An explanation.
The attention of the editors of this paper has been called by their friends to a paragraph in the local column of Monday, concerning the administration of the rite of confirmation, in this city, on Sunday last, which has been understood as intended to ridicule and bring into contempt the religious usages of the Episcopal Church.
We have heretofore explained, and we had supposed it was well understood, that the different departments of the
Dispatch, like those of all well regulated dailies, have each their own separate head; some of the departments, indeed, having several gentlemen engaged upon them, making in all a somewhat numerous editorial staff.
The gentleman in charge of the local department is at present absent from his post, and his place has been temporarily supplied by another gentleman, whose brief paragraph, written in great haste, at a late hour on Sunday night, has rendered this explanation necessary.
We make this statement in justice to the Episcopal Church and to ourselves, never having seen the paragraph till it made its appearance in the paper, where, certainly, it would never have appeared, if the conductors of this journal had previously seen it. The readers of the
Dispatch must, by this time, know that, if there is one rule of action from which it has never deviated, it is courtesy and respect towards all men, and it can hardly be supposed that at this time of day we should wantonly make an exception to that rule, and that exception a Christian Church, and that Church one which challenges our reverence and respect, alike by its age and its conservatism, by the combined simplicity and grandeur of its religious worship, and its unobtrusive piety and zeal.
