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In Uniform Crown 8vo Volumes, bound in red cloth. Price One Shilling Each. The Imperial Parliament Series. Edited by SYDNEY BUXTON, M.P. {Author of "Handbook to Political Questions," etc.). The intention of this Series is to place within reach of the general public, at a very cheap rate, short volumes dealing with those topics of the day which lie within the range of practical politics. Notwithstanding the constantly increasing demand for political literature, to enable electors and others to follow the argument in connection with particular reforms, there are no easily obtainable and permanent text-books to which they can refer, the advocates of these reforms confining themselves, as a rule, to pamphlets, magazine articles, and speeches, or else discussing their subject in a form beyond the reach of the masses. It is hoped that these little volumes, being written in a judicial spirit— and, though advocating each its own pro- posal, as far as possible, free from party bias or polemical controversy— may be recognized as authoritative, and, being published in a permanent form, may be less evanescent than ordinary political writings, and be thus of real value. The Series, though " political," is not " Party." The volumes are written by politicians who are recognized as authorities on the subjects of which they treat. Each volume is complete in itself, and the writers alone are respon- sible for the opinions they may express. The Series comes into competition with no existing publi- cation. The valuable " English Citizen" Series details the rights and responsibilities of citizens as they exist at present; it speaks of things as they are— this Series deals with them as reformers think they should be. The following Volumes are already published i. THE MARQUIS OF LORNE. "IMPERIAL FEDERATION." 2. SIR JOHN LUBBOCK, BART., M.P ' ' R EPR ESENTA TION." 3. WM. RATHBONE, M.P. ) ALBERT PELL, M.P. [ F. C. MONTAGUE, M.A.J "LOCAL ADMINISTRATION." 4. RT. HON. W. E. BAXTER, M.P. "ENGLAND AND RUSSIA IN ASIA. §tk Thousand. Isth Thousand. [$th Thousand. " women suffrage: \%th Thousand. 6. W. S. CAINE. ) WM. HOYLE. \ REV. DAWSON BURNS, D.D. J "LOCAL OPTION." 7. HENRY BROADHURST, M.P.) R. T. REID, M.P. S " LEASEHOLD ENFRANCHISEMENT." 8. HENRY RICHARD, M.P. I J. CARVELL WILLIAMS, M.P.) " DISESTABLISHMENT." The following are in course of issue :— 9. JAMES BRYCE, M.P. "REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS." 10. J. F. B. FIRTH, M.P. " REFORM OF LONDON GOVERNMENT, AND OF CITY GUILDS." 11. ALBERT GREY, M.P. \ REV. S. A. BARNETT. [ REV. G. REANEY. ) " CHURCH REFORM.' Other Volumes will follow. London : SWAN SONNENSCHEIN AND CO. The Imperial Parliament Series. In uniform crown 8vo volumes, bound in red cloth. Price One Shilling Each. IMPERIAL FEDERATION. By the Rt. Hon. THE MARQUIS OF LORNE, P.C., K.T., G.C.M.G., Late Governor-General of Canada. PALL MALL GAZETTE, May 19, 1885.— " Lord Lome's treatise on Imperial Federation is sensible and to the point. . . . The little book is full of topics for thought. It deals with one of the most important questions of future politics, and we cordially welcome its appearance at the head of a series that w e hope will be a widely circulated political library for the people." REPRESENTATION. By SIR JOHN LUBBOCK, Bakt., M.P. LIVERPOOL MERCURY, July 23, 1885.—" The volume is written in a calm, judicial spirit, and although warmly advocating its particular proposal, may be said to be entirely free from party bias. It well deserves the wide circu- lation it has already attained." LOCAL ADMINISTRATION. By WM. RATHBONE, M P, ALBERT PELL, M.P., and F. C. MONTAGUE, M.A. DAILY NEWS, August 17, 1885.—" . . . The authors have grappled with this complicated question most skilfully, with the result that they have produced a little book of some 150 pages in which a vast amount of information on the whole subject of local administration and local taxation is presented in a most readable form. ..." VOL. IV. ENGLAND AND RUSSIA IN ASIA. By the Rt. Hon. \V. E. BAXTER, M.P. ECHO, October 7, 1885.— " No calmer, more temperate, or more judicious pa^es have ever been written on the subject." NONCONFORMIST, October 29.— "Those electors who study this able summary can hardly fail to be convinced by the reasonableness of the appeals with which it concludes." VOL. V. WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. By MRS. ASHTON DILKE and WM. WOODALL, M.P. DAILY NEWS, October 6, 1885.— " Written with conciseness and argu- mentative force, this little work is one that cannot fail to prove a timely addition to the political literature of the day." LIVERPOOL DAILY POST, October 14.—" The case for extending the franchise to duly qualified females could not be put more concisely, or with more discriminating zeal, than by these two well-known champions of the cause." [see over. VOL. VI. LOCAL OPTION. By W. S. CAINE, M.P., WM. HOYLE, F.S.S., and REV. DAWSON BURNS, D.D. CHRISTIAN CHRONICLE, November 26, 1885.— "Those who wish to make themselves familiar with the history and purpose of the movement, cannot do better than read this book." VOL. VII. LEASEHOLD ENFRANCHISEMENT. By H. BROADHURST, M.P., and R. T. REID, M P. ACADEMY, January 16.—" A vigorous exposition of the evils of the pre- sent leasehold system.'' VOL. VIII. DISESTABLISHMENT. By H. RICHARD, M.P., and J. CARVELL WILLIAMS, M.P. Mr. BRIGHT writes : " It is a remarkable book, admirable alike in regard to facts and argument. ... I have read nothing on the Church Question so complete and so calculated to influence public opinion iu the right direction." VOL. IX. REFORM OF THE HOJSE OF LORDS. By [Shortly. JAMES BRYCE, M.P. VOL. X. REFORM OF LONDON GOVERNMENT AND OF CITY GUILDS. By [Sltortly. J. F. B. FIRTH, M.P. VOL. XI. CHURCH REFORM. By [In Preparation. ALBERT GREY, M.P., REV. S. A. BARNETT, REV. G. REANEY. London: SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LE HAS AND LOWREY. [see over SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO, PUBLISHERS. NOW READY. Crown 8vo. Cloth, 2s. ; Paper Coversl Is. "OVER-PRESSURE " ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. By SYDNEY BUXTON, M.P. CHAPTER. CONTENTS. I. Origin of Agitation.— The State and the Children.— The Doctors.— The Teachers. — Some Over-strain unavoidable. II, Over-pressure, does it Exist?— Acute Over-pressure. — General Over-strain. — Conditions of School Life. — Require- ments of the Code. — Diminution of Disease amongst Children. III. Examination of the Remedies Suggested. — Medical Register.— Increased payment for attendance. — The " Twenty- two " Weeks' System. — Irregularity of Attendance. IV. Payment by Results.— Suggested Abolition of Payment by Results.— Present System.— Education before 1861. — Alterna- tives to Payment by Results. — Advantages of Existing System. V. Modifications in the System of Payment by Results. — General Relaxations. — Individual Examination. — Classifica- tion. — Re-presentation. — Withholding Children from Examin- ation. — Merit Grant. VI. Minor Points. — Needlework.— Technical Instruction. — Free- dom of Choice for Class Subjects. — Grammar — History. VII. The MANAGERS.— Should be Efficient.— Appointment.— Re- sponsibilities and Duties. — Withdrawal of Children.— Play- grounds. — Penny Dinners. — General Duties. — Home Lessons. — Keeping-in. VIII. The Teachers.— Pressure on the Teachers.— Modes of Relief. — An anxious Profession. — Medical Certificates. — Pupil Teachers.— Fixture of Tenure. — State Payments. — Status of Teachers. IX. Summary and Conclusion. Appendices.— 1. The Merit Grant. 2. Withholding Children from Examination. 3. Analysis of Return of Education Depart- ment relating to Cases of Alleged Over-pressure. 4. Mode in which the Government Grant was assessed and paid before 1861. Index. SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LE BAS AND LOWREY, Paternoster Square. The Imperial Parliament EDITED BIT SYDNEY BUXTON, M.P. hat all opinion DIgEgTpM$PME]W. HEHRY RICHARD, M.P., J. CARVELL WILLIAMS, M.P. SECOND EDITION. SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LE BAS & LOWREY. TATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1886. PREFACE. The limited space at the disposal of the authors has obliged them to confine themselves to certain branches of the great question with which they have undertaken to deal. They have, therefore, selected such aspects of the subject as are of greatest interest to those who regard it from a practical, rather than a controversial, point of view; omitting all reference to many topics of great im- portance which would properly be dealt with in a larger treatise. As the Scottish Establishment, and the ecclesiastical affairs of Scotland generally, differ widely from those of England, it has been found necessary to confine atten- tion to the Establishment existing in England and Wales. For information respecting Scotland, as well as for facts, statistics, and arguments which have of necessity been omitted from this small volume, the reader is referred to two recent publications of great excellence, viz., " The PREFACE. State and the Church," by the Hon. Arthur Elliott, M.P., in the " English Citizen Series ; " and " The case for Disestablishment," issued by the Liberation Society. Mr. Frederick Martin's " Property and Revenues of the Church of England " also contains full information on that subject. Since the writers completed their task there has appeared in The Times an important series of letters, pro and eon, on the subject of Disestablishment. Bishops' charges, the speeches of eminent politicians, sermons from Established Church pulpits, and an abundance of printed matter, have still further shown the interest which it now excites. There has been much in these utterances deserving serious attention ; but to have dealt with them in this work would have involved undue ex- pansion and undesirable delay. London, November, 1885. CONTENTS. I. THE GENERAL ARGUMENT AGAINST ECCLE- SIASTICAL ESTABLISHMENTS . . 13 II. THE ARGUMENT FROM THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND . . 2 2 III. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN WALES . 55 IV. HOW THE CHURCH IS ESTABLISHED — RELIGIOUS EQUALITY .... 67 V. THE ALLEGED EVIL RESULTS OF DIS- ESTABLISHMENT 76 VI. THE PROBABLE ACTUAL RESULTS . . 89 VII. CHURCH REFORM AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO DISESTABLISHMENT . . . . 104 VIII. CHURCH PROPERTY AND DISENDOWMENT . 109 IX. RESULTS OF DISESTABLISHMENT ALREADY EFFECTED 1 24 X. CONCLUSION 137 APPENDIX- PROPOSALS FOR DISENDOWMENT . . 145 INDEX 155 DISESTABLISHMENT; CHAPTER I. THE GENERAL ARGUMENT AGAINST ECCLESIASTICAL ESTABLISHMENTS. There are three conditions on which it is possible for Church and State to co-exist in the same country — either that the Church should rule the State, or that the State should rule the Church, or that Church and State, recognizing and acknowledging that they exercise dominion over different provinces, should, on perfectly friendly terms, agree to separate, and to remain apart ; each keeping within its own domain, and minding its own business. No doubt there are points where the two jurisdictions meet and intersect each other, and may come into conflict. But when each of the two parties relinquishes the pretension of interfering in what is, obviously and admittedly, the sphere of the other no insurmountable difficulty has been found. As is abundantly illustrated by the experience of the United States and the British Colonies, in adjusting those points DISESTABLISHMENT. so as to avoid all serious breach of social and political harmony. The difficulty arises where an attempt is made to maintain some sort of union, alliance, or concordat, between Church and State, which leads to an inevitable scramble for the supremacy. The first of the two alternatives named, and which at one time threatened to become dominant throughout Europe — that the Church should rule the State— is be- coming more and more impossible ; while the second, that the State should rule the Church, occasions conflicts which are more or less agitating nearly all European nations ; perplexing governments, embarrassing the administration of justice, and occasionally threatening to give rise to disastrous civil strife. Experience is driving home the conviction to the minds of the people in all countries, that the only real solution of the problem lies in the separation of Church and State. No one who watches the progress of events can doubt that there is a great tidal wave of opinion sweeping over the face of the nations, directed against civil estab- lishments of religion. This is emphatically the case in our own country. Secular politicians are apt to overlook, or to underrate, the operation of certain moral and spiritual forces which are at work around them, because they lie beyond the sphere of their own sympathies. And hence it is, that leaders of parties and public journalists, who have ignored this great movement, are startled to find how much more generally than they had suspected, certain principles have penetrated into and leavened the ECCLESIASTICAL ESTABLISHMENTS. 15 mind of the community. Mr. Chamberlain, in The Fori nightly Review of October, 1874, wrote: "There remains only one great question of immediate interest to Radical politicians on which the party may be summoned to unite or re-form ; and its claims to be the first article of the new Liberal programme demand careful con- sideration. The separation of Church and State is not a new idea to Liberal politicians. It has been felt by every member of the party to be at some time or other inevitable, although many have been glad enough to postpone its immediate consideration. There are plain indications, however, that the time is approaching when men must definitely take sides on the question, which may well be the new point of departure for the Liberal policy." It would be impossible within the limits of a short volume to deal with all the aspects of this great question. Happily, some of them may be laid aside, as of no present relevancy. The various theories, for instance, on which Church Establishments have been defined and defended, and which, at different times, have been elabo- rated with a great display of learning and logic, have one after another been virtually abandoned. It is not necessary, therefore, to discuss Hooker's theory, that Church and State are identical and conterminous — both personally one society, called "a Commonwealth," in its relation to the law of the land, and "a Church" in its relation to the law of Christ ; so that as the king is the first person in the Commonwealth, so he must be in 2 1 6 DISESTABLISHMENT. the Church. Nor Warburton's theory of alliance between Church and State, of which the fundamental article is this — that the Church shall apply its utmost influence in the service of the State, and that the State shall support the Church. Nor Paley's utilitarian theory, which makes the relations of State and Church wholly a matter of policy. Nor Coleridge's mystic theory of a clerisy of the nation, or a national Church, to comprehend the learned of all denominations, all the liberal arts and sciences. Nor Mr. Gladstone's theory of the State having a moral personality, of which the Church is the conscience. Nor Dean Stanley's theory, according to which an Estab- lished Church is to be composed of two elements. " The first is that the State should recognize and appoint some religious expression of the community ; the second, that this religious expression should be controlled and guided by the State." Nor a number of other theories, in which the friends of Church Establishments have sought to find some solid ground on which to plant their foot, in doing battle for their favourite institution. It would be a mere work of supererogation to examine and refute all these theories, seeing that they have been already disclaimed, renounced, and demolished by Churchmen themselves of one school or another. They may be dismissed with the single remark, that their great variety and utterly con- flicting character furnish a pretty conclusive proof that no point of principle has yet been discovered which is deemed satisfactory and sufficient, even by the advocates of State-Churches, on which to rest their case. And, as ECCLESIASTICAL ESTABLISHMENTS. 17 Dr. Campbell says in his "Lectures on Ecclesiastical History," " It is a shrewd presumption, that a system is ill-founded when its most intelligent friends are so much divided about it, and in order to account for it, recur to hypotheses so contradictory." Neither is it necessary here to dwell at any length on the religious argument ; though to many minds that is the most powerful and convincing of all arguments against Establishments. To judge by a late utterance of the Bishop of Durham, that also is given up ; since, after a very cursory and superficial reference to one point in what he calls " the argument from Holy Scrip- ture," he says, "I will pass away from the Scriptural argument ; it is plainly not a question of principle, but a question of expediency." 1 It is sufficient to say that those who object to Church Establishments deny that there is any warrant for such institutions, either in the New Testament or the Old ; that they are at variance with the essential spirit of Christianity ; that they mis- represent its character, and have been the means of engendering prejudice and bitter hostility against it in the minds of multitudes of men in all ages ; that they always involve, in however disguised a form, the principle of religious persecution — for, as Lord Russell once said, even preference is persecution — that they sow the seeds of discord in the national life; that, by erecting artificial barriers between them, they keep apart good men, who might otherwise unite in Christian communion and « Speech at Meeting of the Church Defence Institution. iS DISESTABLISHMENT. service. It is further held that if they are unjust to all Churches without their pale, they are still more injurious to the favoured Churches themselves; inasmuch as their inevitable tendency is to secularize their spirit, to tarnish their purity, to fetter their freedom, to hinder salutary discipline, and in every way to impair their efficiency as instruments of truth and righteousness in the world. 1 But the great bulk of mankind are not likely to trouble themselves with elaborate theological and ecclesiastical disquisitions, or with subtle theoretical abstractions. They will test the value and utility of this, as of other institutions, by a more practical standard; by inquiring how far, as ascertained by the voice of history and the actual experience of mankind, it has contributed, or is likely to contribute, to the freedom, the harmony, and welfare of nations. And on this point the testimony of the past gives no uncertain sound. The principle which lies at the root of all Church Establishments, that the State has the right, and that it is its duty, to patronize, protect, and promulgate, what it deems religious truth, and, as the inevitable logical corollary, to punish and suppress religious error, 2 has probably been fruitful of 1 "All experience shows that where this intimate union of Church and State exists, instead of the Church spiritualizing the State, the State secularizes the Church. When the political and ecclesiastical powers are exercised by the same hands, the former are sure to prevail over the latter. No enlightened friend of religion will seek to confound the province of the State with that of the Church, or to confer upon the State spiritual, and upon the Church political, functions." — Sir George Cornewall Lewis. 2 " If it be true that the civil magistrate has a right to make ECCLESIASTICAL ESTABLISHMENTS. 19 more misery to mankind than anything else that can be mentioned in the history of the world. • In the first place, this theory is responsible for the un- speakable horrors of religious persecution inflicted by earthly rulers, whether in pagan or Christian times. What a ghastly procession of terror and agony is evoked by that one phrase — religious persecution ! Of the Diocletian per- secution of the early Christians, we are told that it was "a deliberate attempt by the Roman Imperial power, sup- ported by the whole machinery of provincial government, and extended over the entire surface of the empire, to extirpate Christianity from the world." 1 By the agency of the Spanish Inquisition, it is a well-ascertained fact, 31,000 persons were burnt alive, and more than 200,000 doomed to punishments little less severe than death. There were 75,000, or, as Grotius says, 100,000, persons put to death for their religion in the Netherlands alone, under the reign of Charles V. and his son. To these may be added the massacres of the Albigenses and of St. Bartholomew, and the incalculable sufferings which fol- lowed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the Marian persecutions in our own country. It is needless to explore this chamber of horrors ; the facts are too notorious, and almost too revolting, for recital. But if the Church of Rome has attained to a bad de- regulations for the government of the Church, &c, then he must have a right to enforce them by penalties, for it is nugatory to make an enactment which a man may either obey or not as he pleases." — Archbishop Whalely. 1 " History of European Morals," p. 478. 20 DISESTABLISHMENT. nence above all other Churches in this matter, it is partly because her opportunities have been more ample, and, partly because clerical influence has never been so strong in Protestant as in Roman Catholic countries. But when- ever the principle which lies at the foundation of a State- Church has been recognized, there persecution has pre- vailed. It will be seen presently how far this has been illustrated in the history of the Church of England ; but persecution is not confined to that Church. All Estab- lished Churches have been persecuting Churches. In Germany, the Lutheran Church ; in Scotland, the Presby- terian Church persecuted. In France, when the Protes- tants acquired partial and temporary ascendency in some parts of the country, they immediately began to persecute. In Sweden, all who dissented from the Confession of Augs- burg were banished. In Switzerland, the Anabaptists were drowned and Servetus was burned. In the early American colonies the Puritans, who were themselves driven into the wilderness by persecution at home, per- secuted both Catholics and Quakers with great severity. Even the infidel government which was ascendant in France during the Revolution persecuted as fiercely, and on the same ground, as others. For it was by virtue of precisely the same principle— the right of the magistrate to enforce his will in religious matters— that Roman Catholic priests were banished to Cayenne, or sent out in hulks to perish at sea, for refusing to conform to the worship of the Etre Supreme, at the bidding of the Convention, which, under Louis XIV., drove hundreds of thousands of Protes- ECCLESIASTICAL ESTABLISHMENTS. 21 tants from France, or condemned those who remained to death for not conforming to the Catholic religion. At the door of the same evil principle must be laid most of the religious wars which have desolated hu- manity. It is with inexpressible pain that Christians are obliged to admit the truth of the statement made by Mr. Lecky in his " History of European Morals," that, " with the exception of Mahomedanism, no other religion has done so much to produce war as was done by the reli- gious teachers of Christendom during several centuries. The military enthusiasm they evoked by the indulgences of the Popes, by the ceaseless exhortations of the pulpits, by the religious importance that was attached to the relics at Jerusalem, and by the extreme antipathy they fostered towards all who differed from their theology, has scarcely ever been equalled in its intensity ; and it has caused the effusion of oceans of blood, and has been productive of incalculable misery to the world." And why were these religious persecutions and religious wars pro- moted ? For precisely the same reason that is assigned in advocacy of Church Establishments — that it is right to invoke the secular power in defence of the faith. 1 1 " During almost a hundred and fifty years Europe was afflicted by religious wars, religious massacres, and religious persecutions ; not one of which would have arisen if the great truth had been re- cognized, that the State has no concern with the opinion of men, and no right to interfere, even in the slightest degree, with the form of worship they may choose to adopt." — Buckle's " History of Civilization," vol. i. p. 262. CHAPTER II. .HE ARGUMENT FROM THE HISTORY OF THE ESTAB- LISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. As such historical facts as those mentioned in the last chapter may be thought to be too vague and remote for immediate interest, it may be well to bring the matter home by a practical illustration derived from one of these ecclesiastical establishments, the cha- racter and history of which are, or ought to be, familiar to us in this country, namely, the Established Church of England. Fairness, however, requires it to be said that in doing this only one aspect of the Church of England is presented, and not its best aspect. The fact is, that it has two histories — one as a Christian Church, and the other as an Established Church. The former is, in many respects, a great and honourable history. In that capacity it has its noble army of martyrs ; its long and illustrious line of able, learned, and eloquent writers, who have contributed largely to vindicate the truth, to illustrate the excellence, and to enforce the duties of Christianity ; its hundreds and thousands of pious and devoted clergy, who have made full proof of their minis- try among all classes of the community ; its tens of thousands of men and women trained under its influ- THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 23 ence, who, by their saintly lives and pure devotion to the highest service of humanity, have embodied the gospel in their own character and example ; its large apparatus of voluntary institutions, religious, charitable, and educa- tional, spread over the face of the country. These are things of which any Church may be proud. But its his- tory as an Established Church is neither noble nor honour- able. In the latter capacity it must be maintained that in nearly all the efforts made by the people of this country, since the Protestant Reformation, to give a fuller and freer development to the national life, the Church of England, in its official character, has been uniformly and violently against them. Look, first, at the question of religious liberty ; which is the foundation of all liberty. It is sometimes said by members of the Church of England that theirs is the most tolerant Church in the world. But, even if it be so, the inevitable inference is this — that no Church whatever can be trusted to use the secular power for its own pur- poses. For if this is the best of ecclesiastical establishments, the best is so bad, that no nation careful of its liberties ought to tolerate an Establishment. For what does history tell us as to the conduct of this most tolerant of Churches in times that are past ? A few sentences will summarize what can be substantiated at large by any amount of proof. What did it do in the reign of Queen Elizabeth ? This is the description given by a clergyman of Archbishop Whitgift's conduct : " Armed with the tremendous powers of the High Commission Court, he harassed the 24 DISESTABLISHMENT. Puritanical clergy; they were fined and imprisoned, hundreds of them were suspended, and many deprived of their livings. At one time it was said a third of the whole beneficed clergy were under suspension for refusing to comply with the habits and ceremonies of the Church." 1 With the few Nonconformists, of course, it fared still worse : " They were imprisoned for months and years in the foulest gaols — they were beaten with cudgels ; some left to die of fevers and sores, while others were com- mitted to the gallows." 2 What did it do in the reign of Charles L ? The same clergyman, referring to Laud's treatment of the Puritans [1633], says, "They were persecuted in the bishops' courts, fined, whipped, pilloried, imprisoned; they suffered barbarous mutilations, ear-croppings, nose-slittings, and brandings ; they could enjoy no rest, so that death was better than life itself." 3 "Nothing," says Milton, "but the wide ocean and the savage wilderness could hide and shelter them from the fury of the bishop6." What did it do in the reign of Charles II. ? It passed the Act of Uniformity [1662], the Conventicle Act [1664], the Five Mile Act , and the Test Act[ 1 6 7 3], and by the operation of these acts inflicted upon Nonconformists hardships and sufferings of which few in these days have the faintest con- ception. Fines, imprisonments, transportations, were put in force against them relentlessly. It is estimated that the pecuniary penalties exacted of them from the Restoration 1 Mountfield's " Two Hundred Years Ago," p. 14. * Skeat's " Free Churches," p. 27. 3 Mountfield, p. 22. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 25 to the Revolution, a period of over 100 years, amounted to fourteen millions sterling. The prisons — and that at a time when the prisons of England were dens of torment and pestilence — were crowded with men and women guilty of no crime but that of worshipping God according to their consciences. Sixty thousand were imprisoned. There were 4,000 Quakers alone in the different gaols of the kingdom at one time. From 5,000 to 8,000, as they are variously estimated by different writers, are believed to have died in prison. Some were transported or sold as slaves into the colonies ; others escaped from the sufferings that awaited them by becoming voluntary exiles in Holland or America. What did it do in Scotland during the reign of the Stuarts ? " In Scotland," says Mr. Lecky, " a persecu- tion, as revolting in atrocity as almost any on record, was directed by the English Government at the instigation of the Scotch bishops, and with the approbation of the English Church against all who repudiated Episcopacy. The Presbyterians were hunted like criminals over the mountains. Their ears were torn from the roots. They were branded with hot irons. Their fingers were wrenched asunder by the thumbkins. The bones of their legs were shattered in their boots. Women were publicly scourged through the streets. Multitudes were transported to Barbadoes ; infuriated soldiers were let loose upon them and encouraged to exercise all their ingenuity in torturing them." 1 1 Lecky's "Rationalism in Europe," vol. ii. p. 41. 26 DISESTABLISHMENT. What did it do in England in the reign of Queen Anne ? It passed the Occasional Conformity Bill, which undid the few concessions in favour of Dissenters made by the Toleration Act, and branded them with the stigma of utter disqualification to serve the State in any office whatever. " The whole body of the clergy," says Dean Swift, " were violent for this Bill." It further passed the Schism Act, which, if it had come into operation — a calamity happily averted by the death of the Queen — would have abso- lutely crushed all the colleges and other educational institutions of the Nonconformists throughout the country. What has it done since ? It has steadfastly and stren- uously resisted all efforts made in the direction of religious liberty, whether for the Roman Catholics, or the Jews, or the Protestant Nonconformists. What did it do in Ireland, not to the Roman Catholics, but to the Protestant Nonconformists ? Mr. Froude's recent volumes cast a singular light on this subject In 1665 the bishops and authorities of the Ecclesiastical Establishment passed a second Act of Uniformity, if possible more despotic and merciless than the English Act, which drove multitudes from the country. " Then commenced," says Mr. Froude, " that fatal emigration of Nonconformist Protestants from Ireland to New England which drained Ireland of its soundest Protestant blood. In 1692 the bishops and clergy resolutely and successfully opposed the passing of a Toleration Bill identical with the English Act ; though it was earnestly pressed forward by the king. In 1704 they passed a Bill which deprived THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 27 Nonconformist marriages in Ireland of all legal validity. It was announced that the children of all Protestants not married in a church should be treated as bastards ; and, as the record of this childish insanity declares, many persons of undoubted reputation were prosecuted in the bishops' courts as fornicators for cohabiting with their own wives." 1 It may be said that the measures and Acts just de- scribed were those of the State. Undoubtedly of the State, but of the State controlled and stimulated by the Church. For it is a melancholy, but unquestionable fact, that whenever there has been any specially bitter out- break of religious persecution in this country, it is con- nected with the name of some great ecclesiastic as its principal originator and fomentor. Is it not so ? The names of Elizabeth and Whitgift, of James I. and Ban- croft, of Charles I. and Laud, of Charles II. and Sheldon, supply an answer. In most of these cases the secular statesmen of the day were shocked and scandalized at the indecent violence of Churchmen, and tried to restrain and moderate their fury. It is well known that Burleigh, Walsingham, and Bacon were disgusted with the in- tolerant and arbitrary proceedings of Whitgift. Lord Burleigh wrote in strong remonstrance against certain articles of examination which the prelate had prepared as " so curiously penned, so full of branches and circum- stances as he thought the inquisitors of Spain used not so many questions to comprehend and to trap their prey." * Fronde's "The English in Ireland," vol. i. pp. 155, 238. 28 DISESTABLISHMENT. "But the extensive jurisdiction," says Mr. Hallam, the historian, " improvidently granted to the ecclesiastical commissioners, and which the Queen was not at all likely to recall, placed Whitgift beyond the control of the temporal administration." Even Charles I. was obliged, in obedience to a strong expostulation from the nobility, to interfere personally to forbid some of Laud's measures of excessive severity. And it is said that Sheldon and the bishops made even Clarendon and Charles II. sometimes ashamed of their violence. Yes ! the fact stands unhappily too well attested on all pages of history, that the priests of any religion, when they have been armed with the secular power, are ever the most merciless of persecutors. There is no doubt that there are tens of thousands of the members of the English Church in our own day who bewail the folly and execrate the cruelty of the acts described ; and they may ask— Why revive those ancient grievances ? The Church does not persecute now. No ! the Church does not persecute now — at least in such forms of persecution as those which have passed in review; first, because it has not the power, and also, because many of its sons have not the disposition. But surely it is unreasonable to expect that these facts of the past should be utterly ignored ! How is it possible to understand the character of an institution without study- ing its history, and especially studying its history in those times and circumstances when its natural tendencies were at liberty to develop themselves without let or hindrance ? THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 29 There was an episode in the ecclesiastical history of England which is full of significance and instruction. The nation, driven to desperation by the wrongs and sufferings it had endured from an established episcopacy, arose in its wrath and hurled it from its pride of place. The Anglican Church was discrowned and deposed, and Presbyterianism reigned in its stead. And what then happened ? That which always happens with Established Churches. The Presbyterians began to persecute as vigorously as their predecessors. The country soon found, as Milton said in the indignant sonnet he wrote on the occasion, that " New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large," and that the fresh comers into ecclesiastical supremacy were eager, like those who went before them, to " Adjure the civil sword, To force our consciences that Christ set free." The members of the Church of England are wont, when the persecutions which the Puritans and Nonconformists endured from their Church are referred to, to retort the persecutions which their ancestors endured from the Presbyterians when they gained the ascendency. They have a perfect right to do so. But it was an established, not a free Presbyterianism that persecuted then ; just as it was an established, not a free Episcopalianism, that persecuted before. Not less detrimental has been the influence of the 3 o DISESTABLISHMENT. Established Church on civil liberty, and the progress of Liberal legislation, in regard to our social and political rights. On this point the deliberate judgment of two great writers of our age, neither of whom is a Noncon- formist, may be cited. "The Church of England," says Lord Macaulay, " continued to be for more than a hundred and fifty years the servile handmaid of mon- archy, the steady enemy of public liberty. The Divine right of kings, and the duty of passively obeying all their commands, were her favourite tenets. She held those tenets firmly through times of oppression, persecution, and licentiousness ; while law was trampled down, while judgment was perverted, while the people were eaten as though they were bread." 1 Mr. Lecky is no less emphatic : "Anglicanism," he says, "was from the beginning at once the most servile and the most efficient agent of tyranny. . . . No other church so uniformly betrayed and trampled on the liberties of her country. In all those fiery trials through which English liberty has passed since the Reformation, she invariably cast her influence into the scale of tyranny, supported and eulogised every attempt to violate the constitution, and wrote the fearful sentence of eternal condemnation upon the tombs of the martyrs of freedom." * This is a terrible indictment. But before some of the evidence by which it may be sustained is adduced, it may be premised that this description applies to the Church of England only as represented by the clergy, and those whom the clergy inspired and instigated. Among the lay members of that Church there have always been 1 " Macaulay's Essays," vol. i. p. 132. 2 Lecky's " History of Rationalism in Europe," vol. ii. p. 178. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 31 found some of the truest and noblest friends of freedom that the world has seen, and it is, indeed, to the steady and strenuous resistance of her own sons to the servile doctrines and persecuting practices of the Church that we owe to a large extent our present liberties. 1 Illustrations of the slavish spirit inculcated by the Church in doctrine and practice are only too abundant. The Homilies [1547] are steeped in that spirit, and are full of passages enjoining the most absolute submission to princes, whether good or evil. The same principles were embodied in the canons of convocation in 1606, and in the writings and sermons of the clergy they appear in forms, if possible, still more marked and offensive. As a very mild specimen, take the statements of Archbishop Parker, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth : " The magistrate is empowered to govern the consciences of his subjects. Private persons have no right to judge ; they are not masters of their own actions, nor ought they to be 1 But Liberal Churchmen, of every age, would have been the first to acknowledge that their success in resisting measures of oppression, and promoting measures of liberty, was mainly owing to the support they received from the Puritans and Nonconformists. " So absolute was the authority of the crown," says Hume, in reference to the time of the Stuarts, "that the precious spark of liberty had been kindled and was preserved by the Puritans alone ; and it was to this sect that the English owe the whole freedom of their constitution." Mr. Lecky says, " It is difficult, indeed, to overrate the debt of gratitude that England owes both to her non-Episcopal churches and to those of Scotland. In good report and in evil, amid perse- cution and ingratitude, and horrible wrongs, in ages when all virtue seemed corroded, and when apostacy had ceased to be a stain, they clung fearlessly and faithfully to the banner of her freedom." 3 PISES TABLISHMEXT. governed by their own judgments, but they ought to be directed by the public conscience of their governors." 1 Dr. Mainwaring, in the reign of Charles II., says: " Kings are above all, inferior to none, to no man, to no multi- tude of men, to no angels, to no order of angels. . . . Their power is not only human but superhuman. It is participation of God's own omnipotency." 2 It is impossible to exaggerate the evil of such teaching. It operates in two ways. First, it encourages princes in their most exorbitant and dangerous pretensions to abso- lute power. Is it any wonder that the Jameses and the Charleses, to whose lips copious draughts of such fulsome adulation as this were held by consecrated hands in the very vessels of the sanctuary, should have become drunk with the spirit of despotism? And still worse was its other tendency, to beget in the popular mind a base and servile spirit, inconsistent with the very existence of liberty. If the people of England had given heed to the political doctrines of their Established Church, they must have remained the most abject of slaves to the end of time. And as the teaching of the clergy so was their conduct. In the long conflict of centuries between arbitrary power and the rising spirit of freedom in this country, the Church of England has invariably sided with the former. Lord Macaulay says that " the meeting of the Long 1 " Church Polity," sect. i. p. 17. 2 These and other extracts are given iu Perry "s " History of the Church," pp. 35S, 362, 366. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 33 Parliament [1640] was one of the greatest eras in the history of the civilized world." It is not necessary to dwell on the part taken by the clergy of the Established Church in the most memorable struggle which then began. It was their pride and boast that they faithfully followed the King's fortunes. They endured great hardships and sub- mitted to many sacrifices in vindication of their loyalty. For this let every honour be done to them. All men are worthy of respect who conscientiously suffer for a prin- ciple. But we cannot, we ought not, to forget that that was the critical epoch in the history of our country's liberties; that the principle for which the Royalists contended was the principle of arbitrary authority; and the man in whom that principle was embodied, was the man who had used his utmost efforts to strangle British freedom in its cradle. It is difficult to speak with moderation of the conduct of the clergy in the shameful reign of Charles II. "When," says Mr. Lecky, "in the gloomy period of vice and of reaction that followed the Restoration, the current set in against all liberal opinions, and the maxims of despotism were embodied even in the Oath of Allegiance, the Church of England directed the stream, allied herself in the closest union with a Court whose vices were the scandal of Christendom, and exhausted her anathemas not upon the hideous corruption that surrounded her, but upon the principles of Hampden and of Milton. All through the long encroachments of the Stuarts she exhibited the same spirit." 1 1 " Rationalism in Europe," vol. i. pp. 182-183. 34 DISESTABLISHMENT. In the reign of James II., the Church of England was placed in a peculiar position. While he was pressing forward all those measures, tending to turn a free government into an absolute monarchy ; while he was collecting revenues without parliamentary sanction; while he was attacking the free charter of corporate bodies ; while he was stealthily forming a large standing army in time of peace ; while, through his creatures Jeffreys and Kirke he was practising cruelties which filled the nation with horror and loathing ; while he was persecuting the Nonconformists in England, and still more atrociously persecuting the Covenanters in Scotland, the bishops made no sign of disapproval. As Mr. Fox says, "So long as James contented himself with absolute power in civil matters, and did not make use of his authority against the Church, everything went smooth and easy." 1 But the moment he showed a disposition by his declara- tion of indulgence to touch the monopoly of the Church, then it threw to the winds the doctrines it had been steadfastly teaching for more than two hundred years. As Defoe says, "Then passive pulpits beat the ecclesi- astical drum of war ; absolute subjection took up arms ; and obedience for conscience' sake resisted Divine rights." But no sooner, however, was the immediate danger over, than they seemed to repent of their conduct, deplored the deposition of James, began to intrigue for his return, and far from redeeming the fair promises of redressing the grievances of Nonconformists which they had made ' Fox's "History of James II.," p. 165. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN EXGLAXD. 35 in the hour of trial, used their utmost endeavours, as soon as they had the power, still more to abridge their rights and to tighten their bonds. Mr. Hallam says that " the great ultimate security of English freedom was the expulsion of the House of Stuart " in 16SS. But the Established Church used its influence to prevent their expulsion and to promote their return. The conduct of the clergy towards William III., whom few people now will doubt was the great deliverer of England from temporal and spiritual oppression, and the founder of our constitutional liberties, was a signal illustration of the little care they had for "the ultimate security of English freedom." They turned their back upon him and utterly rejected him as their Sovereign. The Oath of Allegiance was refused by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, the Bishop of Chester, the Bishop of Chichester, the Bishop of Ely, the Bishop of Gloucester, the Bishop of Norwich, the Bishop of Peter- borough, and the Bishop of Worcester. The only friends of William among the clergy were the Low Churchmen, as '.hey were afterwards called : and Macaulay says, <; We should probably overrate their numerical strength if we estimate them as a tenth part of the priesthood." It is not necessary to enter into a minute inquiry into the conduct of the clergy, in their relation to the civil power, in the reigns of Queen Anne and the first two Georges [1700 to 1760]. It is demonstrable that they felt no attraction to the House of Hanover until George III. threw himself completely into their hands. In the 36 DISES TA BUSHMEN T. rebellion of 1715 and 1745, it was the general convic- tion that the sympathies of many of them were with the Pretender. Charles James Fox, in advocating the cause of the Dissenters in the House of Commons many years after- wards, referred to those critical times, and said, "Gentle- men should recollect that, at the times alluded to, the High Churchmen did not display much gallantry, for many appeared perplexed and pusillanimous. Hence the superior glory of the Dissenters, who, regardless of every danger, had boldly stood forth in defence of the rights and liberties of the kingdom." In the early part of the reign of George III., there arose another struggle for liberty, which, though it had immediate reference to one of Britain's remote depen- dencies, involved really the same principles as were concerned in the conflict with the Stuarts. Probably no two opinions now exist as to the folly and injustice of the attempt made by the Tory Government of the day to tax the American colonies without their consent in 1770, or as to the wickedness of the war, prompted and sustained prin- cipally by the personal obstinacy of the king, that was waged to enforce that arbitrary claim. The Dissenters, almost to a man, opposed the war, and the policy that led to it, as a gross infraction of constitutional right. But the Church threw itself with the utmost violence into the opposite scale. "The clergy," said Edmund Burke, in a letter to Fox, " are astonishingly warm in this American business ; and what the Tories are when embodied and united with their natural head, the Crown, THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 37 and animated by their clergy, no man knows better than yourself." The pulpits of the Establishment resounded with the fiercest diatribes against the colonists. The old rusty weapons of passive obedience and non-resistance were furbished up, and flashed in the face of the Ameri- cans. The rebellion was compared to the sin of witch- craft. Franklin was likened to Ahithophel, and Washington to Jeroboam. Every measure for carrying on the war, and for adding renewed oppression to the colonies, was supported by the bench of bishops. " Twenty-four bishops," wrote Benjamin Franklin, " with all the lords in possession or expectation of places, make a dead majority that renders all debating ridiculous." 1 That time, and the time that immediately followed, was one of the darkest in our history — a time pregnant with peril to English freedom. The king and ruling classes, rendered frantic by fear, in consequence of the French Revolution in 1789, passed a series of laws of the most despotic character, tending to gag the press, to stop public meetings, to suppress political discussion, and to destroy every vestige of popular liberty. When some of these Bills were before Parliament, Charles Fox declared that " they positively repealed the Bill of Rights, cut up the whole constitution by the roots, by changing our limited monarchy into an absolute despotism." And, unhappily, in this deadly crusade against liberty, the clergy were again conspicuous, as well as in promoting that war with France, which was confessedly undertaken 1 Skcat's " History of the Free Churches," p. 457. 38 DISESTABLISHMENT. to divert attention from the demand for reform, which was beginning to rise in the country. When, soon after the beginning of the century, the nation began to recover breath, after the exhaustion of that tremendous conflict, its attention was turned afresh to the necessity of reform in its own domestic institutions. None will now question that such reform was imperatively required. Parliamentary representation was a mere sham. The voice of the people at large had no power whatever in the House, which made the laws and imposed the taxes. The nation may be said to have had no political life. The necessity for parliamentary reform may be in some degree measured by the immense progress in Liberal legislation which immediately followed that reform being effected. And yet when, in 1830-1, the demand for parliamentary reform arose, with a unanimity and earnestness which brooked neither denial nor delay, the entire body of the clergy set themselves strenuously to resist what was nearly the universal will of the people. This is mournfully acknowledged by the Rev. W. N. Molesworth, himself a clergyman, in his " History of the Reform Bill," published a few years ago. He says— " The clergy were almost unanimous in their hatred of the pro- posed innovation. Already highly unpopular, partly on account of the determined opposition which, as a body, they had offered to every proposal for the extension of civil and religious liberty, and partly on account of the vexations and disputes attendant on the collection of tithes, they rendered themselves still more odious by their undisguised detestation of the new measure." * 1 Molesworth, p. 156. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 39 And the reason assigned by Mr. Molesworth for their conduct is precisely one which proves that this resistance to what the nation desired arose purely from their being ministers of an Established Church ; because they feared spoliation of Church property. When the critical divi- sion took place which was to decide the fate of the measure, and when England was trembling on the verge of revolution, 21 bishops, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, voted against the Bill, and threw it out; provoking the exclamation of Lord Suffield — " that the votes of the right rev. prelates were in favour of Govern- ment so long as it adopted severe measures against the people, and that they began to be opposed to Govern- ment only when a Liberal policy was formed." Among the grievances with which the Reformed Par- liament of 1832 was called upon to deal, there was one which, from its peculiar nature, might have been expected would have enlisted the instinctive sympathies of all ministers of religion in the effort to get it redressed. The Corn Laws were laws as unjust as were ever inscribed on the Statute-book of any nation; their tendency, if not their avowed design, being to increase the value of the rich man's estate, by raising the price of the poor man's bread. It is not necessary to show in how many ways those odious laws operated to stifle the life and stunt the growth of the national prosperity ; how they fettered in- dustry, suppressed enterprise, and diverted the legitimate employment of capital. There are few now living who can remember the ter- *0 DISES7 ABLISHMENT. rible distress they inflicted on the people. Speaking of 1840, Mr. Prentice, in his "History of the League," says :— "At the time when Parliament was prorogued, there were 20,936 persons in Leeds whose average earnings were only n^d. a week. In Paisley, nearly one-fourth of the population was in a state bordering upon actual starvation. In one district of Manchester, the Rev. Mr. Beardsall visited 258 families, consisting of 1,029 indi- viduals, whose average earnings were only 7^d per week. Colonel Thompson, who had just visited Bolton, said, ' Anything like the squalid misery, the slow, mouldering, putrifying death by which the weak and feeble of the working classes are perishing here, it never befell my eyes to behold, nor my imagination to conceive.' While millions were in this deplorable condition, the duty on the importation of wheat was jQi 4s. 8d. ; on oats 13s. 9d. ; on barley, 10s. iod. ; and on rye, 14s. per quarter." But when that great association, the Anti-Corn-Law League, was formed, headed by Richard Cobden, John Bright, and Charles Villiers, to procure the abolition of these laws, what help did it receive from the clergy in their enterprise? None, or next to none. When the country was in the condition just described, it occurred to the leaders of the League to invoke the aid of ministers of religion to protest, in the name of the gospel, against laws which were as opposed to the obvious designs of Providence as to the true interests of nations. They issued an invitation to clergymen of all denominations to meet in a conference at Manchester. As many as 630 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 41 ministers of various denominations accepted the invitation, and came from all parts of the country to tell the tale of bitter privation and distress with which they were so familiar among the poor of their flocks. How many of them were clergymen of the Established Church? There was one — one solitary man, the Rev. Thomas Spencer, of Bath! "Among the faithless, faithful only he." Indeed, one of the reasons assigned by Canon Ash- well, in his " Life of Wilberforce," for the opposition of the clergy to the repeal of the Corn Laws, was because it was advocated by Dissenting ministers. These are his words: "The Anti-Corn-Law League was entirely a Liberal movement ; its strength was in the large towns, and the circumstance that it was supported with great eagerness by the Dissenting ministers as a body, was not calculated to recommend it to the clergy."' And when the Bill for the repeal of the Corn Laws came to the House of Lords, in 1846, nine of the bishops recorded their votes against it. What is still more surprising, when movements not of a political character, but simply for the promotion of know- ledge, justice, and humanity, have been set on foot, too frequently the clergy have been either indifferent or hostile. During the long struggle for the abolition of slavery in our colonies, very few of them took any active part in the agitation. One of the most active of the noble band of philanthropists who carried on ' " Life of Wilberforce," p. 196. 4 2 DISESTABLISHMENT. that crusade of humanity, once said, "I believe I could almost count on my ten fingers the clergymen who helped us in that conflict. There were a few, like good Mr. Marsh, of Birmingham, and others, who threw themselves earnestly into the work ; but, in general, they were against us, or utterly indifferent." And in those great anti-slavery conferences held in London during the progress of the struggle, attended by many hundreds of gentlemen from all parts of the country, including a large proportion of ministers of religion of all denominations, there were seldom more than four or five clergymen present. And Lord Russell has emphatically declared that it was " the Dissenters who carried the abolition of slavery." Speaking of the conduct of the bishops in relation to this question, Sir George Stephen, in his " Anti-Slavery Recollections," says — " I much wish I could say that they had manfully discharged the duty they owed to God and man, and taken an active part for the slave. But their real motives shall never be concealed by me. I had it from one, still alive, who knew them intimately and well, who was then himself in Parliament, and esteemed by all for his high-toned honour no less than his talents and inflexibility of principle, that, with but a single exception, the whole Episcopal Bench had avowed to him, some in one form and some in another, that though their hearts were with us, they dared not support a principle that trenched on the rights of property ; if the slaves went, tithes must soon follow them." 1 There was another portentous evil which began to attract the attention of some of our moral and political 1 " Anti-Slavery Recollections," pp. 175—179. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 43 reformers, about the beginning of the present century — namely, the character of our Criminal Code. There probably never was in any country in the world a body of laws more ferocious and sanguinary than that which dishonoured the Statute-book of England at that time. "There are persons now living," said Sir T. F. Buxton in 1819, "at whose birth the criminal code contained less than sixty capital offences, and who have seen that number quadrupled — who have seen an Act pass making offences capital by the dozen and by the score." Human life was sacrificed with a levity that is incredible. Strings of men, women, and almost children, were continually seen dangling in front of our gaols, and some of them for offences which are now deemed sufficiently expiated by a few weeks' imprisonment. At length the horrors of this system of judicial murder moved men like Bentham, and Romilly, and Mackintosh to make some efforts to mitigate its severity. Would it not have been natural to expect that those whose business it was to expound the merciful genius of the gospel, would have felt that this savage code was a reproach to any State calling itself Christian, and would have eagerly rallied around those who were trying to effect some mitigation of its draconic rigour ? But what was the case? The first attempt of Romilly was to abolish capital punishment for the crime of stealing privately to the amount of five shillings in a shop. No one could charge this with being a rash or extravagant innovation. Yet, session after session, this small measure 44 DISESTABLISHMENT. of mercy, after being carried through the Commons, was rejected by the Lords ; the bishops being always con- spicuous by their numbers in the adverse lobby. Romilly records this deplorable action again and again in his diary. Thus, under the date of May 30, 18 10, he says — "The second reading of the Bill to abolish capital punishment for the crime of stealing privately to the amount of five shillings in a shop, came on to-day in the House of Lords. It was rejected by a majority of 31 to II, the Ministers having procured a pretty full attendance of Peers, considering the advanced season of the year, to throw it out. Amongst these were no less than seven prelates, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London, of Salisbury, of Ely, of Hereford, of Chester, and Porter, an Irish bishop. I rank these prelates amongst the members who were solicited to vote against the Bill, because I would rather be con- vinced of their servility towards Government than that, recollecting the mild doctrines of their religion, they could have come down to the House spontaneously to vote that transportation for life is not a sufficiently severe punishment for pilfering what is of five shillings value, and that nothing but the blood of the offender can afford an adequate atonement for such a transgression." 1 The apology seems to be almost worse than the act, and furnishes, at least, another flagrant illustration of the evil affects of making the ministers of religion the crea- tures of Government. Nor must we forget that, meritorious and most exem- plary as have been the exertions of the clergy of late years in promoting popular education, there was a time when they were its sturdy opponents, or, at most, when they tardily admitted its propriety, strictly on condition of its being absolutely under their own control, and made subservient to the interests of the Established * "Life of Romilly," l2mo, vol. ii, p. 150. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 45 Church. When, in 1807, Mr. Whitbread introduced into Parliament the Parochial Schools Bill, the Arch- bishop of Canterbury was one of its principal opponents. His main reason for opposing it was, that the advantages of education were extended more than appeared to be thought, and that the provisions of the Bill left little or no control to the minister of the parish. " This," he says, " would subvert the first principles of education in this country, which had hitherto been, and he trusted would continue to be, under the conduct and auspices of the Establishment ; and their Lordships would feel how dangerous it would be to innovate in these matters. Their Lordships' prudence would, and must, guard against innovations that might shake the foundations of religion." 1 And when Joseph Lancaster started his system of teaching the poor about the beginning of the century, though it was as perfectly Liberal and unsectarian a system as it was pos- sible to be, the bishops and clergy raised a tremendous out- cry. The benevolent Quaker and his plans were denounced in the most unmeasured terms. One Church writer said it was "a wild, absurd, and anti-Christian scheme, and calculated to answer no one purpose so much as amal- gamating the great body of the people into one great deistical concordat." The plan, said another, was "a plan of a Quaker, and Quakerism meant nothing but deism and a disgusting amalgam of all those anti- Christian heresies and blasphemies which were permitted to disgrace and disturb the Church in her early days." ' Hansard, 1807. 46 DISESTABLISHMENT. Still, in despite of these declamations, the Lancasterian system was extending ; and rather than let the education of the people fall into the hands of the Dissenters, the Church must start an educational system of its own. And such is really the whole account of the origin of the National School Society and its operations. Here are Dr. Bell's own words in reply to a letter from Mrs. Trimmer, a great light of the Church in those days, in which she predicted that if Lancaster's plan were allowed to go on much longer, " the common people would not know that there was such a thing as the Established Church in the nation." " What you say, of prevailing this scheme against the Church, is what some years ago occurred to me ; and I then said, what I shall never cease to repeat, that I know of but one way effectually U check these efforts, and it is by able and well-directed efforts of on own hands." 1 The testimony of Earl Russell on this point is very emphatic. In a letter written by him, in February, 1872, he says — "The clergy were in those days— even the Liberal clergy— generally opposed to the education of the poor ; but, finding the cause of education made progress, they agreed, in 181 1, to set up a society for founding and maintaining schools." It is hardly credible, but it is nevertheless true, that when the British and Foreign Bible Society was formed, although its sole and simple object was to furnish the Sacred Scriptures in their purest form to the people of this country who were perishing for lack of knowledge, it was - 1 Southey's " Life of Bell," vol. ii. p. 150. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 47 assailed with the utmost virulence bysome of the dignitaries and clergy of the Established Church ; and the reason openly avowed was that it was dangerous to the Church. <■* Supply these people with Bibles," said an Established clergyman, " I speak as a true Churchman, and you will supply them with weapons against yourselves." Dr. Law, then Bishop of Chester, in his charge to the clergy, said, "The tendency of the Bible Society is unfavourable to our Church Establishment." One other point must be referred to. Christianity is generally regarded as a religion of peace. What has the Church of England done as a peacemaker? She has had very ample opportunities. It has been stated in the House of Commons, and not contradicted, that since the peace of 1816 this country has been engaged in no fewer than seventy- six wars, great and small. Have the bishops and clergy ever used their influence to arrest or rebuke all this bloodshed? Let us take one illustration. In 1857 we had a war with China, known as the " Lorcha Arrow war" — a war which involved us in a further Chinese war in i860. There never was such a consensus of opinion amongst the foremost statesmen of this country in condemnation of any act of foreign policy as there was in regard to that war. Lord Derby, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Grey, Mr. D'Israeli, Lord John Russell, Mr. Glad- stone, Mr. Sydney Herbert, Mr. Cobden, and almost every man of mark in both Houses of Parliament not directly connected with the Government, spoke or voted against it. Lord Elgin, who went out afterwards as Pleni- 4 4 8 DISES TABLISHMENT. potentiary to China, said, " The question of the Arrow is a scandal to us, and is so considered by all except the few who were personally compromised." In the House of Lords, Lord Derby made a special and most eloquent appeal to the bishops, as " emphatically the servants of Him who came to bring peace on earth and goodwill among men," to use " their great and legitimate influence to stay the uplifted hand of violence and oppression and rebuke the shedding of innocent blood." But in the division, eighteen bishops voted for the war and five against it. And, unhappily, almost always the voice of the Church has been for war. The Times, in an article which appeared on the 9th of October, 1876, thus summarized the political history of the Church of England : — " The Church of England was in favour of the alliance of con- tinental absolutists against constitutional government; it was against the amelioration of the Criminal Code, and in favour of the principles of vengeance and prevention as against that of reformation ; it was in favour of hanging for almost any offence a man is now fined for at the assizes ; it was in favour of the slave trade, and afterwards of slavery ; it was against the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts ; it was against Catholic Emancipation ; it was against parlia- mentary reform and municipal reform ; it was against the com- mutation of tithes, though it has since had to acknowledge the Act a great benefit ; it was against the repeal of the Corn Laws and Navigation Laws ; it was against free trade generally ; it was ngainst all education beyond the simplest elements, and even re- ligious instruction ; it was against public cemeteries and extra-mural interment ; it was against the division of parishes. Indeed it is hard to say what it has not been against in the way of improvement. ... In all these cases it was everywhere a worldly clerical oligarchy, combined for mutual advantage, and working for high THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 49 preferment, that took the name of the Church, and lent the name of the Church of England to leaders of party. The Church of England all this time was helpless because misrepresented, duped, and betrayed by that which called itself the Church party." It may be said that these are but the utterances of an irresponsible journalist ; but they are confirmed by the candid confessions of both clergymen and laymen of the Church. " The clergy of the Established Church," said the Rev. T. J. Lawrence at the Newcastle Church Con- gress, "as a body have resisted most of the great political and social reforms that have made the country a fit place to live in, and welded the nation into one har- monious whole." To the same effect is the sorrowful acknowledgment of a lay member of the Church — " It made one almost sink with despair to reflect that during this century the influence of the Church of England, in so far as it had publicly manifested itself, had for the most part been nearly always on the wrong side — on the side of privilege against right, on the side of ignorance against knowledge, on the side of restriction against freedom, on the side of the few against the many. In almost every political conflict the great bulk of the clergy are found on one side, and that least associated with sympathy for the people." 1 Let us consider in the light of these facts what would have been the present condition of this country if the influence of the Established Church had been predomi- nant on our national destinies. So far as one can see, we should have been still under the dominion of the Stuarts ; still subject to the Star ' Mr. Harwood, at the Carlisle Church Congress, 1884. 5 o DISESTABLISHMENT Chamber and the High Court of Commission; still victims to the slavish doctrines of non-resistance and passive obedience ; still without a vestige of religious liberty ; the Nonconformists crushed by the Uniformity Act, the Conventicle Act, the Five Mile Act, and other atrocious Acts passed against them by the influence of the Church ; still with our sanguinary Criminal Code un- amended ; still without Parliamentary Reform ; still with Protection and the Corn Laws lying like an incubus on our industry. In short, we should have been a people without rights, without freedom, without hope, trampled under foot alike by tyranny and priestcraft. Is it natural that men like the clergy of the Church of England, men of education, possessed of the highest learn- ing and culture of their times— the declared servants of the Just and Merciful, and men who in other directions have, no doubt, proved themselves kind, charitable, hu- mane — is it natural, unless some pernicious disturbing element were at work, that they should be always found on the side of despotic rulers and bad laws ? Surely, the ministers of Christ's gospel should be in the van of human civilization — the first to champion the rights of the humble and oppressed ! And beyond doubt the disturbing ele- ment has been in this case the connection of their Church with the State. And there are thousands, and tens of thousands, who have the profoundest conviction that the day when the severance of that connection shall take place will be for the Church of England herself a day of deliverance from memories of the past and associations THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 51 of the present which paralyze her spirit, tarnish her repu- tation, and incalculably impede her usefulness as a Christian Church. It may be said that all these statements relate to the past, and do not describe the Church Establishment of to-day. But whoever will take the trouble to follow the course of recent liberal legislation will find that, in almost every instance, it has been strenuously resisted by the Church. Roman Catholic Emancipation, the Repeal of Jewish Disabilities, the Admission of Dissenters to the National Universities, the Abolition of Church Rates, the opening of the Churchyards to Nonconformists, and other measures for the promotion of civil and religious liberty, were delayed for many years by the persistent opposition of the bishops in the House of Lords, backed by a strong majority in the country of the partizans of the Establish- ment, and were at last carried in spite of that opposition.^ Among the serious evils of an Establishment the loss of freedom to the Church itself may be placed in the forefront. A church established by law is a church in fetters; denied all that liberty to regulate its own affairs, which ought to belong to every Chris- tian community. Some excellent Churchmen take umbrage at the idea of efforts to effect their "libera- tion " from bondage to the State. " What Church," exclaims the Bishop of Durham in a speech delivered * The Bill for abolishing the Irish Church Establishment was carried in a single session ; but it was strongly opposed by the Bishops. 52 DISESTABLISHMENT. at a recent meeting of the Church Defence Institution, "is more free already than our own Church of Eng- land ? " In what respect is the Church of England " free " ? Is it in the election and appointment of its pastors? Why, all its highest ecclesiastical rulers are made on the nomination of the Prime Minister of the day. All, or nearly all, its parish priests get their " livings " from the Crown, or the Lord Chancellor, or the Chan- cellor of the Duchy, or private patrons, in respect tc which the people have not the smallest voice. Is it free to reform anything that may be injurious or disrepu- table in its administration ? Look at the sale of livings, a system which Bishop Wilberforce justly described as "a most horrible mercantile transaction, and most vicious and degrading ; " which the Archbishop of York charac- terized as an " abominable traffic ; " under which the Bishop of Peterborough declares practices " of deliberate and enormous wickedness " are carried on enough to make the Church " stink in the nostrils " of the nation. Yet the Church has for centuries been groaning under this most flagrant and crying scandal, which, after many efforts made, it is declared to be utterly impotent to remedy. And why impotent ? The Guardian supplies the answer in the admission that "It deserves to be again and again said and urged that the abuses of private patronage are specially, emphatically, due to the con- nection of Church and State." The bitter complaints of its own members furnish abundant and most affecting testimony to the fettered THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND. 53 condition of the Church. "We are," said the Rev. John Keble, "the one religious body in the Queen's dominions to which the following privileges are expressly denied : to declare our own doctrines ; to confirm, vary, and repeal our own canons ; to have a voice in the nomina- tion of our chief pastors ; to grant or withhold our own sacraments according to our own proper rule as a religious body." The Church of England is described by Canon Fremantle as " the only body in Christendom which has no voice. She gasps for utterance in Congresses and Conferences, but it is a vain attempt." The Bishop of Liverpool complains that his Church is " sadly wanting in elasticity and power of adapting itself to circum- stances," and with grim humour adds : " Its organization is stiff and rigid, like a bar of cast-iron, when it ought to be supple and bending, like whalebone. Hence its machinery is continually cracking, snapping, and breaking down. Like some fossilized country squire, who lives twenty miles from a railway, and never visits London, the poor, dear old Church of England must still travel in the old family coach, shoot with the old flint-locked single-barrel gun, and wear the old jack-boots and long pigtail." 1 The demand for freedom, therefore, comes from all sections of this freest Church in the world. It may be thought a severe saying of Mr. Goldwin Smith's, that "the Church is the creature of the Tudor Kings and Parliament, surviving the authors of her being, and with her only power of legislation and self-adaptation 1 Papers on Church Reform. 54 DISES TA B LIS H ME NT. buried in their grave." That, however, is no more than has been admitted in less pungent terms by other bishops than the Bishop of Durham. " The Church," said the late Bishop Wilberforce, " by its connection with the State, has given up great and natural liberties, which, as a religious body, it would otherwise possess." " Our Church," says the Bishop of Peterborough, " is not only Catholic and national : she is established by law — that is to say, she has entered into certain definite relations with the State, involving on the part of the State an amount of recognition and control, and on the part of the Church subjection to the State." And it is because a large section of the Church resents that subjection that demands are now made for changes which would entirely remodel the relations of Church and State, and give to the former all the advantages of State-connection without any of its drawbacks. CHAPTER III. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN WALES. For a crucial example of the utter abortiveness of an Established Church, and of the practical effectiveness of the voluntary principle, it is only necessary to turn to the religious history of the Principality of Wales. The Pro- testant Church Establishment has existed there for at least three centuries. During the whole of that time it has failed absolutely in winning the love and loyalty of the people, or in fulfilling, in anything approaching to an efficient and satisfactory manner, its own professed func- tion as the religious instructor of the nation. There is, unhappily, superabundant evidence to prove this. In the preamble of an Act of Parliament passed in 1563, ordering the Welsh bishops to translate the Bible into the Welsh language within three years — which was, how- ever, not done for twenty-five years — it is stated that the people of Wales " are utterly destitute of God's Holy Word, and do remain in the like or rather more darkness and ignorance than they were in the time of Papistry." In the absence of the Bible there was, of course, all the more need for an earnest personal ministry among the clergy. But how did the people fare in this respect? 5S DISESTABLISHMENT. In 1560 Dr. Meyrick, Bishop of Bangor, writes that he had only two preachers in his diocese. Strype, in his "Life of Archbishop Parker," says that, about 1563, the diocese of Llandaff had been for two or three years void, that in Bangor the diocese was " much out of order, there being no preaching used, and pensionary concu- binacy openly continued, which was allowance of con- cubines to the clergy by paying a pension, notwithstanding the liberty of marriage granted." In 1587 Dr. William Hughes, Bishop of St. Asaph, was accused of misgovern- ing his diocese. On inquiry being made it was found that he himself held no fewer than sixteen rich livings ; that the holders of most of the great livings lived out of the country, and that there were only three preachers residing upon their livings. 1 The admirable Rees Pritchard, Vicar of Llandovery, who flourished in the first half of the seventeenth century, draws a most deplorable picture of the condition of the country, and adds that "the clergy were asleep, leaving the people to wallow in their sins unwarned and unrebuked." In 1623 Dr. Bailey, Bishop of Bangor, paid a visit to the parishes in his diocese. His report is still partly extant. In place after place through several of the counties of North Wales the records are of this nature : " Only two sermons for the last twelve months." " No sermon here for five years." " Never any preaching here." " Only two sermons in a twelvemonth." "The curate here spends 1 Strype's " Annals of the Reformation," vol. iv. pp. 295-4 5 and appendix to vol. iv. p. 63. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN WALES. 57 his time in taverns, is a public drunkard and brawler," &c. Space does not admit of tracing this dismal story, as un- happily it would be only too easy to do, down to nearly our own time. The Rev. Griffith Jones was a most zealous and earnest clergyman; and if one man could have saved the Church in Wales, he would have saved it. He describes the state of things, when he began his own apostolic labours about 1730, thus " In many churches there was no sermon for months together ; in some places nothing but a learned English discourse to an illiterate Welsh congregation." For, to aggravate the evils already sufficiently rife in the Welsh Church, the English Government, about the beginning of the eigh- teenth century, adopted the practice of appointing only Englishmen utterly ignorant of the Welsh language to Welsh bishoprics. For a hundred and fifty years, it is said, not a single Welshman was raised to the Episcopal Bench in his own country. The result of this monstrous arrangement might easily be anticipated. The English bishops of Wales, imitating the example of those who appointed them, deluged the Principality with English clergymen, their own relations and connections, to whom the highest dignities and the richest livings were almost uniformly assigned ; though, in spite of the emphatic con- demnation of the practice by the articles of their own Church, they could conduct the service only "in a tongue not understanded of the people." Indeed, during the eighteenth and far into the nineteenth century, every form 5S DISESTA BUSHMEN 7. of evil that could afflict a Christian Church, or rather, let us say, an Established Church — simony, pluralism, nepo- tism, absenteeism — grew rampant in the Welsh Church. Even so late as the year 1836 Sir Benjamin Hall, after- wards Lord Llanover, stated in the House of Commons that the late Bishop of St. Asaph had himself eleven sources of income, and that "the amount enjoyed by the bishop and the relations of the late bishop alone amounted to ,£23,679, and exceeded the whole amount en- joyed by all the other resident and native clergy put together." Under such circumstances, we need not wonder that everything fell into neglect and disorder; churches became dilapidated, and some fell into utter ruin; Sunday services were not performed for weeks and some- times for months, or were performed in such a slovenly and perfunctory manner as to inspire disgust instead of devotion. Worse than all, many of the clergy themselves, neglected and despised by their ecclesiastical superiors, fell into most disreputable habits — and all this was the case within the memory of many still living. Some striking testimony was honestly borne to these facts by earnest Churchmen at the Church Congress in Swansea in 1879. This is the picture of the state of things in South Pembrokeshire drawn by Mr. G. B. Hughes, a barrister-at-law, photographed, as he said, from the light of his own experience in early life — " The Holy Communion was administered at most four times a year — rarely that. The churches were miserably out of repair, ruinous in some instances ; always damp, mouldy, and unwhole- THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN WALES. 51 some ; the pews fast falling into decay, in many cases incapable of occupation, but, alas ! seldom put to the test. . . . The services were slovenly and irreverent, the congregation — what wonder? — miserably small. The singing was often confined to a painful solo, executed by the 'Amen ' clerk. In one parish a woman was clerk. Save at the bishop's visitation, the clergy were never brought together. The archdeacons never visited ; and ruridecanal meetings were un- known. It is a painful and humiliating picture to present to you. I have not, I think, exaggerated it. No wonder to find Dissent in nearly every parish flourish and abound. . . . What the clergy were I hesitate to say, but we are met to hear and speak the truth. If a clergyman was sober, moral, and respectable, it was, I fear, an exceptionally fortunate parish that claimed him." Lord Aberdare on the same occasion said — ■ "Though I was not born in the era of the gross degradation of the Welsh Church, which I believe has not been too strongly painted ; but even when I was a young man the majority of the incumbents in my neighbourhood were men of whom it is not too much nor too bad to say that they were indifferent to their duty, leading, some of them, flagrantly immoral lives." The Rev. J. Powell Jones, Hon. Canon of Llandaff, in an article in The Churchman of July, 1880, quotes these words of Lord Aberdare, and adds : " This is a sad picture, but it is true ; the immorality of the clergy at one time was proverbial among the people ; it produced on their minds an impression that true piety could not thrive within the pale of the Church." Such, then, has been the history of the Protestant Estab- lished Church in Wales from its origin to the present day. Yet, in spite of all this, the inhabitants of Wales are at this moment as religious, as intelligent, as moral, and as orderly a people as is to be found in the United Kingdom, or in any part of the world. To what is the 6o DISESTABLISHMENT. country indebted, then, for its Christian civilization? Beyond all doubt mainly to the labours of the Noncon- formists. Nonconformity originated in Wales in the reign of Charles I. It began with a few Puritan clergy- men, who for the excess of their zeal were driven out of the Church. During the short period of the Common- wealth they displayed extraordinary activity. But when the Restoration came the persecution was renewed with redoubled severity. In no part of the country was the penal legislation of the reign of Charles II. against Dissenters more pitilessly enforced than in Wales, and often enforced at the instigation of that very Church whose " lack of service " the Nonconformists were striving to supply. This is, indeed, an aggravation of the case against the Church in Wales which needs to be dwelt upon with some emphasis, as tending very much to explain the feelings of the present generation of Welshmen towards that institution, that along the whole line of its history it has not only not helped, but actively hindered, the efforts made for the evangelization of the country. Whether as regards the Puritans, the Nonconformists, or the Methodists, their experience has been always the same, that when they were toiling for the religious benefit of their countrymen, they were assailed with violent persecution or bitter calumnies by the partisans of the Established Church. Like the "lawyers" of old, the latter " took away the key of knowledge ; they entered not in themselves, and them that were entering in they THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN WALES 61 hindered." The sufferings of the Nonconformists is a very affecting chapter in the history of Wales. Mr. Arthur Johnnes, the author of a remarkable work " On the Causes of Dissent in Wales," though a Churchman, pays this generous tribute to the zeal and courage of their ministers : " Even in the persecuting times of the Stuarts, the Nonconformist pastors still continued to traverse the wild hills of the Principality, braving all dangers for the sake of their few and scattered followers. Their con- gregations still met in fear and trembling, generally at midnight, or in woods and cavern;; amid the gloomiest recesses of the mountains." And whenever there was a lull in the tempest they did more. They promoted education. They printed and disseminated religious books, and were especially active in the printing and circulation of the Bible. During the half-century follow- ing 1630 there was only one edition of the Bible published by the instrumentality of the Church, a large folio of 1,000 copies for the pulpits of the churches. But during the same period the persecuted Nonconformists published nine editions, consisting of about 30,000 copies of the whole Bible, besides 40,000 of the New Testament alone. As soon as something like religious liberty was secured, their efforts to provide the means of religious worship and instruction for the population, which were so grievously neglected by the official Church, were and have been in- defatigable. Let it be borne in mind, that the Noncon- formists of Wales, especially in the early part of their history, were a very poor people ; the wealthier classes 62 DISES TABLISHMENT. always, as a rule, clinging to the Church. Yet their "poverty has so abounded unto the riches of their liberality," that they have covered the whole face of the country with a more perfect apparatus of the means ot religious worship and instruction than can be found perhaps in any part of the world. To show the rapidity and completeness with which this has been done, it is sufficient to cite the following figures of the number of Nonconformist chapels in the Principality at five different periods — 1742 1775 1816 1861 1884 105 171 993 [2,927 4,200 In order to compare what the Church has done for Wales with what the Nonconformists have done, it is necessary to make a brief reference to figures. At the time of the religious census of 1851 the population of Wales, including Monmouthshire, amounted to 1,118,914. The net result of the returns then made was as follows — The Established Church had provided of sittings, 301,897, or 30 per cent. The Nonconformists had provided 692,239, or 70 per cent. Assuming, as Mr. Horace Mann assumes, that there should be church accommodation for 58 per cent, of the population, or for 689,569 in Wales, the above figures show the following results — The Church fell short of this supply by 387,672 sittings. The Nonconformists exceeded this supply by 2.799 sittings. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN WALES. 63 The Church, that is to say, had provided sittings for 26 per cent, of the population ; the Nonconformists for nearly 59 per cent. The same returns show that the number of persons present at the most numerously attended services on the Census Sunday was as follows — Churchmen 138,719, or 22 per cent. Nonconformists 473,102, or 78 per cent. The disproportion between the means provided by the Church and by the Nonconformist bodies for the religious instruction of the people of Wales is still greater now than at the census of 185 1. Nonconformity supplies 4,503 ministers and lay preachers, and it gives religious instruction in its Sunday-schools to more than 463,000 children and adults. It contributes in money for the support of its benevolent and religious institutions at least ,£400,000 a-year. It is not possible to decide with absolute precision the relative numbers of the adherents of the Church and other religious bodies in Wales, because the Church publishes no statistics. It varies in different parts of the country. According to a voluntary census, lately taken, it would appear that in some parishes the relative pro- portion of Nonconformists to Churchmen has been as 13 to 1 ; others as 12 to 1 ; in others as 10 to 1 ; but, taking the whole Principality, it is a moderate estimate that makes the average relative proportion as 6 to r. But what aggravates the anomaly, as Mr. Gladstone has 5 64 D/SES 7 A BLISHME?* T. said, is the fact that "so large a proportion of her members belong to the upper classes of the community, the classes who are able to provide themselves with the ministrations of religion, and therefore in whose special and peculiar interest it is most difficult to make any effectual appeal for public resources and support." It must be further observed, that it is not merely in the matter of religious instruction that the Nonconformists have been almost exclusively the leaders of the Welsh people. As respects literature and art, and all important social and political movements, there has been the same predominance. The literature of Wales is almost wholly Nonconformist. The Rev. David Williams, a Denbigh- shire clergyman, read a very able and exhaustive paper at the Swansea Church Congress on the periodical litera- ture of the Principality, in which he says, " The adherents of the Church of England in Wales stand in the same pro- portion to her population as her publications do to those of Nonconformity. Out of thirty-two Welsh periodicals the Church claims the significant number of four." Mr. Williams dealt only with the periodical press. Happily there is in Wales a large living literature in the form of books on a great variety of subjects ; but nearly the whole modern literature of the country, secular as well as religious, owes its existence to Nonconformists. No doubt the Church did some years ago make strenuous efforts in favour of education in Wales, but the people of Wales would have been more grateful if those efforts had not been made so evidently for pro- THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN WALES. 65 selyting purposes. But it is not true, as is sometimes alleged, that all the day-schools in the Principality were provided by the Church. Even before the Education Act of 1870, the Nonconformists, with some aid from Liberal Churchmen, had established several Training Colleges in the Principality, and between 400 and 500 schools. The present state of the question is this, that out of 1,795 schools and departments of schools in Wales, 748 are so-called National or Church of England Schools, and 1,047 are Board, British, Roman Catholic, and Methodist Schools. Mr. Gladstone's language in reference to the Irish Church is, in fact, equally applicable to the Church in Wales— " An Establishment that neither does, nor has the hope of doing, work, except for a few, and those few the portion of the community whose claim to public aid is smallest of all ; an Establishment severed from the mass of the people by an impassable gulf and by a .vail of brass ; an Establishment whose good offices, could she offer them, would be intercepted by a long unbroken chain of painful md shameful recollections ; an Establishment leaning for support upon the extraneous aid of a State which becomes discredited with the people by the very act of lending it — such an Establishment will do well for its own sake, and for the sake of its creed, to divest itself, as soon as may be, of gauds and trappings, and to commence a new career, in which, renouncing at once the credit and the dis- credit of the civil sanction, it shall seek its strength from within, and put a fearless trust in the message it bears." 1 In the light of the above facts, does not Wales supply a perfect answer to the panic apprehensions of some good 1 "A Chapter of Autobiography." 66 DISESTABLISHMENT. people as to the fate of religion in case of Disestablish- ment ? The experiment as to the comparative efficiency of an endowed and a voluntary Christianity has been made there under circumstances which give it the force of an experimentum cruris. Attention may be specially directed to those parts of the country where the popula- tion are comparatively few, scattered, and poor. Under such conditions, we are told, it would be impossible to provide for the spiritual needs of the people without the parochial system, by which the State provides a building and a teacher for the people. But there is no part of the Principality where the means of religious instruction have been more amply provided than in the agricultural districts. According to the census of 185 1, in the regis- tration districts of Cardiganshire, which is almost purely agricultural, the number of sittings in places of worship provided was 97-8 per cent, of the population ; of which the Church of England supplied 27-4, and the Dissenters 70-4 per cent. CHAPTER IV. HOW THE CHURCH IS ESTABLISHED — RELIGIOUS EQUALITY. Is the Church of England really established ? Can it be disestablished? And, if so, how? It is necessary to answer these questions, because in some quarters there is much confusion of thought, if not ignorance, in regard to the point. Mr. Raikes, a Member of Parliament, speaking lately at a diocesan conference, said — "People talked about Disestablishment. He was an ignorant man, because he had never been able to attach a precise meaning to the word. . . . The position of the Church at the present time was one which scarcely permitted of Disestablishment, if he could attach any meaning to the word at all." In like manner, the present Lord Halifax, the President of the English Church Union, in his lately issued address to the members of that body, said that — " In regard to the ambiguous term ' Disestablishment,' it cannot be repeated too often that Parliament cannot disestablish what it never established. The Church of England was never established by Parliament. It was in possession of the country before Parlia- ment existed ; neither was it endowed by Parliament." "Where is the Act of Parliament which established the Church of England ? " it is asked, and it is confidently 68 DISESTABLISHMENT. asserted that " no establishment ever took place ; " and that " the most insignificant sect is as completely under State-control as an Established Church." 1 Obviously, if the Church is not established, it cannot be disestablished, and a great deal of strength is being wasted in resisting a change which cannot be effected. But what is probably meant by such assertions is, that the State did not create the Church, which, however, does not prove that it is not, in the strict sense of the term, established by the State, nor, except as a matter of historic interest, is it material to inquire when, and in what way, it came to be established. It may be, as Mr. Edward Freeman contends, a popular error to suppose that there was some time when " the State picked out one particular religious body," and " made a kind of bargain together " for the promotion of the religious instruction and wor- ship of the people ; or that " there was some time or other when the Church was ' established ' by a deliberate and formal act." It may also be admitted that " there was no moment when the nation, or its rulers, made up their minds that it would be a good thing to set up an Estab- lished Church." The fact remains that it was, and is, established ; being, as Mr. Freeman admits, " the crea- tion of the law," not " of any particular law, but of the general course of our law, written and unwritten." " In early times the Church was simply the nation looked at with reference to religion ; just as the army was the nation looked at with reference to warfare." The Church " " The National Church." HOW THE CHURCH IS ESTABLISHED. 69 was established as other institutions have been established — " gradually and silently : no statute enacted them, though later statutes took them for granted." 1 When the Act establishing the British Constitution can be pro- duced, it will be reasonable to insist on the production of the statute which established the Church of England. It is difficult to treat seriously such assertions as that " the Dissenting communities are just as much established as the Church of England," which is no more under State-control than they are. 2 The Acts of Parliament for regulating the affairs of that Church are numbered by hundreds — how many are there for regulating the affairs of the non-established bodies ? As regards both legisla- tion and administration, the State exercises supreme au- thority over that Church. It creates bishoprics, and selects the bishops, as well as the deans, and many of the canons, and the occupants of Crown livings. It remodels the cathedral establishments, forms new parishes, and con- trols the erection of churches. It distributes the ecclesi- astical revenues as it thinks fit j prescribes the mode of appointing the clergy and their duties, and, to some extent, their incomes. It determines the form and order of the Church's services; regulates the traffic in Church livings, and maintains what discipline there is in the Church. In fact, the Church can do nothing in the way of material change without the assent of the 1 See chapter ii. of Mr. Freeman's " Disestablishment and Dis- endowment." 2 The Church Times. 70 DISES 7ABLISHMENT. State. How does the State similarly control the Churches which are not established by law? It can neither create nor fill an office in any one of them. It is not for them that it passes Church Discipline or Public Worship Regulation Acts. Their ministers are bound by no State-rubrics, or lectionaries, and are subject to no parochial limitations. Their congregations may change their modes of operation, and extend them, without the intervention of Parliament or Government It is true, that within certain limits the State exercises control over Nonconformists as well as Conformists ; since both are subject to the law and answerable to the judicial tribunals. But Nonconformists invoke the pro- tection, and are subject to the law, only in the same way as all other bodies and individuals. A public company has its articles of association, can sue its debtors, and be compelled to fulfil its contracts ; but that does not con- stitute it an Establishment in the sense in which the Church is established. The possession of property — whether it be used for secular or religious purposes — of necessity involves legal protection, and, at times, judicial interference. The construction and alteration of trust deeds, breaches of contract, and violations of rules and agreements, all come within the jurisdiction of the courts of law — no matter whether the questions at issue arise in connection with charities, clubs, churches, or private per- sons. But there is an essential difference between the posi- tion of the non-established and the Established Churches as regards their relation to the law, or its administration. HOW THE CHURCH IS ESTABLISHED. 71 This is frankly admitted by The Guardian (Oct. 8, 1884), which thus accurately describes the facts of the case — " Nonconformist Churches, so far as they hold property, come under the control of the State, and the jurisdiction of the courts of law. No one who considers the matter can believe that any body of Englishmen can escape from the control of the law. If they hold property they must sooner or later look to the law to defend their property; if they wish to assemble for worship they must look to the law for defence against disturbance. But subject to so much inevitable control, and in most cases to certain documentary forms and trust-deeds, these bodies are, as a matter of fact, much freer in their corporate action, in their legislation, in their discipline, and in their forms of worship, than the Church of England. Except where they are controlled by trust-deeds they can legislate for themselves without asking permission from Parliament, or from the law courts ; and the Church of England cannot. ... It is fallacious to declare that the Church of England is freer than the unestablished Churches, because they have to go to the law courts to interpret their trust- deeds, and to Parliament to alter them." From the circumstance that the State prescribes the organization, the worship, and the discipline of the Church of England, and exercises control over its edifices and finances, the law touches that Church at a hundred points at which there is no similar contact in the case of the non-established Churches. A result of this is, that the intervention of the law courts in the affairs of Non- conformists is comparatively rare ; while litigation con- nected with the Establishment has become one of the scandals of the time. There is this further difference between the respective positions of Episcopalians and Nonconformists, viz., that the latter accept the decisions 72 DISES TABL IS H ME NT. of the law courts without questioning their impartiality ; whereas the former are apt to suspect — whether rightly or wrongly — that the judges, and especially those of the final court of appeal, are influenced in their decisions by considerations of policy ; having regard to their probable effect on the Church as a national institution. And, finally, as Canon MacColl has pointed out — "Other religious communions, including the Established Church of Scotland, enjoy full liberty to define their own doctrines on any point on which the secular court interprets the language of their formularies in a sense contrary to the authoritative ruling of the ecclesiastical tribunals. This provides a safeguard against the im- position of alien doctrines by the State. The Church of England possesses no such safeguard." 1 But for recent confident assertions to the contrary, it would have seemed superfluous to point to such obvious facts. "The time was," said Lord Stanhope in opposing Lord Sidmouth's Bill for restricting the liberty of Dis- senting ministers, " when Dissenters sought for toleration as a favour. Presently they demanded it as a right, and the time will come when they will reject it as an insult." That prediction has been long since fulfilled. Toleration and religious liberty having been secured, there has now arisen the demand — as logical as it is final — for religious equality. That demand is met by two answers, which contradict each other. Religious equality exists already, say some, and exists in combination with a National 1 Paper at the Newcastle Church Congress. RELIGIOUS EQUALITY. 73 Church. It cannot exist at all, say others ; " there being no more absurd dream in the world than the dream of religious equality." 1 Neither of these allegations is well founded. The various measures passed for removing Nonconformist disabilities, and curtailing the privileges of the Established Church, have been steps in the direc- tion of religious equality ; but an Established Church being, as the Bishop of Peterborough admits, " founded on the principle of ///equality," there cannot be complete equality while it continues to be an Establishment. Instead of securing a fair field for all, and showing favour to none, the State places one Church in a privileged posi- tion, to the disadvantage of all other Churches. The Sovereign is the head of the Church. Its bishops are appointed by the Crown, and, sitting in Parliament, not only vote on questions affecting the entire people, but influence Governments in the framing of their measures. Its doctrines and formularies have the stamp of national sanction, though a large portion of the nation are beyond its pale. Church dignitaries, and many of the clergy, are nominated by the Premier, or other public officials, and all of them exercise authority vested in them by the State. They alone can conduct religious services of a national character, and can occupy the pulpits of cathe- drals and other national ecclesiastical edifices. They are the chairmen of parish vestries, trustees of parochial charities, and custodians of the ancient parochial burial places. They hold the greater part of the chaplaincies, 1 Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, M.P. 74 DISES1 ABL1SHMENT. the masterships of public schools, and school inspector- ships, and largely control the educational machinery of the country. The social influence of the clergy, resulting from their legal position, is even greater than the authority derived from any legal source. The prestige of an Estab- lished Church attracts multitudes 'vho would not other- wise be among its adherents ; while \he privileged posi- tion of the clergy tends to beget a spirit " which looks with scorn on those who are outside the privileged circle ; " 1 and the laity are apt to follow their example. That " no one gains anything by being a Churchman, or loses anything by being a Dissenter," 2 is contrary to notorious facts. It is not true in towns : it is still less true in country parishes, where, if the Nonconformist is a shopkeeper, he suffers in his trade. If poor, he loses his share of the public charities. If he farms land, there are whole districts where he cannot buy, or rent, a single acre — simply because he is a Dissenter. Land is sold on the express condition that no dissenting place of worship shall be built upon it. Episcopalian landlords forbid dissenting services in their cottages ; and there are hundreds of parishes where Dissenters cannot, " for love or money," obtain a yard of ground for school, or chapel, or any other dissenting purpose. It is puerile to charge those who complain of such a state of things, with being actuated by mere " envy " and " jealousy " ; nor is there anything ignoble in their complaints. They are citizens, entitled to equal justice with Episcopalians, and - Canon MacColI. 2 Sir W. V. Harcourt, M.P. RELIGIOUS EQUALITY. 75 were the position of the parties reversed, there is pro- bably not an Episcopalian who would not protest with equal energy. No one supposes that all Churches, any more than all men, can be made equal by Parliament ; but Parliament ought not to add artificial and needless inequalities to those which are natural and necessary. Religious equality does not mean equality of sects, but equal treatment of all sects by the State. It may be true that, "whether we have an Established Church or not, one religion would be more popular than another, and would command greater support ; " 1 but that is no reason why one religion should be backed up by State-force and State-favour, and so have an unfair advantage over all the others. If the Church of England would, as is alleged, always be superior to other Churches, because of the culture of its clergy, and the better social position of its members, that is a reason for reliance on those advan- tages, without the adventitious aids afforded to a national institution. Religious equality, instead of being a dream, is a realized fact in the United States, in Canada, in all the larger British colonies, and even so near home as Ireland. Exactly what prevails there, is demanded here — freedom and security for religionists, of every class, and no State-patronage or support for any — and there is nothing to prevent the existence of the same state of things in England, Wales, and Scotland. « Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, M.P. CHAPTER V. THE ALLEGED EVIL RESULTS OF DISESTABLISHMENT. It is significant that the supporters of the Established Church system show a growing inclination to discuss the question, not on abstract grounds, but as " simply one of expediency." 1 Not, Is it scriptural? or, Is it just? but What shall we gain and what shall we lose by its aboli- tion ? is their one inquiry. And the conclusion to which they mostly come is, that the disadvantages of Disestab- lishment would counterbalance its advantages ; although Bishop Ryle, with less discrimination and greater posi- tiveness, asserts it would do "no good at all" to Dis- senters ; " a little good and a great deal of harm " to the Church ; " no good, but very great harm " to the State ; and " no good, but great harm to the poor." 2 Nearly thirty years ago, Mr. Gladstone, in writing to Bishop Wilberforce, relative to the amendment of the Clergy Discipline Act, took note of this tendency to neglect " the elementary principles of right and wrong " which had already begun to show itself. "It is," he said, "neither Disestablishment, nor even loss of dogmatic 1 Bishop of Durham. 2 " What Good will it do?" by the Bishop of Liverpool. ALLEGED EVIL RESULTS. 11 truth, which I look upon as the greatest danger before us ; but it is the loss of those elementary principles of right and wrong on which Christianity itself must be built. The present position of the Church of England is gradually approximating to the Eastian theory, that the business of an Establishment is to teach all sorts of doctrines and to provide Christian ordinances by way of comfort for all sorts of people, and to be used at their own option. It must become, if uncorrected, in lapse of time a thoroughly immoral position." 1 The lapse of time has justified Mr. Gladstone's fears ; far less stress being now laid upon the spiritual benefits conferred by the Established clergy than on the temporal benefits accruing to a parish from the appointment of a resident minister. It is the lower, instead of the higher, instincts of the villagers, which are appealed to, to convince them that they will be great pecuniary losers by Disestablishment. This change in the character of the controversy makes it needful to discuss practical details, instead of abstract principles, and those details may be classified under two heads — the alleged usefulness of the Establishment, and the alleged evil results of Disestablishment. In dealing with both it is necessary to keep in mind the distinction between the Church and the Establishment. 2 It may be thankfully admitted that the Church of England 1 " Life of Bishop Wilbei force," vol. ii. p. 353. 2 This, however, is constantly forgotten by the supporters of the Establishment. In the recent utterances of Lord Salisbury and of the Bishops, the abolition of the Establishment is constantly spoken of as though Establishment and Church were synonymous terms. 73 DISESTABLISHMENT. of to-day is, in many respects, a very different institution from the Church of a century ago, when, according to Sydney Smith, the clergy of England had no more influence over the people than "the cheesemongers of England." Of that " dreary age " a candid writer in The Church of England Quarterly Review? says, " We look in vain for signs of Church life. No churches were built ; no schools established ; no legitimate at- tempts made to multiply clergy to keep pace with the growing population, much less to provide adequate en- dowments. . . . The Church could scarcely have sunk lower, and it was natural that the sober, practical English mind should doubt whether she was not rather a burden than a blessing." That time of the Church's greatest weakness as a religious agency was the time of its greatest strength as an Establishment ; when its rights and privi- leges were unquestioned; when it was omnipotent in Parliament and but little troubled by Nonconformist aggression. How came the Church to lie, as the Arch- bishop of York admits, in a " profound slumber " ? and he tells us that " she rested too much on the pillar of her endowments and her national dignity." And it needed what Dr. Chalmers has called " a vigorous Dis- senterism " to wake her from her slumbers. If, instead of apathy, of neglect, and of incompetency, there is now abounding activity, growing devotedness, and aptitude on the part of the clergy, and increasing zeal and liberality among the laity, how far is the change due to the ' July, 1877. ALLEGED EVLL RESULTS. 79 establishment of the Church, and how far has it been inde- pendent, and even taken place in spite of, establishment ? Mr. Gladstone has lately noted the fact that "those abridgments of her prerogatives as an Establishment, which have been frequent of late years, have not brought a decrease," but have been " contemporaneous with an increase of her spiritual strength." And " the vast and ever-increasing development, for the last fifty years," of " the powers of voluntary support " 1 dates from the time when it came to be understood that no further pecuniary aid for the purposes of Church extension was to be ex- pected from the State. It has been since Parliament refused to vote more money for Church purposes that Churchmen have so largely subscribed to build new churches and to found new bishoprics. Nor is that all ; 6ince the clergy who occupy the new churches are to a large extent maintained, not at the public cost, but by means identical with those adopted by Nonconformists. The Marquis of Salisbury therefore accurately described the Church of England when he said that she combined in herself the character of both an established and a voluntary body — " The expenditure which was laid upon her in support of the duties which she had to discharge up to the beginning of the century was met in the main by endowments of the past. But to meet the ex- penses, and they were abundant and increasing, which arose from the wants of the generation in which we lived, she had to rely on the same resources as any voluntary body. " 2 1 "Address to the Electors of Midlothian, September, 1SS5." a Speech on behalf of the St. Albans Bishopric Fund, 6 So DISESTABLISHMENT. Nor should it be forgotten, that, besides with- holding pecuniary aid, the State has done nothing to inspire, 1 or to stimulate, the new agencies which have so greatly increased the vitality and usefulness of the Church. It has not even removed the restrictions which make the work of Church extension needlessly difficult; so that Churchmen cannot adapt their operations to the needs of the time. The Church has, in fact, outgrown the Estab- lishment It has become stronger, while the Establish- ment has become weaker ; and year by year it gains less, and suffers more, from alliance with the State. 