CONVOCATION ON CLERICAL POVERTY.
MHERE are three distinct lines upon which a scheme for relieving the poverty of the clergy may move, and upon the choice made between them the success of the effort will mainly depend. The first is a redistribution of the existing wealth of the Church. This plan is much in favour with some of the clergy. They complain that clerical incomes bear no relation to clerical work or clerical experience. A poor parish may have a large population ; a rich parish may not have as many units as the other has thousands. The poor benefice may be held by a man who has spent a life-time in the service of the Church; the rich benefice may be held by a man who was not in orders a year ago. How, asks the objector, can we expect the laity to endow the Church over again, so long as these anomalies remain in being ? The answer—the perfectly conclusive answer— to this question is simply this. That it may be useless to ask the laity to endow the Church over again, while these anomalies remain in being, we do not deny ; but in that case, we must be content to see clerical poverty go unrelieved. A redistribution of the wealth of the Church will never be effected except by disestablishment. To suppose that Parliament would take so vast an under- taking in band merely for the benefit of the clergy, implies a simplicity of mind with which it is useless to argue. The resistance to be overcome would be of ex- traordinary tenacity because, in the eyes alike of patrons, incumbents, and parishioners, redistribution would be in- distinguishable from confiscation. Ecclesiastical endow- ments were not originally given to the Church of England as a whole ; they were given to the Church in such-and- such a parish. Except upon some doctrine analagous to that of cy pres, the Church in another parish has no better title to them than the Church in another country. Any force capable, if necessary, of bringing about this partial confiscation would be strong enough when once started to bring about total confiscation.
The second plan is to undertake the relief of individual cases of distress among the clergy. This is the plan recommended by the report of a committee of the Canter- bury House of Laymen and by some of the speakers in that house in the short discussion of last week. Mr. Remy Morris, for example, objected to the augmentation of benefices on the ground that an unmarried man, or a married man with a small family, would get as much as a married man with a large family. Undoubtedly this is true ; and it is equally true that a man with private means would get as much as a man with no income beyond that derived from his benefice. Further, Mr. Morris objected to the money given to the poor clergy being called a "dole," because this term has come into disrepute through the operations of the Charity Organisation Society. But what else than a " dole " can money given to the poor clergy be • called if words are to correspond to things ? A " dole " is ordinarily used of gifts in money as contrasted with gifts in kind ; and we presume that Mr. Morris does not desire • that the relief of the poor clergy should take the form of loaves or groceries. Money given to a man because he is poor is alms, no matter by what fine name we may choose to christen it; and our contention is that the poor clergy are not proper recipients of alms. They are insufficiently • paid workers, and the appropriate remedy for such a state of things is not the supplementing of their pay by alms, but the raising of the pay. The ideas which have found • what, let us hope, is only a temporary footing in the Canterbury House of Laymen, are almost prehistoric. They belong to a time when relief in aid of wages was thought a proper and charitable way of spending money. To-day—at least, so we might have thought—this con- ception is altogether out of date. The very dockers would reject with contempt a proposal to supplement their six- pences by pence given out of charity. Either the incomes of the poorer clergy—taking into account all that is ex- pected of them—are a fair payment for work done, or they are not. If they are, the case for relieving them has broken down. They have as much cloth as they deserve, and they must be left to discover for themselves how best to cut their coats out of it. If they are not, the laity. who in the long-run are the paymasters, are not paying them enough, and then the remedy is to pay them more. An employer who proposed to pay lower wages to a man with a small family, or one who was known to have money by him, than to a man with a large family, or one who had been unable to save anything, would soon learn from his workmen that wages are a matter of right, not of favour. Why are we to assume and encourage in the clergy a want of indepen- dence which we should regret in the artisan ? Nor is this the only objection to the plan of making the relief of the poor clergy an act of charity rather than of justice. The practical difficulties in the way of the former process are immense, and. probably insurmountable. When the fund raised for the relief of the sufferers by the dept.:- ciation in the value of glebe came to be distributed, there were constant complaints of the inquisitorial character of the questions asked. Many of the clergy could not be brought to see that men who consent to take alms must not hope for exemption from the sift- ing process to which every application for relief ought to be subjected. What but a highly inquisitorial process can weigh not merely the married man against the bachelor, or the man with private means against the man without private means, but the man with a healthy wife and a large family against the man with a small family and a sickly wife, or the man with nothing but his benefice against the man who has money invested in a doubtful Company of which the capital is not fully paid-up ? No process, indeed, can be inquisitorial enough to get at the exact rights of the several applicants for relief, but even a very inadequate process would be found searching enough to create excessive irritation among those whom self-respect would not allow to make a, full disclosure of their eircura- stances.
The third plan is to aim, not at relieving the poorer clergy, but at permanently augmenting the income of the poorer benefices. This plan was so far recognised by the House of Laymen, that, instead of receiving the report, they adopted an amendment of Mr. Heygate's to refer it back to the Committee for further consideration. In the Lower House of the Convocation of York, a report was presented which, so far as we can judge without having seen the text, accepts frankly the principle that the relief•given must be given to the benefice, not to the incumbent. The immediate and obvious advantage of this course is that the facts which have to be dealt with are perfectly well known. No inquiries which can give offence are necessary to ascertain what is the present value of tithe, or the rent for which the glebe is let, or what deductions must be made for rates or for money due to Queen Anne's Bounty, The discovery of all these facts is a matter of figures, not of personal inquiry. The particulars are already known to the Diocesan officials ; all that remains to be done is to tabulate and publish them. If the augmenta- tion of benefices had no other recommendation than this, it would, to our minds, be a conclusive one, since it would ensure, in the distribution of the money raised, the perfect fairness which comes from perfect knowledge. The con- tributors to the fund would know which are the poorest benefices, whereas no amount of care could give them any reasonable assurance that they knew who are the poorest clergy. But it has, in addition, the inestimable advantage of putting the claims for relief on the right ground. The simple question that every wealthy layman should put to himself is,—Do the beneficed clergy get a fair minimum wage for the work they have to do ? This question is not disposed of by the plea that it is the same wage that they have always got. In the first place, the plea is not true,' for the agricultural depression has made many benefices inadequate for the support of the incumbent, that once gave their 'holders at least a livelihood. Tithe now yields something like 40 per cent, less than it yielded a gene- ration ago, and a glebe farm is not more easily let, and does not command any higher rent, than a lay farm. ,In the second place, the plea is not pertinent ; for it leaves out of sight the enormous reduction in what are called the prizes of the Church. When a cathedral stall might be worth £20,000 a year, the inducement to rich men to take orders was infinitely greater than it can ever be again ; and with a clergy which includes many rich men, the evil of poor benefices is very much less felt than it is with a clergy among whom rich men are necessarily few. A race of incumbents to whom it mattered little whether their benefices could keep them or not, has now given place to a race of incumbents to whom the dis- tinction means the difference between living and starving ; and this consideration alone should dispose of the cry that clerical poverty is no new thing.
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