electric Scotland

1860-64] POSITION OF BISHOP TAIT 283
"
I am authorised to append the following names :-
C. T. EBOR.
A. C. LONDON.
H. M. DURHAM.
C. R. WINTON.
H. EXETER.
G. PETERBOROUGH.
C. ST. DAVIDS.
A. T. CHICHESTER.
J. LICHFIELD.
S. OXON.
T. ELY.
T. V. ST. ASAPH.
T. P. MANCHESTER.
R. D. HEREFORD.
J. CHESTER.
A. LLANDAFF.
R. J. BATH AND WELLS.
J. LINCOLN.
C. GLOUCESTER and BRISTOL.
W. SARUM.
R. RIPON.
J. T. NORWICH.
J. C. BANGOR.
J. ROCHESTER.
S. CARLISLE."
It had not been without debate that this answer was
agreed to. Bishop Tait s close friendship with two at
least of the Essayists made his own position a somewhat
difficult one. But he seems from the first to have taken
the line to which he adhered to the end, drawing a marked
distinction between the different essays, while he joined in
his brethren s censure of the rash and harmful character
of the volume regarded as a whole. 1
1 The biographer of Bishop Wilberforce has in this case, as in many others,
published the Bishop s recollection of what took place at the private meet
ings of the Bishops (vol. iii. p. 3). These meetings being regarded as
entirely confidential, no official record is kept of the discussions or rather
conversations which take place. During the years covered by Bishop Wil-
berforce s Biography there was not even a rough minute-book of the proceed
ings. The confidential character of these conversations would obviously be
at an end if the death of any single Bishop were to be regarded as justifying
the immediate publication of his memoranda of what had passed. Whatever
the personal interest of the Bishop s memoranda, as recording the impression
left upon his own mind, they can in no sense be regarded as authoritative
history, and any one who has had the opportunity of comparing them with other
sources of information upon the subject must have been struck by the wide
but perhaps not unnatural dissimilarity which occasionally exists between
the Bishop s recollection of what was said, especially by those who differed
from him, and the recollection of others. No evidence has been given to the
world that Bishop Wilberforce intended, or would have sanctioned, the