LI B RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N IVLRSITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS
 
 / 
 
 THE 
 
 ESTABLISHED CHURCH 
 
 AND THE 
 
 LIQUOR TRAFFIC: 
 
 BEING A LETTER ADDRESSED TO 
 
 1bi6 Grace tbe Hrcbbtsbop of Canterburi^, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. Canon WILBERFORCE, M.A.; 
 
 ALSO ARTICLES FROM 
 
 "THE TIMES," &c., 
 
 ON THE SAME SUBJECT. 
 
 LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. 
 MANCHESTER: A. IRELAND & CO.; UNITED KINGDOM ALLIANCE, 
 
 1882.
 
 THE 
 
 Established Church and the Liquor Traffic. 
 
 Deanery, Southampton, 
 July, 1882. 
 My Lord Archbishop, 
 
 I desire very respectfully to call your Grace's 
 attention to an assertion in connection with the temporalities 
 of the Establishment, which, if only partially true, is not only 
 a grave scandal, but a source of weakness to the National 
 Church. 
 
 In these days of change, when institutions are put upon 
 their trial, we are frequently exhorted to join Church Defence 
 Associations, to combat platform agitators, and to do our 
 utmost to frustrate the designs of the Liberation Society,; 
 doubtless it is the duty of all who endorse Mr. Gladstone's 
 words, spoken in the House of Commons on May i6th, 1873, 
 ^' The severance of the union of Church and State would leave 
 nothing behind it but a bleeding and lacerated mass," to con- 
 tradict authoritatively the many monstrous misrepresentations 
 of the political opponents of the Establishment; but at the 
 same time to those who believe earnestly that the true Church 
 is a Spiritual body, who accept the definition that Church 
 membership is " very membership incorporate with the mys- 
 tical body of the Son of God, which is the blessed company 
 of all faithful people," who believe that the commission of the 
 Church is to maintain the conflict of her Lord with the special 
 corruptions of every age, it must be obvious that true Church 
 Defence is not platform agitation, but Church Reform, Church 
 Purity, Church Activity, Church Aggressiveness in the face 
 of evil ; and that the Church which will successfully defy her 
 enemies and deserve to maintain her position in the nation, 
 is the Church which is unflinchingly loyal to her Divine head ; 
 the Church which is in deed as well as in word " salt of the
 
 earth," " light in the world," an enduring principle of regenera- 
 tion, witnessing fearlessly against the soul-destroying corrup- 
 tions of the age, and ever ready to take the side of the weaker 
 and less educated of the people when oppressed, wronged,, 
 or tempted. 
 
 I am convinced that I speak the mind of tens of thousands 
 when I say that there is at this moment no form of temptation 
 to compare with the great licensed liquor traffic of this nation 
 with all its attendant horrors. I need not recapitulate the 
 shameful statistics which have been poured in upon us from 
 Parliamentary Committees, Convocation Reports, judges,, 
 recorders, coroners, magistrates, governors of gaols, and 
 masters of workhouses ; they all prove, without one shadow 
 of doubt, that an immense proportion of the crime, pauperism,, 
 and lunacy of the country is the direct fruit of the public- 
 house system. The ancient saying, " Fas est ab hoste doceri''' 
 never met with a better illustration than in the oft-quoted 
 words of Mr. Charles Buxton, M.P. " The struggle of the 
 school, the library, and the Church," he says, " all united 
 against the beerhouse and the gin-palace, is but one develop- 
 ment of the war between Heaven and Hell ;" and is not the 
 war between Heaven and Hell the Church's war, and not the 
 world's war ? Is it not the peculiar duty of the Church to be 
 foremost in the battle, against whatever special development 
 of sin may abound in each successive generation ? I venture 
 to say that if but one-half of this frightful category of pre- 
 ventable misery were true, it would be incumbent upon the 
 National Church to plunge into the battle in the name of her 
 Lord, regardless of the temporal consequences to herself. 
 
