The Press.
London, England, 1858-10-30 00:00:00

1048

least of the evils resulting from our existing
ecclesiastical arrangements. The fact that clergy-
men in that position are reduced, to a greater or
lesser extent, to a state of enforced inefficiency,
reacts upon society at large with retributive
justice and with most pernicious effect. The
" salt " of society being made savourless, it is not
surprising that society itself should sink down to
an unsavoury condition.
When, as occasionally will happen, this retri-
butive effect of the social injustice committed
wholesale towards the ill-paid clergy manifests
itself in a peculiarly offensive and inconvenient
form, a great outcry is raised,—not, however,
against the act of injustice, or its perpetrators,
but—in aggravation of the original injury—
against its unhappy victim. A case of recent
occurrence in one of the western dioceses aptly
illustrates this sort of thing. The Vicar of a
borough containing some 3,000 inhabitants has,
it appears, become an inmate of the debtors'
prison. For some time the Churchwardens
managed to find substitutes for the performance of
his Sunday duties ; but at last, one fine Sunday
morning, they were unable to do so, and Divine
Service had to be intermitted. Forthwith there
appears in the local press an indignant para-
graph about "the position of a flock that has no
shepherd," and " the immediate attention of the
Bishop" is demanded to the question "how far
" the imprisonment of a minister may affect his
" having the spiritual charge of some 3,000 or
" 4,000 people from whom he is separated." Who
that reads this paragraph is not ready to cry
"shame" upon the clergyman who has brought
his profession into discredit, and whose unfor-
tunate flock is by his misconduct reduced to a
state of "spiritual destitution " ? But what,
on consulting the statistics of the parish,
turns out to be the state of the case ? The
vicarage has annexed to it the curacy of
a hamlet, for the spiritual wants of which the
Vicar is responsible; the assessment to the
poor-rate of the real property in the borough
with its hamlet is neat upon 15,000/. ; the great
tithes are divided between several impropriators;
and the income of the Vicar, out of which he has
to keep the vicarage-house in repair, to pay
rates and taxes, and to meet every other claim
upon him as " the spiritual head of the parish,"
is-1341. per annum ! We know nothing of the
Reverend Gentleman, of his character or ante-
cedents, and we are unable to tell, therefore,
whether or not there may be in the circumstances
which have led to his imprisonment—beyond
his inability to meet the claims upon him—any-
thing censurable ; though from the absence in
the indignation paragraph of even an insinuation
to that effect, it is, perhaps, fair to infer that he
is not chargeable with any delinquency beyond
poverty. Assuming this to be the case, it can
scarcely be denied that the " some 3,000 or 4,000
people " thus left spiritually destitute, and among
them especially the owners of property, and the
impropriators who levy the great tithes, arc far
more to blame than the clergyman brought to
ruin by the utter inadequacy of the provision
made for his support ; and that the Bishop's
attention is required, first and foremost, to the
neglect by the parishioners, by the patron of
the living, and by other impropriators, of the
duty of making for the parochial minister a pro-
vision sufficient to enable him to support himself
in comfort and respectability—a duty which, we
venture to think, is quite as incumbent on them
as is on the parochial minister the duty of per-
forming the functions of his sacred office.
We are not arguing in favour of rich endow-
ments for the clergy. " Give me neither poverty,
" nor riches ; feed me with the food convenient
for me," is the standard of provision which we
should like to see applied to them. Less than
this is unjust to them,—for " the labourer is
" worthy of his hire,"—and it is hurtful to
society at large. The parochial system of the
Church of England is, when carried out according
to its theory, the most efficient machinery that
has ever been devised for maintaining the people
in a morally healthy and civilly well-ordered
condition. The reason why such large masses of
the population have fallen into a state of moral
degradation, which makes them the easy victims
of vice and crime, is, that we have not allowed
our parochial system to develop itself pan/ passu
with the increase of the population. We have
left that beautiful engine to become powerless
through want of fuel, to grow rusty, or wear
itself out by hard friction, through want of oil ;