THE ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS. T HE Bishops are at last unanimous, Taught
by the ex- pense of the suits against scandalous or heretical clergymen, which have been of late so numerous, they have agreed to introduce a Bill for the Amendment of the Church Discipline Act. Doubtless it will effectually provide for the relief of their Lordahips' pockets, but the public will hardly gain much by it, if, under the cloud -of dust which it raises, the attention of Parliament is once again diverted from the consideration of the whole question of the Ecclesiastical Courts. The vitality of these institutions has indeed been remarkable. Before either of the three Courts of Common Law existed, they protected our chattels from the grasp of confiscating Seigneurs, and administered the (splices canonica., while that of Chancery was still undreamt of. In 1827, the attack on them com- menced. In 1855, and again in 1856, the Liberal Go- -vernment of the day attempted to transfer their whole jurisdiction to the Courts in Lincoln's Inn, but the hos- tility of the Bishops and a natural dread of Chancery availed to defeat the Bills. Then the expedient of con- stituting a new Court of Probate and Divorce was resorted to, and the Ecclesiastical Courts robbed of all that jurisdiction which ordinarily brought laymen into their grasp, ceased to attract their fair share of public attention.
In truth, since Sir Cresswell Cresswell commenced his labours, they have existed with sadly diminished splendour. The Court of Arches retains its jurisdiction over clergymen accused of violations of the law of the Church, but the minor diocesan courts scattered over the country, the chief seats of iniquity, are now obliged to content themselves with an oc- casional squabble over a pew or an archdeacon's fees. The fact is, no man will enter them who can escape by submitting to any ordinary amount of injustice. Their judges are noto- riously incompetent ; they are cumbrous, dilatory, and expen- aive, and exist only for the sake of the fees which they enable their officials to exact. The beat mode of dealing with these niedimval establishments would be simply to abolish them. 'The questions with which they deal are all questions of pro- perty, and might be transferred at once to the courts of ,common law. A squabble about a church rate, or the repairs of a church or parsonage, may well be left to the same tri- bunals by which all other questions of this sort are satisfac- torily adjusted. If the compensation of the officials should present any practical difficulties, the registries, which are attached to these courts, and from which the emolument is chiefly derived, might be allowed to linger on during the lives -of the existing place-holders. The functions of the registries might be otherwise provided for, or they might be allowed, after being carefully reformed, to perform any trifling duties which might still remain to them.
It is impossible to dispose equally summarily of those really important duties which are performed by the Court of Arches in respect of clergymen charged with immorality of life or unsound doctrine. On the whole, it is perhaps to be desired that they should be still discharged by a judge appointed ad hoc. It is not that the rules which regulate the life of a layman are or ought to be more lax than those which regulate the life of a clerk, but that the latter, by the :solemn engagements which he has contracted with society and the Church, and the latter only, has submitted his con- duct to an earthly tribunal. He must therefore be judged by a code which attaches criminality to many actions which other men may commit with impunity. He is, in fact, only in the position of all other professional men, and who ever thought of testing the conduct of a barrister or soldier by any other than a professional standard ? If the separate jurisdiction of the court is still to exist, there is certainly no judicial officer, with anything approaching the time at his disposal, which the judge of the Admiralty Court enjoys. Whether in his ecclesiastical capacity be does or does not still continue to be known as the Dean of Arches, is a matter of comparatively trivial import. But this is certain, that whether under the same or a different name, the court should assimilate its practice and procedure to that of all the other courts, and ought no longer to be guided by the principles of the Civil Law.
