TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MAINTENANCE OF THE CLERGY.
THE inability of the property of the Established Church to pro- vide competent incomes for a large number of the existing clergy, is only one branch of the more complex problem of extending the operations of the Church to meet the wants of a population that increases in England and Wales, " over and above the drain by emigration, and irrespective of an arrear of millions unprovided for,' by an addition of 200,000 or more annually. The Bishop of London, in a recent address, calculated that church-accommo- dation had not been provided for more than a tenth part of the additional population that has grown up within the last fifty years, at least in great towns ; and in London alone, in spite of the fact that one hundred and sixteen new churches had been erected within a few years, there were between six and seven hundred thousand persons of those capable of attending public worship for whom no sittings were provided by any religious body. He adds, that in order -to provide for one-half of the population of andon at present without any religious accom- modation, three hundred new churches would be needed. The " Society for the Employment of Additional Curates in Populous Places ' compiles from Mr. Horace Mann's well-known report a tabular statement of the religious accommodation and attendance in all the Parliamentary boroughs of the manufacturing districts of Yorkshire and Lancashire except Wigan. Its principal results are the following. The basis of the estimate made by Mr. Horace Mann is, that 58 per cent of the whole population are able to at- tend any service performed on Sunday, and this estimate is lower than that of other writers on the subject ; while the service se- lected is the morning service, at which the census report shows the attendance to be greater than at either the afternoon or even- ing service. The whole number of persons able to attend reli- gious worship in these boroughs amounts to more than 937,000 ; the number of sittings provided by the Church of England is nearly 238,000 ; the number of sittings provided by the Church and the sects together is about 573,000 ; the number of attend- ants at church is 122,000—of those attending all places of wor- ship together, 348,000. Now, it must be borne in mind that this includes ncludes the great seats of our manufacturing and commercial wealth, Halifax, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Oldham, Pres- ton, Salford, Sheffield, &e. ; and that if from the rapid increase of such places the Established Church shows worse than in agrl' cultural and generally than in stationary, districts, yet the Dis- senting sects on the other hand naturally thrive most in the midst of wealthy manufacturers and merchants ; so that on the whole we may take the table to represent not unfairly the general level of accommodation and attendance at religious worship as com- pared with the numbers of the population able to attend worship. And two inferences stare one in the face —the first, that the ac- commodation is miserably inadequate to face, —the the wants of the popula- tion ; the second and the more mportant, that the attendance is miserably below the accommodation. The primary want is, not new churches or chapels, but a more efficient minis —a clergy that can and will carry their teaching to the poor, and make the churches and chapels attractive to them. Now with the higher conditions of success in this problem we are not at present dealing. Of course, to endow the Church with double its present income would be alone of very little effect, un- less the sort of men were forthcoming who would and could do the work of the Church among our native heathen. But no rea- sonable man can expect a constant supply of able and energetic clergymen unless such clergymen can maintain themselves by their profession on the general level of the class to which they socially belong. For our own parts, we do not see any chance of an adequate supply of such clergymen, unless the income to be obtained by ministering to the spiritual wants of a district can be raised to such an amount as will enable a man to support himself, marry, and bring up his family, in the style and with the pros- pects of the comfortable middle classes. How little this is the case at present, may be judged from the statement made in the report of the Society for the Employment of Additional Curates for the year 1854-'5—to the effect, that if all the incomes of the parochial clergy were equally divided between incumbents and curates, the net income of each would amount to only 1504 per annum : and this, be it remembered, takes no account of the an- nual increase of 200,000 souls, demanding, according to the cal- culations of the same report, an annual increase of one hundred clergymen.
But in fact, as we urged last week, such a division is impracti- cable, even if it could be considered by any friend to the Church desirable to take away all the large prizes from the lottery. Add to the lump the Episcopal and Chapter incomes, the lapse of a few years would, with the rapid increase of our population, bring us back to our present difficulty. But let any one consider what Church property is to a very large extent. It consists of the in- comes of the benefices, the advowson of which has by long practice come to be treated just like any other property, and, under cer- tain fixed limitations, sold in the public market. The largest livings in the country belong to this class, Their present patrons may have inherited them from a long line of previous possessors, or they may have purchased them. In either case, their right to them is as valid and as indefeasible as the right of any landowner to his estate ; and though we can conceive the confiscation of this or of any other sort of property by the Legislature, such confiscation would amount to a revolution, and could only be the result of a revolution, if for no other reason, yet because such a confiscation would shake every title in the oountry. Nothing) however, is more common than to hear this confiscation urged in private so- ciety, under the vague notion of a general equalization of bene- fices ; and it is not many days since we heard a jealous as- serter of the rights of property in general, when brought up by this objection, coolly propose to leave those benefices which are in private patronage as they are, but to reduce the incomes of all the Bishops to 10001, a year, do away with Cathedral establish- ments, and with the sum thus gained to equalize the incomes of all the benefices that are in the gift of Bishops, Chapters, and the Government ; a process which would leave many of the parochial clergy possessed of far larger emoluments than their rulers in the Church. We need scarcely say that any proposal for equalizing the incomes of the parochial clergy, which would have a chance of settling the question, must embrace them all alike, whether the benefices are in private patronage or otherwise. And to any such proposal it would be a sufficient answer, except in the event of a democratic revolution, that no man's property could be considered secure after such a measure was passed ; and that if it were effected, the difficulty would recur in the course of a few years.
