17 JULY 1886, Page 7

THE CLERGY AND HOME-RULE.

THE action of the Liberal clergy in the recent Electives has not, so far as we have observed, been identical with that of the educated Liberal laity. There has been no general falling away from Mr. Gladstone in consequence of his alliance with Mr. Parnell. The majority of the clergy, of course, are Conservatives, and now, as formerly, the olerical vote has been in the main Conservative. But the Liberal Unionist vote, we suspect, has been very small indeed. The recent secession has hardly affected the clergy. Those of them who were once followers of Mr. Gladstone and now are not so, had for the most part left him before his Irish policy was declared. Those of them who supported him in the Elections of 1885, have for the most part supported him in the Elections of 1886. If we are right in our view of the facts, it is plainly of in- terest to inquire why the facts are as they are. Ordinarily, there has been no such difference between the clergy and the laity ; indeed, the Liberal clergy have rather prided themselves on their ability to look at public affairs with lay eyes. Why is it that they play so small a part in the most remarkable example we can recall of the abandonment of a political leader by his most attached and convinced followers ?

The main reason we believe to be that Mr. Gladstone's character has for them a special—we might almost say a pro- fessional—attraction. It awakens a moral enthusiasm which they cannot lay aside at the bidding of political distrust. No doubt this moral enthusiasm has been largely shared by the laity. Admiration based on character and temperament, is quite irrespective of a man's calling in life. There has been the same kind of devotion to Mr. Gladstone among physicians, barristers, schoolmasters, and journalists, that there has been among clergymen. But moral enthusiasm is a more universal factor in the formation of clerical cep- victions than it is in the formation of lay convictions. When the clergy are once possessed by it, they are less ready than the laity to limit its application. It is a common thing to , find a clergyman saying that the, great point in an election is to return the best candidate,—mpaniug by this the candidate who comes nearest to his conception of a good man. A lay.. . man is very seldom actuated by this feeling. He asks less from what motives a candidate will vote, than for what

measures and what Minister he will vote. He would rather,

no doubt, be represented by a good man than by a bad man ; and so far as he has any influence on the choice of a candidate,

he gives great weight to this consideration. But except, perhaps,

in some very isolated and remarkable case, he does not suffer it to govern his choice of a representative. This difference

may be traced to the facts that the clergy have, as a body,

less experience in the conduct of affairs, and that the rule which such experience furnishes does not apply with the same force to the affairs of which they have special cognisance.

Men who are familiar with business know that good intentions, disinterested devotion to the welfare of others, conscientious

determination to do right in the smallest particulars, may be

productive of nothing but mischief,—that they will not in the least take the place of such commonplace and unheroic qualities as common-sense, knowledge of the world, and intelligent allowance for human frailty. It is a commonplace that long acquaintance with mankind weakens the generous enthusiasms of youth, and the reason is that it shows the inability of the heart to take the place of the head. No amount of moral excellence will enable a solicitor to give good advice on the conduct of a lawsuit, any more than it will give the faculty of diagnosis to a physician, or appreciation of the value of securities to a stockbroker. Politics are just as much a business as law, or medicine, or the investment of money ; and as a man may be a good husband, a good father, a good Christian, and yet lose his client's cause, injure his patient's health, or empty his cus- tomer's pocket, so he may have all these virtues and yet lead

his country to ruin. It is experience of affairs that brings home this conviction, and in so far as the clergy have less of this experience than the laity, they are likely to expect of moral excellence results that they have no right to ask from it. Moreover, in the affairs of which they have special experience, moral excellence plays an exceptional part. That parish, of course, will be best managed in which the clergyman combines with moral and spiritual excellence a good head for business. But supposing that only one of the two qualities can be had, moral and spiritual excellence is immeasurably more important than the good head for business. But the reason of this is that the chief end of a clergyman's work is the formation of personal character. He has other things to do as well ; conse- quently it is desirable, if possible, that he should have other qualities than those which help him in the formation of personal character. But as these other things are as nothing by the side of his main work, so the qualities necessary for the doing of them are as nothing by the side of those which minister to the main work. The chief end of a statesman's work is different from that of a clergyman's ; and when the clergy allow their admiration for personal character to blind them to the tendency of a particular policy, they lose sight of this essential distinction.

Another element in the indifference of the Liberal clergy to the Union—if we are right in crediting them with such indifference—is the traditional dislike which the High Church party entertain towards the Whigs. In many respects, no doubt, this dislike is well founded. Neither the ecclesiastical policy nor the ecclesiastical appointments of the Whigs have been such as to give them any title to the esteem or gratitude of High Churchmen. The Palmerston Bishops were a by-word, and the evil odour of Lord John Russell's "Durham letter" clings to the party, though its contents have long been forgotten. We think the indulgence of this dislike in the present instance wrong, because in the presence of a great national crisis the action of the clergy should be determined by the same con- siderations which determine the action of good citizens generally. An Anglican clergyman who supports Mr. Glad- stone because he thinks Lord Hartington not equally useful to the Church, is guilty of precisely the same error as the French priest who supported Napoleon III, because he thought that he would serve the cause of the Church better than a Republican Government. The question that now concerns us, however, is not the morality of the clerical action in sup- porting Mr. Gladstone, but its motive ; and from this point of view, dislike of the Whigs may be set down with confidence as one of the elements that have influenced them.

Again, the Unionist Liberals include not only Lord Har- tington, but Mr. Chamberlain ; and to most of the clergy Mr. Chamberlain is an object of well-grounded alarm. They had schooled themselves to some extent to look forward to Disestablishment ; but it was to Disestablishment as in Ireland, and the party with which Mr. Chamberlain has hitherto been associated does not intend that this particular variety of Disestablishment shall ever be reproduced. Among the Liberal clergy there is, we fancy, a not infrequent feeling that, since Disestablishment must come, they had better receive it from the hands of Mr. Gladstone than from the hands of any Liberal Minister who is likely to succeed him,—above all, from those of Mr. Chamberlain. Now, they have un- expectedly been asked to give a vote which is to have as its immediate result Mr. Gladstone's retirement from office, and possibly from Parliamentary life, and one of the poli- ticians on whose behalf this vote is solicited is Mr. Chamber- lain. It is true that for the moment Mr. Chamberlain is only a single factor in a composite result, and that the victory of the Unionists is not immediately likely to make him Minister. But the Liberal clergy are probably sceptical as to any pro- longed Conservative reaction ; they may therefore think that the effect of voting for a Unionist candidate will be to substi- tute Mr. Chamberlain for Mr. Gladstone as the leader of the Liberal Party, and eventually of a Liberal Ministry. This is only another variety of the last error. It is the abnegation of a specific and immediate duty, in order to avert a contin- gent evil which may never present itself in this precise form, and even if it does, will be resisted to better purpose by men who have shown that they can, in case of need, be good citizens as well as good Churchmen. Again, however, we must dis- claim any intention of judging the action of the Liberal clergy in this matter. Our only aim has been to explain what is undoubtedly an unusual divergence between them and the Liberal laity.