Moreover, he had scarcely quitted England when the fanatics once more raised their heads. At the Church Congress which assembled at Birmingham that year, Dr. Perowne, the Bishop of Worcester, had the effrontery to declare that "Zola had spent his life in corrupting the minds and souls not only of thousands of his fellow-countrymen and especially of the young but also, by the translation of his works, thousands and hundreds of thousands of young souls elsewhere." At the same gathering Mr. J. E. C. Welldon, then Headmaster of Harrow School and later Bishop of Bombay, denounced the novelist as "infamous," and besought the aid of Churchmen for the "National Vigilant Association," of which, according to "The National Observer," he, Mr. Welldon, was "a conspicuous ornament."[28] The Bishop of Truro, speaking at a church gathering in the west of England took a similar line, and complained bitterly that translations of Zola's horrible books were sold at the railway-station bookstalls, which, said he, would never have been allowed in the lifetime of that good man, Mr. W. H. Smith. Ernest Vizetelly answered the prelate in a newspaper of his diocese, pointing out that the only Zola translations sold at Messrs. Smith's bookstalls were those of "La Débâcle" and "Le Docteur Pascal" by himself, and that of "Le Rêve" by Miss Eliza Chase; and he defied the bishop to find in any one of those three books a single sentence that could give offence to any sensible man. Other correspondents reinforced Vizetelly; but the bishop, quite content with having uttered his slander, preserved absolute silence, that being a characteristic trait with some bishops--of various churches and countries--who, regarding themselves as very superior persons, seldom if ever offer reparation for the aspersions they may cast upon laymen. Yet the law of libel applies to them as to others, and it is perhaps a pity it is not enforced against them. But the lawyers say, or at least they said to Vizetelly: "It is useless to proceed against an English bishop. There is so much cant in this country that you would never obtain a verdict against him, however complete your evidence might be."