THE COST OF A CHURCH.
THERE are no doubt many ways of managing a national Church, and each has its peculiar disadvantages. The great objection to the practice of the Ecclesiastical Commis-
sioners is their love of a certain pattern of ecclesiastical red tape, the amount of official verbiage which they find neces- sary before doing any work, and, as official verbiage is one of the most expensive luxuries, their consequent cost to the country. With all this they do much good. If we take the trouble to glance through their Seventeenth Report, which has been lately published, and a glance through which entails no small amount of trouble, we shall find that they have done much and spent much on the work of the Church of England. Last year they expended 130,586/. in augmenting and endow- ing benefices. They increased forty-four small livings under the provisions of the Lord Chancellor's Augmentation Act. The mere enumeration of the grants they made, whether grants to meet benefactions, or grants in respect of local claims, or temporary augmentations, or annuities, or grants from one fund or another, occupies several pages in their appendix. It is true that, to the mere lay mind, which has no personal interest in any of these benefactions, the list of grants is vague and cloudy. We lose ourselves in a string of small parishes and out-of-the-way rural deaneries. The report does not serve as an index to the appendix, and the appendix only adds to the bewilderment of the report. As a sample of the literary merits of the latter we transcribe a single sen- -tence :—" In accordance with the provisions of the Acts 3 and 4 Viet., c. 113; 4 and 5 Viet., c. 39; and 17 and 18 Vict., c. 84, schemes have been passed for apportioning the incomes of cer- tain benefices between the incumbents of those benefices and the incumbents of certain other benefices. See Appendix, No. 13, p. 70." Have the Commissioners anything to con- ceal that they adopt such a roundabout phraseology ?
We think not. The use of it merely confirms our belief that the Commission is a cumbrous and costly machine. A religious contemporary reminds us that the Commissioners have been at work for nearly thirty years, and that from the rate at which they have proceeded in the re-distribution of the. Church estates they seem likely to remain in office for some generations. Unlike the tutor who was eulogized for his constant endeavours to render himself useless, they cannot resist the temptation of retaining their importance as long as they can, and proving that they are indispensable. This is the more to be regretted, as it is likely to make the world forget their real services, and dwell principally on their de- fects. They want some brisk and energetic spirit to break through their routine. They want their work done without their delays. As it is, they seem to be inspired by the drowsy port-wine influence of old country clergymen, who, deaf themselves, cannot appreciate the misery they are inflicting on their hearers, and who mistake their indifference to everything attractive for the loftiest purity of devotion. An imitation of these gentlemen may seem well enough as a means of con- ciliating them, of teaching them that nothing radical or re- volutionary is contemplated by the Ecclesiastical Commis- sioners. But if any work is to be done it must be of a kind to shock, rather than spare, antiquated prejudices. From the recent samples we have had of the country clergy when acting in a body, we are afraid that any measure of reform initiated or sanctioned by them would prove wholly futile. All that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners effect by their emulation of the country-clergyman spirit is the alienation of their best supporters and the discouragement of all parties at once. It probably seems decent and orderly to spin out almost four pages of closely printed octavo before constituting a new dis- trict, and no doubt it disarms criticism to some extent as few critics will take the trouble to read such lengthy specifications. But this kind of circumlocution adds vastly to the expense of administration, and fully as we accept the principle of a fair day's wage for, a fair day's work, we grudge any payment at all for unnecessary prolixity. Any man with the smallest gift of language could put these interminable paragraphs into a few words, and the matter would not only look infinitely more satisfactory, but would be clearer into the bargain.
But what does this matter ? we may be asked. The public pays, and the public can afford to have its work done thoroughly, even at the expense of length. We presume the public can afford the Ecclesiastical Commissioners their 20,0001. odd for the expenses of the official establishment, and their additional 10,000/. odd for legal expenses. The per-cent- age on their disbursements may seem large, but we have never advocated the principle of starving an important department.
We would rather point to the cases in which the public does not pay. A case of this nature came to our knowledge a few weeks ago, and is one that reflects little credit on the manage- ment of the Ecclesiastical Commission. As the story has not found its way into the papers, we tell it at some length. A clergyman had reclaimed a wild, out-of-the-way heath, had
worked among the people, and finally built a church there. Before opening the church he desired to hand it over to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and they consented to receive it, on condition of his paying the necessary expenses of the transfer. Not wishing to make a present which costs money to the receivers he at once assented, had the deeds drawn up by his own lawyer, and sent them up to the Com- missioners. But he, too, found them slow and dilatory. Their lawyers wasted time in unnecessary formalities, in letters back and forth, and it seemed to him that the transfer of the church would never be completed. In despair he wrote to a. powerful friend, and got him to stir up the Commissioners ; the powerful friend went down to the office, and stirred them up effectually ; the work was done. Now, to the clergyman's horror, came a long legal bill from the Commissioners' own lawyers. He turned over pages of foolscap filled with precise entries, and gradually swelling the amount to be carried forward. There was " To receiving a letter from yourself, announcing a desire on your part of transferring Church to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and perusing the same, 6s. 8d. ;" " To writing to your lawyer and an- nouncing the willingness of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners
to accept the church as aforesaid, 6s. 8d. ;" " To receiving a letter from your lawyer accompanying the deeds of transfer,
and perusing the same, 6s. 8d. ;" " To acknowledging the receipt of deeds, 5s. ;" " To receiving the visit of your powerful friend, who came to complain of the delays occa- sioned by legal formalities touching the transfer of
Church, and entertaining his complaints, 6s. 8d. ;" " To in- forming your lawyer by letter of the visit of your powerful
friend, and reiterating our explanations as made to your powerful friend on his visit by word of mouth, 5s." And on looking to the total, the clergyman found a sum verging on 101. for the benefit of the lawyers of the Ecclesiastical Com- mission.
We do not know if this is an isolated case, or if it is to be paralleled by the experience of others. Whichever it be, it
is surely a grievous scandal. Naturally enough the man who makes a gift wishes it to be a free gift, and the clergyman of whom we have spoken did not hesitate to sign an engagement beforehand that he would pay the expenses of the transfer. But the ecclesiastical lawyers, who would not entertain his offer without his signing this engagement, would have done well not to impose penalties on his Aenerosity. The number of men who are willing to reclaim waste places, to build churches at their own cost, and make a free gift of them, can never be too large, and whenever a person of the sort offers himself it would surely be wall to encourage him. If, instead of that, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners are to give him up as a fair prey to their lawyers, and initiate him into the mysteries of a lawyer's bill of professional charges, we need not wonder if fewer waste places are reclaimed, and fewer churches are pre- sented to the community. But as this part of the working of the Ecclesiastical Commission is purely private, is not one alluded to in their report or in any of the 160 numbers of their appendix, we might easily have been left in ignorance of it. The public has come to believe that the literature of blue-books is complete, though tedious, and that the whole system of our Government, external and internal, is to be mastered by their means. In some respects we are convinced that they do supply a deficiency which is seriously felt by other nations, but not in all. And there are people who can emerge safely from the modern ordeal of blue-books, as in olden times there may have been witches who escaped the trial by water, and guilt that came out clear from the ordeal of hot ploughshares.
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