 Amongst the objects sought to be obtained by the Church 
 of England Temperance Society, of which your Grace is 
 president, is " The Removal of the Causes which lead to 
 Intemperance." The Times, in a powerful article in the issue 
 of May 19, 1882, unveils for us the great first cause of the 
 evil in the following words — " If temperance advocates really 
 mean to declare war upon the liquor traffic, they must go 
 beyond anything they have as yet ventured to propose." 
 " Instead of striking at a symptom, they must set about their 

 
 work in a root-and-branch way. They must deal with the 
 origin of the mischief, with the importers and producers of 
 intoxicating drink, and not only with a section of the retail 
 
 sellers As well attempt to legislate against a 
 
 miasma and to leave undrained the ' pestilential source ' from 
 which it springs." Now what is the Established Church as 
 an institution, whose sole razson (Tetre is the purification of 
 national life, doing withYegard to these "pestilential sources" 
 of national sin ? Let us read and digest an article in " Sword 
 and Trowel," for March, 1882 :— 
 
 IS IT TRUE? 
 
 " Does it not appear an absurdity that our archbishops and bishops should 
 give temperance lectures and address public meetings on the sin and misery caused 
 by intemperance, teaching their hearers to avoid the public-house, as leading them 
 into temptation, while in their corporate capacity, as members of the Ecclesiastical 
 Commission, they are perhaps the largest owners of public-house property in the 
 country, certainly they own more than any brewer's firm in the kingdom. 
 Indeed, so well is this fact known among the working classes that frequently in 
 the Western Road from Hyde Park Corner, through Knightsbridge, they are in 
 the habit of pointing, as typical of the Establishment, to a Church of England on 
 the right-hand side of the way, near Albert Gate, having a gin-palace on each side 
 of it, built up side by side in a row, the place of worship and the gin-shops being 
 all Church property. It is stated — and I believe it would be found to be a fact — 
 that the Bishop of London, when he leaves his house in St. James's Square, and 
 rides to his palace at Fulham, passes on his road more than lOO public-houses 
 built on land belonging to the Church. 
 
 ' ' The expense at which some of these public-houses are maintained by their 
 customers may be estimated from the returns of two respectably-conducted estab- 
 lishments of the kind— one, the ' Royal Oak,' at Notting Hill, on the land of 
 the Bishop of London ; the other, the ' Hero of Waterloo,' near the terminus of 
 the South Western Railway, on the estate of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It 
 is stated that the returns of the * Royal Oak ' will not be less than p^io,ooo a 
 year, or more than the maintenance of all the places of worship of every denomi- 
 nation, schools, and the police-force of the district within a diameter of a mile j 
 while the returns of the ' Hero of Waterloo ' are equal to a similar expenditure, 
 on the Surrey side of the water. Nay, more, it is asserted — and I believe will 
 hardly be disputed — that when the lease of a public-house in possession of the 
 Church Commissioners falls in, it is valued by a professional gentleman, employed 
 on property of the kind, to know if its rental can be increased. The Church 
 will also grant ground-leases for the erection of public-houses, as may be seen on 
 the Paddington estate. Nay, more, when one of the leases of their public-houses 
 is for sale, and it be thought a bargain, the Commissioners will become the 
 purchasers. Nor is this evil confined solely to London. Some time since I 
 measured a square of 300 paces each way in the centre of Salisbury, and found 
 on it no less than 18 pubUc-houses and gin-shops, all on Church lands; and other 
 localities may be mentioned where they are equally numerous. 
 
 *' I may now be told that I am doing the bishops an injustice by making this 
 accusation against them ; that a special commission has been appointed for the 
 management of the estates of the Church, in which they have nothing to do. 
 But it must be remembered that the Estates' Commission is simply a branch of 
 the Ecclesiastical Commission ; and if any legal quibble should be forthcoming 
 {and I have shown in many ways that legal quibbles are admitted by our law 
 authorities with astonishing facility when used in the service of the Established
 
