What did these good men do when they were come together? Not, it must be admitted, very much. They prayed and they preached, and debated and divided, and, in the matter of Colenso, quarrelled. They issued a Pastoral Letter which, as Bishop Tait said, was "the expression of essential agreement and a repudiation of Infidelity and Romanism." If this had been the sole result of the Conference, it would have been meagre enough; but under this official ineffectiveness there had been a real movement towards "Life and Liberty." The Conference taught the Established Bishops of England and Ireland that the Bishops of Free Churches--Scottish, American, Colonial--were at least as keen about religious work and as jealous for the spiritual independence of the Christian society as the highly placed and handsomely paid occupants of Lambeth and Bishopthorpe. Bishop Hamilton of Salisbury (whom the Catholic-minded section of the English Church regarded as their special champion) "thought that we had much to learn from contact with the faith and vigour of the American Episcopate"; and Bishop Wilberforce thus recorded his judgment: "The Lambeth gathering was a very great success. Its strongly anti-Erastian tone, rebuking the Bishop of London (Tait), was quite remarkable. We are now sitting in Committee trying to complete our work--agree to a voluntary Court of English Doctrinal Appeal for the free Colonies of America. If we can carry this out, we shall have erected a barrier of immense moral strength against Privy Council latitudinarianism. My view is that God gives us the opportunity, as at home latitudinarianism must spread, of encircling the Home Church with a band of far more dogmatic truth-holding communions who will act most strongly in favour of truth here. I was in great measure the framer of the "Pan-Anglican" for this purpose, and the result has abundantly satisfied me. The American Bishops won golden opinions."