TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE CLERKENWELL ELECTION.
THERE is a Society, we believe, or Association in existence which devotes itself to the protection of private patronage in the Church of England. We know little about it, except that its members seem to believe that the best way to protect private patronage is to scold the Bishops for nepotism ; but if its managers sincerely desire the continuance of the system they defend, we recommend them to republish from the Daily Chronicle of Clerkenwell a full account of the recent proceedings at the election of a Vicar, the speeches at public meetings, the scenes on nomination-day, the letters, and above all, the reports of the competing sermons. We have read them all through, yards upon yards, not to say furlongs of them, and are bound to declare that they furnish in every respect except one the best argument yet produced against the election of beneficed clergymen by democratic vote. Meetings, speeches, letters, sermons are all alike thoroughly discreditable to the intelligence, and some of them to the characters of all con- cerned. The choice of a Vicar appears to have excited more interest than an ordinary election, and to have been conducted in pre- cisely the same way, with all the machinery of placards, can- vassers, inflammatory speeches and fiery addresses from the candidates,—addresses sometimes, no doubt, called sermons. From a very early period it became evident that the choice would lie between Mr. J. H. Rose, the senior curate of the parish, who has worked in it for seven years, and Mr. J. Holderness, Vicar of Woolfardisworthy, Devonshire, who seems to have been regarded as a man of exceptional intellectual powers. We know nothing of either candidate, but unless Mr. Rose in his " probationary " sermon of Sunday did the grossest injustice to himself, he is an Evangelical of the narrowest and most fanatic type, who holds that St. Paul succeeded at Corinth and failed at Athens not because Corinth was the wickedest and Athens the most sceptical city in Greece, but because in Corinth he " would know nothing but Christ and him crucified," and in Athens "he drew upon his scientific knowledge and learning,"—an evident and direct hit at his rival, who is supposed to mix science with his theology, and who on the same Sunday gave a taste of his quality, and presented his audience with the mixture in this form :— " The fiery deluge [in which the world is to perish] was just as much a matter of derision and mockery as the deluge of water. But the deluge of fire would not be kept back by derision. Many in tones of scorn said, ' Show us how this fiery deluge can take place, and we will believe you ?' When his text was written gas was not known. It was much easier to understand and believe in this fiery deluge in this nine- teenth century than when the text was written, Dr. Priestley and others having told us that the air we breathe and the waters of the ocean contain immense quantities of combustible gas. Ten cubic feet of oxygen brought into contact with a proportionate quantity of hydrogen exploded with a loud report. But what was ten cubic feet of oxygen compared with that contained in the waters of the sea ? The sea had been sounded in many parts and had been pronounced unfathomable, while it had been ascertained that in some places it was nine miles in depth. The atmosphere was 100 miles in height. What would be the noise produced by an explosion of the combustible gases in the vast mass of these elements? Could angels hear [? bear] the terrific thunder of the crash It would probably be heard in other planets, and it might be heard beyond our planetary system. Astronomers had had their eyes upon planets which had been in a state of incandescence, and which after a time finally vanished. It might be that the change that would at one day take place in our planet had already taken place in other orbs. Men might scorn and scoff at the second coming of Christ, but in spite of what infidelity—which was an affliction of the heart rather than an affliction of the head—might say, there was no doubt that sooner or later Christ would come and judge the quick and the dead. To escape the deluge of water the ark was provided, and there was room in it for many more than went in. To escape the deluge of fire the ark that was provided was—Christ. The apostle, in his Epistle to the Thessalonians, said that at the last day believers would be caught up in the air to meet the Lord. That this globe would one day be wrapped in fire it was not difficult to believe, since we lived on around furnace, the walls of which were comparatively thin. If our lives were hid in Christ we should be caught up to meet Him when the fiery deluge came."