 Church), the bishops have seats in it. But I submit that if their hands are tied 
 their voices are at liberty, and they have had full power of using them. Possibly 
 the cry of ' confiscation ' may be raised against any attempt to deprive the Estab- 
 lishment of its gin-shops. And I admit the cry of ' confiscation ' has frequently 
 had tremendous effect on the minds of the public, occasionally scarcely less so 
 than that of 'the Church in danger' — and with as little reason. But let us first 
 see whether there really is any confiscation in the matter, and, if so, in what it 
 consists. The Church, as represented by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, has 
 indisputably the right to refuse the renewal of a public-house lease when it falls 
 into their possession. Say they refuse to renew the lease — what then? The 
 house still remains, and is applicable to any other trade, consequently there is no 
 confiscation of any property. The sole thing confiscated is the spirit and beer 
 license. If the spirit license is admitted as a portion of the foundation for the 
 support of our Ecclesiastical system, let it be stated honestly and candidly, and 
 the public will then have in their possession another plea to urge them to exertion 
 in the separation of Church and State." 
 
 *'Is it true? We ask without casting any doubt on Mr. Gilbert's veracity; 
 but fearing the possibility that he has been led into error as to the true state of 
 affairs. His book is before the world, and challenges reply. Meanwhile we 
 urge every temperance man, whether he be Churchman or Nonconformist, to be 
 urgent and incessant in the demand that this abuse be brought to a speedy end. 
 Fancy what an outcry there would be if the Tabernacle derived its income even 
 in a small degree from owning gin-palaces. We say no more. Let the members 
 of the Episcopalian body see to this evil, of which the most of them have never 
 heard before. Now that they have heard of it, let them accept no quibbles by 
 way of justification ; but let them demand a clean sweep of the whole concern. 
 There are plenty of uses for lands and houses without consecrating them to 
 Bacchus, in order to bring in a larger revenue for Christ." 
 
 My Lord Archbishop, as one whose heart is on fire with 
 sympathy for the thousands perishing in this land from this 
 preventable evil, and whose hands are tied by the above 
 appalling revelation if true ; I appeal to your Grace either to 
 afford us an authoritative contradiction to the statement, or 
 to do all in your power to sweep away, or at any rate to pre- 
 vent for the future a condition of things which is morally as 
 discreditable as politically it is short-sighted. Upon the 
 lowest grounds, the grounds of self-preservation, the Estab- 
 lishment would act wisely in divorcing herself from that which 
 is demoralising the people of England. Long ago, Richard 
 Cobden said, "The moral force of the masses lies in tem- 
 perance ; I have no faith in anything apart from that move- 
 ment for the elevation of the working class. We do not 
 sufficiently estimate the amount of crime, vice, poverty,, 
 ignorance, and destitution which springs from the drinking 
 habits of the people." 
 
 As the destinies of England, in the course of the march of 
 progress, become more and more entrusted to the great work- 
 ing classes, as the power to sway elections with increasing
 
 certainty is placed in their hands, as with advancing education 
 their power of discernment between real and false friends 
 increases, they will not be slow to remember that the organi- 
 sation which by its profession, by the Name it bowed before, 
 by all it held dear, should have been to them a practical 
 embodiment of the prayer, " lead us not into temptation," has 
 been virtually helping to multiply the already overwhelming^ 
 sources of temptation wherewith they are held down. 
 
 I am not unaware of the difficulties of repairing the past. 
 The sight of my own glebe studded, by consent of the Eccle- 
 siastical Commissioners, with drink-shops ; the knowledge 
 that some of the income of my own incumbency is derived 
 from this very source saddens and humbles me ; but the future 
 is yet in our hands ; the method which I have adopted with 
 much blessing in the case of my own glebe is, that of refusing 
 to sign any lease, whether approved by the Commissioners or 
 not, without a rigorous clause excluding the sale of alcoholic 
 drinks ; and this action, so far from depreciating the value of 
 the house property on the land, has rather enhanced it. The 
 clause is as follows : That the lessee " shall not, nor will at 
 any time or times during the continuance of the said term, 
 hereby granted, use or occupy, or permit, or suffer to be used 
 or occupied the said hereby demised land or any part thereof, 
 or any building hereafter erected thereon for or as a Brewery 
 or Distillery, or for or as an Inn, Ale, or Beer House, or Spirit 
 Shop, or for the sale thereon or therefrom, whether wholesale 
 or retail, of any Wines, Spirits, Ale, Porter, Cider, or other 
 fermented, or spirituous, or intoxicating liquors." 
 
