POOR BENEFICES v. POOR CLERGY.
[To TER EDITOR OF TER " &ROTATOR:] Srs,—Will you allow me one word of comment on the article in the Spectator of June 12th, "Shall Poor Benefices or Poor Clergy be First Helped ? " Owing to economic [To TRH EDITOR OF THZ "SPECTATOR" have read with much interest your calm and tem- perate article in the Spectator of June 12th on the action of the Oxford Diocesan Conference in declining, for the pre- sent, to support Lord Egerton's Clergy Sustentation Fund. 'That the objection raised by the Report which the Diocesan 'Conference has virtually adopted is sound in principle, you fully admit ; and you would, it appears to me, also admit the soundness of the course adopted by the Conference, were it not for two considerations ; first, that the faulty principle involved in the mode of relief chosen must have been fully apparent to the founders of the Sustentation Fund, and de- liberately—(though probably with reluctance)—adopted by them as necessary ; secondly, that, after all, it did not greatly matter, because it is only to one-fifth of the subscriptions raised in any diocese that the faulty system of distribution will apply, while the remaining four-fifths may be appropriated in any manner that the diocese thinks fit. I will not enter into discussion as to the first of these points. It may be as you suppose, though the obscure wording of the circulars issued—the repeated references to the augmentation of poor benefices, when what is really meant is the temporary relief of poor clergymen—as well as various other signs, would rather seem to me to indicate that the scheme of operations was somewhat hastily framed and issued, without any very careful or accurate estimate of the exact effect of the rules adopted. But, however this may be, you are certainly under a mis- apprehension as to the second point. The ambiguous wording of some of the circulars issued has led you to suppose, as it has led others to suppose, that each diocese would be free to deal, in any manner it thought best, with four-fifths of the money it raised. This is not so. Whatever else may be obscure, it is laid down with perfect clearness that, as a neces- sary condition of affiliation or of receiving any help from the Snstentation Fund, the whole of the sum raised in the diocese for suatentation purposes (one-fifth of which is what goes to the Central Fund) must be applied in the same manner as grants from the Central Fund itself; that is to say, exclusively to the relief of the indigent clergy, irrespectively of the value of their benefices. In other words, if ten or twenty years hence the Fund is still in existence, many individual clergy. men will have been relieved by it but no single benefioe will be permanently the better off, nor will the needs of the Church be one penny the less than they now are. This is all the more to be regretted when we consider that, if the Sus- tentation Fund succeeds in obtaining the large sums it desires to raise, efforts to raise the permanent value of bene. flees must be proportionately crippled.—I am, Sir, &c., 6 Sloane Gardens, June 14th. STANMORE. [TO TER EDITOR 01 MIR " &ROTATOR:9 SIR,—ba your article in the Spectator of June 12th entitled "Shall Poor Benefices or Poor Clergy be First Helped ? " you refer to a Report of the Oxford Conference Committee which describes the Fund as "most invidious and inquisitorial in its operation, full of uncertainty and anxiety to its recipients, and not free from a sense of humiliation on their part." The Oxford Conference doubtless made its report before the publication of the First Annual Report of the Queen Victoria Clergy Sustentation Fund, in which it is clearly shown that the principles upon which the Central Fund is governed are that it is not an additional clerical charity, but aims at providing a fair remuneration for work done, and that its grants will be made to supple- ment the incomes of poor benefices. When its first grants were made, in February last, of sums of from £350 to 21,350 to seven dioceses, the Committee neither asked for, nor received, any returns of the private incomes of any of the incumbents, but made its calculations upon the official incomes only. Surely it is not more inquisitorial to ask for returns of the official incomes of the clergy than of the official incomes of officers of the Navy, the Army, or the Civil Service, nor can the grants be more correctly considered doles, nor be received with a greater sense of humiliation, than are the grants made by the various Church societies for curates, schools, Scc. If the Fund is properly supported there should be no more uncertainty as to the labourer receiving his hire than of the majority of the professional and mercantile classes receiving theirs. The proper support of the Fund must depend much upon the clergy, and how they assist in carrying out its first object,—viz., to impress upon all mem- bers of the Church of England the clearly defined Christian duty of contributing towards the support of the clergy. The Oxford Committee seem to have entirely overlooked this. For many reasons it might be preferable to raise the incomes of the benefices to an adequate amount by endowments, but when it is considered how large a capital sum would be required, how long it would take to raise that sum, and the probability that the attempt would cripple existing work, it is scarcely within the range of practical politics to make the attempt. Possibly there may be sufficient wealth among the Church- men of the diocese of Oxford, and such a readiness to part with it, that the necessary capital may be raised—it must be borne in mind that it would require one million to raise all the benefices in the diocese to a minimum of £200 per annum— but in few other dioceses is there any probability of raising the necessary sum. A generation has passed away since the Bishop of London—Dr. Tait—made great efforts to raise for his Diocesan Fund the sum of one million, but his efforts and those of his two successors have not yet succeeded in accom- plishing it. To raise the incomes of all the benefices in Eng- land and Wales to £200 would require about fifteen millions, and to £300 upwards of forty millions. The Queen Victoria Clergy Sustentation Fund, it is reason- able to hope, may be able to raise by means of its Central Fund and through the diocesan organisations an annual income sufficient to provide the hire of which the labourer is worthy ; but it will have to raise much of it from those living on the earnings of profession and commerce, who at present contribute little towards the support of their clergy and are not likely to contribute to endowments,—a class whose number has trebled during the last fourteen years, and whose incomes, according to the Income-tax returns, have increased in the same period more than 40 per cent., while the incomes derived from land and dividends have been stationary. The present generation provides only about one-seventh of the incomes of the benefices, the remaining six-sevenths being derived from endowments. When the facts are clearly put before the laity, and the duty of providing a fair wage shown them, there is little doubt but that they will fulfil the duty.— I am, Sir, &c.,
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