' -- DR. TEMPLE AND THE POOR CLERGY.
EVERY question connected with Church Temporalities, or, for
that matter, Nonconformist Temporalities, is more or less difficult, and the one raised by the Bishop of Exeter in his speech of Tuesday, delivered in support of the Lorne fund for poor clergy- men, is among the most difficult and annoying of them all. The way out seems so clearly visible, and yet it is so blocked. The evil, as stated by Dr. Temple, is a very well-known one. There exist in every diocese of England and Wales, and especially in the Welsh dioceses, in that of Exeter, which covers Cornwall, in
that of Winchester, in that of York, and in that of London,
hundreds of " livings " which must be occupied by beneficed clergymen and not by curates—that is, by accepted workmen, and not apprentices—and which do not produce sufficient in- comes to support educated men. Many hundreds, indeed, thou- sands of the poor parishes throughout the kingdom, yield leas than £200 a year cash, with a free house, and many hundreds of them less than a hundred a year and no house at all. It is very difficult, with the present prices of meat, fuel, and service, for clergymen with wives to live " respectably," even on the former pay ; and on the latter the feat has become, we may fairly say, simply impossible. Nobody bound to wear black clothes, and to seem to be a " gentleman," however poor, and to eat meat once a day, and to give even shillings in charity, can, if he is a mar- ried man, live and pay rent in any part of England on £100 a year. He must either starve his household—that is, live on bread, butter, and vegetables—or adopt for himself and wife the raiment and ways of working-folks, or accept aid which, however willingly given, involves to his consciousness the receipt of alms in a peculiarly painful form. The labourer is worthy of his hire, and we do not knew that any clergyman so placed would
be hurt by a cheque, or even a small purse of coin, more than the Nonconformist minister would be—though of course the differ- ence in theoretic opinion as to the shoulders on which the burden ought de jure to fall creates a certain difference in feeling—but the aid is apt to take the form of gifts, which are all good, but which human pride would, if it had fair-play, rather be without. There is an institution among us which sends old clothes to clergymen, whose officers can tell frightful stories, and though it is right that such an insti- tution should exist, and right, too, that men whose consciences are clear as to their own usefulness and their own needs should accept its aid, one has a positive sense of pain, of per- sonal humiliation as it were, in reading its carefully reticent reports. In many places the parishioners only aid the clergy- man as this institution does, and with much more noise. Everybody knows the life of such a clergyman, compelled to receive gifts ; the pinching strain to keep up appearances, the difficulty of maintaining independence ; the relation of half-grati- tude, half-fear, in which he stands to his butcher ; the care-worn face, or worse, the despairing slovenliness which comes over his wife ; the crisis caused by an illness, and at last the revelation of poverty, so seldom, be it said, to the credit of the clergy as well as of the ministers, made more bitter by disgrace. There is no need to go over the well-worn theme, or to indulge in painful descriptions, except so far as they may enable readers to realise what Dr. Temple means, when he says that such cases are numerous in his diocese, and that he can see no remedy except a Sustentation Fund. Formerly, such cases could be met, for men with means were willing to take such livings ; but now they crowd towards the cities, where they can do as much or more work, where their independence is equally in their favour—we know one town where out of thirteen livings one is good, one moderate, and three yield an endurable maintenance—and where they are not so utterly cut off from human society as in some of the poor country livings they necessarily are. The applications from independent men for poor rural parishes grow fewer and fewer, till private patrons in despair allow their patronage to lapse, and the Bishop who inherits it finds that his cures cannot be filled except by men who have some taint, however slight, upon their characters or careers. They are procurable still, but with rare exceptions they are indifferent parish priests, either ashamed to face their flocks or unable to influence them ; or- s, very frequent case when the slur on them is one of unpaid bills —intent mainly on keeping themselves comfortably alive.