 I earnestly pray your Grace to use your great power and 
 influence, either by procuring the insertion of such a clause in 
 every future lease of Church property, or by Bill in the House 
 of Lords, or by whatsoever method may suggest itself to you, 
 to restrain the Ecclesiastical Commissioners from implicating 
 the National Church any further in that which has been 
 denounced by the present Prime Minister as bringing upon 
 the nation the accumulated evils of war, pestilence, and 
 famine. — I am, with much respect, your Grace's most faithful 
 Servant, BASIL WILBERFORCE.
 
 8 
 
 Lambeth Palace, S.E., 
 
 July i/th, 1882. 
 
 My Dear Basil Wilberforce, 
 
 I am very much obliged to you for drawing my 
 attention to the important subject to which your printed 
 letter refers. 
 
 * I cannot doubt that you show a good example of the way 
 in which this difficulty should be treated by the course you 
 follow as to the public-houses which have obtained leases in 
 past times on your glebe, and I shall not fail to draw the 
 careful attention of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to the 
 subject. 
 
 At present I have no knowledge of the facts to which you 
 refer. 
 
 Believe me to be. 
 
 Ever yours, 
 
 A. C. CANTUAR. 
 The Rev. Canon Basil Wilberforce.
 
 THE TIMES" 
 
 ON THE 
 
 REV. CANON WILBERFORCE'S LETTER. 
 
 Canon Basil Wilberforce, in a long letter addressed to the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, has drawn attention to the large 
 number of public-houses, in London and elsewhere, built upon 
 Church land. As a good Churchman and a consistent advo- 
 cate of the temperance movement, he is shocked at what he 
 relates. He thinks it intolerable that the Church, the sworn 
 opponent of evil and corruption in every shape, should be 
 found thus identifying itself with the most crying evil of the 
 day. Church land is under the control of Church officials. 
 The Archbishops and Bishops are ex-officio members of the 
 Commission which manages it. It is with their sanction, 
 therefore, that these public-houses have been built and 
 licensed, and that they are now busy in carrying on their 
 degrading traffic. Canon Wilberforce feels deeply the incon- 
 sistency which this involves. He has a strong case, and he 
 states it strongly. He quotes an article in a temperance 
 paper to the effect that the Archbishops and Bishops in their 
 corporate capacity are, perhaps, the largest owners of public- 
 house property in the country. " Indeed," continues this 
 document, " so well is this fact known among the working 
 classes, that frequently in the Western Road from Hyde Park 
 Corner, through Knightsbridge, they are in the habit of point- 
 ing, as typical of the Establishment, to a Church of England 
 on the right-hand side of the way, near Albert Gate, having 
 a gin-palace on each side of it, built up side by side in a row, 
 the place of worship and the ginshops being all Church pro- 
 perty. It is stated — and I believe it would be found to be a 
 fact — that the Bishop of London, when he leaves his house 
 in St. James's Square and rides to his place at Fulham, passes 
 on his road more than lOO public-houses built on land belong- 
 ing to the Church." Canon Wilberforce cites the case of the 
 Royal Oak at Bayswater, on the estate of the Bishop of 
 London, and the Hero of Waterloo, near the terminus of the 
 South- Western Railway, on the estate of the Archbishop of
 
