VIII.: Who Would Be Benefited by a Reform of the Church?

A reform of the Church, like most other reforms, would permanently benefit the many, and only temporarily injure the few. The lawn-sleeves, the shovel-hats, silk-aprons, and monopolizing incumbents would be the chief sufferers; while the condition of the most numerous and useful order of the clergy would be improved. Such odious abuses as non-residence and pluralities would be abolished, and the shameful injustice of one man doing the duty and another receiving the reward would be no longer tolerated. Every district, or parish, requiring the services of an officiating clergyman would be provided with one to whom the degrading epithet of “poor curate” or “poor parson” could never be justly applied. By mitigating the penury of the working clergy, their respectability and influence would be augmented, and every neighbourhood enjoy the advantages which are known to result from the permanent abode of at least one educated, intelligent, and exemplary individual. The clergy alike profess to be engaged solely in the work of religious instruction, and no class can boast superior piety or attainments by which to lay claim to superior reward. Why then should there exist such disparity in income? Why should the rector enjoy his £2000 per annum, the vicar receive but £400, and the curate only £80 or £100?

The equalizing of the value of sees would remove the abuse of translations, and thereby effect a great improvement in the bench of bishops. It is only a few lucky individuals who obtain the rich prizes of Canterbury, Winchester, London, Ely, and Durham, that are benefited by the unequal revenues of the bishoprics. Many prelates have barely income enough to support the dignity of their stations; yet they share, in common with the rest, the public odium attached to their class from the inordinate wealth of their more fortunate brethren. It is this inequality, and the desire consequently excited to move to the wealthier endowments that gives to the bishops their political animus, and renders them the most self-seeking men in the country. Without translations they would be as independent in their conduct as the judges are said to be; but with the help of them government has, generally, the power to render them subservient to its purposes.

The exercise of legislative functions by the bishops has become extremely unpopular since their mischievous vote on the Reform Bill. The House of Lords has always been to them the great scene of jobbing, intrigue, and ambition. On no occasion have they done themselves credit there; they appear, indeed, totally void of legislative aptitude, and never, by one act, have they rendered substantial service to the State, or done honour to themselves and the Church. Whether as magistrates or legislators, clergymen are inherently disqualified for the discharge of secular duties. It is not so much in their character of churchmen as of laymem that they have become so universally disliked; and we verily believe, had they been eligible to seats in the lower house as they are to the upper, the additional opportunity thereby afforded to render themselves odious, would have hastened the downful of the establishment.

Besides the deprival of their legislative functions, a substantial improvement in the prelacy would consist in the abolition of their patronage. As it is, a rigid discharge of their duties is often incompatible with their interests, or at least their feelings. Their proper functions are the superintendence of the subaltern clergy of their dioceses; but many of these clergy have been promoted by themselves to their benefices; they are their very good friends, and not a few their own flesh and blood. How, in such cases, can it be expected they will be strict in the enforcement of pastoral duties; that they will not be indulgent in the granting of licenses for non-residence, and dispensations for pluralities; or that they will insist on the payment of suitable stipends to the curates. A bishop, like a pope, ought to have no relations, and thus escape, as Benedict II. remarked of the successors of St. Peter, the opprobrium of perverting the patronage of the church to the aggrandizement of his family. Under the existing system the chopping, exchanging, bargaining, and moving about, that ensue in a diocese on a translation or consecration, are a disgrace to the church, and render the discharge of episcopal duties more like a game on the chessboard, in which the rooks, knights, and other prime pieces, represent the “kit and kin” of the new diocesan.

The unequal extent of benefices has been urged in favour of ecclesiastical reform. In most cases, the extent of the livings is made to answer antiquated boundaries of parishes, by which, sometimes five or six churches are to be seen within a mile of each other, in a thinly populated country, while, again, parishes of from eight or ten miles in length afford but the accommodation of one church to a large population. Thus the distribution of the churches and livings bears no proportion either to the inhabitants or the acres, as will appear from the following list:—

Anomalous and disproportionate as are these numbers, the above remark is still more strikingly displayed by reference to individual cases; thus the livings of—

“Thus we see,” as observed by the author from whom the preceding statement is copied, “that the State provides the same extent of accommodation for 47 as for 23,331 persons, so that as far as secular authority is concerned for the religious instruction of the people, a large proportion of them are wholly unprovided for; while, on another portion, its goodness is showered to redundancy. And should the former class think it necessary to have a second church in the same parish, they can have no clergyman to perform the services therein without an increase of their ecclesiastical burdens, notwithstanding they may already raise £3,000 per annum, for the purpose of an adequate supply of religious instruction. That income is the freehold of the rector, and any other instruction than what he can afford in a church not large enough to contain one-tenth part of the inhabitants, at a distance of five or six miles from many of their homes, must be paid for by a separate imposition.”—Church Establishment founded in Error, p. 70.

