THE GRIEVANCES OF CURATES.
AGREAT deal is heard nowadays of the grievances of curates. They fill a large space in the cor- respondence of the Guardian, they make their way occasionally into the august columns of the Times. These complaints range themselves for the most part under one of two divisions,—the social and the profes- sional. Of the former there is really very little to be said. They have their origin in the nature of man, and will exist until that nature is radically changed. If all incumbents were courteous, and all incumbents' wives considerate, and all curates reasonable, there would be no ground for dis- content. Unfortunately there is always a good deal of ground for it because in all these classes there is a minority which is destitute of these good qualities. But this is equally the case with mankind at large. In every profes- sion and in every society there will be people who are hard to get on with, people who do not make things pleasant for those with whom they are associated, people who are very careful of their own interests and very indifferent to those of every one else. But these, we repeat, are things that can only be altered by altering human nature. That is a task beyond the powers of the journalist. The professional grievances of curates are of a different kind. They could easily—at least so those who suffer under them contend—be removed by a few slight changes in ecclesiastical law or custom ; consequently they are really worthy of consideration. The timb spent in de- vising a remedy will not be time wasted. These removable grievances are mainly two,—one which has to do with the finding of work, and one which has to do with the keeping of work. There are more curates than there are curacies, and the curates who have curacies are liable to arbitrary dismissal. There is, indeed, a third com- plaint, that they are not paid enough while they are curates. But this is not pressed with much force, and, indeed, does not admit of being so pressed when we com- pare the stipend of a curate with the net income of many benefices. The curate is often a richer man than his rector, and though he may still be underpaid, he is under- paid as a clergyman, not specially as a curate. The other two complaints, on the contrary, have a real founda- tion in fact. They are not only grievances, but grievances specially belonging to curates above all other men.
No one asserts that a young man has any difficulty in getting a curacy when he first takes orders. For the youth of twenty-three there is, it seems, a positive scramble. Incumbents rush to offer him titles, Bishops are in quite a hurry to ordain him. This halcyon period of clerical existence seems to last in its perfection for about seven years. A curate under thirty must indeed be inefficient if he cannot command continuous employment. But with his thirtieth year there comes a cloud on his professional horizon. It is no bigger than a man's hand, and if be has no occasion to change his curacy about that time he will not notice that it is in the sky. But if he has such occasion he may notice already a change in the attitude of the incumbents to whom he addresses himself. Over thirty,' they say, with a slight shade of regret in their voice, I had determined not to take a curate above that age.' And the reason of this hesitation is evident. When a man is past thirty he is within measurable distance of thirty-five, and it is maintained by those who have made themselves the exponents of the curates' case that after thirty-five a man has no chance of getting employment except of a less attractive kind or for lower pay. Nor is age the only disqualification for work as a curate. There is another quite as bad, and that is the possession of a wife and family. Among the letters that have been pub- lished a considerable number deal with this obstacle to finding work. I am still,' a man writes, in the full possession of my bodily and mental strength. I can work as hard as ever, and I can bring experience as well as zeal to the performance of my duties. But I have a wife and seven children, and no incumbent will so much as look at me.' Thus the curate seems created to disprove the truth of three statements which occur over and over again in Scripture. An incumbent reads on Sunday in church, " The hoary head is a crown of glory," but none the less does he sit down on Monday m'brmng to write letter after letter declining the applications of men above thirty-five. "Marriage is honourable" in all save only in a curate. The man who has abundance of children "shall not be ashamed when he speaks with his enemy in the gate," but he will have only too mucheause to be ashamed when he speaks with an incumbent in his study.
We are afraid that the truth of all this must be admitted, and that the improbability of finding an effectual cure for it must be admitted also. Absurd as it may sound, the three things here enumerated—age, marriage, children—do tend to make a man less useful as a curate. For the most part, an incumbent who pays a curate out of his own pocket does so in order to make over to him the less attractive parts of his work, or the parts which he is no longer able to do as well as formerly. There is a great deal of night-work in the parish, and he is not as disposed as he once was to go out after dinner. Or there are young men to be looked after, and this can be done with most success by a man who is young himself. Or there is work to be done in outlying parts of the parish which, if it is done properly, breaks up home-life. For each one of these reasons, and for many more like them, .an incumbent wishes for a young unmarried curate. There is need,' he would say, in this parish for a celibate as well as for a married man, for the energy and physical strength of youth as well at} for the experience and sound judgment of age. I have a wife and children myself, and I hope that I have some experience and judgment. Therefore the natural complement for me and for my work is a curate who has youth and strength, and is not hampered by family ties. If he is old, the work will try him as it tries me, and it will be ill done by him as it would be by me. If he is married, he will dislike being always away from home just as I dislike it. If he has many children to bring up on £150 a year, he cannot give his undivided thought to his clerical work.' We see no answer to this reasoning on the part of incumbents. In many cases, to take a middle-aged curate with a wife and children would be to defeat the very object for which a curate is wanted.
Much the same thing may be said with regard to the dismissal of curates. The modern conception of a curate is that he is the agent, the lieutenant, of the incumbent. To give him fixity of tenure might mean the saddling the incumbent with an agent in whom he has ceased to feel confidence, with a lieutenant whose whole theory of minis- terial duty is different from that of his commanding officer. The curate may indeed have the faculty of self-effacement in such perfection that he carries out every idea and wish of his incumbent as completely as though they were his own. But such cases as these will be extremely rare, and where they exist the thought of dismissal will never probably have presented itself to the incumbent. In ordinary cases the incumbent may be quite wrong in desiring to get rid of a curate. It would be much better, possibly, for the parish if he made the curate's ideas and wishes his own. But taking him as he is, he does want to get rid of him, and it is his own ideas and wishes that he wants to have carried out. That being so, the best thing surely is that incumbent and curate should part company, and not add to the other difficulties of the parish the evils of divided counsels. We do not say that a different system might not bring better results. We believe that in other countries and in other Churches the relation of incumbent to curate is placed on a different footing. All we contend is that it is a different footing, and that the one footing cannot be substituted for the other without a complete revolution in the English parochial system. That system is a system of parochial autocracy. The incumbent is master, and, being master, he naturally—and, as it seems to us, legitimately—wishes to rule his own house after his own fashion. From that it is but a short step to wishing to rule it by subordinates chosen and dismissed by himself. You may sweep away this parochial autocracy and substitute a system of colleges of priests working in larger areas than the present parishes. You may put the autocracy in commis-
gm But when we think of the sweeping changes that this would entail in the whole conception of ecclesiastical property and ecclesiastical patronage, we feel sure that no such revolution is possible except as part of a scheme of Disestablishment. That is a larger price than we are prepared to pay in order to give curates an advantage which after all might prove more apparent than real.
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