2 The present improved condition of the Church of England is an argument for, rather than against, Disestablishment. When it is sought to avert that supposed calamity by describing the disastrous consequences which must follow, it should be remembered that similar predictions have been constantly relied upon to prevent, in the past, changes which have been most serviceable to mankind. In advo- cating Roman Catholic Emancipation, the Rev. Sydney Smith, in the " Letters of Peter Plymley," wrote — " Lord Sidmouth, and all the anti-Catholic people, little foresee that they will hereafter be the sport of the antiquary; that their pro- phecies of ruin and destruction from Catholic emancipation will be clapped into the notes of some quaint history, and be matter of 1 " You might as well try to extract warmth from an iceberg as inspiration from the State." — Oliphanfs " PiaadtHy." - That is an answer to the inquiry, 'Why attack the Establishment when it is doing more than at any previous period to fulfil the object of its existence ? It is not the Establishment, but the Church, which is expanding and improving itself ; and that fact proves that the latter can flourish without the aid of the former. ALLEGED E VIL RESUL TS, 8 1 pleasantry even to the sedulous housewife and the rural dean. There is always a copious supply of Lord Sidmouths in the world ; nor is there one source of human happiness against which they have not uttered the most lugubrious predictions. Turnpike roads, navigable canals, innoculation, hops, tobacco, the Reformation, the Revolution — there are always a set of worthy and moderately gifted men who bawl out death and ruin upon every valuable change which the varying aspect of human affairs absolutely and imperiously require." When the Disestablishment of the Irish Church was proposed, in 1865, Sir George Grey, the Home Secretary, expressed the firm belief of the Government, that the insti- tution " could not be subverted without revolution, with all the horrors that attend revolution." The Archbishop of Armagh also said that Disendowment " meant nothing short of the extinction of Protestantism in the greater part of Ireland." In the same way, affecting pictures were drawn of roofless churches, and broken windows, and no services, as the certain consequences of abolish- ing Church rates. The abolition of unjust ecclesiastical tests at the Universities was resisted, because, it was argued, it would flood Oxford and Cambridge with infi- delity and irreligion. Of the Burials Bill, it was declared that, if it were passed, " three-fourths of our parish churches would be without pastors. The churches in a great number of parishes would probably be sold for barracks, warehouses, barns, or other common uses — may, perhaps, be turned into drinking saloons." 1 The prophecies of some of the opponents of Dis- establishment are equally extravagant, and are as little "John Bull and the Burials Bill." S2 DISESTABLISHMENT. likely to be fulfilled. They do not, indeed, say, as did Mr. Disraeli in writing to Bishop Wilberforce, " It is all over with the Church of England if she be disconnected with the State " [1868] ; but they practically attribute the vitality and usefulness of the Church to the existing connection, the dissolution of which must necessarily lead to feebleness and incapacity. The Bishop of Rochester declares that " in many of the rural parishes the Church organization, from want of material support, must disappear." In the great towns " the Church's framework would be utterly submerged," and she "would oe struck down with paralysis." " With Disestablishment, Paganism would soon recover its ancient and sinister significance. The sick would be left to die without consolation, the poor and afflicted would no longer have the power of claiming or receiving the tender sympathy and personal instruc- tion of their own authorized clergymen ; the best and cheapest kind of police for the masses would be suddenly dismissed about their business, and it is no exaggeration to say that the entire country would suffer." 1 In reply to these alarming forecasts, one cannot refrain from asking, How was it that Christianity won its early triumphs? It had to make its way in the world, not only without Government patronage and protection, but against all the power which imperial Rome, in the palmiest days of its world-wide ascendency, could exercise. " The Chris- tian religion itself," says Edmund Burke, " arose without establishment, it arose even without toleration, and while its avowed principles were not tolerated, it conquered all ' Letter to Rochester Diocesan Conference, Aug. 12, 1885. ALLEGED EVIL RESULTS. S3 the powers of darkness — it conquered all the powers of the world." Is it necessary to cite the language in which the early Fathers of the Christian Church describe the rapidity with which the faith spread among the nations of the world ? " There is no race of men, whether barbarians or Greeks," says Justin Martyr [a.d. 133], "or called by whatsoever name, whether those who pass their lives in waggons (the Scythians), or those called migra- tory, or the pastoral tribes who dwell in tents, in which prayers and thanksgivings are not offered up to the Father and Creator of all, through the name of the cru- cified Jesus." " We are but of yesterday," says Tertullian [a.d. 192] ; "and we fill all your cities, islands, forts, coun- cils, even the camps themselves, the tribes, the decuries, the palaces, the senate, and the forum." And can we find a more impartial witness than Gibbon ? who says : " While that great body (the Roman Empire) was invaded by open violence or undermined by slow decay, a pure and humble religion gently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigour from opposition, and finally erected the trium- phant banner of the cross on the ruins of the Capitol." Another question which suggests itself is, Have the bishops and ministers of the Established Church, who use such language as that quoted, utterly lost their own faith in the vital power of Christianity ? While the de- plorable results they predict are to ensue when the State withdraws its support from the Church, where will be the millions of the Church's own earnest and devoted 84 DISESTABLISHMENT. members? Will they stand by while the parishes of England are falling back into Paganism, and the poor left without religious instruction ? Is it possible to conceive a more flagrant illustration of the paralyzing influence of dependence on the State than is afforded by such prog- nostications by which good men unconsciously libel their own character and that of their Church, and bring reproach upon Christianity itself? These prophets of evil assume much which cannot be proved, and forget much which they ought to remember. They assume that the Church's machinery throughout the country is in good order and thoroughly worked, and that there is everywhere the same competency and devo- tion in the discharge of clerical duty which is displayed by so many individual clergymen. They also assume that the Church's pecuniary resources are wisely ex- pended, and produce adequate results. But it is well known to be otherwise. There are hundreds of parishes in which, from clerical inaptitude, or perfunctoriness, the Church exercises no appreciable influence for good. There are endowments so distributed or expended as to be, for religious purposes, altogether useless. It is also forgotten that the religion of the people of this country — even of the poorest — is not wholly depen- dent on the ministrations of the Established Church ; that in Wales, as has been already shown, its disappear- ance would effect no appreciable change ; that in the mining districts of Cornwall and the North, the bulk of the working population are provided for by religious ALLEGED EVIL RESULTS. agencies which would not be affected by Disestablish- ment; and that throughout England there are num- berless religious communities which would be neither "submerged" nor "paralyzed." 1 Lastly, it is forgotten that even the loss of some of the ancient endowments now held by the Church would before long be as nothing compared with the contributions which the quickened zeal of Churchmen would supply for the Church's wants. A Church in which ^90,000 can be raised by its members to endow one new bishopric, would have no difficulty in averting such calamities as those now described. While Disestablishment is objected to by some because, by crippling the Church, it would make it too weak; others object for a precisely opposite reason, viz., be- cause it would make the Church too strong ! It would be left so rich and so uncontrolled, and would become so narrow and sectarian, that it would be a formidable foe to Liberalism and national progress, — an imperium in imperio, dangerous to State and religion alike. It is further asserted that when the Church is disestablished, it will cease to be Protestant, and that the legatee of the Establishment will be the Church of Rome ; so that, whereas the establishment of the Church was formerly advocated as a means of strengthening the Church, it is now thought necessary to retain the restraints of State- connection in order to limit the strength of the Church ! " In 1876, Nonconformists had 20,536 places of worship, against 15,468 consecrated buildings of the Church of England. 86 DISESTABLISHMENT. If even such a purpose be legitimate, is it fulfilled by the continued maintenance of the Establishment ? Is not the evil which is deprecated, to a great extent already upon us, in spite, if not as the result, of Establishment ? All who watch the course of events, and the drift of opinion, in the English Church see that, not merely Ritualism, but Sacerdotalism, and what has been expressively termed Clericalism, is continually growing, and is becoming the dominant power in the Church. And what is the State doing to check the progress of the retrograde movement ? The laws for the repression of illegalities in the Church are all but inoperative. Bishops appear to have agreed to let them fall into desuetude ; or the expense and uncer- tainty of an appeal to the courts of law prevents a resort to them ; or the decisions of the judges are derided and disregarded. 1 Prime Ministers are expected to bestow their patronage on each of the antagonistic parties in the Church, and, as the most daring of the "schools of thought" grows in number and influence, the others suffer proportionate diminution. Clearly, if the nation is to be saved from the evils of sacerdotalism, it must be saved by some other power than the Erastianism of State- Churchism. It is the laity who will have to protect both Church and nation from the priesthood, and Disestablish- ment will give to the laity a new position and increased 1 " In point of fact, we enjoy more freedom from State-control than the Liberationists themselves do ; for we laugh at the decisions of the Privy Council and the Public Worship Regulation Courts."— The Church Times, Sept. II, 18S5. ALLEGED EVLL RESULTS. 87 authority. The priestly party in the Church " would find that the laity, once driven to protect themselves from clerical usurpation, would take good care that the Pro- testantism which they cherish in the Prayer Book, as in the other formularies of the Church, was enforced upon her ministers with a stringency never yet approached ; " 1 and the High Church party, at least, recognize this fact ; which weighs with them in opposing disestablishment. They point to the Church of Ireland as a dreadful ex- ample to Episcopalians ; a result of its emancipation from State-control being the revision of the Prayer Book in a Protestant sense, and the acquisition of power by the laity at, it is alleged, the expense of the clergy. These fears regarding a too strong, and too priestly church assume that the Church of England will remain one and indivisible after its disestablishment. Yet there are others who dread an opposite result ; fearing that it will fly into pieces as soon as the State-bands now holding it together are removed. It is useless to speculate as to which result will follow : probably not exactly either. The cessation of State-interference with the non-established Church will, no doubt, be a new and important factor in English religious life — a portentous one in the estimation of some, but one full of hope in the opinion of others. This, at least, is certain — there can be no more reliance on the hollow props, and the weak safeguards, of State-legislation and administration. The power of truth alone must he relied on in the * The Quarterly Review, October, 1878. 83 DISESTABLISHMENT. conflict with sin and error. Conviction must do the work of coercion, and opinion take the place of law ; and what Mr. Gladstone has happily termed " the golden persua- sives of endowment" will no longer exert a sinister influence in determining ecclesiastical preferences and acts. "So long," wrote Canon Liddon, in 1868, "as the Church of England is connected with the State, its social importance will always be greatly in advance of its religious force. It will contain, as it does contain, in nominal connection with itself, as being the State institute of religion, elements of thought and feeling which are hostile, not merely to its own distinctive organization and principles, but even to the most funda- mental dogmas of the faith of Christ." 1 If that be so, ought there to be hesitation in deciding whether the Church loses more than it gains by State-patronage and support ? ' Letter to The Guardian, March, 1868. CHAPTER VI. THE PROBABLE ACTUAL RESULTS OF DISESTABLISHMENT. " If," said Lord Carnarvon, in responding to the toast of " Church and State," " any misfortune should befall the Established Church of England a void would be created that no imagination could fill up, and the parting knell of the Church of England would toll the death nearly all that is greatest, noblest, and purest in the country." 1 Is there really an adequate ground for these dismal prognostications ? If Disestablishment would certainly not " destroy " the Church of England, it is equally certain that it would not destroy the British Constitution, or throw the parishes into confusion, or shatter the framework of society. As to the Constitution, Mr. Froude has said that " the Church of England as part of the Constitution has ceased to exist ; " and, however that may be, the Monarchy will not cease to exist because the Monarch ceases to be head of the Church. The House of Lords may be in danger from other causes ; but it will not fall because bishops no longer sit with the temporal peers. Nor would the 1 At Reading, October 30, 1883. 90 Disestablishment. composition of the House of Commons be changed, save that a few clergymen might possibly be returned as members. Even in the parishes, the legal changes caused by Disestablishment would be inconsiderable, and some of them would be distinctly advantageous. The vestry would remain; though the chair would not be occupied, as of right, by the incumbent. So would the Poor Law Union, the Sanitary Authority, the Local, the Burial, the School, and the Highway Boards. And in very many cases the parochial business would be better, or more fairly, managed when the clergy no longer acted, by virtue of their office, as chairmen of the vestries, custodians of the parish burial-places, and trustees of the local charities. And the clergy, in losing their present legal position, would escape from the prejudice which that position has created, and would probably, there- fore, exercise greater religious influence. 1 Are there any other portions of the machinery of government, whether imperial or local, which would be adversely affected ? Certainly not the army, or the navy, or the magistracy, or the police. Our entire judicial system would remain intact, with the exception of the ecclesiastical courts ; but these are now the subject of such bitter complaint on the part of many Churchmen. The truth is, that there has been great exaggeration, 1 " In the presence of democracy the social position conferred by Establishment, and the religious inequality — now more seeming than real — thence arising,- create a positive prejudice against the Church, and so make the work of evangelization harder." — Rn. D. jf. Vaughan, of Leicester, November 3, 1870. THE PROBABLE ACTUAL RESULTS. 91 and some misapprehension, as to the connection between the Church of England and " the national life." Cen- turies ago it was, no doubt, otherwise; but it is now truly said of that Church that it " is able only to just touch the fringe of the English nation." 1 Not only have the ties which linked Church and State together been diminished in number by modern legislation, but the nation has been continually outgrowing the Church. The British Empire now controls the destinies of 250 millions of people scattered over the globe. Of these but 35 millions belong to these islands; and these include the inhabitants of Scotland and Ireland, nearly all of whom are outside the Church of England, and all the Nonconformists of England and Wales 2 — to say nothing of that part of the population which does not belong to that or any other Church. Admitting the influence and usefulness of the Church of England, the claims it makes to national support, when examined in the dry light of facts, will be found to be much less strong than its unreflecting eulogists suppose. Many of those who do not dread the political, or legal, results of Disestablishment, fear that it would destroy the parochial system, or seriously diminish the usefulness of the Church in the rural parishes. The benefits flowing from the residence of "an educated gentleman," in the person of a clergyman, in every parish, have been so highly extolled that the real facts of the case have been ignored. It is a bishop who has said, " The truth must The Times. ' See chapter iii. as to Wales. 92 DISESTABLISHMENT, be spoken on this matter, however offensive it may be to some. The Church of England has made an idol of her parochial system, and has forgotten that it has weak points as well as strong ones, defects as well as ad- vantages," and the "weak points" of the system are described by the same writer with exemplary candour — "In some cases the incumbent is simply careless and indif- ferent. He goes through ' a cold, formal round of Sunday ser- vices,' and nothing more. The people are neglected; they 'are like sheep without a shepherd.' All the good that is done in the parish is done by the Dissenters ; and the people look upon the Church 'as a rotten, useless institution." And he adds, "There are hundreds of large parishes in this condition." 1 Other clerical witnesses testify to the same facts. " I know," wrote "a Rural Dean " in The Church Times (May 27, 1881) parishes — " Where there are thousands lapsing into heathenism, and the lazy and inefficient parson is absolutely powerless to reach them. No one can do it for him, unless he be a Nonconformist, because of the stronghold afforded to ' freehold rights' by the ' parochial system.' " There are, no doubt, hundreds of clergymen who are bright examples of devotedness and usefulness ; but, when the case of the Establishment is made to rest upon the amount of good actually effected by the parochial clergy, the state of the parishes as a 'whole must be inquired into. What, it is asked, would become of the villages in the event of Disestablishment ? The question may be answered by another — What becomes of them ' " Papers on Church Reform," by the Bishop of Liverpool. THE PROBABLE ACTUAL RESULTS. 93 now ? Much ignorance, social stagnation, a badly paid and wretchedly housed population — where are these not to be found, if not in these same villages, in which the parochial clergy have had undisputed sway ? The simple truth is that, quite apart from spiritual results, " the so-called civilizing agency happens, as a matter of fact, not to civilize." 1 This failure is due to two causes — clerical neglect of the real wants of the labouring classes and clerical mistakes in the attempts made to benefit them. Canon Girdle- stone — a true friend to the agricultural labourer — writing in Macmillarfs Magazine a few years ago, exclaimed — " It is wonderful how little interest the country clergy have taken in the temporal welfare and social position of the labourers. They have warned them against forsaking the Church. They have reproved them for being Dissenters or drunkards, sometimes as much for the one as for the other. They have preached the gospel to them. But to any practical attempt to improve their social position, to obtain for them a fair day's wages for a fair day's work, to enable them to throw off the incubus of pauperism, to make independent men of them, with few exceptions the country clergy have given little if any countenance." The clerical author of " Village Polities " 2 confirms these serious statements. He admits the kindly inten- tions and acts of the clergy, and their wish to improve the labourers' condition ; but, he says, that as regards any general amelioration in that condition, " we country clergy have miserably failed." And he adds that they have failed because they have tried to alleviate symptoms ' Mr. J. Morley, M.P. 2 The Rev. Charles Stubbs, Vicar of Grandborowgh, Bucks. 94 DISESTABLISHMENT. of distress instead of dealing with its causes. " Blankets and broth are not the only factors of social regenera- tion. ... It is not benevolence, but justice, that is mainly wanted." 1 It is surely strange that, if the presence of a resident clergyman in every parish is of such inestimable value, md especially to the poor, the clergy should be regarded —and especially among the labouring classes — with a degree of prejudice which does not attach to the ministers of any non-established Church. One clerical writer speaks of the " blatant tirades of the Arca- dians against the Church," and of " the cruelty of hate with which he seems to hurl himself body and soul against the parsons." 3 It may be that this strong feeling is due, as Mr. Gladstone has suggested, to the fact that " the parochial clergy have not always been able to abstain from partizanship, and where they have been partizans, it has not commonly been on the side of labour." But, whatever the cause, it is significant that no sooner has the parliamentary vote been given to the labourer, to whom the clergy are supposed to have been such great benefactors, than fear is expressed that the first use made of the vote will be to disestablish the 1 In a striking article in The Fortnightly Review (March, iS85), entitled "Squires, Spires, and Mires," the Rev. W. Bury says that the charitable agencies for which the clergy are praised have done "no real service," but have been of "a demoralizing nature." The labourers " distrust such mistaken friendship," and suspect the clergy of a design to advance their own popularity under a cloak of religion ! 2 Dr. Jessop. THE PRVBABLE ACTUAL RESULTS. 95 clergy ! The efforts now being made to convince the labouring classes in the villages, that their prosperity is inseparably connected with the maintenance of the Establishment, are sufficient evidence that the parties most concerned are not conscious of the fact. Or, it may be that the agricultural labourer does not believe that the country clergy will really desert their parishes when they cease to be public functionaries, and is willing to run the risk of there being no one left " to draw up the petition to be circulated amongst the neighbours, if the cottager's cow or pig should die prematurely." 1 He may even be looking forward to a time when his condition may be so improved that he will be less dependent than he is now on clerical or parochial charity. It is asked, " Would it be wise to destroy machinery producing such results as those now yielded by the Church of England? And what can take its place?" — the latter question being answered with the assertion, that Nonconformity certainly cannot. If, as the Bishop of Winchester says, " no answer has ever been given to these questions," it is not because no answer is possible. For, as already stated, the machinery is not likely to be destroyed, and as it is not conceivable that the Church of England will abandon its work, the idea of any other body supplying its place need not be discussed. Fortunately, for the Church, there are many of its members who, looking at existing facts, and forecasting the future with sobriety, can anticipate Disestablishment * Earl Carnarvon. 7 96 DISES TABLISHMENT. without any terror. In that event, says The Church Times— "Towns and places with anything like a considerable population could very well shift for themselves. A vast number of them already do so, and the rest could be none the worse for having to follow their example. The only difficulty would be as to small villages in the country, of which no one could be found to assume the charge gratuitously ; and as to town districts which were too poor to pay for a clergyman. These, of course, would have to be undertaken by the diocese as such, and dealt with as missions ; nor do we doubt that they would, on the whole, be better cared for than is always the case now." * This may, or may not, be an over-sanguine view ; but it presents a favourable contrast to recent descriptions of the " heathen barbarism " 3 into which village life in Eng- land will sink if the Church of England is to cease to be established by law. In what does the life of the Church of England consist ? Is it in the headship of the Queen ; the presence of the bishops in the House of Lords ; the occupation by the clergy of the chair at parish vestries ? Is it in Acts of Parliament, or Orders in Council; in Crown appointments to bishoprics and livings ; in royal commissions, or in ecclesiastical courts? Is it even in tithes and glebes ? All true Churchmen would reply to such inquiries with an emphatic negative. They would say that these are incidents of an Establishment, and not essentials of a Church. They would insist that the Church of England's sources of real power are to be found in its doctrines, its modes of worship, its organi- 1 Jan. 29, 1875. * Bishop of Winchester. THE PROBABLE ACTUAL RESULTS. 97 zation, its bishops and clergy, and that its success is dependent on the devotedness with which all its machinery is worked by a self-sacrificing ministry, and a zealous and generous laity. But neither Disestablishment nor Disendowment would destroy the Church's organization ; abolish any of its functionaries ; put an end to the Houses of Convocation ; abrogate the Thirty-nine Articles, or alter a line of the Book of Common Prayer. The legal position of both men and things would be altered ; but they would remain. They would not remain unchanged ; because the Church, having obtained the right of self-government, would effect improvements now impossible, and so would adapt itself to the circumstances of changing times. Even a strong opponent of Disestablishment like Bishop Ryle 1 admits that—" (1) It would doubtless give us more liberty, and enable us to effect many useful reforms. (2) It would bring the laity forward into their rightful position, from sheer necessity. (3) It would give us a real and properly constituted Convocation. (4) It would lead to an in- crease of bishops, a division of dioceses, and a recon- struction of our cathedral bodies. (5) It would make an end of Crown jobs in the choice of bishops, and upset the whole system of patronage. (6) It would destroy all sinecure offices, and drive all drones out of the ecclesias- tical hive. (7) It would enable us to make our worship more elastic, and our ritual better suited to the times." M All these," the bishop acknowledges, " are gains, ' " What Good will it do?" 93 DISESTABLISHMENT. unquestionably ; " but, he adds, " their value must not be exaggerated." They are, however, so great, that there is no need for exaggeration, and Churchmen, in growing numbers, are of opinion that they are worth even the price of Disestablishment. And Bishop Ryle's list is not an exhaustive one; for, in addition to other organic changes which might be named, the Church would be relieved from a large amount of prejudice arising out of its privileged position; and being no longer " in danger " from hostile legislation, its members could look forward to general elections, and to political changes, with no more fear than is felt by the various Noncon- formist bodies. 1 "But what about the Dise»dow»ient of the Church ? " the reader has by this time asked. Will not the financial results be such as must seriously diminish its resources, and cripple it for a lengthened period ? Let it, first of all, be remembered that the Church is now much less dependent for support on ancient endow- ments than it was a century ago ; because, as has been already stated, modern Church extension has been the work of modern voluntaryism. That is as true of the main- tenance of the clergy as of the erection of churches, and * It may be noted that the allegations that Disestablishment would destroy the Church, or greatly diminish its authority and usefulness, are quite incompatible with another set of allegations, which describe the Church as having existed long prior to its establishment, and as possessing great spiritual resources quite independent of the State. Both lines of argument cannot be sustained. THE PROBABLE ACTUAL RESULTS. gg every year these old endowments will bear less and less proportion to the support derived from other sources. Another important fact is, that, so far as religious pur- poses are concerned, a large portion of the existing Church revenues are absolutely wasted, and their withdrawal would in no degree impair the Church's usefulness as a religious agency. 