ese changes naturally made the selection of an archbishop a more
delicate and troublesome business than it was in those good old days.
Nobody then blamed a Prime Minister for preferring an aspirant who had
the support of powerful political connections. Blameless in life he
must be: even the eighteenth century demanded that from candidates for
English, if not, according to Dean Swift, for Irish sees. If he was
also a man of courtly grace and dignity, and a finished scholar, so
much the better. If he was a man of piety, that also was well. By the
time of Queen Victoria the possession of piety and of gifts of speech
had become more important qualifications, but the main thing was
tactful moderation. Even in apostolic days it was required that a
bishop should rule his own house well, and the Popes esteemed most
saintly have not always been the best, as the famous case of Celestine
the Fifth attests. An archbishop must first and foremost be a discreet
and guarded man, expressing few opinions, and those not extreme ones.
His chief virtue came to be, if not the purely negative one of
offending no section by expressing the distinctive views of any other,
yet that of swerving so little from the _via media_ between Rome and
Geneva that neither the Tractarian party, who began to be feared after
1837, nor the pronounced Low Churchmen could claim the Primate as
disposed to favour their opinions. In the case of ordinary bishops the
plan could be adopted, and has since the days of Lord Palmerston been
mostly followed, of giving every party its turn, while choosing from
every party men of the safer sort. This method, however, was less
applicable to the See of Canterbury, for a man on whose action much
might turn could not well be taken from any particular section. The
acts and words of a Primate, who is expected to "give a line" to the
clergy generally and to speak on behalf of the bench of bishops as a
whole, are so closely scrutinised that he must be prudent and wary,
yet not so wary as to seem timid. He ought to be both firm and suave,
conciliatory and decided. That he may do justice to all sections of
the Church of England, he ought not to be an avowed partisan of any.
Yet he must be able and eminent, and of course able and eminent men
are apt to throw themselves into some one line of action or set of
views, and so come to be considered partisans. The position which the
Archbishop of Canterbury holds as the representative in Parliame
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