THE GOVERNMENT AND CHURCH PATRONAGE. T HE abuses connected with the
passing of church patronage from one owner to another are not of modern growth. What is new about them is the sense that they are matters with which the law ought further to concern itself. We say "further concern itself," because any one who has ever had occasion to ask the meaning of simony must be well aware that some of the finest and most subtle distinctions that have ever been drawn by counsel or Judges have their origin in that great subject. But for generations past advowsons and next presentations have been bought and sold, and until lately no one has been shocked. The most desirable feature of property is that it should easily pass from owner to owner. In pro- portion as difficulties are placed in the way of this process it becomes less valuable because harder to turn into money. What is true of property in general used to be held true of the special form which consists of the right to present to a benefice. But of late years a different feeling has grown up. We have come to look less at the points which church patronage has in common with other property, and more at the points which are peculiar to it. In this way people have come to see that property which consists in a right of presentation to a public office is property saddled with a trust. It may be difficult to enforce the trust,—difficult, that is, to ensure that the owner of the right to present to a living shall always exercise it properly. But we no longer think that it is no concern of anybody but himself how he exercises it. When a patron ostentatiously declares his superiority to all considerations save the amount of money he can make by his patronage, when he sells the next presentation to a benefice without any thought who the purchaser is, when he puts an advowson up to auction just as though it were a field or a crop, we feel somehow that the law ought to have prevented it, and that it argues a defect in the law that it was unable to prevent it. For many Sessions past Peers and commoners, Archbishops and laymen, have tried their hands at amending the law. Patronage Bills and Benefices Bills have been presented m one House and introduced in the other without any impression being made on the statute-book. They have passed through various ordeals, they have run the gauntlet in Committee of the whole House, they have been more politely but not less searchingly examined in Grand Committees. They have come very near to passing, and only failed because at the last moment the Leader of the House could not find an unoccupied day or hour to bestow on them. And at length their authors have one and all come to see that there can be no certainty of getting any one of them through Parliament unless the Govern- ment make it their own. This year for the first time the Government have done what they have often been asked to do. At the head of the list of measures which will be laid before Parliament, if there is time to proceed with them, stand " proposals for the prevention of certain recognised abuses in connection with church patronage."
We are sincerely glad that this promise has been given. Those who have striven to legislate on this subject have certainly not been idle. They have not asked Ministers to do for them what they were too indolent to do for themselves. They have spared no pains in their en- deavours to get their Bills through, and as soon as they have been defeated in one Session they have set about preparing for another. That they have taken all this trouble without anything coming of it has been no fault of theirs. It has been due to the growing impossibility of getting any contentious Bill through the House of Com- mons so long as it remains in the hands of a private Member. The framers of the various Bills have thus satisfied the test to which the legislative efforts of private Members are more and more subjected. They cannot expect to see their Bills converted into Acts of Parlia- ment while only their names are at the back of them, They cannot expect that the Government will derange the whole order of its business at the most critical period of the Session in order to bring about this result. But what they may look for, after their own persistence and the general conversion of the public mind have made the prudence of the step evident, is to see the Cabinet take the matter into its own hands, and their own often- withdrawn proposals reappear as Government Bills. The Bishops in one House and the " Church " party in the other have earned and obtained this distinc- tion. The Church Patronage Bill of so many private Members now appears for the first time in the Queen's Speech. Nor is it only their persistence that has made this victory well deserved ; it is also the fact that the measure is eminently one which it behoves a Govern- ment to take into its own hands. So long as the Church is established she has a moral claim on the time of Parlia- ment for such legislation as her more urgent needs require. She cannot alter the law of her own mere will. She can- not remove a single abuse, however flagrant, without Parliamentary aid. She may see the very work for which she exists hampered and spoiled because Parliament re- fuses to give her the help she asks. What ground can a Government assign for refusing to listen to a petition which these circumstances make so reasonable. You will not, the Church says, let me legislate for myself and you will not legislate for me. Do which you please, but do not refuse to do either. There was a time, not very long back, when some Nonconformists were disposed to reply : You shall have no help from Parliament, even though that help be simply the removal of abuses which hinder your proper work, unless you will consent to be dis- established.' That answer is no longer given. We know.
of no Nonconformist at this moment who would thus admit that he had his heel on the Church's neck and that he meant to keep it there. But with this objection out of the way there is not one of any moment left. Supposing, that the Bill handles the subject of church patronage in the right way, it will meet with no open opposition.
The words " certain recognised abuses in connection with church patronage" imply, no doubt, that the scope of the Bill will not be large. It will disappoint some ardent Church reformers whose desire is not merely to- remove blots in the existing system, but to replace it by a. wholly new system. That is not a disappointment with which we can feel any sympathy. We have no desire to- see private patronage abolished. On the contrary, we think that it provides a most useful alternative to the some- what stereotyped appointments which are to be expected from the Crown and from the Bishops. But if patronage is to be retained some freedom of disposition must be retained also. A landowner, for example, finds himself obliged to sell his estate. So long as it was his he felt it a part of his duty to give the people living on it the best parson he could find. Now the estate has passed into other bands, and the new owner is animated by the same desire to see the benefice well filled. But if there is• no possibility of selling the advowson it will naturally remain in the hands of the original patron, and of those who come after him. Their connection with the parish in which the estate lies is at an end, but they will go on appointing the parson. It is hardly possible to imagine a worse system than one which would retain private patronage while insisting on leaving it in hands which are no longer interested in its proper administration. All that is wanted, therefore, in regard to the sale of advowsons, is such additional provisions as shall ensure publicity, prevent scandal, and arm the Bishop with additional powers of refusing to institute an. improper presentee. When we turn to the sale of next
presentations, we shall find that they stand on a wholly different footing. A patron may wish, as we have seen, to sell an advowson because his connection with the parish has come to an end, or for some equally valid reason. But why should he wish to sell the next presenta- tion? Not because his connection with the parish has come to an end, for then he would sell the advowson. Not because he thinks the purchaser of the next presenta- tion the best man to have the living, for then he could give it to him when it fell vacant. What he really wishes to do is to make money by divesting himself of the right to present on a particular vacancy while retaining that right on all future occasions, in the hope of making more money by it. We can hardly con- ceive a transaction better calculated to have question- able results. Now and again, of course, it may bring a good man into a parish because he may wish to find work that suits him, and the patron will usually have no objection to selling the next presentation to a good man provided that the money is secure. But this is a matter of pure chance, and as public opinion sets itself more and more against the trade in next presentations it is a chance which is less and less likely to occur. If the Government measure does nothing more than take this abuse out of the way it will deserve a most cordial welcome.
Previous page