1 A third fact is, the economy which is sure to be a characteristic of the Disestablished Church — economy which will be quite compatible with efficiency. If it be needful for the archbishops and bishops of an Established Church, who live in palaces and sit in Par- liament, to receive incomes of from ,£4,000 to £15,000 a-year, there will be no such necessity when the Episco- pacy becomes an exclusively spiritual institution. The amount now expended on deaneries and canonries — between £100,000 and £200,000 a-year — will equally admit of reduction. Nor will there be empty, or nearly empty churches, served by richly endowed incumbents ; or " fat livings," the possessors of which minister to a very few people. The clergy may, as the result of Dis- establishment, perhaps, in some cases, be inadequately remunerated ; but it is not likely that the majority will be, as now, greatly underpaid, and a few greatly over- paid. 2 There is but little hope of removing these 1 The Church Times admits that a great part of the endowments of the Church may be " regarded as practically wasted. Many livings are so small that they might almost as well not exist ; others, again, are out of proportion to the requirements of the parish." " A parliamentary return of 1881 showed that, out of nearly 5,000 curates, only 162 received ^200 a-year, and only 1,100, ,£150. Of 100 DISESTABLISHMENT. anomalies while the established system lasts ; but a self- supporting church may be expected to have more regard to fitness than to individual interests, and to be inspired by a more equitable spirit, than can be looked for in an Esta- blished Church, in which vested interests are paramount. Nor are these the only mitigating circumstances with which the process of Disendowment is likely to be accom- panied. For, while Disestablishment will take place at a fixed period, Disendowment will be gradual, and, there- fore, time will be afforded for preparation for the new order of things. The life interests of the existing clergy being respected, the burden of their maintenance — if it be regarded as a burden — will be but lightly felt. The Church will also, no doubt, retain all modern churches and endowments which have been the result of voluntary gifts, and it may be expected to retain the use of many of the ancient churches also. 1 In fact, under any scheme of Disendowment, it may be expected that the Disestab- lished Church will start on its new career with an amount of property possessed by no other religious community — a fact which, as already stated, is regarded by some as an argument against freeing it from State-restrictions. what avail is the calculation that, if all the Church revenues were equally divided, the clergy would have but the moderate sum of £250 a year each, when no such division is probable, or possible? 1 Notwithstanding that the advocates of Disestablishment have, in the plainest of terms, admitted the claims of the clergy to full com- pensation, and of the Church generally to retain both the churches and the endowments which are of modern origin, Lord Salisbury has declared that the Church will be left naked and bare, and other speakers and writers have indulged in equally reckless assertions. THE PROBABLE ACTUAL RESULTS. 101 But even all these resources — large as they must be — will be as nothing compared with those which will be placed at the Church's disposal by the increased liberality of its members. They would, as Bishop Ryle admits, " love her better, and open their purses more liberally, when they saw her in plain attire, than they ever did when she was clothed in purple and fine linen." 1 The Church, it is allowed, has, " practically, an exhaustless reserve of strength," in " the services of faithful and earnest laymen," and on which " Disestablishment would compel her to draw to an extent which few at present can realize." 2 Yes! and of money, as well as of men; for, notwithstanding the liberality of individuals, it is admitted that, though Churchmen form the wealthiest part of the community, their contributions towards the support of the ministry are absolutely nothing compared with those of the members of the various sects; their "miserable parsimony" being the effect of "the deadening paralysis of Establishment " in which its members have been nurtured. 3 One of the evil results of the Church's present position is, that in many quarters the opinion * " What Good will it do ? " 2 The Church Times. 3 See the Rev. Bryan King's pamphlet, " Disestablishment : the present hope of the Church." The Church Times puts the matter still more strongly : " There are as many as 3,000 churches in the land which contribute nothing whatever to any mission, either home or foreign; and it is a well-known fact that our charitable societies chiefly depend for support on the liberality of the clergy, and a few rich laymen, the mass of the laity simply contributing nothing at all. In view of the future disendoavmcnt of the Church, the first duty of her sons is to learn hew to give." 102 DISESTABLISHMENT. prevails that it is so rich as not to need more than it already possesses. The Bishop of Durham has com- plained of the ignorance on the subject which prevails ; stating that many of the miners in his diocese believe that every clergyman has ^700 a-year out of the taxes. It may be doubted whether such errors will ever be exploded so long as the Church continues to be estab- lished. At any rate, similar mistakes are not made in regard to non-established ministers. If the statements now made are accepted as accurate, it follows that the disestablishment of the English Church will not effect any very perceptible change in the civil life, or government, of the English people ; nor even any disastrous change in regard to their religious interests. The Church's method of work would be altered; but not, of necessity, its organization, or any of its essential features. Considerable financial changes would, ulti- mately, take place ; but that the clergy would be left penniless and homeless, the laity lose their churches and their spiritual guides, and the villages of England their civilizing influences, and that there would be a total divorce between Christianity and the public life of the English people 1 — these and similar fears maybe dismissed, 1 " I cannot agree with those who say that the severance of the political relations of the Church with the State is, and necessarily must be, an abnegation of national Christianity, or an act of national apostacy. . . . National religion, as I understand it, is not any profession embodied in laws, or forms and ceremonies made by those who are at the head of the Government, but it is the religion of the people who constitute the nation." — Sir R. Palmer's (now Lord Selborne) speech against the Irish Church Bill, March 22, 1869. THE PROBABLE ACTUAL RESULTS. 103 as the creations of a distempered imagination or a feeble faith, or else as devices to terrify the unreflecting portion of the British people. 1 " I deprecate any such rhetorical exaggeration as calling Disestab- lishment an act of national apostacy. It will not make the nation irreligious if the people continue to be religious." — The Bishop of Southwell at the Diocesan Synod, June 2, 1885. 1 The Bishop of Winchester includes among the evils of Dis- establishment the loss to the parishes of the private incomes of the clergy now expended in them. This is, perhaps, the lowest ground yet taken in defence of the Establishment. CHAPTER VII. CHURCH REFORM AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO DISESTABLISHMENT. "Instead of abolishing the Establishment, why not reform it — put an end to admitted scandals and abuses — let the Church be comprehensive instead of exclusive ; and, by subjecting it to greater popular control, make it a truly national Church ? " These are the inquiries of a section of the supporters of the Establishment, inconsiderable in point of numbers, but sincere in their desire to do justice and to promote the welfare of both the Church and the nation. The programme has a look of speciousness ; but its framers cannot have fully studied the nature of the problem which has to be solved, and do not realize the insur- mountable character of the obstacles to their success. It may be doubted that success was ever attainable : now it is Utopian. Church reform is a phrase which means quite different things, according to the standpoint of those who use it The Broad Church reformer wants the abolition, or a great relaxation, of the Act of Uniformity; the discontinu- ance of subscription to creeds and articles, and abolition of the enforced repetition of the Athanasian Creed. He CHURCH REFORM. would allow Episcopalian and Nonconformist ministers to exchange pulpits, and would facilitate the entrance of the latter into the Church of England. He would (probably) admit the laity to Convocation, and give them* more authority in Church affairs, by means of parochial Church Boards and other changes. The Evangelical Church reformer would assent to some of these changes, but would insist chiefly on such a revi- sion of the Prayer Book as would deprive, what he calls, the sacerdotal party of their present standing-ground in the Chtirch. He would also make judicial proceedings for preventing ecclesiastical illegalities, or for punishing clerical delinquencies, less costly and more certain. The High Church reformer would resist nearly every one of the demands of the other two sections with passionate earnestness, and would promote Disestablishment rather than that they should be conceded. He opposes them for their Erastianism, and because they are antagonistic to all his ideas of a church, and especially of such a church as the Church of England. He desires dis- tinctly Church Courts to decide Church questions. He objects to the admission of the laity into Convocation as destructive to Convocation. He even requires that a proposed " house of laymen " shall be " merely consulta- tive, not legislative ; " for if the laity are to have a voice in the legislation of the Church he would " have nothing to do with it" ' Then there is the Radical Church reformer, who is less 1 The Church Review, 106 DISESTABLISHMENT. troubled about ecclesiastical than about financial ques- tions. He wishes to cut down large episcopal and clerical incomes j to improve the position of the poor clergy and the patronless curates ; to wholly put an end to the traffic in livings, and generally to make the Church more efficient ; even though it should become less imposing, and less attractive to the aristocracy and the wealthy middle class. Is any adequate reform of the Establishment con- ceivable in the face of such antagonism of both principle and purpose ? Or, if either of the parties in the Church could, in conjunction with other forces, accomplish its objects, would not the inevitable result be to rend the Church asunder ? Other considerations equally formid- able have to be taken into account. Those who object on principle to national Church establishments of any kind, cannot be expected to assent to the reconstruction of an institution which they wish to abolish. There is, also, unhappily, the large portion of the community who belong to no church, and who would sympathize with Nonconformist opposition, though not on Nonconfor- mist grounds. There are the politicians who, impatient at the slow pace of legislation in secular matters, would resent the devotion of legislative time to the endless and hopeless task of reforming an ancient Established Church. Finally, the unfitness of the House of Commons to undertake the work of reformation is now generally admitted. Churchmen themselves are unwilling to ask for the removal of even admitted evils from a body com- CHURCH REFORM. 107 posed, not of Churchmen only, but of Roman Catholics, Jews, Nonconformists of all kinds, and even of known unbelievers. Writing to Bishop Wilberforce in 1855, Mr. Gladstone expressed the opinion that " no good to the Church will come from Parliament; it must be developed from within." That feeling has become much stronger since. " None but the most short-sighted," says Lord Carnarvon, 1 " Will look to legislation as a remedy for ouv present difficulties. The conditions of Parliament, as now constituted, are incapable of wise and just legislation on Church questions. There is scarcely a line on this subject in the Statute-book of recent years which would not be better out than in ; and whatever our difficulties, and even our contentions, the less we have of parliamentary interposition the happier we shall be." The difficulties in the way of Disestablishment may be, as is contended, " enormous ; " but they can be overcome ; while the substitution of, what would prac- tically be, a new, for the existing, Establishment would be impossible. "The reformation of the Church by the State is a mere chimera," wrote Dean Alford, and saga- cious Churchmen and politicians recognize, however much they may regret, the fact. " The Church of England," said Mr. W. E. Forster, M.P. — himself a Churchman and opposed to Disestablishment — in 1881, "is the only great institution in the world which has to go on almost without the possibility of reform ; because it can only be reformed by Parliament, and Parliament cannot effectually reform it." 1 At a meeting of the Church of England Working Men's Society, io8 DISESTABLISHMENT. " Diseases desperate grown, By desperate appliances are relieved, Or not at all." The disease in this case is obviously desperate ; but not so the only adequate remedy. Disestablishment would, of itself, terminate some of the abuses complained of ; would facilitate the removal of other abuses ; and would give to the members of the Church the reforming power which has now practically no existence. Church reformers who oppose Disestablishment, for the sake of reform, are therefore chasing a shadow and losing the substance. CHAPTER VIII. CHURCH PROPERTY AND DISENDOWMENT. It will be expected that any treatise on Disestablishment, however brief, will contain some reference to what is commonly called, however erroneously, Church pro- perty. For it is agreed that Disendowment is the neces- sary corollary of Disestablishment, and it is the former which excites the keenest interest. Indeed, if the ques- tion of revenues and endowments could be abstracted from the controversy it would soon be closed. But this portion of the subject is too large and complicated, and involves too many historical and legal details, to allow here of much more than a statement of the points at issue, and some suggestions for reflection and inquiry. There is nothing more difficult than to ascertain the extent, and the value, of the various kinds of property applicable to the purposes of the English Establishment. The sources of information are so uncertain, the known facts and figures are so conflicting, and official refusals of adequate information so persistent, that the subject is involved in an obscurity which perplexes the most honest and painstaking inquirer. The result is that there is exaggeration on the one side and understatement on the other ; with mutual charges of dishonesty which are ill- founded. no Disestablishment. It is noteworthy, that almost every successive attempt to estimate the value of the ecclesiastical revenues has placed them at a higher figure. In 1780 the Bishop of Llandaff reckoned them at no higher than one and a half millions, including even those of the Universities and Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. Prebendary Cove, in 1816, made the amount close upon four millions. In 1832 a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the subject, and their estimate was nearly three and a half millions, but without including the capitular revenues of Westminster and Windsor. Even supposing that these figures were correct at the time, it is obvious that the large increase which has taken place in the value of Church lands — especially in and near towns — the falling in of leases, and other sources of increment, must have led to a substantial addition to all the earlier estimates. Of recent inquiries, that contained in the work en- titled "The Property and Revenues of the English Church Establishment," by the late Mr. Frederick Martin, editor of " The Statesman's Year Book,' is the most elaborate. The results of his investigations are tabulated as follows : — Annual Income of two Archbishops and 28 Bishops ... ,£163,300 ,, Value of 33 Episcopal Palaces 13,200 ,, Incomes of 27 Chapters of Deans and Canons... 123,194. ,, Value of Deaneries and Incomes of Collegiate Chapters 56,806 „ Incomes of the Parochial Clergy 4,277,060 if Value of Glebe Houses 750,000 Total do * Published by the Liberation Society in - ,£5.3S3,5°0 1877. CHURCH PROPERTY AND DISENDO IYAIENT. ill Mr. Martin adds, that in this estimate "no notice is taken of extra cathedral revenues, nor of the disburse- ments of Queen Anne's Bounty, nor, either, of the surplus income of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the aggregate of all which cannot be under three-quarters of a million sterling." If this three-quarters of a million be added, the total amount would be ^5,633,560 ; but that includes the incomes derived from recent endowments of voluntary origin. On the other hand, the incomes of the clergy are based on the figures of " The Clergy List;" which, it is believed, considerably understate the value of the livings, and probably do not include fees and pew-rents. The two qualifications, it is suggested, may perhaps neutralize each other. Mr. Arthur Arnold, M.P., in an article on "The business aspect of Disestablishment," in The Nineteenth Century for April, 1878, gives the result of his inquiries in an altogether different form, and his estimate is much higher than that of Mr. Martin. It is as follows : — Description. Revenue. Capitalized Value. bishops' Estates ^40,854 £1,021,350 „ Palaces 12,400 248,000 Deans and Chapters' Estates 136,488 3,412,200 Residences, &c 50,000 1,000,000 Tithes * 5,000,000 125,000,000 Glebe Houses 750,000 15,000,000 Glebe Lands 400,000 10,000,000 Churchwardens', &c-, Lands 21, OOO 525,000 Queen Anne's Bounty 30,000 750,000 Ecclesiastical Commissioners 700,000 " 17,500,000 Property omitted from the New Domes- day Books 361,860 9,046,500 Total . £7,502,602 £183,503,050 112 DISESTABLISHMENT. With regard to the capitalized value, Mr. Arnold says that the estimate is "very moderate." 1 The supporters of the Establishment have shown no inclination to inquire into the facts of the case, but have contented themselves with general statements, which have mostly been in contradiction of the statements of those who have paid greater attention to the subject. A leaflet of the " Church Defence Institution " 2 gives as the annual sum derived from the endowments of the Church, ^4,200,000 ; but the only sources of revenue named are tithes, rents, and interest on money. It is also stated that out of that sum "the State takes as taxes, &c, other than income-tax, and sums usually paid by occupier," about ^7 00,000, leaving only about .£3,500,000 as the net yearly value of the endowments. The Bishop of Winchester, however, stated to the Church Congress in 1884 that the whole amount of the revenues is about ,£5,000,000 a-year,3 and that may pro- bably be taken as the minimum amount. If the figures relating to Church property widely differ, the prevailing theories regarding its origin, the tenure on which it is held by the Church, and the right of the State to deal with it, are in much greater antagonism. The theory of the average defender of the Establishment is, that tithes were the voluntary gifts of private donors 1 Neither Mr. Martin nor Mr. Arnold takes into account the annual value of the cathedrals and churches. 2 "What the State-Church costs." 3 " The advantages of an Established Church," CHURCH PROPERTY AND DISEND 0 IV ME NT. 113 to the Church of England ; that, with the exception of some trifling parliamentary grants, none of the pro- perty now held by the Church came from the State ; that it belongs to the Church in just the same way as Nonconformist property belongs to Nonconformists ; that " the Church costs nothing to the nation as such ; " that the State has exactly the same right to disendow the Independents and Baptists as it has to disendow Episcopalians, and that to apply any part of Church property to secular purposes would be "confiscation," "sacrilege," "spoliation," "immoral," and the like. It would require a volume to expose the inaccuracies and the fallacies involved in such allegations. For proof of the groundlessness of the assumption that all the pro- perty held by the Church of England originated, not in public law, but in private liberality, the reader must be referred elsewhere. 1 Even if the private liberality theory were admissible, it is notorious that the ancient property, at least, was not given for the support of the Church of England as it now exists. And, further, it is fair to assume that many of the gifts admitted to be of volun- tary origin were bestowed on that Church in its cha- acter of a national institution, and not as a religious body possessing exclusive control over its doctrines and worship. " It should not be forgotten," says Mr. Elliot, " that gifts are made by benefactors with their eyes open * The subject is exhaustively treated in " The Title Deeds of the Church of England to her Parochial Endowments," by the late Mr. Edward MialL DISESTABLISHMENT. to a national institution," and that "a benefactor, while wishing to devote his property to religious purposes, may prefer to bestow it in a manner where he may reasonably expect that national, rather than sectarian, interests will be considered, and for this he may look for some security in the influence exercised by the State over the Church with which it is connected." Because the Church is the State Church, " its property is held subject to the conditions, and to be applied to the purposes which the State prescribes, as best conducing to the welfare of the nation." 1 That, of course, is a speculative argument ; but there are certain facts which are altogether inconsistent with the theories already referred to. i. The phrase " Church property" is so far misleading, as to have produced the impression that the Church holds it as proprietor, and can exercise proprietary rights over it. But the Church, as such, does not, and cannot, hold property. It is not itself a corporation; though it is composed of a number of corporations — some sole and others aggregate. The property is vested in those cor- porations, but not in the Church collectively. 3 1 "The State and the Church," by the Hon. Arthur Elliot, M.P. • " The fact was, that, materially and legally speaking, there was no such thing as the Church of England. There was an aggregate of corporations sole which had certain churches vested in them, but no body of the Church of England was in possession of land. He, as a bishop of England, was a corporation sole, and he got a certain income, which was secured to him by law. Every rector or vicar, and every cathedral chapter [?], was, in the same way, a corporation sole, and each had his income secured ; but the Church, as an CHURCH PROPER TY AND D1SEND0 WMENT. 1 1 5 2. Those in whom the property is vested are in no sense proprietors, and cannot exercise the rights of pro- prietors. The bishops, the capitular bodies, and the clergy, are entitled only to the annual product of the property vested in them, and, having only life interests, cannot appropriate it to other purposes than those pre- scribed by the State. 3. The recipients of the annual revenues derived from the property do not receive them for their own personal benefit, like the private owner of an estate, but in return for services rendered. They are public functionaries, who are remunerated, not by salaries paid by the treasury out of the taxes, but by incomes arising from public property set apart for their maintenance. 4. The State determines the number of these recipi- ents, the mode of their appointment, and their allocation. It creates and suppresses bishoprics, unites or divides parishes, takes away estates from sees and capitular bodies, and pays salaries instead. 5. The State prescribes the terms on which the clergy hold their livings ; the creeds and articles they shall subscribe ; the services they shall conduct, and even the aggregate of these coporations sole, had no property." — Speech of the Bishop of Manchester at Dewsbury, December 2, 1876. " Everything connected with the Church is subject to the law. The law defines the status of its clergy, fixes their duties, and con- trols their action. There is no ecclesiastical corporation of the Church of England ; its clergy are officers of the State, with their duties clearly defined by the State."— Letter of Canon Buhtrode, of Ely, to " The Manchester Examiner," February 6, 1877. DISESTABLISHMENT. passages of Scripture they shall publicly read. 1 It also defines their duties, and provides legal means, however 2 inadequate, for securing obedience to its rules. It is difficult to understand how, in face of facts like these, it can be asserted that "the endowments of the Established Church rest on exactly the same ground as the endowments of Dissenting bodies." 3 The difference between the two lies in this — that the former are impressed with a public trust to support such religious services as Parliament may from time to time appoint ; whereas the latter are in the nature of private trusts, to support services approved by the creators of the endowment. It is true that the State, acting in the public interest, does in certain cases, and in a very limited way, super- vise and modify the administration of Nonconformist as well as all other trusts, whether charitable or religious. But it would be impossible to prove that the State exer- cises the same control over the property held by Noncon- formists, as such, as that which it habitually exercises over the property now applied to Church of England purposes. In the former case the interference of the State with the original trusts is exceptional and limited ; the trusts not being abrogated unless they become injurious to the 1 Both the Prayer Book and the Lectionary are literally parts of Acts of Parliament. 2 The latest illustration of this is the Act of 1885, for amending the Pluralities Acts; which Canon Treon describes as "a more outrageous piece of State-religion than has been known in this country since the days of ' Bloody Mary.' " 3 "Disestablishment and Disendowment," by E. A. Freeman. CHURCH PROPERTY AND DISENDOWMENT. 117 public. But the State deals with Church revenues with a free hand, treating them as national, and appropriating for professedly national purposes. This distinction is pointed out with admirable clearness by Mr. Frederic Harrison in the following passage — " No man can dedicate property to the Church of England, no ec- clesiastical corporation can hold property, in such a way that it shall support other uses than what Parliament may prescribe. If you give property nominally to the Church of England, but prescribing a specific ritual, or the like, you are only founding a new Nonconfor- mist sect ; the reason being that the political authority alone is competent to direct to what religious uses the property of the Church shall be devoted, and it does so direct from time to time. Non- Church endowments, on the other hand, are dedicated to such uses as the creator of the trust has specifically directed. Courts of law and Parliament recognize the difference, and consequently at law and in politics Church property is public in a sense in which other endowments are not, much more than in a sense in which other property is not." 1 A still higher authority — Lord Selborne, the late Lord Chancellor— enunciated the same principle in another form, when, in opposing the proposal that additions to churchyards for fifty years by private donors should not be included in the Burial Act of 1880, he said — " It would be fatal to sound principle for their lordships to sanc- tion the doctrine that those who had given out and out for public purposes land which was once private property should reserve to themselves the dictating to Parliament as to how such purposes should be regulated or modified. The additions to the church- yards were additions made to that which was the subject of known 1 Letter to Pall Mall Gazette, April 2, 1875, in reply to the arguments of Mr. E. A. Freeman contained in " Disestablishment and Disendowment." n8 DISESTABLISHMENT. public use, regulated by public law, and if the Legislature were to hold its hand and not to be at liberty to use its power to modify the regulations applicable to such public burying-grounds, there would be no end to the mischief which would arise from such a principle." The contention that the property held by the Church should be treated in the same way as that of a privately endowed sect, ignores, what in other connections is in- sisted on strenuously enough, viz., that the Church is a national institution. It cannot be both private and national, and claim the advantages of both positions. And who constitute the National Church ? The baptized members of the Church, say some ; the communicants only, say others ; others, again, hold that it is the regular attendants at its services. But, in the legal sense, it remains as true as in the days of Hooker that " there is not any man of the commonwealth who is not also of the Church of England." 1 Hence " it is about as difficult for any Englishman to sepa- rate himself from the Church of England as it is for the Church of England to separate itself from him. In- deed, practically, there is no such act, or way of separa- tion." 2 It is in accordance with this view, that every inhabitant of a parish can claim a seat in the parish church, and burial in the parish churchyard ; admission to the communion and other rites of the Church ; together with (if he be a ratepayer) a vote in the parish vestry. In like manner, all Englishmen (except Roman Catholics) 1 " Ecclesiastical Polity," book viii. sect. 2. • The Times, October 9, 1876. CHURCH PROPERTY AND DtSENDOWMENT. itg can exercise the rights of a Church patron ; and Jews, if sent to Parliament, can take part in legislation for regulating the affairs of the Church. All these facts suggest that the Church property exists for the benefit of the entire people, to whom it really belongs. And, if so, the nation in dealing with the property at its pleasure is dealing with its own, and the cry of "robbery" is irrational. " The only possible way," said Dr. Arnold, " in which there can be robbery of public property, is to transfer it to private uses. In varying the particular object to which it is applied, there may be great folly, but not the especial crime of robbery or spoliation." The appointment, and all the acts, of the Ecclesiastical Commission, furnish the most conclusive proof that the State considers itself to possess, and that it exercises, the most absolute right of ownership as regards the control and appropriation of that which is known as Church pro- perty. For that reason the creation of the Commission was strongly resented by those who held the belief, still current in some quarters, that the property belonged solely to the Church, and that to allow it to be dealt with by the civil power was nothing short of "spoliation." 