 10 
 
 Canterbury, both flourishing places of business. Worse than 
 all, it is asserted that " when the lease of a public-house in 
 the possession of the Church Commissioners falls in it is 
 valued by a professional gentleman, employed on property of 
 this kind, to know if its rental can be increased." The Canon 
 is deeply moved by these enormities. He cannot bear that 
 the revenues of the Church should be drawn from so unholy 
 a source, and that its spiritual rulers should be found lending 
 themselves to a great national crime. Lead us not into 
 temptation is the daily prayer of these functionaries, for 
 themselves and for other people. Their practical counsel 
 upon it is to multiply the sources of temptation to which 
 their fellow-countrymen are exposed. The course is profit- 
 able, no doubt. The working man who takes his glass at 
 the Royal Oak or the Hero of Waterloo adds so much to 
 the letting value of the house. His movements are watched 
 and chronicled, and when the lease falls in the question 
 comes how far what he has done for the good of the house 
 will warrant an advance in the rental. The Royal Oak is 
 royal in the scale of its returns. Its yearly turnover is stated 
 to be not less than ;£" 10,000. The Church has a vested 
 interest in this enormous outlay. The beer consumed on the 
 premises, the glasses of gin sold over the counter, all go to 
 the indirect improvement of the property. The publican is 
 thus erected into a sort of Church agent. The more roaring 
 trade he can push, the better for the Church and for himself. 
 But the money is polluted in its source. No after use that 
 can be made of it can free it from the original taint. It may 
 be employed for building new places of worship, for new 
 schools, for increasing the number of the clergy. The work- 
 ing man, from whose pockets it has been drawn, may receive 
 back some portion of it in the shape of spiritual guidance. 
 He will be taught the virtue of intemperance and the folly 
 and sin of indulging himself in strong drinks. But, as Canon 
 Wilberforce points out, with the advance of education his 
 power of discernment will increase, and he will begin to find 
 out some disagreement between Church profession and 
 Church practice. Canon Wilberforce's own hands are clean, 
 or it is no fault of his own if they are not. Some part of the 
 income of his incumbency is derived from the rent of drink- 
 shops. His glebe is studded with them, but not with his own 
 consent. His own practice is to refuse to sign any lease 
 without a rigorous clause forbidding the liquor traffic in any 
 of its forms. He will have no brewery or distillery, no inn or 
 beerhouse or spirit-shop, no wholesale or retail dealings in
 
 II 
 
 intoxicating liquors, on his land with his own consent. To 
 the provisions of running leases, whatever they may be, he 
 has no choice but to submit. New leases are in his own con- 
 trol, and he takes care that they contain the needful prohi- 
 bition. He is responsible for no one but himself, and if he 
 denounces the liquor traffic he can do so without having it 
 cast in his teeth that he has given his consent to it, and that 
 he has a pecuniary interest in its development. The Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, in his reply, approves the course which 
 Canon Wilberforce has been following. But the facts are 
 new to him, and he confines himself, accordingly, to an 
 acknowledgment of the importance of the subject, and to a 
 promise that he will not fail to draw the careful attention of 
 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to it. 
 
 The temperance movement is new. Its rise and growth 
 are like the rise of a new religion. The duties it lays down 
 are an addition to the accepted moral standard of the age. 
 It is not long since good port wine and good Church prin- 
 ciples were thought to agree. A Church dignitary who 
 declined to fill his glass was a suspected man. He must be 
 unsound somewhere, and he was let off easily if it was assumed 
 that it was his digestion which must be in fault. Drinking 
 habits prevailed at the Universities and in society. Intem- 
 perance, usually so called, is of earlier date. But long after 
 intemperance had ceased to be a vice of the upper classes the 
 custom of drinking largely kept its ground. It was a social 
 habit. There was good classical authority for it. The poets 
 had always been in favour of it. Scripture itself was pressed 
 into the defence. So it came that the bottle passed freely, 
 and that the man who shirked his share of it was put down as 
 a muff or a weakling or an unsociable sort of fellow, a little 
 out of place in the company of gentlemen. Of the example 
 thus set to the working classes no account was made. It was 
 their duty, of course, to be sober, but chiefly because the 
 expense of the contrary habit was more than they could 
 properly afford. Drinking was regulated by the purse. The 
 working man might have his Saturday's beer or glass of spirits. 
 The tradesman was expected not to drink wine, but no further 
 burden was laid upon him, and when he had made his fortune 
 and retired from business it was open to him to do as he 
 pleased in the choice of his drink. Such are the ideas with 
 which the generation now passing away has grown up. The 
 Ecclesiastical Commissioners, lay and clerical, may fairly be 
 assumed to belong to it. Canon Wilberforce judges them 
 by the standard of another age. He forces duties upon
 
