THE SALE OF ADVOWSONS.
[TO MR EDITOR OF TRH " SPEOTATOR. "]
Sin,—i hope the Bishop of Manchester will not content himself with one vigorous protest against the system of Church patronage, but will open a new era in the Church of England by resisting with authority and perseverance the tyranny which is exercised over her, not, as so many think, by the State, but by aristocratic and plutocratic influence. It gave me pleasure to see such a pro- test front the high places of a Church far inure given than any Church ought to be to the dangerous habit of pooh-poohing princi- ples. Your apology for the system, as it seems to me, is just such as may be made for any great abuse. It has all the omissions which such apologies invariably have. " A State Church could not last long under any other system." But you omit to show— what surely would take a great deal of showing—that it will last long under the present system; -4, Evils would arise in the work- ing of any other system." But you ought to show that these evils are greater than those which arise in the working of the present system. "The present system works well because it has certain good results." But a system works well not when it produces good results, but when the good results it produces outweigh the bad ones.
What is the reason why, as some member of Parliament said, a Church clergyman is, in time cases out of ten, a Conservative? This cannot be a small evil in the estimation of Liberals and of those who hold that in the great social controversies of the age Christianity, if it were rightly preached, would be found to be on the Liberal side. It cannot be a small evil to those who think it desirable that Liberalism should be at least fairly represented among the clergy, so that they may not place themselves in direct opposition to the movement of the age. Dissenters tell us that the Church is Conservative because of its connection with the State. Bat its connection with the State would make it Liberal or Conservative, according us either of the two political parties gained the upper hand in the State, wikereas it remains steadily Conserva- tive. It is not the connection of the Church with the State, but its connection with property that makes it so stationary. The plutocracy hold the Church by means of patronage, as it holds the House of Commons through the expense of elections and the gratuitousness of political service.
You think it fatal to several schemes that they would make the Church of England the Church of a sect. Is not a system still more to be condemned which makes it the Church of a class, and that class the very one from the ascendancy of which Christianity was intended to relieve men?
"The system is absurd, but it works well." Are there no limits to the application of this priuciple ? Or rather, do no conse- quences follow from the principle implied in a system quite dis- tinct from those which follow from the operation of the system itself ? It seems to me that a spiritual body loses caste by resort- ing to this argument ? The main business of a spiritual body is to assert principles. I hold that all abuses that might spring up through the infirmities of individuals in a just system do less harm, particularly in a Church, than the adoption of one immoral principle. The faults of an individual can only disgrace the indi- vidual, but the Church itself is disgraced by this nionetroue confusion between property and function. You can point to certain visible good results which flow from the ystern of private patronage, but
surely you are not of those who would deny the existence of other results because they are less visible and measurable. I cannot measure how much harm is done by the sale of advowsons, but the evil is not to be loft out of account because it cannot be measured.
All this I might express more shortly by saying that I do not think, with you, that the system is absurd but still tolerable, but that I think it immoral, and therefore not tolerable at all.—I am,
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