1 The action of the Ecclesiastical Commission has com- pletely subverted the theory that Church property is " simply the property of the several local churches, the 1 Sir Robert Inglis, in objecting to one of the Bills dealing with the revenues of the bishops, said, that " for the first time, in re- spect to England, by an Act of the Legislature sanctioned by the Church, it recognized the principle that Church property was public property." 120 DISESTABLISHMENT. ecclesiastical corporations, sole and aggregate, bishops, chapters, rectors and vicars, or any other," by throwing much of the property into a common fund, and distribu- ting it according to local necessities and modern wants. In spite of all its mistakes, the Ecclesiastical Com- mission has done much service to the Church ; but it has also done the Church, as some consider, the great disservice of showing how completely what is called Church property is subject to legislative management ; while its operations have greatly tended to facilitate the process of disendowment. It may be alleged that, after all, the Ecclesiastical Commission has not alienated Church property, by applying any of it to secular purposes ; and that it has simply made it more available for the promotion of Church objects. That, however, is a plea that cannot be urged in regard to the Act which, in 1869, abolished the Irish Church Establishment, That Act, after providing for the compensation of individuals whose life interests would be affected by Disestablishment, and after assigning a good deal of property as an actual gift to the Church, provided that the surplus of the property should " be ap propriated mainly to the relief of unavoidable calamity and suffering," as Parliament might direct. The surplus has actually been appropriated to the Royal University, inter- mediate education, the National School Teachers' Pension Fund, the assistance of landlords and tenants, the pro- motion of sea-fisheries, the relief of distressed Poor Law Unions, and the relief of distress generally. CHURCH PROPERTY AND DISENDOWMENT. 121 The right of the Legislature to deal with " Church property," as part of the possessions of the nation, could not have been asserted in a more decisive way, and no one in Parliament controverted that right, however strongly it was denied elsewhere. In fact, the ideas respecting Church property which are so confidently insisted beyond its walls find no place in Parliament, and are repudiated by all responsible statesmen, as well as jurists. An attempt has lately been made to show that, in the opinion of Mr. Gladstone and other statesmen of repute, the clergy of the National Church are not State-paid. But Mr. Gladstone has referred to his speeches in various Irish Church debates for a statement of his views on that point. And nothing can be more explicit. In 1 868, he spoke of the Irish clergy as "a salaried 01 stipendiary clergy," "supported by the income of the State," and of the Establishment as being maintained by the appropriation of public property " to its support," and as being a " great system of State-endowment." In 1869 he spoke of " the public endowment of religion in Ireland," and contended that " it was for the nation that the property was given," to be " applied for all time to the benefit of the entire population." 1 Nothing can be clearer than that Mr. Gladstone considered the Irish clergy to be "State-paid," and, as the English clergy occupy precisely the same position as their Irish brethren, it inevitably follows that the Legislature can equitably deal with them on the same principle ; and, by ' Extracted from " Hansard's Debates." DISESTABLISHMENT. referring to these speeches, Mr. Gladstone evidently means to indicate that he is still of that opinion. Nor is Mr. Gladstone a daring innovator or revolutionist, in holding and acting upon such an opinion. He is simply follow- ing in the steps of the greatest statesmen, lawyers, historians, and even bishops of the past. It is Lord Coke who has declared that " the settlement of tithes among us has been by ancient and unquestionable laws of the land." " To the Prince, or to the law, we acknowledge ourselves indebted for all our secular possessions," was the asser- tion of Bishop Horsley; while Bishop Randolph similarly admitted that "the State has granted us emoluments. The establishment of parishes, the endowment of them with lands and tithes ... are the creatures of the civil authority." The same doctrine has, in varied forms, been held and enforced by Lord Brougham, Lord Hard- wicke, Lord Campbell, and Lord Coleridge ; Sir James Mackintosh, Lord Melbourne, Lord Althorp, Earl Russell, and Lord Macaulay ; by John Stuart Mill, Bishop Stil- lingfleet, Bishop Watson, and Dean Milman. Where are the authorities of equal weight on the other side ? 1 The right of the State to deal with the property now in the possession of the Church of England is quite dis- tinct from another question of great practical interest, 1 It would be a waste of space to deal with the shallow sophism that the Church costs the nation nothing, because it is not supported out of the taxes, and does not appear in the annual estimates. The monarchy, and other institutions or persons maintained out of the Consolidated Fund, are none the less supported by the nation because they do not figure in the estimates. CHURCH PROPERTY AND DISENDO WMENT. 123 viz., in what way should the State deal with that property in effecting the Disendowment which, it is admitted must accompany Disestablishment ? Even those who are agreed upon the first may, and do, differ in regard to the second. And the difference relates mainly to two points — one, the extent to which the members of the Church of England should be permitted to retain the property now in its hands ; the other, the body, or bodies, in whom that property should hereafter be vested. On these points the reader is referred to a statement which will be found in an Appendix. CHAPTER IX. RESULTS OF DISESTABLISHMENT ALREADY EFFECTED. Disestablishment is spoken of, by some, as though it were an altogether untried experiment, and one fraught with terrible danger ; whereas it has already taken place in several countries, and with results which ought to reassure the most timid of English Churchmen. It is probably not generally known, that State- Churches once existed in the United States of America, and that, even after the Declaration of Independence, Episcopalianism was the State-religion in the South, and Congregationalism or Presbyterianism in the North. It is not necessary to detail the steps by which the change was effected. When that change was impending, there were many excellent men who shared the fears now felt by some among ourselves, and were filled with the keenest distress as to the fatal damage which they believed would be done to religion by its severance from the State. Dr. Wolsey, formerly President of Yale College, thus describes the feelings of Dr. Dwight and Dr. Lyman Beecher — father of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and Mrs. Stowe : " I can remember, as a boy, that Dr Dwight, when agitation was going on in Connec- RESUL TS ALREAD Y EFFECTED. 125 licut which destroyed the last faint traces of State- religion in that commonwealth, thought the foundations of religion were giving way, and in this feeling of his there were no elements of sectarianism mingled. So felt Dr. Lyman Beecher, a hopeful, courageous, self-relying man. Writing of that crisis, he said, ' It was as dark a day as ever I saw. The injury to the cause of Christ, as was then supposed, was irreparable. For several days I suffered what no tongue can tell— -for the best thing that ever happened to the churches? " The whole history of that great country since, has proved that, as Dr. Wolsey adds, "perfect freedom in supporting public worship very soon converted the apprehended curse into a blessing." What voluntaryism, unaided by the State, has done for religion in the United States within the last eighty years, was thus admirably described by the Rev. Dr. Storrs, one of the most distinguished ministers in that country, in an address to the Congregational Union in 1881 — "Let us look at some of the facts, that I may show you what the earnest Christian life of America, not wrought into established forms, but working freely, has accomplished since the century began. In the year 1800 there were 3,090 Evangelical churches in all the United States of America. In 1880 the number had multiplied to 97,090, showing a growth in eighty years of 94,000 Evangelical churches. In 1S00 we had 2,651 Evangelical ordained ministers ; in 1880 we had 69,870, a growth of about 67,000 in eighty years; and, what is more remarkable, in the last ten years the increase in the number of Evangelical ordained ministers was 22,261. Our Sunday-schools grew from an enrolled scholarship of 570,000 in 1830 to 6,580,000 in 1880— a growth of nearly 6,000,000 in fifty years. Let me go a little further, for, after all, the true test of Christian success lies in the direction of converted men. In 1S00, 26 DISESTA BLISHMEN 1\ in all Evangelical denominations in our country, there were 364,872 members, and in 1880 there were 10,065,963 — a positive increase in those eighty years of 9,701,091. The number of Evangelical societies in 1800 was one for eveiy 1,740 inhabitants; in 1800 there was one society for every 520 inhabitants. Again, in 1800 we had one ordained minister for every 2,000 inhabitants, and in 1880 we had one for every 717 inhabitants. In 1800 we had one communicant to every fifteen of the population ; in 18S0 we have communicants in Evangelical churches for every five of the popular tion. While our population has increased during these eighty years about ten-fold, the number of communicants has increased almost twenty-eight fold. During the last thirty years of intense struggle between free thought and Christianity, the growth of our communi- cants has been 6,535,985. These are some of the figures that will serve to illustrate to you, that, to borrow Milton's thought, ' If truth has an open field and freedom, we need fear nothing from Would that we, in this country, even with our Church Establishments, could give so good an account of the provision made for religious worship and instruction ! And how has it fared with the Episcopal Church in the United States since its disestablishment ? There is abundant testimony from its own ministers to show that it has flourished far more than it did before that event These are the words of Dr. Pusey, than whom a more unexceptionable witness could not be desired : " Severed in the United States from the protection of the State — nay, rather trampled in the dust by those who hated it for the loyalty of its members — it first struck root when it was deprived of all human aid. Long ago it quad- rupled, while the population doubled only."' Sir John 1 " Eiseinlcon," p. 277. " The Church of the Age " (2nd series), RESULTS ALREADY EFFECTED. 127 Mowbray, speaking in the House of Commons on a Bill for the increase of the Episcopate, said : " What was the case of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States ? It was a voluntary church, and was not above ninety years old. What was the number of its bishops ? More than twice the number of those of the Church of England, whose numbers were five times those of the Episcopal Church in the United States. What has hap- pened in the Colonial Church during the same time? Fifty years ago there were, perhaps, half a dozen bishops in the colonies; now there were upwards of sixty. That showed what voluntary organization could do to promote the efficiency of the Church." The testimony of the American Church itself may also be cited. Bishop Coxe, of Western New York, while deprecating Disestablishment in England, says : " For my own country, I devoutly thank God an ecclesiastical establishment is an impossibility." It is imagined by some that by losing what they call " State-recognition of religion," which they maintain an Established Church involves, religion itself would lose its hold upon the community. But is it so in the United States ? De Tocqueville, in his great work on Democracy in America, says : "There is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America." Nay, more, he states that he inquired carefully into the cause of this, inquired of men of all sects, and especially of the clergy of various denominations, including Roman Catholic priests, and they mainly attributed the powerful 9 DJSES TABLISHMENT. dominion of religion in their country to the separation of Church and State. " I do not hesitate to affirm," he says, " that during my stay in America I did not meet with a single individual of the clergy or of the laity who was not of the same opinion on this point." If we require more recent evidence to the same effect, we may take the declarations of Rev. Dr. Macaulay, who has visited the States quite recently. He says : " Some who have not visited America may imagine that the absence of an Established Church implies a low state of religious feeling. There could not be a greater mistake. Religion pervades the nation to a far greater extent than in any country of the Old World, and Christianity is far more honoured and influential in every department of public and social, as well as domestic life." 1 Let us now turn to the British colonies. Owing to the resistless demand of public opinion, State-aid to religion has been abolished in Canada, South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbadoes, Honduras, Antigua, St. Kitts, Grenada, the Mauritius, and South Africa. What have been the results? Have the evils which the friends of Establishment in this country prognosticate come to pass ? In every instance, so far as is known, the exact reverse has been the case, as is gratefully acknowledged by those most intimately acquainted with the circum- stances. Of Canada, the Rev. Dr. Hatch, Vice-Principal 1 " Across the Ferry," pp. 370 371- RESUL TS ALREAD Y EFFECTED. 1 29 of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, and formerly rector of the High School at Quebec, says that when the "Clergy Reserves " in Canada were secularized, it was thought that it "threatened almost the existence of the lamp of the gospel." Instead of which, he shows that the Church has made great progress ; as one illustration of which, he cites the fact, that the number of clergy in Upper Canada has increased within ten years — from 1858 to 1868— from 173 to 268, and that the funds of the single diocese of Montreal have increased during the same period upwards of ^23,000 sterling, being at the rate of ^290 for every clergyman, or ^"360 for every parish in the diocese. 1 To the same effect, Sir Francis Hincks, in a pamphlet on " Religious Endowments in Canada," declares that " the influence of the Church was largely extended after the dissolution of its connec- tion with the State." If we turn to the West Indies, we have testimony of a similar character. At the Newcastle Church Congress, in 1881, a day was devoted to a discussion of the ques- tion — " What we gain and what we lose by the connection between Church and State." After many theoretical opinions had been expressed, Dr. Mitchinson, Bishop of Barbadoes, asked permission to speak, " as being pro- bably the only man in the gathering who had prac- tical experience of State-support and Disestablishment working together side by side." And very remarkable is the testimony he bears. He compares State-established 1 MacmillaiCt Magazine for Oct., 1868. ija blSESTABLISHMENf. Barbadoes with the Disestablished Windward Islands. In the former, he says that during the whole period of his administration, though they talked much in their. Church council, they never made one real distinct step forward in adapting themselves to changing circumstances. " In the disestablished diocese of the Windward Island, on the other hand, though there was strenuous resistance to Disestablish- ment on the part of the clergy, and a large section of the laity, when once it was a fait accompli, and we were brought face to face with the necessity of re-construction, and self-support, church-life did, as a matter of fact, develop itself with wonderful spontaneity ; and I have no hesitation in saying that in the Disestablished Islands the education of each little church in the ways in which the church should legislate for itself, and provide for itself, was an unexpectedly rapid progress." He then shows in what respects this rapid develop- ment took place, and mentions " the much greater interest which the laity took in church questions," "im- proved clergy discipline," the far greater liberality of the members of the church, " the results of Disendowment were not the diminution but the augmentation of clergy power in the different islands. Disendowment, too, did not mean with us any more than it need mean with you Congregationalism, or the starving of the church in country districts, ... for the strong bore the burdens of the weak." Of Jamaica, the Bishop of Jamaica says that as a consequence of Disestablishment, he believed that the Church would acquire a deeper establishment in the hearts and affections of the people. Let us turn next to South Africa. A remarkable letter RESULTS ALREADY EFFECTED. from a clergyman in that country appeared in The Church Times of Sept. 14, 1877, in which he says, after referring to "the unfettered and vigorous life of the Disestablished Colonial and American branches of the Church," " We have our own special conflicts, difficulties, and trials, but we can see with our eyes what God hath wrought in testimony to the truth and office of the English Church. We have seen a single diocese grow in thirty years into a province ruled by six bishops, soon to be supplemented by a seventh, for the new Transvaal diocese, and we look upon our development as a convincing proof of the inherent vitality of the English Church when untram- melled by Erastianism." Still more striking was the testimony of Dr. Merriman, the late Bishop of Grahamstown, at the Church Congress at Croydon in 1877. He said — " I have been for thirty years a member of a non-established Church, which has had to solve most of the questions which have been mooted to-day, according to the practice which was referred to yesterday, namely, solvittir ambulando. With respect to the Dis- senting bodies, I must say that our relations towards them are very different to what they are in this country. Peace and harmony subsist between us, simply because there is no jealousy of the same kind that there is here. We are regarded by our fellow-Christians of a different communion as a spiritual body ; our courts are spiritual courts ; our canons are not mere waste paper ; they are not a by- word for their inapplicability to the circumstances under which we exist ; our canons are living canons, guiding our conduct, and are recognized by the courts of the country as such. I would never say one word to assist, or raise one finger to forward, the Disestablish- ment of the English Church, but at the same time I would rather resign my ministry than again put my neck under the yoke of the Church as it exists in England." DISESTABLISHMENT. The evidence from the Australian colonies is similar. Mr. Anthony Forster, the historian of New South Wales, says : " Since the abolition of the State-grant in aid of religion in the colony, the various Churches have not only been more vigorous and useful in their respective spheres, but the jealousies and animosities to which that grant gave rise, have entirely disappeared, and the tone of Christian society has been improved and elevated." The Bishop of Adelaide, writing in the periodical called The Mission Field, in 1867, says— " A moderate but certain provision lias been made for the clergy of the diocese of Adelaide, not by damping or repudiating the voluntary principle, but by correcting its unsteadiness and supple- menting its deficiencies. If the ordinances of religion are worth having they are worth paying for. I rejoice to say that this prin- ciple is conscientiously held and extensively acted upon by the members of the Church of England in South Australia. Hence the early independence of the diocese of Adelaide of all aid from the Colonial Treasury and the Society for the Promulgation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts." Added to all" these facts are those connected with an experiment in Disestablishment taking place close at hand, and within a few years. Nothing could be more lugubrious than the forebodings indulged in when the Disestablishment of the Irish Church was passing through Parliament. The Protestant Church, it was asserted, would be disastrously crippled, if not totally destroyed. What has been the actual issue of the event so much dreaded? The Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette of Dec. 10, 1881, says: "It is wonderful what Irish Churchmen have done for their Church during the past ten years, RESULTS ALREADY EFFECTED. 133 certainly more than for hundreds of years previously, Cathedrals built or restored, Churches built or rebuilt and adorned, glebe houses erected all over the country." The Christian Observer says that "a new life seems to have been breathed into the slumbering Church." The Church Times, Feb. 17, 1882, says: "There is more life, more true activity, more even of Church feel- ing and Church doctrine visible in Ireland now than at any time since the Reformation." The declarations of the bishops of the Irish Church are in harmony with these statements. At the annual meeting of the Ossory Diocesan Synod at Kilkenny, July 4, 1882, the Bishop said : " No one could look attentively upon our Church's history during the last ten or twelve years, without perceiving that, by the good hand of God upon them, there had been a decided growth in all that was best, and purest, and most important. Never, in his recollection, had their Church been more clear or united in her testimony to Christian truth or more faithful in every good word and work." So far from there being the general desolation appre- hended, especially in the country parishes, the Bishop of Ossory and Ferns assured his Synod, in 1881, that "there had not been a Church closed in the diocese during the ten years that have passed since the Disestab- lishment." Still more emphatic are the words of the Rev. G. de Meade, Rector of Killamey, in a letter to The Spectator in April, 1879 — 134 DISESTABLISHMENT. " The subscriptions of our own members sufficed for our needs, amounting as they did to nearly a quarter of a million each year, with the happy result that no congregation, however remote or scattered, has been left without a resident clergyman. In addition to this, more churches have been built, restored, or enlarged, than had ever been done in the same number of years previously." Very striking also is the satisfaction with which Lord Plunket, the Bishop of Meath, regards the Disestablish- ment of his Church, at least in one respect. Referring to the turbulence and agitation which have recently prevailed in Ireland, he has said — "Had we been called upon to face a land agitation at the lime when our clergy, as ministers of a State-protected Church, received their tithes from the poor, or even when they drew their tithe rent- charge from the landlords, some of them in very needy circumstances, how intolerable would have been our position, both as regards the obloquy and outrage we should have had to endure, and the cruel straits to which we should have been inevitably reduced. But now, however, the very disaster which seemed most to threaten our down- fall has been overruled for good. Our separation from the State thus takes away one, at least, of the handles whereby our enemies were wont to bring us into disrepute ; and our dissociation from all connection with the land, whether as receivers of tithe or rent-charge, has saved us from those fresh complications which an agitation such as the present would at that time have brought about." There is another country also close at hand in which there has been partial disestablishment of a Church ; not, indeed, by any act of the Legislature, but by the voluntary action of the people. In 1843 as many as 451 ministers of the Established Church of Scotland, unable longer to bear what they regarded as the yoke of the State in the appointment of ministers of the Church, quitted that Church, and went RESUL TS ALREAD Y EFFECTED. 1 35 forth, with their congregations, to found the Free Church of Scotland. They gave up tithes and manses, and were without a single edifice in which to worship. And what has been the result of that memorable exodus ? In forty years the Free Church — the members of which are far less wealthy than the Episcopalians of England — have occupied every part of Scotland with new churches ; have built manses for their ministers, and have founded theo- logical colleges, and, for a time, have supported day schools also. They have zealously carried on missionary work abroad, as well as created numerous religious agencies at home. The membership of the Church is nearly 300,000. Its contributions for all purposes amount to ^£590,333 per annum; while it has raised since the disruption the astonishing sum of ^14,654,937 Perhaps the most remarkable effect of the formation of the Free Church has been the stimulus which it has given to the Established Church. Dr. Norman McLeod, before the disruption, wrote : " The sins of the Church are (1) covetousness — only ;£ 20,000 for the whole Church, for the cause of Christ — not £20 from each parish; (2) Too much mingling of the Church and world." Now, roused by the activity of other Churches, it boasts of raising more than ^300,000 a year by volun- tary contributions. If to these results of Disestablishment, where it has already actually taken place, there be added the achieve- * The United Presbyterian Church— the result of another seces- sion — raises nearly .£400,000 a year. 136 DISESTABLISHMENT. merits of the several Nonconformist bodies, as well as those of the Church of England which have sprung from the voluntary action of its members, the total result should be enough to convince the least hopeful Church- men of the groundlessness of some of the fears which have been excited by the prospect of Disestablishment and partial Disendowment. That it " will be fatal to the institution which Churchmen revere," and be "fraught with frightful disaster to the nation," 1 may be asserted by political partizans for a political purpose j but can be believed by no one who considers the facts of the case with sobermindedness and candour. 