 12 
 
 them of which they know nothing and which they may 
 possibly decline to recognise. He must be tender, if so, to 
 the untutored consciences of men in later middle life. The 
 temperance movement has been too rapid for them. It has 
 been spreading and growing while they meanwhile have 
 been standing still. It has its own canons, its own rule 
 of right and wrong, strict and severe and new. Its cham- 
 pions and adherents are uncompromising in their allegiance. 
 It passes its sentence of condemnation upon all who do not 
 belong to it. The man who takes a single glass of wine is 
 put down as an enemy. He will find, wherever he is, that 
 his offence will not pass unmarked. He will be made con- 
 scious that some eye is glaring at him, that some unfavour- 
 able judgment is formed, that in the opinion of some one at 
 table he is to be reckoned as a man who drinks. We have 
 not a word to say against the movement and its advocates 
 and its rules. We wish all success to it, and we are quite 
 sure that it is on the high road to success. The doctors have 
 declared for it, and the doctors are much too prudent to com- 
 mit themselves to a losing cause. What they advise is, we 
 may be sure, very much what their patients wish them to 
 advise. They serve as a weather-glass, and the glass stands 
 at present in favour of the prospects of temperance. If a 
 patient is out of sorts, if he is suffering from attacks of head- 
 ache or of nervous depression or of sleeplessness, they no 
 longer recommend him to take a little more wine with his 
 dinner or a nightcap before he goes to bed. On the contrary, 
 they tell him that he had better abstain altogether from all 
 intoxicating drinks, and they give him to understand that his 
 maladies are not improbably due to his past non-observance 
 of the rule. Now, this is as it should be. We welcome the 
 advice and the state of public feeling of which the advice is 
 an index. We ask only for a kind allowance to the frailties 
 of well-meaning men who are not yet convinced. Charity, as 
 well as temperance, has its place among the Christian virtues. 
 We do not believe that the two are in any way inconsistent, 
 or that the older and better established of the two ought to be 
 practically set aside in favour of its aggressive rival. 
 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury engages to draw the atten- 
 tion of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to Canon Wilber- 
 force's statements. We shall be curious to learn how his 
 promise is fulfilled. He approves what Canon Wilberforce 
 has been doing on his own glebe. He speaks of it as a good 
 example. Will he recommend it to the Commissioners as 
 an example which they are to follow? Will he and his
 
 13 
 
 brothers on the bench follow it themselves ? It is only the 
 facts in Canon Wilberforce's letter which he seeks to be 
 informed about. But the facts are patent. Canon Wilber- 
 force speaks of what is within his own knowledge. There is 
 his glebe, and there are the drinkshops. Quite notorious, too, 
 are some of the other instances to which he refers. The 
 Paddington estate is Church property. It used to belong to 
 the Bishop of London. It has now passed to the Ecclesi- 
 astical Commissioners. There are certainly public-houses 
 upon it, and certainly, too, these houses pay a rental in 
 some proportion to their receipts. Is the system to be con- 
 demned ? Is it to be held that a decent man, and, above all, 
 a religious corporation, is to have nothing to do with the 
 liquor traffic ? Or will it be enough, for the present at all 
 events, that the business should be decently carried on, and 
 that the public-houses of the Church should give no encourage- 
 ment to drink in its more outrageous forms ? These are 
 questions which Canon Wilberforce's letter suggests. They 
 must be met and answered, and we wait with some interest 
 to see what answer the Primate of the Church will find for 
 them. — TJie Times, July 29, 1882. 
 
 THE 
 
 ''MANCHESTER EXAMINER AND TIMES'^ 
 
 ON 
 
 REV. CANON WILBERFORCE'S LETTER. 
 
