TORY CHURCH REFORM.
THE Tory plan of Church Reform, as detailed in the First Report of the Commissioners, requires little comment.- It is avowedly incomplete, and as far as it goes is meagre. We are to have two new Bishoprics, Manchester and Ripon; but no additional Bishops, as Bangor and St. Asaph, Bristol and Llandaff, are to be united. It is proposed to make a new distribution of episcopal revenues, so as to give the poorest Bishop 43001. a year ; while the incum- bents of Canterbury, York, London, Durham, and Winchester, are to have larger incomes, but how large is not stated. It is plain that if five sees are to be considerably richer than the other twenty-one, the political subserviency of the Right Reverend Bench will be as glaring as ever. The evil of translations will not be diminished.
It appears from the statement of the incomes of the several bishoprics, calculated on the average of the three years ending in December 1831, that there is an annual revenue in round numbers of 130,0001., or about 60001. a year each Bishop, if equally divided. As, however, the two new Bishops are to be provided for out of Cathedral property, the 150,000/. will in future, according to the plan proposed, be divided among twenty.four. To simple- witted persons it might appear that there is no occasion whatever for applying to the Cathedral property for the maintenance of the two n3w Bishops; and it strikes les as rather an impudent thing in :hero Right Reverend Comm.essioners and their colleagues to take this opportunity of rlfarnung the Church, to crib some eight
or ten thousand a year from other Ecclesiastical revenues for the augmentation of their own incomes. Would any person have supposed, that one of the very first propositions of the Commis-
sioners would have been to augment the revenues of the Bishops, their duties and expenses remaining the same? Yet this would
seem to be a principal feature in this new plan of Church Reform.
Will the House of Commons submit to such an imposition ? Will it solemnly decree that 6000/. a year is not sufficient for any Bishop or Archbishop ? Why, the Commissioners themselves,
who sanction this precious scheme of plunder, admit in another
part of their Report, that 450111. a year is enough, and that twenty- one out of twenty-six Bishops must not expect any addition to
such an income. The Cathedral property thus proposed to be added to the Fpiwo )al revenues is what all honest Church Re-
formers look to as fund for increasing poor livings, not rich bishoprics, and itr the repairs of churches. The attempt of the Bishops to appropriate it to their own body is shameful.
Very little is said about patronage ; but we are given to under- stand that some Prebendal Stalls will be done away with, and their incomes attached to livings with cure of souls, as was recently done in the case of St. Margaret's, Westminster. It depends alto- gether upon the details of the plan whether this scheme will not in Ilia add to the patronage of the Bishops. Preferment in the gift of the Crown may be made over in this way to the Episcopal patrons of livings.
All vested interests are to be respected. No abuse, however glaring, is to be abolished, except with the express consent of him who profits by it. The Archbishop of Canterbury will continue to pocket his 18,0007. or 20,000/. a year, though he admits that the good of the Church requires that lie should be content with cer- tainly not more than half of this enormous income. The richer Bishops must be looked upon as obstacles in the way of that im- provement which they pretend anxiety to bring about ; for it is to be apprehended that although the Bishops of Chichester, Llandaff, and Bristol, might be ready to anticipate the future order of things, their brethren of York, Durham, Canterbury, and Winchester, will cling to the good things in possession.
This Report is confessedly an incomplete affair ; and it is not impossible that the Commissioners may go more boldly to work when dealing with the inferior clergy. That remains to be proved. Certain it is that their future Reports cannot be more paltry, more discreditable to men assuming the name of Reformers, an 1 affecting holy zeal for the good of the Church, than this their first production.
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