THE SOUTHWARK AND BIRMINGHAM BISHOPRICS.
the course of Parliamentary business, there can be no doubt as to the pledges of the Government on the subject of the Bill sanctioning the constitution of new bishoprics for Southwark and Birmingham. When, to the profound disappointment and regret of all those interested in the efficiency of ecclesiastical administration in South London and in the Midlands, the attempt to carry through the Bishoprics Bill was abandoned last August, Mr. Balfour gave it most clearly to be understood that the Bill would be brought forward early in the Session of 1904, with a view to avoiding all danger of another failure of the same kind. It was, be it remem- bered, a Government measure. As such it had been introduced and carried through the House of Lords, and included by the Prime Minister, a few days before its with- drawal, among the measures which, in his opinion, it was imperative that Parliament should place on the statute- book before the prorogation. But in face of the obstruc- tion, obstinate in quality though small in volume, which was offered to it, its passage could only be secured by the adoption of the Closure, and in the last fortnight of the Session it was impossible to obtain the attendance of a sufficient number of Members to enforce the Closure, 'unless, indeed, Ministers were prepared to talk of resignation and Dissolution. Few more unfortunate incidents have marked the recent history of the British Parliament.
Here was a simple question of giving legislative effect to a rearrangement of the areas of ecclesiastical adminis- tration in two of the most important and most densely populated parts of the country, and of reinforcing its personnel, at charges to be met entirely out of Church resources, and as to the great proportion of them from the generosity of living Churchmen. In the case of the Birmingham bishopric, as we understand, that generosity, in leading which Bishop Gore has taken a most conspicuous part, has already provided, or guaranteed, the whole of the money required for the endowment fund, beyond the £800 a year assigned from the revenues of the contributory See of Worcester. In the case of the Southwark bishopric, which, of course, is to consist, roughly speaking, of the metropolitan and suburban portions of the present diocese of Rochester, £500 a year is to be drawn from the revenues of the parent See. For the rest, it is part of the proposed scheme that out of the funds arising from the sale of Addington Park, the former residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, £15,000 should be reserved for the establishment of a new episcopal residence at or near Rochester, and that a small remainder of perhaps about £5,000 (the bulk of the whole money from the sale going to provide a new archiepiscopal residence at Canterbury) should go to the endowment fund of the new Southwark bishopric. The reasons for these arrange- ments are (a) that it is proposed to detach the rural deaneries of East and West Dartford from the Canterbury diocese and attach them to the reduced diocese of 'Rochester; (b) that the present residence of the Bishops . of Rochester is in South London, and will naturally • :become the residence of the Bishops of Southwark ; and (c) that the Southwark diocese will contain so extra- ordinary a concentration of poor that any moderate relief of the resources of the new diocese out of unde- niably Church funds would seem the most right and proper thing imaginable. Some .00,000 has yet to be secured towards the endowment fund of the Southwark bishopric, but there is good reason to anticipate that when the Bill 'authorising its constitution has become law no long time will pass before the financial conditions are completely satisfied. The revenue of the new Southwark See will be £3,500 a year, reckoning the house at £500; and if it be said that this is needlessly large, the answer is that £3,500 a year was the minimum annual value of the endowment fund fdr new bishoprics mentioned in the Act of 1878, facilitating the establishment of the bishoprics of Wake- field, Newcastle, Southwark, and Liverpool ; that the value of money has not risen in the interval ; that the Bishop of Southwark will in all probability need a suffragan to help him in the supervision of two and a half millions of people ; and that the general calls upon the Bishop of that wilderness of poverty called South London must be quite exceptionally heavy.
For our own part, if we were looking about for ecclesias- tical ideals, we should hold that there was much to be said for a very considerable increase in the number of chief officers, with a reduction in the burdens—moral, physical, and financial—laid upon each, and a corresponding re- duction in the scale of average emolument. But nothing of that kind is in view, or is in accord with the present or approaching temper of the nation. The financial arrangements proposed in connection with both the Southwark and the Birmingham bishopric schemes are framed, but by no means too liberally, in harmony with the current feeling as to what is naturally expected of a Bishop of an extremely populous diocese in respect of work, of hospitality, and of general liberality to diocesan objects. In both' cases the schemes represent the practi- cally unanimous view of those acquainted with the needs of the existing dioceses concerned as to the lines on which it is essential to move in order to allow the principal organisation for the spiritual and moral elevation of the people of all classes to realise, or even to approach, its own full possibilities of efficiency. In both cases it 'is within the knowledge of all well-informed persons that the existing dioceses are totally unworkable, even at the cost of the most exhausting labours on the part of Bishops who are recognised, even by those who disagree with them, as combining devotion and ability of the first order. Strain every nerve as they may and do, it is impossible for them to overtake the tasks pressing upon them,— impossible for, them to exorcise that pervading super- vision over their clergy, to establish and maintain that personal touch with all their parishes, which are of the essence of the successful working of an episcopal Church. And it is not only the best, but the over- whelmingly predominant, opinion in both the' districts in question that in the establishment of the proposed new dioceses lies the one true hope of securing that, humanly speaking, the Church of England shall have a fair chance of doing her work worthily for the vast populations con- coined. The two cases present contrasts as well as resemblances. In that of Birmingham there is a community exceptionally well organised in all other than ecclesiastical respects. In regard to municipal activities, to politics, and to education in all its branches, the Midland capital has achieved an effective corporate unity. which commands the 'envy, in many ways, of the rest of the country. It may well be regarded as a grievous anomaly that from the Churchmen of Birmingham there should be withheld the opportunity, long ago accorded to those of Manchester and Liverpool, of realising their own proper unity, by having a Bishop of their own. So ordered and organised they might reason- ably hope to contribute far more effectively than is now possible to them to the treatment of the manifold social problems which press upon all good citizens even in that great centre of industry and of intelligence. And if they are willing, as they are, to meet all the needful charges of the required administrative change, there is something astonish- ing in the temper of those who would throw difficulties in -their way. But the responsibility so itssumed becomes almost appalling when it is extended to the obstruction of the• rearrangement of ecclesiastical supervision called for in the case of South London. For there we do not see the cor- porate life of Birmingham, or any distant approach to it. There it is in the building up of a sense of unity in Church affairs that we may hope to see the beginnings of the general unity so profoundly needed for the purpose of grappling wiih the overpowering Problems presented by that vast collocation of poor. Further, by the proposed constitution of the Southwark diocese there would be strongly pro- moted the creation of some effective sense of responsibility on:the part of the well-to-do whose employments are in London, but their homes in the pleasant Surrey suburbs and country outside, for the welfare—spiritual, moral, and physical—of the masses whose. homes .and whose work alike lie in' the lea&ues of mean streets south of the Thames. Among the most trusted representatives of the working 'classes there is, we are convinced, nothing but friendliness towards an ecclesiastical project which they recognise as being essentially connected with the best kinds of social progress. We cannot believe that the House of Commons will lightly allow another Session to pass without enacting the simple legislation needed to set the Church free to rise, at her own cost, in Birmingham and in South London to the full height of her mission in the service of those great communities.
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