It is not that we would venture to allude with disrespect to that imperial jurisprudence on which the law of Scotland and of all the Continent is based. Singularly enough, while the public are wisely anxious to reduce all exceptional forms of procedure to the uniformity of English law, lawyers are • endeavouring to enlarge the narrowness of our domestic jurisprudence by a resort to the maxims and principles of the civilians. And, indeed, justice may be well dis- pensed under either system, so long as it is administered by men of liberal mind competent to 11;tould and adapt its principles to the changing requirements of each .changing age. But this is just what a handful of second- rate men can never do ; and such, in spite of here and there a brilliant accident, must ever be the character of a small knot of practitioners administering an exceptional system in an exceptional court. On the one hand, in the dread of missing substantial justice, they have fallen into a laxity of practice which is the fruitful source of extravagance and delay ; on the other, they have adopted, in the applica- tion of principles to novel circumstances, a narrow and pedantic technicality which ties the hands of Justice and makes her well-nigh as powerless as she is fabled to be blind. This is not, however, the only reason why the clergy accused of offences against the law of the Church should be tried by the principles of the common law. So long as eccle- siastical charges are investigated before tribunals guided by exceptional principles, so long do we maintain a line of se- paration between the clergy and the laity, so long does the priesthood assert its right sub _72omanii lege rivers, and vin- dicate its pretensions to a personal law. he danger may seem chimerical to some, but this is not an age in which even the smallest vantage-ground should be conceded to such assumptions as these. The long list of clerical crimes, to be found in the reposi- tories of ecclesiastical learning, may, after all, be reduced to a few heads. Non-residence, simony and plurality, are now provided against by statute, and almost every other exclusively clerical sin may be reduced, either to irre- gularity in the discharge of some of the services of the Church, immorality of life, or unsound doctrine. This latter charge must, of course, always be left to the de- cision of the court, which can alone pronounce what is, or is not, the law of the Church. But why should a clergy- man charged with any irregularity which depends on a dis- puted fact be deprived of the benefit of a jury ? Why, in any case, should not the witnesses against him be examined in open court, and tested by the ordeals of cross-examination. What is there in any of these cases to prevent their being dealt with on the principles of the common law. Let it not be forgotten that these imputations involve the loss of a man's freehold, or at least his suspension from it ; that they strike, moreover' at his professional status, his honour, and the prospects of his family and himself. Such charges would be none the worse established for being ventilated in the free atmosphere of our, ordinary courts. Shortly, then, our plan is this : 1. The institution of a new court, either under a new or old name, to replace the Court of Arches, for the trial of clerical offenders ; such new court to administer justice on the principles of the com- mon law. 2. The abolition of all the ecclesiastieel courts, and the transfer of their remaining jurisdiction to the ordi- nary tribunals of the country. It would, perhaps, be de- sirable, as a safeguard against oppression to an. unpopular incumbent, that parishioners should not be at liberty to commence proceedings against their clergyman without the consent of the Ordinary. There is a parish in a midland county, in which the son of a wealthy attorney preferred to the bishop against his rector the three following charges : First, that he had returned home from a party at two A.M. Second, that he had been heard to any that if his parishioners would leave him alone, he would leave them alone. Third, that he had run a race with a layman without his shoes on. The second article of accusation only was not denied, but the prosecutor never proceeded with it. A man obviously, how- ever, might be dragged from his parsonage to London to answer charges merely frivolous and impertinent, and some simple rule should be laid down for his protection. That this or any other scheme of reform will be adopted in the present session we are not sanguine. A grievance which must be estimated by the severity of the wrong which it inflicts, not the number or importance of those who suffer by it, is always long-lived. Even the Ecclesiastical Courts would not, probably, be in want of apologists. There are minds to which antiquity commends itself for its own sake, whose lamentations would not fail to be raised over the de- struction of what is, we should be carefully informed, the sole relic, except the House of Lords, of the Norman constitution of England. This opposition overcome, which alone would be too strong for any private member of Parlia- ment, the Bench of Bishops would still remain behind. To diminish the costs of proceedings, which they themselves defray, is one thing ; to consent to the abolition of Courts, of which the patroriage is in their hands, merely because they prey upon the public, is quite another. If, as Sir George Grey has indicated, we are to wait for reform until there is complete episcopal unanimity on this head, we may wait indeed. When all Bishops shall have ceased to claire patronage, when all Bishops shall have been shamed out of nepotism, and shall shrink from supporting their officials in the exaction of fees for which nothing has been done, that time will have arrived when all Courts shall be closed for want of suitors, and the contentions of humanity be for 4111 ever still.
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