LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
A CENSUS OF RELIGIOUS PROFESSION.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Notwithstanding your exceptional liberality in allowing in your columns expressions of opinion different from your own, I do not presume to contest your general views on the Census question, however much I may differ from them. But may I crave space for a few words on its more practical aspect? It seems natural enough—though personally I should object—to ask every person, for Government reasons, to state his religion. But I think I can show that there is no known machinery by -which that object can be secured.
To take a census as proposed, you must invest every house- holder—one person, say, in every twenty—with arbitrary au- thority to fill up the column relative to religious profession on be- half of every one under his roof on a given Sunday night in the spring. Let us see bow this might work. To take an extreme, but illustrative case :—The manager of the Grand Hotel, Charing Cross, is bound to state something as to the religious profession, as well as the names and ages of 200 inmates. Could he or would he ask his guests their religion ? Or is it not likely that, instead of such an offensive inquisition, he would put them all down as Churchmen ? This may be said to be exceptional, but it applies to hundreds of hotels and inns, and many thousands of the population. Then, take the squire of the country parish. Would lie be likely to ask his score or more of servants whether they were Churchmen or Methodists? I trow not. Here, also, you mast multiply the squire and his dependents by hundreds. Again, with regard to soldiers and sailors, and the great number of inmates of gaols, hos- pitals, and other public institutions, whom the Bishop of Winchester so innocently claims, are you going to ask them all their religious persuasion, or would they not be set down as members of the Church of England? One might multiply these types of social life, if your space would allow. Then we have to remember that at least one-third of the population habitually neglect public worship. But how many of them would like to confess they are nothingarians, and what would they say in the census-paper ? Hundreds and thousands of others, the product of recent free investigation or free reading, are Rationalists. What trace of these leanings would there be in the census-paper What would it all be worth, when you had got it, inclnding the religious opinions of women and children In reality, it would come to be a plibiscite of the population for and against the Established Church, in which the social forces of society would be lathe main enlisted on its behalf. The result cannot for a moment
be doubted. Only you virtually decide, for the time being, and covertly, a momentous politicoeecclesiastical question, not by constitutional means, but by a side-wind, and without discus- sion; for, of course, an enumeration by such machinery would make it appear that a large majority of the population are nominally Churchmen. Moreover, what was ostensibly a statis- tical inquiry would resolve itself into an eager political canvas, in which the issue would virtually be decided by the indifferent, —the know-nothings. I need not go beyond your own columns for an illustration as to how the thing would work. In a letter from the Rev. Brooke Lambert, which you inserted on Septem- ber 28th, 1878, he candidly admits that when taking the census of his parish, in the East of London, he often got the answer,— " I go nowhere ; put me down 'Church.'"
One word more. It might be that in one year there would be an elaborate statistical return, which would show that the Church of England was the Church of the nation; next year, perchance, the properly constituted and active political force of the country —the electorate—might decree Disestablishment. The bare possibility of such an anomalous state of things should, as it seems to me, warn Liberals, at all events, against the danger of having recourse to such new-fangled and Bonapartist means of solving great national problems, rather than the method pre- scribed by our constitutional system and English traditions.— I am, Sir, Scc.,
[If a man is willing to be put down " Church " he will vote "Church," which was the point of our article.—En. Spectator.]
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