It has indeed been urged, that two measures passed within re- cent times were as violent an interference with private prope as the measure we pronounced impracticable. The Reform Bill, it is said, destroyed property for which valuable consideration had been given in the market ' • and the Slave Emancipation Act forced the owners of property to receive a very inadequate com- pensation. The answer is obvious—that the bargains in Parlia- mentary boroughs were never legal except so far as the mere transfer of the property went; that the power of returning Mem- bers to Parliament was an accident of the property ; and that it was only with that accident that Parliament dealt. In the other ease, though the compensation given to the owners of slaves was probably very inadequate to repay them for the losses incident to the forcible suppression of slavery, it was the value set by Go- vernment upon the actual existing slaves themselves ; and, so far as the analogy is valid at all, it would point to a purchase by the nation of the proprietary. rights of the patrons of livings ; the main objection to which is, that Parliament would not vote the necessary funds. We are driven, then, to voluntary contributions, as the only avail- able resource for supplying the present, and, much more, the future wants of the Established Church. Such contributions may take the form of building-funds and endowments for new churches, additional endowments for existing churches at present inade- quately endowed, or annual stipends for assistant curates to in- cumbents whose parishes need such assistance but whose incomes are too small to enable them to pay for the aid. The two societies we alluded to last week devote their energies principally to the two latter objects, and find themselves constantly obliged to with- hold assistance in cases of pressing necessity from the want of ade- quate funds. The " Pastoral Aid Society' is considered to repre- sent the Low Church Party, and enjoys the patronage of only a portion of the Episcopal Bench. The Society for the Employment of Additional Curates is supported by the more thoroughgoing Church- men, and all the Bishops are upon its Committee. So far as appears by the rules of the two Societies, they differ mainly in the following points. The Pastoral Aid employs laymen as Scripture-readers and Tract-distributors ; while its rival expends its funds solely in the maintenance of ordained clergymen : the Pastoral Aid al- lows the incumbent who applies for assistance to select his nomi- nee, but makes its grant subject to its own approval of the nomi- nee; the other Society claims no such right of rejection, but will only consider applications made through and sanctioned by the Bishop of the diocese. A careful perusal of the rules of both So- cieties does not enable us to state any other material difference, except it be that the Pastoral Aid constitutes its Committee of twenty-four lay members of the Church and all the clergy who are members of the Society,—somewhat a Falstaffian proportion of sack to bread ; while the Additional Curates Committee consists of the Archbishops and Bishops, the Trustees, the Treasurer, and twenty-four other members of the Society to be named by the Archbishops, of whom half are to be clergymen. Certainly, were we judges, we should incline on all points but the non-employ- ment of lay-agents as Scripture-readers, &c. to the rules of the Additional Curates rather than those of the Pastoral Aid ; and even on behalf of that limitation it may be urged, that so lone as the regular ministry of ordained men falls short of the requisite force, it is the first business of a Church society to supply that want. The contributing public does not, however, seem to be of our opinion ; for the income of the Additional Curates, for the year 1855-'6, amounts only to 17,7231. 58. 8d., whereas that of the Pastoral Aid for the same year is 37,264/. 18s. 9d. ; while both Societies join in lamenting the inadequacy of their funds to meet even the most pressing calls made upon them for assistance. The Additional Curates report local contributions in support of their grants to afurther amount of 7089/. ; raisingthe whole sum employed by their agency to nearly 25,000/. for the last year. We certainly cannot congratulate the members of the Church of England on this result ; nor can we attribute the smallness of the contribution, as we were inclined to suppose last week, to anything manifestly faulty in the constitution of either society. Those who dislike the au- thority of the Bishops need not be alarmed at any excessive sub- mission to those dignitaries exhibited by the Pastoral Aid Society ; while those who reverence the existing order of the Church, and
would have the Bishop to be really the ruler of his diocese, may find their predilections gratified by the regulation of the Additional Curaths Society. The plain fact is, that the contribution to both Societies together is a satire upon the members of the Established Church of the wealthiest nation in Europe. Either the rich care nothing for the spiritual condition of their poorer fellow countrymen, or they do not believe in their Church, or their feelings are so inactive as to amount in practice to the same thing. May be, many persons who both care for the poor and believe in the Church do not feel any strong respect for or confidence in the clergy. But one way to make the clergy more useful, and to train them up into better men, is to give them their work to do—to send them as missionaries into the heart of our native heathendom ; and the man who most keenly feels how far our clergy fall short of their ideal character and function will also feel most keenly that the presence of even an average clergyman in a hitherto neglected district is not an advantage to be despised, or postponed to that far distant period when every clergyman shall be a Wesley or a Luther.
The practical upshot of all these remarks is, that a great want exists ; that the means for supplying it at present in operation are utterly inadequate ; and that the only effectual resource is the voluntary contributions of those Englishmen who think the object worthy of sacrifice and are prepared to make the sacrifice. One clergyman, indulging rather his fancy than his experience of mankind, gravely suggests that all persons inducted henceforth into a benefice of more than 5001. per annum shall contribute the excess above 500/. per annum to a common fund, which is to ac- cumulate till enough be raised to make all the livings in the coun- try produce 500/. per annum. The idea is striking, but not very likely to be realized. If such a spirit of sacrifice were abroad in the Church, greater things even than the endowment of small livings would come of it, nor would it be confined to the clergy. And it does seem strange, considering the style in which Chris- tianity and the Church are conventionally spoken of in England —nay, the degree in which both are really valued—that such a proposal should strike one as so utterly Utopian. But Utopian it undoubtedly is ; and meanwhile the evil is pressing, and concerns the nation at large. If the Church of England is to stand, sooner or later we must come to a general voluntary contribution for its partial support ; and sooner is better than later—indeed, postponement may be irremediable.
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