The Press.
London, England, 1858-07-10 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 10, 1858.

No. 271.—V0L. VI.

THE CHURCH-RATE QUESTION.
Mao DERBY observed, with his usual penetra-
tion, that the first thing to be done, to bring

about a reasonable adjustment of this question,
was, to reject the demand for Total Repeal in a
very decided manner. A majority -which ren-

dered Sir Joint TRELAWNY'S Bill hopeless for
many years to come, would be the most likely

thing to bring the assailants to a reasonable
state of mind; and so to render an adjustment
of the question possible.
This is most true: and yet we must discrimi-
nate the character of the assailants, so as not to
'hope where hope would be in vain.
The decided tone taken by the House of Lords,
its utter rejection of Total Repeal, and yet the
declared willingness of every speaker to consider
sny rational plan for a commutation, must
operate powerfully on the minds of those mode-
rate Whigs of the House of Commons who
really desire a settlement of the question without
inflicting any great injury on the Church. All
these will naturally be prepared to give up Total
Repeal as hopeless, and to embrace any feasible
scheme of commutation.

But there is a more forward and noisy class,
from whom it would be a mistake to expect the
least concession.

The active anti-Church-rate agitators are '
handed together in a Society into which no
thought of compromise or concession will ever
penetrate. Its presiding spirits, the MIALLs and
MORLEYS, are men thoroughly imbued with
hostility to all Established Churches, and who
regard the attack upon Church-rates as merely
the first step in the course they are taking.
They mean the Tithes to follow the Church-rates ;
they mean the exclusion of the Bishops from the
House of Lords; and they do not even intend to '
leave the parish churches in the possession of the
clergy. With men in this temper of mind, all
negotiation is useless. And, below them, we
find divers active agents, who are paid servants
of the Society, and who do not wish the question
to be settled, or the agitation to be quieted. In
fact, of the whole body of agitators we must
not entertain the least hope. The recent vote of
the House of Lords may increase their animosity,
but it will not render them in the slightest de-
gree more open to a rational consideration of the
question. Their course will be unaltered. Their
demands will not be in the smallest degree re-
duced. Their activity will be increased ; their
warfare against the rates, in individual parishes,
will go on. They will continually boast of new
triumphs; and, at elections, they will constantly
pledge large numbers of the borough members
to support, and to accept nothing short of, Total
Repeal.
It would be the greatest possible mistake,
therefore, to expect any change in the tactics of
the Dissenting agitators, or to hope that the late

vote of the House of Lords will render them
more accessible to reason. It will do nothing of
the kind. And to wait for their improvement
would be merely to lose so much time.
The decided negative of the Peers, therefore,
is a good preparation, not for a negotiation with
the Dissenters, but for propounding a rational
plan of commutation to the moderate 'Whigs in
Parliament. Lord GRANVILLE in the Upper
House, and Lord JOHN RusaELL and Sir GEORGE
LEWIS in the Lower, profess their willingness to
consider any such plan ; and the question is too
large to be dealt with by any smaller power than
the Government itself. The Ministry will be
expected to offer some proposal of this kind early
in the next session.

We have already indicated the outlines of two
or three projects of this kind; and we will now
mention one or two more suggestions which have
been made, and which seem to merit at least some
consideration. _ _

1. The Tithe-cotimutation is now a completed
thing. The sum levied on each parish is an as-
certained fact, and the aggregate of the whole
collection could be ascertained. What would
be the product of an added five or seven and a
half per cent. ? If collected, the incumbent
ought to pay it over (the added five or seven and
a half per cent.) to the Governors of Queen
Anne's Bounty, or to the Ecclesiastical Com-
missioners, who might dispense it to the respective
parish churches, upon the application of the
Churchwardens, backed by the Archdeacon and
the Diocesan Architect.

2. The parochial incumbents, everywhere, are
at present most unjustly overcharged in the
Poor-rate. Take any respectable village or small
town. There is a solicitor, who occupies a house
worth 501. a year, and who is rated at 401. There
is a surgeon, who occupies a house worth 40/. a
year, and who is rated at 321. Then there is the
parson, whose house is also worth 401. a year ,
but instead of being rated at 321., he is rated at
250/. ! Why is this ? Because, while other
people are rated merely upon the houses they
occupy, he is rated upon his income ! The soli-
citor, probably, makes his 4001. or 5001. a year ;
the surgeon, his 3001. or 400/. The incumbent
receives 250/. from his tithes,—out of which,
probably, he has to pay 20/. or 30/. for a school-
master; yet he is rated on his whole income,
while the other inhabitants of the town are rated
on what is probably not equal to one-sixth or
one-tenth of theirs.
This is clearly unjust ; yet so helpless are the
clergy, that it has long bt.‘ett submitted to in
silence. probably, if each incumbent Of a parish
paid to the Poor-rate only a fair assessment on
his dwelling, and paid the reQt of his assessment
to the churchwarden fin- the expenses of the
church, it might often suffice. Not that this
would be fair or just ; but it would be better

STAMPED
UNSTAMPED -FIVEPENCE.

than simply abolishing Church-rates, and leaving
the incumbent to provide the expenses of the
church himself. This would be a double in-
justice; whereas such a compromise as we have
suggested would only rob the clergyman once.
These two suggestions may serve to show how
many ways might be discovered of providing
something like a substitute for the present Church-
rates. Let the ensuing vacation be well and
sedulously employed, in bringing some scheme of
this sort into a practical shape; for we feel as-
sured that the friends of the Church have no
time to lose.