(To THE EDITOR 07 THE " SPECTATOR.1 SIR,—Your editorial note
at the end of my letter, which you obligingly published last Saturday, in which you suggest a union of small benefices as a way out of the crippling at present existing in clerical professional incomes, induces me to trespass upon your space with a short communication. Some years ago I thought as you do, but on two grounds my ideas have been changed on the matter. (1) However small the parish may be, if a house is provided for the vicar or rector the parishioners like it to be so occupied, and not to be let for any other purpose, and so to have the advantages of their clergyman living amongst them. These advantages are so obvious as not to need pointing out. (2) There are so many unbeneficed clergy in the Church of England tired of curate- life, and in many cases grown too old to be acceptable as such to the beneficed, and unable to find suitable employment in consequence, that it is quite unfair to close against them this door of hope and relief. It may have escaped your notice that after forty years of age men in Holy Orders depreciate in value as curates, and their beet chance of continuing in harness during the rest of their working days it a small incumbency. It may be only a " starving," but it is better than nothing, or a clerical charity dole.—I am, Sir, &o.,
ASTLEY COOPER.
Buckminster Vicarage, Grantham
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