ST MICHAEL’S.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 578, 26 April 1876, Page 2

ST MICHAEL’S.

To the Editor of the Globe. Sir, —In your article of yesterday you referred to the recent meeting of the parishioners of St Michael and All Angels, and you suggested that possibly the retirement of the two vestrymen, “with whom the incumbent could not work in harmony,” might have led to an improved state of things. It is right you should be made aware that a similar difficulty occurred at Easter, 1875, there being then, as now, two members of the old vestry with whom the incumbent said “ he could not work in harmony,” and that your suggested expedient was then adopted, neither of these gentlemen having been re-elected; and yet Easter, 1876, has found the relations between the incumbent and the whole vestry to be such as are indicated by your report of the meeting. I have said above “the whole” vestry, because as a body they repudiate the “ idea of there being one or two members in particular with whom the incumbent cannot work. They decline to allow any member to be specially singled out as being more the author of any particular act than each of themselves, They have acted throughout the year most unitedly, and after full and frequent consul aliens, and it is useless for the incumbent to suggest that individual members are specially antagonistic to him, when he knows that such antagonism is fully shared by every other member of the vestry. I must add that I have only written this letter by way of explanation, and that I should not have referred to the subject at all if it had not been specially noticed in your leader of the 25th instant.—Yours, &c, R. J. S. HARMAN. April 26th, 1876.