1 Marquis of Salisbury, October, 1885. CHAPTER X. CONCLUSION. It was to be expected that the course of events during a lengthened period, the character of much of the legisla- tion of the present century, with the action of political parties, and the tendency of public opinion, would prepare the minds of the great body of English Churchmen for a fundamental change in the relations of their Church to the State. That that has been the case with many is quite apparent. A section — small as yet, it must be ad- mitted — openly avow their conviction that such a change is desirable for Church and State alike, and are willing to assist in promoting it. A much larger section has reached the same conclusion ; but will not take the responsibility of hastening the event. Some admit that Disestablishment can be staved off only by effecting reforms in the Church, and suggest, however fruitlessly, measures for the purpose. Others are indifferent, from a feeling that Disestablishment will not effect any serious change in Church or State ; and others would submit to Dis- establishment, but tenaciously cling to the endowments of which the Church now has the benefit. Lastly, there '38 DISESTABLISHMENT. are those who passionately resist both Disestablishment and Disendowment, and who, in many cases, make the most extravagant statements, and hurl the most indignant invectives at the heads of those who are promoting the change which they so strongly deprecate. These they charge with fanaticism, with hatred of the Church, with the grossest dishonesty of purpose, and with designing not merely to uproot and destroy the Church, but to secure a triumph for infidelity and irreligion ! This mode of conducting a serious controversy was rebuked in dignified, but severe, terms by Dean Alford 1 some years ago, and his language is still more applicable now. Nothing, he said, could less become the attitude and temper displayed by some of those who deprecate a change in the legal position of the Church. "The approved weapons among them seem to be an indiscrimi- nate calling of foul names, an attributing of motives which those charged with them would rather die than entertain, and a studious mystification of the great subject at issue by fallacies which, if they do not see through, they are not fit to handle it at all. ... It is unfair to characterize those who forewarn others of the approach of this change, and endeavour to prepare them for it, as the enemies of the Church." He also spoke of — "The extreme injustice of denouncing all those who are actually fighting against the principle of State Establishment as leagued for the destruction of the Church of England. Never was a denuncia- tion less borne out by truth. The most zealous Nonconformist, if he be also a zealous Christian, may ardently wish for the Church of England power to do her work on the population entrusted to her, "Essays and Addresses," by Henry Alford, D.D., Dean of Canterbury, 1869. CONCLUSION: 139 and may believe that the issue of the present system is to withhold that power. And not only way this be so, but, having the privilege of knowing several of the leaders of the 'Liberation' movement, I am able to say that it is so. No member of our Church would more firmly withstand any effort to cripple or enfeeble her real usefulness than would these her reputed enemies ; and yet (or rather, from their point of view, anil therefore) they believe themselves bound to use every effort to procure her severance from the State." The Dean, therefore, earnestly begged of his readers — " To eliminate from their minds the whole of the gratuitous abuse which is, by those who ought to know better, heaped on the heads of persons who presume to advocate or even to foretell, the Dis- establishment of the English Church." Whether this exhortation will be of more avail now than when it was first uttered is doubtful ; but it is certain that every day an increasing number of the English people show a readiness to discuss the whole question with a thoroughness, and a calmness of temper, which argue well for its settlement on a sound and lasting basis. "It works well," is the defence of the established system which is offered by those who cannot defend it on the ground of abstract principle. " We take our stand on the merits of the system we administer," said the late lamented Primate, Dr. Tait. But does it work well ? And are not the demerits of the system, at least, as great as, if they do not exceed, its merits ? Can a system be said to work well which allows of the existence of all the frightful evils connected with the exercise, and sale, of the rights of Church patronage? Which tolerates the mockeries involved in the appoint- ments of bishops? Which remunerates the clergy on i 4 o DISESTABLISHMENT. principles so inequitable, and so irrational? If the system works well, how is it that such bitter antagonism prevails between what are really contending sects in the Church; that there is so much costly and fruitless ecclesiastical litigation, and that a Royal Commission has had to recommend most serious changes in order to to allay irritation, and secure order in the Church ? How is it that clergy and laity alike express dissatisfac- tion with some portion or other of the Church's machinery, and declare that it cannot keep pace with the wants of a growing population, and the changing circumstances of the times, without reconstruction or readjustment? The eulogies which are just now being heaped upon the Church of England may be due to it as a Church ; but they ought not to divert attention from the grievous deficiencies and abuses which belong to the Establish- ment, and to the existence of which Churchmen them- selves have borne emphatic testimony. It is, indeed, the very excellencies of the Church, as displayed in the new activity of its members, which makes the evils of the Establishment more palpable and more intolerable. And, paradoxical as it may seem, it will be the Church which will ultimately kill the Establishment. It is a practice among upholders of the Establishment to point to the faults, or the supposed faults, to be found in connection with various Nonconformist systems, as furnishing reasons against Disestablishment. In particular, objection is taken to the mode of appointing Noncon- formist ministers, who are said to be dependent on the COXCLUSIOX. 141 "whims and caprices " of their congregations ; while the Established clergy are independent It might be replied, that many of the latter are dependent for support on their congregations in exactly the same way as are Non- conformist ministers ; and that the independence of the clergy involves in many cases the bondage of the lait}-. But these objections are, in fact, applicable mainly to the non-connexional Dissenting bodies, and it will be open to the Church of England to adopt other and, it may be, better modes of organization and church work, and to profit by the experience gained from the mistakes and failures of the non-established religious communities. It is at present forced to adopt a course of action which is felt to be either inapt, or absolutely objectionable. While one portion of our fellow-countrymen oppose Disestablishment because they believe that it would be followed by results which will be disastrous, another class are appalled only by the " enormous difficulties : ' to be encountered in effecting the change. Before the Irish Church was disestablished the cry of mm possumus was raised, and it was asserted, and no doubt firmly believed, that Church and State were so inextricably interwoven that it would be almost, if not quite, im- possible to separate them. The able parliamentary draughtsman, by whom that measure was constructed, effectually dispelled that delusion. The work of mere Disestablishment was found to be unexpectedly easy, and the technical difficulties in the way of Disendowment ■did not prove to be very formidable. But, it is alleged, DISESTABLISHMENT. that the Disestablishment of the English Church would be, in comparison, a herculean task ; or, rather, that Disendowment would most severely test the skill and patience of our legislators. No doubt; but in this case, as in the case of other great legislative reforms, the practical and persistent character of the English intellect will prove equal to the occasion. When the mind of the nation has been made up, and definitely expressed, in regard to the object to be realized, there will be a great clearing of the political atmosphere, and minds now full of vague doubts and confused ideas will be bent to the work of devising, or modifying, the legislative schemes for solving the problem which to some now seems absolutely insoluble. Time, full information, and ample discussion will be required, and, happily, there is no party in the State which desires that the object sought for should be attained by other than strictly constitutional methods. What will be needed will be courage to undertake the work ; sagacity and fair-mindedness in grappling with its many details ; persistency in endeavours to overcome unlooked-for difficulties, and faith as regards the ultimate result. Let these high qualities be displayed, as they have been in former crises in English history, and there will have been peacefully effected a revolution which will render our national institutions, more than they have ever yet been, a means of promoting the happiness of the people, and an object of admiration to the rest of the civilized world. APPENDIX. PROPOSALS FOR DISENDOWMENT. It is a familiar device of the opponents of any great change, whether political or social, to seek to evade the discussion of principles by fixing attention on details, or by raising and giving undue prominence to mere side issues. The advo- cates of a principle are first called upon to produce their plans for giving to it practical effect ; and, when the plans are produced, they are criticized with a degree of energy unfavourable for calm discussion, and often to the neglect of the principle involved. While the measure for abolishing the Irish Church Estab- lishment was, so far as respects the process of Disestablish- ment, regarded as satisfactory, the method of Disendoivment adopted by the Irish Church Act was thought by many of its supporters to be objectionable. The opinion widely pre- vailed—and it has since been strengthened, rather than diminished — that concessions similar to those which it had been thought necessary to make in the case of Ireland, ought not to be assented to when the English Establishment came to be dealt with by Parliament. It was that feeling which led the Executive Committee of the organization popularly known as the " Liberation Society," to appoint a special committee to obtain legal and other information required for the preparation of a scheme of Disestablishment, which should not be open to the objec- tions urged against the Irish measure. Two years were spent in patient work for this purpose, and the results were made public in May, 1877, in the form of " Practical Sug- 10 144 APPENDIX. gestions relative to the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Church of England." It is the scheme outlined in these suggestions, and which have been eight years before the public, which has lately been the subject of vehement attack. 1 It was the opinion of a competent authority, 2 ex- pressed at the time, that — " There never was a public measure which has ever been so tho- roughly ground out and trodden forth for legislation as this is ; never an instance of a powerful party smarting under long injustice that has considered the means of redressing it and removing an ancient grievance in a spirit of such judicial fairness and patience, of such impartiality and forbearance. The scheme, I believe, is as sound from the point of view of lawyer and politician, as it is just and moderate from the point of view of religious toleration." As to the fast point, opinions, no doubt, differ ; but there is one characteristic of these " Practical Suggestions" which recent events have made important, and that is their modesty. Instead of being put forth in the form of an ultimatum of a political party, or a plan to be insisted upon with in- exorable rigour, this is the strictly tentative way in which the framers introduce their scheme — " It would be presumption to express a confident opinion on points which have hitherto been so little considered by the public, that they present themselves in various ways to various minds. . . . An a priori measure, framed in advance of the times, and with reference only to abstract principles, would possess a certain degree of speculative interest, but would not commend itself to the judgment of practical politicians. As time elapses, and public knowledge and interest in- crease, and opinion takes a more definite shape, new methods, or 1 The scheme described in the article entitled " Religious Equality," in the lately published volume, " The Radical Programme," is an ex- position of, and a commentary upon, that published in 1877, and, indeed, it is stated to be so. The authors of the " Suggestions " are, however, not responsible for the writer's mode of describing and defending them. • Mr. Frederic Harrison on "A practical way of Disestablishing and Disendowing the Church, 1878." PROPOSALS FOR DISENDOWMENT. modifications of old methods, will suggest themselves ; difficulties formerly thought insuperable may vanish, and changes once regarded as hazardous will be readily assented to. Although it is believed that these suggestions rest upon a sound basis, they do not profess to be more than hints to aid in the public discussion of a great public question. They are a contribution towards the stock of ideas out of which there will ultimately be evolved a complete scheme, which will commend itself to the judgment of the nation." Yet it is these " hints to aid in the public discussion of a great public question," that have been seized upon as afford- ing indubitable proof of the final intentions of those who are promoting the cause of Disestablishment. Still further, to terrify those whose vested interests are supposed to be threatened, it is also assumed that the Liberal Government, on whom may devolve the task of passing a Disestablishment Bill, will certainly construct it on the lines of these sugges- tions. The men who prepared them were far less sanguine ; anticipating, as they did, " diversities of opinion, even among those who are at one as to the object at which they aim." They also fully recognized the unwisdom of being "mercilessly logical," and of disregarding " the tendency of all English legislation to sacrifice merely theoretical considerations, that it may mitigate the rigours of inevitable change, and deal generously, as well as justly, with vested interests of every kind." They, in fact, addressed themselves to those who felt the need of a great change in the relations of Church and State, and were honestly desirous of effecting them in a wise and equitable spirit ; but they have for a time to endure the denunciations of those who would object to almost any proposals for doing that to which, under any circumstances, they would object. The following is a brief synopsis of the main points of the "Practical Suggestions," so far as concerns Disendow- ment :— i. The Church of England not being a corporation, but an aggregate of corporations, compensation should be granted, not to the Church as a whole, but to the individuals whose pecuniary rights are affected. i 4 6 APPENDIX. 2. The clergy should be released from their present obligations, and be left free to contract new obligations with the Episcopal, or any other Church. And regard to that fact should be had in fixing the amount of the compensation to be paid to them. Regard should also be paid to the age of the clergy to be compensated ; the older men receiving their present net incomes. 3. The clergy should be allowed to commute their compensation claims ; but the amount should be paid to them, and not to any church body. 4. Private patrons should receive compensation for the loss of their patronage. 5. The cathedrals should be under national control, and be main- tained for such uses as Parliament may from time to time determine. 6. The churchyards should be transferred to some parochial body. 7. Proprietary churches should remain in the hands of the present proprietors, and be at their disposal. 8. A distinction should be drawn between ancient and modern churches. Modern churches are defined to be those built since 1818 ; when the first of the Church Building Acts was passed, and when Churchmen began to build churches on a large scale by voluntary con- tributions. 9. The ancient churches should be " vested in a parochial board, to be elected by the ratepayers— which board should have power to deal with them for the general benefit of the parishioners, in such ways as it may determine. The power of sale, at a fair valuation, and under proper regulations, should also be given." 10. Modern churches built at the sole expense of any persons living should be at their disposal. 11. Churches (other than parochial churches which have been rebuilt) erected since 1818 by voluntary subscriptions "should become the pro- perty of the existing congregations, and be held in trust for their use." 12. Churches built since 1818, partly by subscription and partly from public sources, should be "offered to the congregations ; " the amount derived from public sources being a charge on the building, but subject to redemption. 13. Modern endowments should be dealt with in the same way as modern churches {see 9, 10, 11, 12) ; but they should be charged with the annuities paid as compensation to the clergy who have been the recipients of such endowments. 14. Incumbents should be allowed to occupy their parsonages as long as they are ministers of the churches in which they now officiate ; but, as the value of the parsonages will have been included in the compensar tion paid to them, rent should be paid. PROPOSALS FOR D1SEND 0 WMENT. 147 15. Provision for the redemption of the tithes should be made. 16. The surplus property should be disposed of as Parliament may from time to time determine. It was to be expected that such proposals, with the accom- panying details, would be keenly criticized, and that not a few flaws, or deficiencies, would be detected. It has, how- ever, happened that very few objections have been taken to, what may be termed, the workmanship of the scheme, and that protests have been almost limited to three points— (1) the mode of dealing with the cathedrals and ancient churches ; (2) the mode of dealing with the modern churches and endowments ; and (3) the proposal to vest property in congregations of Episcopalians, instead of in the Church, or in a Church body. The first and the second have led to the wildest predictions, and have excited the most grotesque fears ; while the third has been the subject of much mis- conception. It might have been supposed that if the cathedrals were placed " under national control," 1 and " maintained for such uses as Parliament may from time to time determine," there would be an adequate guarantee, not for their preservation only, but for their use for purposes not likely to outrage public feeling. But it much better suits the purpose of those who wish to attach odium to a cause which they dislike, to declare roundly that the cathedrals " will be let from Sunday to Sunday to the highest bidder, be he Nonconformist minister or infidel lecturer ; " and even to suggest that it is really desired that they should resound with the cries of the atheist and the blasphemer 1 So, in like manner, the sug- gestion that the ancient churches should be vested in paro- chial boards, 3 with power to deal with them " for the general benefit of the parishioners," and that the power of » The Scotch cathedrals are already under the control of Her Majesty's Board of Works. 2 Even Church reformers now propose that parish churches should be under the control of the parishioners. 148 APPENDIX. sale, at a fair valuation, and " under proper regulations," is freely translated into an assurance that the venerable edifices, around which cluster so many hallowed associations, will be turned into drinking-saloons or barracks ! The authors of these discreditable representations are, at least, impartial, in that they slander the whole of their fellow-countrymen, as well as that section of the community whom they specially wish to discredit. For they can point to nothing in either the parochial, or the municipal, life of England which justifies these and similar hysterical predictions. It will rest with Parlia- ment to determine the ultimate disposal of the ecclesiastical edifices ; the authorities in whom they shall be vested, and the conditions on which they are to be held ; and in such a matter Parliament may be fully trusted to act in accordance with public feeling. Nor is there any class of the community, in town or country, Nonconformist or non-religious, which has, by either its past conduct or its present demands, fur- nished the slightest justification for the fear that reverential feeling in regard to places of worship, and a consideration for the religious susceptibilities of others, will disappear with the disappearance of Established Churches. If the fear be genuine, those who have it show that they do not understand the character of the English people ; while if it be merely feigned, to maintain a system incapable of defence by worthier means, no condemnation can be too severe for the use of such a weapon in such a cause. The remaining point is one in regard to which consider- able difference of opinion may reasonably exist ; for the questions involved are full of difficulty. The Irish Church Act fettered the clergy, by continuing their incomes only so long as they continued to serve the Church ; while it declared that the existing ecclesiastical law should still be binding upon them. It also authorized the appointment of a " Church Body " by Royal Charter, and provided for the transfer to that body of all the property to be retained on behalf of the members of the Church ; as well as of the funds derived from the commutation of clerical claims. These PROPOSALS FOR D IS END 0 IV MEN 7 . 149 provisions led to financial scandals, which brought the Act into temporary disrepute, and produced the conviction that when the English Church was disestablished, the Irish pre- cedent ought not in these respects to be followed. That conviction was also strengthened by tlie fear that the Church of England would become a rich and powerful ecclesiastical corporation, uncontrolled by the State, and therefore a means of mischief to the community. The scheme now under consideration was framed to meet this objection of politicians, but to the extent that its authors have succeeded, they have incurred the anger of those who look at the matter from an ecclesiastical standpoint only. For they are described as having made "a really impudent attempt to force on us a new system of State-made Congre- gationalism foreign to our ecclesiastical system — with the ail-but avowed desire of breaking up the Church into indefinite groups, and the avowed hope that this may produce a crop of future schisms." And, further, these proposals are said to be " stamped, one and all, by the same spirit of ran- corous hate to the Church, not as an Establishment, but as a religious institution ; calculated, one and all, with malig- nant ingenuity, to injure her work, and weaken her efficiency as a religious institution after Disestablishment." ' It is not likely that any disavowal of such intentions, how- ever emphatic, will be accepted in the quarters in which these imputations emanate ; but it is due to the authors to state the grounds on which these particular " Suggestions " were based. To the anticipated objection, that " they recognized the existence and interests of congregations, and ignore the Church," it is replied — "Who are most concerned in the matter— the persons who have been accustomed to worship in the churches, and have had the benefit of the endowments hitherto, or a vague, intangible body designated ' the Church'? In the Act of Disestablishment it will be the duty of the ' Bishop of Peterborough, October 14, 1885. APPENDIX. State not to legislate in the interest of the Church of England, or of any Church, but to make compensations and concessions in the way which will best prevent the infliction of injustice and loss where they will be palpably and directly felt. It would do this by giving liberty of choice and action to the congregations of Episcopalians who have had the use of the churches and the endowments. On the other hand, the greatest possible disservice might be done to them by handing over the property to an institution to which they might not wish to belong, or to some of the regulations of which they might strongly object. The method here proposed would not prevent the congregations uniting themselves with an Episcopal Church, constituted by voluntary arrangements, and even transferring to a representative Church Body the property placed at their disposal by Parliament. Such transactions, however, should be transactions between the congregations and the Church, and m t between the Church and Parliament. The Legislature has no right to assume that all Episcopalians will, throughout all time, constitute but one Church ; neither ought it, either by bribes or by legal compulsion, to continue to bind the Church of England together as it now does by the still more cohesive forces of an Establishment. It will be seen that these suggestions, while they would leave a considerable amount of Church property in the hands of Episcopalians, recognize the right of congregations, and of the inhabitants of particular localities, to deter- mine for themselves their future ecclesiastical relationships." And these pleas might have been strengthened by a reference to the fact that the endowments of the Church were not given to the Church as a whole, but to what Mr. Freeman calls "the several local churches;" the Church, as a single body, having no property. In regard, however, to this and other portions of the problem involved in Disendowment, it may be said, that if it be not premature to make such proposals, it is certainly too soon to either dogmatically press, or to dogmatically object to them. These, and similar questions, will be dis- cussed in a very different spirit, after the nation has resolved on Disestablishment, from that in which they are dealt with now that that stage has not been fully reached. The English people will, no doubt, address themselves to the task in the reasonable and accommodating spirit which usually charac- terizes all their great constitutional changes. Muchwilldepend PROPOSALS FOR D IS EN DO WMENT. 151 on the popular temper at the time when Disestablishment takes place, and much on the character of the then existing House of Commons, and of the Government by which a disestablishing Act will be framed and carried. It may, however, safely be predicted, that when that Act finds a place in the Statute-book, it will bear the marks of a scrupulous regard to the principles of equity, as well as of concern for the highest interests of the people. INDEX. A. Aberdare, Lord, 59. Adelaide, Bi-diop of, 132. Advantages of Disestablishment, 97. Africa, South, 130. Alford, Dean, 138. America, 124. Arguments, Old, abandoned, 17. Armagh, Archbishop of, 81. Arnold, Dr., no. Arnold, Mr. A., M.P., 114. Australia, South, 132. B. Barbadoes, Bishop of, 129. Bcecher, Kev. Lymau, 124. Bell, Dr., 116. Buckle, Mr., 21. Bulstrode, Canon, 115. Burke, Mr., 36, 82. Bury, R«v. W., 94. Buxton, Sir T. F., 43. C. Campbell, Dr., 16. Carnarvon, Lord, 89, 107. Chalmers, Dr., 78. Chamberlain, Mr. J., 15. Christian Observer, The, 133. Church and State, Possible conditions of union of, 13. Church Establishments, Theories of, Church of England as a Church and as an Establishment, 23. Church of England in time of Eliza- beth, 23 ; lames I., lames IL, 34. Church 0/ England Quarterly Re- view, 78. Church Property, Value of, no. Church Reform, Want of agreement Church Times, 86, 96, 99, 133. Civil establishment of Religion, Great wave of opinion against, 14. Clergy and Parliamentary Reform, 38 ; and Com Laws, 40 ; and Slavery, 41 ; and Criminal Code, 43 ; and Popular Education, 44; and Bible Society, 46 ; and Peace and War, Clergy, Social influence of, 74. Coke, Lord, 122. Coleridge, 16. Colonies, The, 128. Conventicle Act, 24. Curates, 99. D. Defoe, Daniel, 34. Disendowment,"98, 108. Disraeli, Mr.. 82. Durham, Bishop of, 17, 76, 103. E. Elizabeth, Church in time of, 23. Elliot, Hon. H. A., 113. Establishment, Influence of on Clergy, 50. Established by Law, 57. F. Five Mile Act, 24. Forster, Mr. W. E., 107. Fox, C. J., 34, 36, 37. Freeman, Mr. E. A., £8. Fremantle, Canon, 53. Froude, Mr., 27, 89. G. Gibbon, 83. Girdlestone, Canon, 93. Gladstone, Mr., 16, 65, 76, 79, 88 94, 107, 120. Grahamstown, Bishop of, 131. Grey, Sir Geo., 81. Guardian, The, 52, 71. H. t .;. <■*/;' Hallam, 35. Harrison, Mr. F., 117. Harwood, Mr. G., 49. Hatch, Rev. Dr., 128. Homilies, The, 31. Hooker, 15, 118. Horsley, Bishop, 122. Hughes, Mr. G. B., 5 3. Inglis, Sir R., 119. Ireland, Results of Disestablishment Irish Church, 81. Irish Church Act, 120. Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette, 132. Jamaica, 130. Jessop, Rev. Dr., 94. Johnnes, Mr. A., 61. Jones, Kev. Griffith, 57 . Jones, Rev. J. Powell, 50. Justyn Martyr, 83. King, Rev. Bryan, joi. Lancaster, James, 45. Law, Dr., 47. Lawrence, Rev. T. J., 49. Lecky, Mr., 21, 25, 3Qi Liberty, Religious, 23. J Liddon, Canon, 88. Liverpool, Bishop of, 53, 76, 92, 97, Livings, Sale of, 52. Long Parliament, The, 32. Loss of freedom in Church, 51. Lugubrious predictions, 81. M. Macaulay, Lord, 30, 32, 35. Macaulay, Rev. Dr., 128. MacColl, Canon, 72, 74. Mainwaring, Dr., 32. Manchester, Bishop of, 114. Martin Mr. F., on Property of the Church, no. Meade, Rev. G. de, 133. Meath, Bishop of, 134. Merriman, Rev. Dr., 131. Miall, Mr. Edward, 113. Milton, 24. Mitchinson, Rev. Dr., 129. Molesworth's History of Reform Bill, Moriey, Mr. J., M.P., 9,. Mounttield Two Hundred Years Ago, National apostacy, 102. Nonconformists and the State, 70. Nonconformity in Wales, 62. O. Ossory, Bishop of, 133. P. Paley, 16. Palmer, Sir R. (Lord Selborne), 103. Parker, Archbishop, 31. Parochial system, 91. Peterborough, Bishop of, 52, 73. Plunket, Rev. Lord, 134. Pritchard, Rev. Rees, 56. Quakers, 25. Quarterly Review, 87. Randolph, Bishop, 122. Reform agitation of 1830-1, 33. Religious argument, 17. „ Equality, 73. ,, persecutions, 19. Rochester, Bishop of, 82. Romilly, Sir S., 44. Russell, Lord John, 17. Ryle, Bishop (See Liverpool, Bishop Sacerdotalism, 86. >.ili-;.iiry, Marquis of, 79. Stephen, Sir George, 42. Scotland, Free Church of, 134. Scriptural argument abandoned, 17. Selborne, Lord, 102. Stanhope, Lord, 72, 117. Stanley, Dean, 16. Smith, Mr. Goldwin, 53. Smith, Rev. Sydney, 80. S nithu cll, Bishop of, 103. "Spoliation," T13. Storrs, Rev. Dr., 125. Stubbs, Rev. C, 93. Theories of Church Establishments, 15. Times, Tlie, and the Church of England, 48, 96. Trimmer, Mrs., 46. Vaughan, Rev. D. J., 00. Verdict of History, 18 W. Wales, Established Church in, 54. Warburton, 16. Whately, 18. Whitbread, Mr., 4= Whitgift, 23. WUberforce, Bishop, 52, 54. Winchester, Bishop of, 95 112 Working of Establishment system, t 39 PUBLICATIONS ON CHURCH AND STATE. The Case for Disestablishment: a handbook of facts and arguments in support of the claim for religious equality. Cloth, 2s. ; stiff covers, is. The Property of the English Establishment. By Fredk. Martin. 2s. 6d. Practical Suggestions relative to the Disestab- lishment and Disendowment of the Church of England. 6d. Title Deeds of the Church of England to her Parochial Endowments. By E. MlALL. is. and is. 6d. 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