Having adverted to the benefits the church would derive from ecclesiastical reform, let us next advert to those it would confer on the community.

In the first place the abolition of non-residence, of pluralities, of sinecure offices in cathedrals, and the reduction of extravagant incomes, and the substitution, in lieu of these abuses, an uniform and graduated rate of payment to the different order of ecclesiastics, proportioned to rank and duty, would not only effect a vast improvement in church discipline, but a saving of at least seven millions per annum of public income. Away then would go the tithe,—the most unjust and impolitic impost the ingenuity of rulers ever devised for tormenting God’s creatures, and crippling national resources. Of course we do not mean the tithe would be simply repealed; that would be merely throwing so much additional rent into the pockets of the land-owners without benefiting the farmer or general consumer of his produce. The tithe is a tax, and forms part of the public income levied for public purposes. Its simple removal, without purchase or commutation, would only yield so much increase of revenue to be lavished on opera dancers and Paganinis; or dissipated in gaming-houses, in concerts, coteries, and grand dinners; or wasted at Paris, Florence, and Naples, and which had better continue to be spent, as much of it now is, by sinecure silk-aprons and non-resident pluralists, at Bath, Cheltenham, and Tonbridge. The measure contemplated by the people is the sale of the tithe outright to the landowners, or its commutation by a land-tax. This would be a real reform; the other is only delusion.

With such a resource as church property would yield, all the rabble of taxes might be repealed which now weigh down to annihilation the springs and sources of industry, and oppress a man’s “house, even his heritage.” The farmers and working agriculturists would share in the general benefit, not only by an increase of profits and wages and the mitigation of public burthens, but also by the extinction of an inquisitorial impost, whose pressure augments with every increase in industry, skill, and capital. For the tithe is not, as it has been alleged, a rent-charge imposed on the land, it is a virtual income-tax levied on stock and industry. A rent-charge is paid by reason of the land, but tithes are not, but by reason of the stock and labour of the occupier. If there be no annual increase, no profit made, or crop planted, no tithe can be demanded; but for non-payment of a rent-charge, he on whom it is settled, may enter upon and possess the land; whereas, he that claims tithe can only avail himself of the produce.

Nothing can more pointedly illustrate the stagnating influence of our aristocratic institutions on the mind and energies of the community than the continuance of the tithe-tax so long after its impolicy and injustice have been demonstrated. Even Mr. Pitt, who, throughout his political life was the slave of a paltry ambition for place, and the tool of a despicable faction, meditated its removal. It has been denounced by Bishop Watson, by Dr. Paley, by Burke, by Malthus, and every writer and statesman with the least pretensions to intelligence and patriotism. It is supported by the example of no country in Europe. Though England swarms with separatists, and can hardly be said to have a national religion, yet, for the maintenance of one handful of spirituals, the whole nation is insulted and the operations of rural industry fettered and impeded.

Our neighbours, the Scotch, have long since wiped out this abominable stain. Among them tithe is a valued and commuted rate of payment, forming a trifling and invariable impost, to the extent of which, alone, the landlord can ever be made liable to the church. This reform they commenced about the time they got rid of prelacy and cathedrals, in the days of John Knox. With this superiority Scotland would be the land to live in, were it not for her rag-money, her myriads of legalists and placemen, her host of servile writers, the barrenness of her moors and mountains, and the griping keenness of her population. “Strange as it may seem,” says lord Brougham, in one of his eloquent harangues, “and to many who hear me incredible, from one end of the kingdom to the other, a traveller will see no such thing as a bishop—not such a thing is to be found from the Tweed to John o’Groats: not a mitre, no nor so much as a minor canon, or even a rural dean—and in all the land not a single curate—so entirely rude and barbarous are they in Scotland—in such utter darkness do they sit that they support no cathedrals, maintain no pluralists, suffer no non-residence; nay, the poor benighted creatures are ignorant even of tithes! Not a sheaf, or a lamb, or a pig, or the value of a plough-penny, do the hopeless mortals render from year’s end to year’s end! Piteous as their lot is, what makes it infinitely more touching is to witness the return of good for evil, in the demeanour of this wretched race. Under all this cruel neglect of their spiritual concerns, they are actually the most loyal, contented, moral, and religious people any where, perhaps, to be found in the world.”

