Remarks on the Ecclesiastical Report.

The preceding outline is the only result, known to the public, of the two years’ labours of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and, meagre as it is, was only conceded after urgent inquiries in parliament by Messrs. Hume and Baines. Between the industry of the Church Commissioners and Poor-Law Commissioners the contrast is as striking as the objects of their respective investigations. But the delay in making a full report by the former is the more extraordinary as the returns from the clergy appear to have been received so early as April 17th, 1833; lord Althorp on that day having prefaced his motion for a commutation of tithes in England by a general statement of the revenues of the church, as now given to the public. Surely in the long interval that had elapsed between the date of the report and of his lordship’s speech there was sufficient time to ‘digest and arrange the materials,’ without keeping them back until the untoward advent of the Duke, who may deem it unnecessary to have any further report at all on the Church.

Leaving these mysteries to be solved by the commissioners, we shall submit a few brief remarks on the matter of the Report such as it is. We have no enmity to the church, only we desire all the good that can be obtained from it at a less cost to the public.

Archbishops and Bishops.—The net average income of these is £5,930. But the Primate of all England has an income of £32,000, according to the statement of Dr. Lushington, and the right reverend bishop of London an income of £15,000, according to his own admission. Such incomes are exorbitant, and quite out of keeping with the incomes of other public servants; as of military and naval officers; or of the first lord of the treasury, and chancellor of the exchequer. In France an archbishop has only £1041, and a bishop £625 a year. A cardinal at Rome, next in dignity to the pope, has between £400 and £500 per annum. These latter sums are enough for Christian pastors. The English bishops have not, we suspect, included in their returns of revenue the annual value of their parks, and ‘palaces,’ and their ‘thrones!’

Deans and Chapters.—The gross revenue of these is £350,861. They were deemed a ‘superfluous condition,’ even in popish times, by archbishop Cranmer; and, in a letter to Henry VIII. he says, a prebendary is neither a ‘learner nor a teacher, but a good viander who wastes his substance in superfluous belly cheer.’ By a reform of the cathedral and collegiate churches a saving of a quarter of a million might at once be effected.

Rectories and Vicarages.—The net average income of these is £285. If there were as many incumbents as benefices, and each received only this very moderate stipend, there would be no complaint that the clergy are overpaid. But the waste and injustice consist in the disproportion between the number of livings and the number of individuals among whom they are shared. From authentic returns it appears that the number of incumbents in England and Wales, among whom the 10,498 benefices are divided, is under 7,000; so that some fortunate persons, with good connexions, have two, three, or four livings, or more, besides dignities in cathedrals, preacherships, chaplainships, and other tit-bits of preferment too numerous to mention, but which together swell the incomes of favoured individuals to an enormous amount. It is not only the aggregate revenues of the church, but their unequal and partial distribution which excites public indignation. In this consists its chief iniquity; but, for a complete elucidation of the subjects of Patronage, Sinecurism, and Pluralism, we must refer to The Black Book itself, especially the edition of 1832, pages 29, 31, and 56.

Curates.—From the incomes of these we may form an estimate of the expense really necessary to the maintenance of an efficient church establishment. It is notorious that the curates and poor clergy who are unable to bear the charge of curates, form nearly the only labouring bees, and that it is by them that the chief business of preaching, burying, baptizing, and marrying is performed. The 5,282 curates, it seems, have an average salary of £80, amounting for the whole to £424,796; so that, for about double that sum an efficient clergy might be maintained, adequate to the discharge of all the practical offices of the national worship.

Poor Clergy.—It seems there are 4,506 benefices with cure of souls, having incomes under £150. The worst of the poor livings is, that they are mostly held single, while the ‘fat ones’ are held double, treble, or quadruple, and often with a stall or some other good thing appended. But there is no help for this class of incumbents any more than for the curates, until they obtain a radical ecclesiastical reform. All we can do for them is to recommend their case to the merciful consideration of the bishop of London, who, now that he has got through his poor-law duties, and perhaps, too, his jobbing and exchanging of church preferment with a brother prelate—of which such curious examples were recently given in the Morning Chronicle—may have leisure to attend to their situation.

We shall not enter into the subject of the total revenues of the established clergy, having already done that in another place; but shall only remark, that the exclusion from the returns of the income derived from college and school foundations, and from lectureships, chaplainships, and other sources, renders the estimate of the commissioners far from satisfactory. Why, too, ought not church rates to be included in ecclesiastical revenue, and which, according to the last return, amounted to £554,295? Are surplice-fees, mortuaries, Easterdues, &c. included in the returns of the clergy?

If the Clergy, from sinister motives, have understated their real incomes, we trust they will hereafter be bound by their own returns, should the Legislature determine on a plan of composition for the church revenues.