THE GOVERNMENT AND THE CHURCH.
THEGovernment which swallowed the camel has shown itself most fastidious in straining out the gnat. In 1874, Lord Beaconsfield seemed quite to welcome' the pressure put upon him by Mr. Russell Gurney to accept the Public Worship Bill, but the Duke of Richmond and Gordon on Monday professed an unconquerable disgust to the gentle endeavour made by Lord Harrowby to induce him to accept a new clause to the Burials Bill. Yet while the former measure introduced a short and easy method of dealing with all incumbents who, though following perhaps the custom of years, had sanctioned a varia- tion in the rubric displeasing to two or three parishioners,— parishioners, too, who might have been, and in some cases, it is said, have been, imported into the parish on purpose to make mischief between the people and their clergy,—the clause in the Burials Bill moved by Lord Harrowby would not have subjected a single clergyman in the land to any new risk or any disagreeable liability, its only effect being to transfer, in most cases, to the ministry of the Dissenters, the office of burying their own dead in the churchyard, wherever the churchyard appeared to be the place fixed by the national laws for the interment. We may well wonder, then, that while Lord Beaconsfield joined with something like gusto in the sport of "putting down Ritualism," and even condescended to cheer on the hounds with his own gay voice, he has allowed the Duke of Richmond and Gordon to commit to the earth with ostentatious lugubriousness his own bulky Burials' Bill, rather than grant a slight privilege to the Dissenters, not only harmless in itself, but extremely likely to diminish materially the bitterness of their rivalry with the National Church, and the élan of their political assaults upon it. But though we may wonder at this mistaken disposition of the Ministry to make war " with a light heart " on one party in the Church, though they will not even stretch by the gentlest pressure the elastic band which determines the official comprehension of the Churchyard, we are far from saying that it is wholly inexplic- able. The cry for the Public Worship Act came from within the Church. The cry for the extension of the religious services of the Churchyard came from outside the Church. It was the Church laity who asked for aid against certain sections of the clergy, in the one case. It was the Dissenters who wanted to be accorded certain definite rights as against all the clergy, in the other case. Of course, on the mere surface of the question, it seemed more the part of a Conservative ministry to give lay members of the Church protection against the en- croachments of their clergy, than to give the political enemies of the Church the most limited of footholds in it. Be- sides, Lord Beaconsfield, for some reason best known to himself, has always had a special delight in snubbing the Dis- senters. Four years ago, he himself, with some pomp, gave notice of a motion for rejecting Mr. Osborne Morgan's Bill, and delivered a homily to the Dissenters on the limited and diminish- ing extent of their political power, making this point, indeed, the chief feature of his speech against that Bill. Of course, therefore, those members of the Cabinet who gravely object to Mr. Osborne Morgan's proposal, would have a strong personal case against Lord Beaconsfield, if he were at all disposed to make any concession to such an amendment as Lord Harrowby's. They would justly say to him, " Why, it was you yourself who led the resistance to a precisely similar proposal, at a time when the Con- servatives were weak, and had apparently no chance of power. Are you going to yield now,—when the Conservatives are strong, and can do what they please,—what you encouraged them to resist to the utmost when they were weak, only because a score or so of Conservative Peers have changed their minds on the subject, and gone over to the enemy ? You, who ' edu- cated our party' to extend the suffrage, also educated our party to defend the ' Semitic principle'—the alliance of the State with religion—against all assailants. Can you, then, expect us to bow to your superior wisdom on a point on which all our prepossessions were opposed to yours, and
yet to refuse to bow to it on the point on which we went with you heart and soul ? " An appeal of this kind to Lord Beaconsfield must have had great force, and no doubt may have contributed to prevent him from urging the Cabinet to accept Lord Harrowby's amendment, even though he would otherwise have been inclined to
do so. And especially the argument would have had weight with him that if, after alienating all the clergy wilo disliked the Public Worship Act, he had proceeded to betray those 12,000 and odd clergymen who had peti- tioned against the opening of Churchyards to Dissenters, he would have made enemies of the clergy en bloc, and secured
in almost every parish an official advocate of Liberalism for the next general election.