Bishop Watson, said “a reformer, of Luther’s temper and talents, would, in five years, persuade the people to compel parliament to abolish tithes, to extinguish pluralities, to enforce residence, to confine episcopacy to the overseeing of dioceses, to expunge the Athanasian creed from our Liturgy, to free dissenters from Test-Acts, and the ministers of the establishment from subscription to human articles of faith.”—Letter to the Duke of Grafton.

Mr. Burke said, he “wished ministers to preach the gospel with ease, but their possessions to be such that the pastor would not have the inauspicious appearance of a tax-gatherer.”—His Works, vol. x. p. 146.

The progress of public reform is at a snail’s pace, and so numerous and strong are the holds of abuse, that many pitched battles have to be fought before a single inch can be gained from the waste of corruption. But the interests identified with a reform of the church are so many, important, and self-evident, that we feel certain it is a measure that cannot be much longer averted. The Archbishop of Canterbury, we are sure, may save himself the trouble of putting forward his cunningly-devised scheme for a composition for tithes, for a limited period, at a fixed rate of payment. The country will never sanction any plan tending to give permanency to an odious impost which, to our great opprobrium, has long been suffered to survive the natural term of its existence. The worthy primate seems to feel that the foundations of Mother Church are giving way, and he, doubtless, deems it good foresight in himself and brethren to lay hold of something certain for at least the next twenty years, the probable term of their earthly pilgrimage. But he may rely upon it the owners and occupiers of land, in England, will not be so easily overcome by ecclesiastical artifice as some of them have been in Ireland: a man must be totally regardless of the aspect of the times, he can know nothing of the state of opinion, as indicated by private conversations, by proceedings at public meetings, by newspapers, by parliamentary debates, by the petitions from Rochester, Devonshire, and other parts of the kingdom, who is not convinced that tithes, two years hence, will neither impoverish the soil nor reproach the wisdom of domestic policy: the attention of the people is rivetted on the vast possessions of the church, and to them they look as the best resource in their privations and difficulties. In the language of Scripture, and of the followers of Sir Walter Raleigh, they may truly exclaim, “Come hither, all ye that are heavy laden,—Here is the real El Dorado for reducing the boroughmongers’ debt, and lightening the burden of taxation. Here is the fund for colonizing, for mitigating poor-rates, repealing corn-laws, and creating employment; and none but fools look for any other!”

Considering, then, a great bettering in the condition of the operative clergy,—the improvement of church discipline,—the abolition of tithes,—and the saving of many millions of public income, as the certain and prominent advantages of ecclesiastical reformation, we will next advert to one or two interests in society which, at first sight, appear to present some obstruction to this salutary revolution.

First, of the rights of lay-impropriators. It is necessary to bear in mind the distinction which has been before adverted to between the tithes of the church and the tithes of laymen. These last are considerable, amounting, perhaps, to one-fourth or one-fifth of the whole tithes of the kingdom. They have been estimated—though, we think, on incorrect principles—to be worth £1,752,842 per annum. Now, these tithes are unquestionably of the nature of private property, and bear no analogy to clerical tithes. How they originated has been explained, (page 12,) but that has no bearing on their present tenure. We must take things as we find them, and adopt such rights of property as the laws and usages of society recognize, without ascending to their remote origin. Upon this principle we quickly discern the different tenure of church and impropriate tithes. The former have always been dealt with as a portion of the public income, payable to certain persons while engaged in the service of such form of worship as the State choose to patronize; the latter has been considered a rent-charge due to individuals, and with which the legislature had no concern. Hence the parliament has no more thought of interfering with impropriate tithes than with the estates in land obtained at the Reformation. The tithe-owner has dealt with them as part of his patrimony, which he could rightfully sell or devise to whom he pleased, and which immunities of ownership have been shown not to appertain to ecclesiastical possessions. To sequestrate lay-tithes would be gross spoliation, but, in the secularization of church-property, the legislature would only exercise an authority it has always possessed; and, were the life-interests of present possessors fairly commuted, neither loss nor injustice would be sustained by any person. It follows, impropriate tithes do not at all enter into the question of church reform; they must continue a charge on land, or lands liable thereto may be exonerated on such terms as can be agreed upon by the landlords and lay-impropriators.

Next, as to the interests of private patrons in advowsons. A right of presentation, in its origin and in acts of the legislature, has been shown to have been always considered merely an honorary function, which ought not to be exercised for gain or family interests, but the promotion of religion and virtue. Private patrons, therefore, could not expect to be indemnified for the loss they would sustain by ecclesiastical reform, according to the present value of benefices. All they could expect would be the continuance to them (as was the case in Scotland) of the right of nominating the ministers of the Reformed Church, subject, as at present, to the approval of the bishop. For the public to purchase their interests, according to the present value of tithes and church-fees, would be nothing less than at act of national simony; it would be converting a spiritual function into a temporal possession, and the state committing the very crime in wholesale which had been condemned and punished when perpetrated in a less degree by individuals.

