THE REPORT OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION. E VEN in these days
of vast fortunes, American and other, a net income of a million and a quarter is a very pretty property. This is the sum which came last year into the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. They are great agricultural landlords ; they hold much house property and a large amount of tithe ; they have over £300,000 in ground-rents, and as much again in mining royalties ; they are holders of securities and mortgages on a considerable scale. Few owners of property have to do with so many various forms of wealth. It is fortunate for the Commissioners, or rather for their cestui que trusts, that this is so. Otherwise we should not read in their Report that a " diminution in the receipts from agricultural lands, tithe-rent charges, and minerals has been balanced by increased receipts from property in London." But large and various as their property is, the greater part of it is appropriated in advance. Of the £1,266,000 which came last year into the Commissioners' possession, £100,000 goes in payment to Bishops, and £150,000 to Chapters. As regards the latter item, it would have been very much larger had not some of the Chapters preferred to keep their estates in their own hands, and to content them- selves with the incomes accruing from them. Great and well-founded has been the grief of the Chapters which made this choice. They retain the estates indeed, but the incomes have in a great measure taken to themselves wings. The depreciation in agricultural land has reduced many deaneries and canonries to less than half their nominal value. Their properties are all, of nearly all, of one kind ; they have nothing to set against the fall in their rents. Had they accepted the Commis- sioners' terms they would now have been feeling an agreeable, because academical, interest in speculating what steps the Commissioners would take in order to make the two ends meet. As it is, they may cheer themselves with the superior position of ecclesiastics who have property of their own over ecclesiastics who are merely annuitants. Unfortunately, this advantage is not of a kind which makes a balance-sheet satisfactory. To the £250,000 already accounted for £706,000 must be added to meet the fixed annual payments in respect of benefices augmented and endowed in furmer years. Thus £956,000 may be treated as non-existent so far as regards the existing Commissioners. All that is left to them to distribute is a balance of £227,000, "with which to carry on the work of augmentation and endowment, and to provide for all the contingencies inseparable from the management of so large a sum."
From one point of view it is to be regretted that this sum of £706,000 is as large as it is. For beyond doubt a portion of it has been spent in a way which has proved rather hurtful than beneficial. We refer to the grants made in former years for the building and improvement of parsonage-houses. In itself, of course, this has been a most proper object on which to lay out money. The parson must have a roof over his head, and in many parishes if a house were not built for him there would be none for him to live in. In the case of small livings, moreover, it is better that so important and vary- ing an item as house-rent should not have to be paid out of the income of the benefice. But unless the Ecclesiastical Commissioners are very much maligned, there was a time when a great deal too much money was spent on individual parsonage-houses. We will not vouch for the truth of such stories as that of the hunting man who induced the Commissioners to add sixteen stalls to his stable, or of the successful coach who convinced them that twenty new bedrooms were not more than he could count upon filling with highly profitable pupils. These may be simply the creation of the clerical imagination. But that a great many rectories and vicarages have been built on a scale far in excess probably of the then value of the living, and certainly of its present value, there is no question. They are now a world too wide for the lessened and lessen- ing incomes of the country clergy. To be comfortable they need more servants indoors and outdoors than the parson can afford to keep, and the cost of repairing them, whether it comes in the shape of an annual outlay or as a lump sum for dilapidations, is a heavy burden, and one which brings in no compensating return. In some districts, indeed, the Commissioners have often at their command a means of undoing the mischief done by their pre- decessors. When the parsonage-house stands on the glebe, and, as is often the case, has some—perhaps many—acres of land attached to it, the best thing that can be done is to sell it and spend the money, partly in building another house of more moderate dimensions, and partly in adding to the value of the benefice. In this way the clergy will be better off in point of income and relieved of a constant source of useless expense.
This figure of £706,000 raises another question. If benefices have been augmented and endowed to an extent represented by an annual payment of this magnitude, the past poverty of the clergy must have been greater than we are accustomed to suppose. The promoters of Clerical Sustentation Funds and the like would think themselves fortunate if they could get, once and for all, as much as the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have at their disposal in a single year. Since 1840, when the common fund was first created, the Commissioners, we are told, have augmented and endowed upwards of five thousand seven hundred benefices. " The value of these grants exceeds £808,835, and is equivalent to a capital value of £24,320,900." These grants were mostly met by local benefactions equivalent to a further capital sum of £5,458,200. Thus " the total increase in the incomes of benefices resulting from the operations of the Commis- sioners exceeds £1,016,775 per annum," which may be taken to represent a capital sum of over £30,000,000. The Report compares these figures with the " estimate formed in the early years of the Commission that the amount which would be ultimately available for the augenentation of poor benefices would not exceed X300,000 per annum," and, while recognising the share that " enhanced values and the development and im- proved management of the estates " have had in the result, justly claims that it is in part "due to the care which has been exercised in the control of the finances of the Commissioners." But satisfactory as the figures are from this point of view, they are somewhat less so when we remember that the outcome of an expenditure of £30,000,000 has been to leave the beneficed clergy in the condition in which they now are. If this immense sum has only brought the poorer benefices up to their present level, what can be hoped for from the frac- tion of that sum which is all that we can expect to raise hereafter?
There is another aspect of the Ecclesiastical Commission which at one time had more interest than it has just now. When Disestablishment seemed to be in the air, it was a point sometimes raised whether the Church had gained or lost by the creation of the Commission. No doubt many scandals have been avoided or put an end to, and many glaring anomalies removed. The chief source of the Commissioners' income, in the first instance, has been the appropriation of the vast estates that formerly belonged to some of the bishoprics, and has arisen from distributing the surplus revenue of these episcopal estates. Among the poorer benefices a conspicuous disproportion between the two orders of the clergy, and in some cases between different members of the same order, has been happily got rid of. On the other hand, it has been objected that the concentration of these large sums in the hands of a Com- mission would make the work of disendowment all the easier. It gives the clergy, so to say, one neck instead of many, and so facilitates the task of the executioner. No doubt this is so far true, that if Disestablishment were now on the stocks it is to the Ecclesiastical Com- missioners that the Government would go to get the information of which the draughtsman must be put in possession before he could begin work. But this only means that the existence of the Commission would save the Government a good deal of preliminary inquiry. That is not a service which we should be anxious to render to the authors of a Disestablishment Bill, but it is not one to be set against the very great advantages which the Church derives from the reforms which the Commissioners have initiated.
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