 A letter of Canon Basil Wilberforce to the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury calls attention to an old Church scandal. The writer is dis- 
 tressed at the large number of public-houses in the metropolis and 
 throughout the country which are built on Church land, and the 
 rents of which go to feed Church revenues. Canon Wilberforce is 
 not one to tell the shame of his church in Gath, or to publish her 
 sins in the streets of Askelon, to arouse the mocking laugh of the 
 Philistine foe. He manfully addresses the chief dignitary of the 
 English Church, tells his story without extenuating or setting down 
 aught in malice, and demands a remedy. What is better still, he 
 describes how he has tried to improve matters within the range of 
 his own influence. The worthy canon's facts are, unfortunately, 
 beyond dispute. So largely does the shadow of the Church seem to 
 foster this kind of traffic that its enemies may be excused for thinking 
 that the national religion and the national beverage are as closely 
 related to each other as the too enthusiastic Tory publican thought
 
 14 
 
 they were. It is said that the Bishop of London in riding from his 
 house in St. James's Square to his palace at Fulham passes more 
 than ICO public-houses built on land belonging to the Church. Nor 
 will Canon Wilberforce allow the Church Commissioners, who include 
 among their number the Archbishop and Bishops as ex-officio mem- 
 bers, to escape on the plea of ignorance. It might, perhaps, be 
 possible to suppose them so absorbed in their spiritual duties as to 
 be quite indifferent to the source whence their temporalities are 
 derived. But it appears that when the lease of a public-house falls 
 in, the Commissioners, with a shrewd eye to business, appoint a 
 professional gentleman used to this sort of property to ascertain 
 if the rental can be raised ; and full advantage is taken of any 
 enhancement of value arising from the increased thirstiness of 
 the neighbourhood. Now that the Archbishop's attention has 
 been called to the facts, he engages to bring them under the 
 notice of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners ; and it will be im- 
 possible to plead ignorance in future. It will be borne in mind, 
 no doubt, that Canon Wilberforce is himself an earnest tempe- 
 rance advocate. He is therefore disposed to take a stricter view 
 of his duties on this question than many of the Commissioners, 
 who have inherited the somewhat laxer views held by their pre- 
 decessors. He has drinkshops upon his glebe, which he has no 
 power to put down ; but when a lease falls in he refuses to grant 
 a new one without a rigorous clause forbidding the manufacture or 
 sale of intoxicating liquors. But the Church Commissioners are 
 not all teetotalers, and may not see their way to restrict to others the 
 use of what they take themselves. There is some excuse, then, for 
 a difference of view between Canon Wilberforce and the authorities 
 whom he addresses through the Archbishop. But, rightly or wrongly, 
 the working man of London has an ugly prejudice against the 
 Church as the wholesale patron and protector of the liquor trade, 
 with an accommodating blind eye for this, and even less reputable 
 traffic, provided it brings plenty of grist to the ecclesiastical mill. 
 We have no desire to lecture our pastors and spiritual teachers on 
 questions of casuistry. That is peculiarly their own province, into 
 which we have no wish to intrude. But even ignorant laymen are 
 obliged to settle these practical matters in their own rough-and- 
 ready way. They cannot be expected to know, or be accountable 
 for, everything that takes place upon their property, or to inquire 
 too curiously into the remote consequences of every transaction in 
 which they engage. But even business men must not wink too 
 hard, or utterly ignore consequences. The public will expect at 
 least as high a standard of duty from Church dignitaries as from men 
 of the world. It is one thing to put down public-houses by main 
 force and treat licensed victuallers as outcasts, and quite another 
 thing to develop with paternal interest a trade in raw spirits and 
 fiery drams which adds appallingly to the misery and pauperism of 
 the Q.ovx\\x^.—j2ily 31, 1882.
 
 ^^<.:4y v> 
 
 w 
 
 v., 
 
 ¥, 
 
 M- 
 
 ^^v- 
 
 <♦, 
 
 f 
 
 MA 
 
 ■■^:-^'