quarrel with the Non-intrusionists? Why suffer a schism to take place
in the church? Give legal effect to the 'call,' and the original cause
of quarrel is gone. For, with respect to the opponents of the
Non-intrusionists, _they_ would bow to the law. On the other hand, if
patronage _is_ to be sustained, then why allow of any lingering or
doubtful force to what must often operate as a conflicting claim? 'A
call,' which carries with it any legal force, annihilates patronage.
Patronage would thus be exercised only on sufferance. Do we mean then,
that a 'call' should sink into a pure fiction of ceremony, like the
English _conge-d'elire_ addressed to a dean and chapter, calling on
them to elect a bishop, when all the world knows that already the see
has been filled by a nomination from the crown? Not at all; a _moral_
weight will still attach to the 'call,' though no legal coercion: and
what is chiefly important, all those _doubts_ will be removed by express
legislation, which could not but arise between a practice pointing
sometimes in one direction, and sometimes in another, between legal
decisions again upholding one view, whilst something very like legal
prescription was occasionally pleaded for the other. Behold the evil
of written laws not rigorously in harmony with that sort of customary
law founded upon vague tradition or irregular practice. And here, by
the way, arises the place for explaining to the reader that
irreconcilable dispute amongst Parliamentary lawyers as to the question
whether Lord Aberdeen's bill were _enactory_, that is, created a new
law, or _declaratory_, that is, simply expounded an old one. If
enactory, then why did the House of Lords give judgment against those
who allowed weight to the 'call?' That might need altering; _that_
might be highly inexpedient; but if it required a new law to make it
illegal, how could those, parties be held in the wrong previously to
the new act of legislation? On the other hand, if declaratory, then
show us any old law which made the 'call' illegal. The fact is, that