Nothing has yet been said of the provision for the Established Clergy, to be substituted in lieu of tithes and church estates,—whether they ought to be paid stipends by Government, or out of the poor-rates, the county-rate, or some other rate levied expressly for the purpose, or whether they ought to be supported by the voluntary contributions of their hearers. The discussion of these matters will be time enough, when the people, or their representatives, have determined upon the secularization of church property. The proceedings of the Church-building Commissioners offer an example which some may think it wise to follow. They have shown not only how episcopalian churches may be built by subscription, but how the minister’s stipend may be paid out of pewrents, and other voluntary contributions, without the aid of the compulsory and odious provision of tithes. It may be thought a similar plan might be extended to all the churches of the establishment; but, for our parts we are in favour of a national religion—a Liturgy—and an endowed clergy; provided the endowment is moderate—fairly apportioned among the working clergy—and does not exceed about a million and a half per annum. A public worship protected by the state has formed, with few exceptions, a part of every well-ordered community. The French tried to do without it; the experiment was productive of enormous crimes, and after floundering for a time in the waves of anarchy, they were compelled again to resort to the aid of spiritual faith. Religion contains now little to give offence to the most liberal mind; it is not, as formerly, like the demon of some German story—recluse, bloody, and unrelenting; its worst features—bigotry and intolerance—have been removed by the progress of science and philosophy, and what remains may be considered a good with scarcely any admixture of evil.

Whether, however, we have an endowed clergy or not, no fear need be entertained about the interests of religion suffering. The fear at present is all the other way, lest a people evidently verging into the gloom of puritanism, may not afterwards recoil into the opposite extreme of licentiousness and unbelief. This has been termed an age of cant, and every thing tends to show its ascendancy. Nothing but cant can live in literature, the drama, trade, or politics. Let any one deny the popular faith, and the doors of the legislature are closed upon him; he is a “doomed man,” whose future life is “bound in storms and shallows,” and he is shunned as if he had caught the plague from some infectious lazaretto. This is the state of opinion among the lower and middle orders; among the higher, there is less scrupulosity; and a lord or a gentleman of £10,000 a year may admire Voltaire, Diderot, or Spinoza, without being ejected out of the pale of social communion.

While men’s fortunes depend on their faith, we may be sure there will be enough of it, or at least, the profession. Like the French satirist, every one thinks it necessary he should live, and of course will adopt the means essential to the end in view. It is possible, however, the artificial encouragement of devotion may produce it in excess, beyond the wants of the state, and thus generate the extreme to which we have adverted at the Restoration of Charles II. There is always some danger in meddling with spiritual opinions as with temporal interests; and many may think the wisest course to be adopted towards religion would be to follow the policy recently become popular in respect of trade—leaving it free; neither attempting to depress one sect by the drawback of civil disabilities, nor to encourage another by the bounty of protection. It is certainly a fact that religion will generally abound in proportion to the wants and demands of society; where there is much ignorance and mental debility, there will, as there ought, be much faith; on the other hand, where there is a strong and enlightened reason, the motives for good conduct will be sufficiently apparent, without being aided by the hopes and fears of superstition.

However, as before hinted, we are not the partizans of a free-trade in religion, and think a worship patronized by the state is best, provided it be cheap. Our reason for this preference may be somewhat peculiar, and not shared in by our readers. We prefer an established worship, not less as a means of maintaining a rational piety, than as a counterpoise to fanaticism. Without religion at all, men are seldom better than beasts; but if their rulers have no control over the popular faith, the people will be at the mercy of every pretender, whose warm imagination or an over-weening conceit may have filled with the delusion of a divine commission. With an endowed corps of ecclesiastics the state possesses a medium through which religion may be kept in countenance among the higher classes, (adopting the slang of aristocracy,) and its temperature among the lower be regulated. Of course we mean a race of clergymen differently qualified from the present. These, good easy souls! have little influence or authority; they have ministered away their flocks, and remain themselves objects of derision or cupidity, not veneration.