We will trust that the reporter was a blunderer, but still something of the kind must have been said, for no lay reporter would have invented that astounding travesty of the promises of the Gospel, or have affirmed that the intention of the Redeemer was to deliver, man not from sin, but from super- heated gas. Some of the electors seem to have gone quite frantic with excitement, which appears even in the letters, wherein one elector, a lady, calls another a " lepidopterous caterpillar " (fact) ; and another declares that Scripture promises that men shall be rewarded according to their works, and as Mr. Rose has worked for seven years he ought to be rewarded
with the vicarage. The meetings throughout have been of the most discreditable kind, the rival parties screaming, shouting, hissing at the candidate of their opponents, flinging out personal insults, and at the nomination refusing absolutely to hear him_ speak. Neither Mr. Rose nor Mr. Holderness could on Monday get out a word. On one occasion all the ladies fled in terror, for stools were flying about; on another, the insults grew so out- rageous that Mr. Holderness lost his temper, and engaged in an altercation which degenerated into a slanging-match ; on nomina- nation day, a principal supporter of Mr. Rose, with that gentleman himself standing by, bellowed from the platform, amidst raging interruption, as one principal argument for his candidate, that he had taken the clothes for his own children to give to a poor family, who otherwise must have been taken to the workhouse ; and Mr. Holderness's seconder declared the Bible told men to entertain strangers, because they might so entertain angels unawares, and it was his firm belief that Mr. Holderness was an angel ! Shortly after, it was announced that the election would not be by ballot, which would not be legal, and the scene became so uproarious that the disgusted Chairman, Mr. Churchwarden Culver, declared the meeting dissolved, " Mr. Gin and Bitters " was proposed to the chair, and the " electors swayed and rolled about in a manner which would have secured them the attention of A 1, had they behaved in anything like the same manner as individuals in the streets." The polling lasted like an old county election for three days, the publicans were accused of coercing customers to vote, menaces as to future votes for municipal elections were freely used, and in the end more than 5,000 electors refused to vote at all, and Mr. Rose was elected by less than three-eighths of the con- stituency. Clerkenwell, in fact, found its pastor as a brawling little borough in the old days would have found its beadle.
Nothing could be worse, or more vulgar, in the bad sense of the word, or more disheartening, than the whole election ; but justice must be done even to men who, like a good many supporters of either side, defy grammar in the cause of God, and in their zeal for the Gospel insult its ministers, and the argument from Clerkenwell against the popular election of English clergymen is not conclusive. In the first place, these noisy, quarrelsome, bad-mannered, ungrammatical people elected the right man, after all, and from the right motive. We dislike Mr. Rose's theology, and should have wearied to death under his probationary sermon, with its artificial elo- quence and repetition of texts as if they were refrains to a song ; but the parishioners of Clerkenwell, or at least those who voted—a majority of whom may have been Dissenters— thoroughly agreed with Mr. Rose's theology, and they did not elect him for his eloquence. Indeed many, perhaps most, of them believed,—falsely, it would appear,—that he had no eloquence in their sense at all, but read his sermons from a written paper. We know nothing whatever of Mr. Rose, but it is impossible to read the speeches, and placards, and letters, and songs about him, with all their dreadful freedom, and per- sonality, and want of taste, without perceiving that Mr. Rose is a man not above the average in any gifts, but very much above the average in the virtues which his supporters vulgarise by calling " Christian graces,"—that he has won the love and respect of a great parish by untiring industry, charity, and self-denial- He has been an apostle to the vulgar, so earnest and so suc- cessful that they have recognised him, and though unable to keep down their delight in brawling, and bullying, and half-comic insult, have spent themselves for days rather than that Mr. Rose should cease to labour among them. They have given up the petty jealousies which in a community like Clerkenwell always tell so heavily against the known man, and worked hard for one who had no claim upon them whatever, except that they believed him to be a good Christian pastor. Are we quite certain that the private patron, though he would have made no noise, and given no scandal, and uttered no bad grammar, would have been actuated by better motives, or have secured a candidate who could more beneficially influence the people of Clerkenwell—who, be it remembered, so far as this election shows, are just in the stage of opinion when a Ritualist or an indifferent clergyman would drive them in thousands at once out of the Church ? There are evils in patronage, as well as in popular election, and we are not sure that educated men, with their horror of "scenes," and noise, and vulgarity, are the most competent persons to weigh the Wilk The Clerkenwell Election, moreover, is a very extreme instance, for it must not be forgotten that the method of choice is accidental, and in no degree represents any scheme ever suggested either for the Establishment or any Dissenting Church. The British Government is elected, but not by a mass-meeting. Nobody that we know of, not even Lord Bandon, has ever pro- posed to go further than to allow a Parish Council or select Committee of Vestry to elect an incumbent, and the proceed- ings of such a Council would not necessarily be either noisy, or vulgar, or terrible to women. There are objections to that mode of election, one principal one being that no one would have a chance unless he belonged to the Evangelical party in the Church, which, commanding as it does all the Dissenters, a heavy majority of the lower middle-class, and all the workmen likely to vote, will always, under any electoral system, rise to the top ; but it is neither approved nor con- demned by the results of direct election in a London parish, —that is, of an election by mass-meeting. It might be worse, but it might also be better, and we wish greatly that before the question comes up seriously, a few of the great proprietors of Church livings would enable the public to see double election at work, pledging themselves to nominate any candidate approved by a Committee elected by the ratepayers. It is of no use to try the Nonconformist plan, and confine election to " members," for the moment the Church ceases to be national she ceases to be established or endowed, but an experiment in double election, the primary body consisting of all ratepayers, might be of the highest utility. If the Church is to be preserved, some method of bringing popular as well as lay influence to bear on it is sure to be adopted, and a little positive experience might yet save Parliament from many errors.
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