What is the permanent remedy for this evil, which in many districts is a most genuine one, much more genuine than the grievances of young curates, who have of late years been reduced to reasonable numbers, whose average wages have in- creased, and who have always hope ? The Saturday Review used to say Celibacy, but it did not apply its panacea to the whole of life ; and its suggestion, even if sound as to curates, does not apply to men who may have to live on a poor living all their lives. The Church of England desires no Order of per- manently celibate clergy, and if she did, would lose much of her hold upon a community which greatly prefers a married clergy, which asks almost as much from a vicaress as a vicar, and which has an instinctive but well-justified dread of its own disposition to tattle about the only educated and marriageable man, perhaps, within five miles. Nor is it certain that in an ordinary English parish an unmarried or childless man, who does not really feel half the burden of life or the gravest troubles cL his parishioners, is or can be the most effective incumbent. The Bishop of Exeter did not make that remark, but he must be by this time well aware that it is, allowing always for exceptional cases, correct ; that while some of his unmarried clergy are the ablest in his diocese, the average bachelor vicar is comparatively inefficient. We have, however, no right to scold the Saturday Review, for if we spoke our real thought, we should be convicted of opinions very nearly as unpractical. We should greatly like to see a clergyman and his wife, when forced by circumstances to live on £100 a year, try to do it without keeping up appearances, and test by experi- ment the problem whether civilised lives could not be led by educated people on £2 a week; whether the life of the cottage, without carpets, or curtains, or black clothes, or the means of entertaining, could not be made respectable, or even dignified. It seems to one, in dreamy moods, that it could, par- ticularly in the country, where poverty is not of necessity so grey and dreary as it is in towns—that the clergyman might, if his character were strong enough, have all the respect of the squire, while unable to be sure of meat for dinner—but we know, as we write, that the dream has no meaning in it. The people for whom the organisation of our Church is maintained are English, and their weaknesses and their strengths have alike to be accepted,— the weakness which makes them despise a poverty inconsistent with the status of him who suffers, the strength which makes them impatient of the sacerdotal pretensions which a clergyman irritably sensitive to his want of other means for ensuring respect is nearly certain to put forward. They can put up with a "peasant clergy," or rather, an artisan clergy, which is not established, but they will not put up with one which lives as the poor live, yet claims the authority of a rich Establishment. Such a clergy, to exercise authority, would have to be celi- bate, and even then, without the guarantees with which the Church of Rome surrounds her system, would not be trusted. Our suggestion is as unpractical as that of the Saturday Review, and we do not know that Dr. Temple's is much better. He will not get an adequate Sustentation Fund. The Ecclesiastical Com- missioners cannot yet help these country parishes, for the country parishes have comparatively few people; and they are bound, first of all, to help the swarming towns, where crowds have accumu- lated in a " district " not entitled perhaps to a fourth of the in- come of an originally poor parish. As for taxing the richer livings to supplement the poorer, that would be condemned by Parlia- ment as an act of confiscation, unless, indeed, the poor livings
could be added to the patronage of the owners of the richer ; while subscriptions offer but a scanty and unequal resource.
Money is obtainable in special places for new churches in almost any quantity—as witness the Bishop of London's Fund—but no perennial or deep stream flows into the coffers of the Association founded by the Marquis of Lorne. He might as well ask for the national revenue, as for a " dependable " income of £100,000 a year clear. Church-goers are not accustomed to subscribe in that way
for parishes beyond their ken ; they think the Church is rich, and they fall back perpetually on schemes of redistribution which could not be carried out without agitation as violent as any which a proposal for Disestablishment would produce.
Our own impression is that the Marquis of Lorne's Fund is a mistake, and that the only Sustentation scheme which could have even a chance of great success is one limited to each diocese, or each county, managed by diocesan or county committees, and in- tended not to increase livings, but to compensate owners of advow- sons for such a disarrangement of their rights as would allow the poorer clergy a certain chance of promotion in the Church. In other words, we would compel the Bishop, the Lord Chancellor, and all official Trustees to fill certain classes of livings, say, all between £250 and £500 a year, with clergymen of, say, seven years' ex- perience, and buy up from impropriators the right either of pre- sentation to those livings, or, which would be better, if the plan were sanctioned by statute, because involving less change, of limiting their right of patronage within that class. They should choose freely still, but from a smaller list of candidates. We would introduce a hierarchy of pay into the Church similar to that which prevails in every other department connected with the State. A young clergyman with his family still costing little for education, and his promotion certain to arrive, could bear poverty very well, as a lieutenant bears it, and wait not only with con- tent, but with dignity for happier days. He would not suffer either from want of respect—for the queer English form of snobbishness discounts promotion and sees in the lieutenant the future Colonel—or from that sense of dependence on nearly accidental favour which, more than any other circumstance in their career, takes the heart out of the Clergy. The scheme is. one for an actuary to consider, and it might be more expensive• than we dream ; but with advowsons selling at ten years' pur- chase, with laymen anxious for help in distributing their patronage,. and with strong local feeling enlisted in its favour, much might surely be accomplished. The process would take years, but a Bishop who could carry a permissive Bill on Patronage might,. we think, by steady pressure, by availing himself of cir- cumstances, by enlisting the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, by inviting bequests of advowsons, by uniting parishes, and by convincing the laity that patronage would not pass to him, but to him assisted by some Diocesan Council, place his diocese in such a position that within his lifetime all the working beneficed clergy would be sure, not indeed of prizes, but of that decent main- tenance without which in our day, and in the present state of re- ligious feeling, no educated caste can be permanently maintained. But then to commence such a work, much more to carry it on for years, one has to be convinced that the Establishment will con- tinue, at least for a generation, and while there are so many who- hope it, there are so few who feel with any certainty that their hope is well grounded.
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