And yet there is much less reality than plausibility in an argument of this kind. Whatever the mere surface party- view may be, the fact is, that while the Public Worship Act has fostered civil war in the Church, the refusal to accept Lord Harrowby's amendment has thrown away a great opportunity of taking the sting out of the external enmity to it. Mr. Gladstone pointed out, during the discussion on the Public Worship Bill, that the result would be, as it has been, a bitter struggle, often completely artificial and factitious, within the Church. And now the Government which promoted this struggle, with an almost cynical hilarity, is so much struck by the danger of assenting to what Lord Harrowby and his Conservative friends think likely to appease the resentment of the Dissenters, that it sacrifices without hesitation the official labour of many weeks rather than yield even a hair's-breadth to their suggestions. Yet for whom is all this show of resistance kept up ? It is pretty clear, we think, that it is not for the laymen of the Church of England. The laymen of all schools look upon the Church- yard controversy as a trivial one, which, whether the clergy be right or wrong, it would at least be wise to compromise, especially when so much greater a controversy lies in the back- ground,—a controversy the position of which would be greatly im- proved for the friends of the Establishment by a conciliatory atti- tude on the smaller issue. Had Lord Harrowby's amendment been accepted by the Government, does any one think that in any con- stituency in England the Conservatives would have lost a dozen lay votes by the concession, whereas it is perfectly certain that in a hundred constituencies or more they would have gained scores or hundreds of votes ? But then the clergy themselves would have been even more incensed against the Government than ever? Doubtless to some extent. Yet the Government which went in for "putting down Ritualism" has alienated the Highest Church clergyman already, and no one supposes that the compromise with Dissenters is at all distasteful to the really Low-Church clergymen. It is, therefore, only for a few thousands of the moderate clergy,—not Broad enough to desire comprehen- sion in any large sense,—not Evangelical enough to be eager for a quasi-union with the orthodox Dissenters,—and not High enough to have been already alienated by the Govern- ment's conduct in relation to the Public Worship Act, that this considerable House of Lords' majority is defied. The laymen of the Church would have been delighted to see a grievance abated which is at present most valuable political capital to the foes of the Establishment. And most of all would those laymen in whose interests chiefly the Public Worship Act was conceived and carried have been delighted to see the grievance abated. Lord Harrowby's clause would indeed have been, at least as regards party politics, a most legitimate Conservative supplement to the policy of the Public Worship Act. Both policies alike were at least intended to contribute to the triumph of lay common-sense over an extreme sacramentarian party, and to the rescue of the Church of England out of sacerdotal hands. Only while the Public Worship Act did this by putting a premium on parochial squabbles, Lord Harrowby's amendment would have done it, only by softening the animosities of Dissenters, and bringing
into the Church more of the class of worshippers who have active sympathies with Dissenters. The result, therefore, appears to be that by rejecting Lord Harrowby's amendment, the Government will have irritated a great number of those on whose behalf it acted in taking up Mr. Russell Gurney's measure, and this, too, without conciliating any proportion worth mention of the clergy whom it offended by adopting that measure.
In a word, the Government's policy on ecclesiastical questions has been superficial and conventional. It has been dictated by the
most empty verbal considerations, and has not gone to the root of either the loyalty, or the hostility,which the Church excites. Strife has been let loose within, and has not been appeased without.
Clergymen have been set against their flocks, and clergymen, too,
against clergymen, with perfect recklessness; but when an opening occurred for quenching the passions of a single party, it
was thrown away. The truth is, Lord Beaconsfield's patronage of " the Semitic principle " is too condescending to be discrim- inating. He does not care enough about the matter, to take pains where he goes. When he undertakes to " put down Ritualism," it is little more than a feat of animal spirits. And when he lets the Duke of Richmond and Gordon throw away
the opportunity of a real pacification, it is because he cares too little about the matter to see how great a chance he is casting away.
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