ABSTRACT
FROM HANSARD, ccxxi 76–82 (15 July, 1874). Disraeli’s speech on the second reading of the Public Worship Regulation Bill elicited much hostility from the High Church party in the Church of England. Offended anyway by the government’s policy of using a statutory instrument to shore up the Act of Uniformity, High Churchmen were particularly incensed by the tone of this speech—with its reference to the ‘Mass in masquerade’, and its frank declaration that the bill was an attempt to put down Ritualism. Disraeli also, in describing the current international manifestations of conflict between the spiritual and civil powers, expressed a popular belief that English Ritualism, as Romanism in disguise, was the agent of a deeper historical struggle than the disagreements over mere candles and vestments might seem to imply.