With the near and long-standing example of the Presbyterian establishment, North of the Tweed, it is surprising the task of ecclesiastical reform has made no progress either in England or Ireland. In the Kirk of Scotland, it has been already remarked, there are no bishops, nor dignitaries, nor tithes. The incomes of the national clergy are paid by the Court of Session out of a fund formed from the ancient tithes of the country. Some of the benefices being considered of too small value, they were, in 1810, augmented by an annual grant, from Parliament, of £10,000, which made the poorest livings worth £150 a-year, and the income of some of the ministers are considerably more, amounting to £300 or £350. Exclusive of house and glebe, the average income of the clergy is £245, which to 948 pastors, makes the whole annual expenditure on the Kirk only £234,900. This cannot be considered extravagant to a ministry with upwards of a million and a half of hearers; and upon the whole there are many things to admire in the Scotch Establishment. The Scots do not pay a quarter of a million for lawn-sleeves; nor half a million for cathedral and collegiate sinecurists. There are no curates; the parochial clergy reside upon their benefices; exhorting, catechising, instructing, and performing all those duties to their parishioners, for which they receive their incomes. The Scotch Church, though it cannot now be termed poor, yet its wealth is not so exorbitant as to corrupt its ministry. The wealth of the English Church is the source of all its vices—sinecurism, pride, luxury, and inefficiency.

The Dissenters afford an example of the efficient support of religion without any compulsory provision. In England and Wales there are upwards of 9,000 ministers supported by Dissenters. This is certainly not done at a less expense than £120 each, or rather more than a million per annum. Again, America is another proof of what can be done by voluntary contributions. There are not less than 11,000 ministers of all denominations in the United States, the great majority of whom derive their subsistence from the free-will offerings of the people, independent of legislative provision. The option left to the people has not operated to the decay of virtue or religion; on the contrary, religion flourishes among them to an extraordinary extent—it pervades all ranks and conditions of men—it is associated with all their pursuits—not, indeed, as a second head of the social body, dividing the intellect and strength of its frame, but as a pursuit distinct from political combinations, altogether a personal concern, and, therefore, purposely discarded by the constitution. Notwithstanding this absence of state-worship the United States have become a mighty empire, which, in spite of the solemn pedantries of Capt. Basil Hall, may be advantageously compared with any other in the world, whether measured by the standard of morals, personal prowess, commercial enterprize, or national wealth and power.

We have now done, and having finished our exposition of the Church of England, can truly say we have “nothing extenuated, nor set down aught in malice.” Our statements we know cannot be impugned; but it is possible our opinions may be misunderstood. It may be thought we are Jacobins, Liberals, or worse. Of this we take no note, knowing we are as good subjects as true Christians. We have no dislike to the Church, but we object to it as we do to the borough system, because it does not reward merit, and oppresses the honest and industrious. Our humble endeavour has been to expose the corruptions of the establishment. If the duties of the Church be of importance to Government, or to the interests of religion and morality, it is a strong reason for reforming, not protecting its abuses. It must be clear to the most common observers it cannot long continue in its present state. Without adverting to the number of dissenters—to defects in discipline,—the Liturgy—ill-proportioned revenue—or the conduct of the clergy themselves, the mere fact of a body of men, not exceeding eight thousand in number, and of no great social importance—claiming in the most vexatious manner a tenth of the natural and artificial produce of a soil, raised for the support of Fourteen Millions, is so staringly outrageous, as to throw all argument out of court, and leave the Church a barefaced and unparalleled oppression, without precedent or palliative. Further reasoning on such a subject is out of place, and the only question is—Who will rise to abate the colossal nuisance? Will Government timely interfere and afford the Church a chance of prolonged duration, under a less obnoxious form, or will it supinely wait and behold it swept off in a whirlwind, leaving “not a wreck behind,” by a simultaneous rush of the tiers etat?

If the Church is to be saved it must be saved by a wisdom very different from that which directs the councils of the heads of the Establishment. They are obviously as insensible to the position in which they stand as the child unborn. Only think of the nature of the bills introduced by them last year for the reform of the Church. The character of one—that for a composition for tithe—has been already noticed. Of the remaining two, one is for augmenting the incomes of vicarages; the other for shortening the time of prescription in cases of moduses and exemptions from tithes. In the last is a proviso which prevents it from interfering with any suit which may be commenced within three years. Ah, my Lords Bishops, the crisis will be past long before. Do not, we beseech you, lay the flattering unction to your souls that there will be litigation about moduses, prescription terms, and nullum tempus maxims three years hence. Your days are assuredly numbered; your lease is expired. The fatal vote given on the Reform-Bill has sealed your doom, and no depth of repentance can again establish you in the estimation of the people. Solemn pledges will be demanded from a reformed parliament that tithe shall be abolished, and that haughty prelates shall cease to haunt the chambers of legislation. A terrible storm is impending over the Church, and nothing can avert its destructive ravages save a timely abandonment of all that has long excited popular indignation—its enormous wealth—its avarice, pride, and self-seeking—its insolent and oppressive power.