The Press.
London, England, 1857-06-20 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

When the mass of the people are uninterested
in any particular change, yet yield at the
same time a theoretic assent to its expediency,
men of extreme measures are able secretly to
mature their plans and then surprise the
people into acceptance of them, through a sort
of reluctance to resist proposals framed in
seeming, though not real, concordance with all
their previous convictions.
Something of this sort is what we fear with
regard to the church-rate question. Church
rates are felt as a practical hardship by an
almost inappreciable fraction of the commu-
nity ; but that they are just now a theoretical
anomaly is what a great number of well-dis
disposed persons may be inclined to believe.
Of this feeling it is possible that the enemies
of the Church may take advantage, and that
persons will thus be committed to the support
of measures which, had the question possessed
any practical interest for them, they would
have examined for themselves and rejected.
The church-rate difficulty is not one of those
which demand instantaneous legislation. As
the law stands now, few people are ever se-
riously aggrieved by church rates. There is
no cutting of throats or breaking of heads, no
seditious meetings or midnight conspiracies,
involved in their continuance. In point of
fact, we believe that the only sufferers by the
present uncertainty of the law are Churchmen
themselves ; and if they desire more time for
consideration and a fuller investigation of the
subject, they are surely entitled to a hea►ing.
The fact is that if church rates at this
moment pressed heavily on so numerous and
influential a body as the English Dissenters,
our readers may depend upon it they would
hear more about them. Their silence is in its
way quite as convincing as the figures which
prove that ninety-five per cent. of English
parishes pay church rates without reluctance.
We are not bringing forward these arguments
for the purpose of refuting the expediency of
any change whatever. We merely mean to
show that there is no such pressing hurry in
the matter, and that Lord PALMERSTON need
not trouble himself to bring forward a bill this
session under the idea that he would be
thereby complying with an urgent demand.
To say that a law cannot be enfored, and
therefore must be repealed, is a fallacy we
have frequently exposed. Every law can be
enforced ; and it is only when such a consum-
mation is so manifestly opposed to truth and
right as to be productive of civil disturbances
that the argument in question can avail. If
every law were repealed, or the principle
involved in it renounced, whenever a difficulty
occurred in giving effect to it, our Statute-
book at this moment would be waste paper,
and the British Constitution could never have
existed. Minorities so small as almost to have
sunk into cliques cannot be allowed to dictate
to the nation, or the people forced into the
abolition of church rates against their will,
because such an impost does not happen to
square with the theories of pedants.
All we recommend is that church rates
should be steadily maintained till an approved
substitute is provided ; and an improved
substitute is not likely to be found at the fag
end of a session, at a period when the subject
has as yet been little ventilated, and Church-
men themselves scarce fully awakened to the
necessity of dealing with it.
What may be the Government intentions
we can only conjecture. But this we know,
that tampering with the Church of England
has more than once proved fatal to the power
of a great party ; and sure we are that it is not
Lord PALMERSTON with his large but wavering
majority at his back who can venture with
impunity on so dangerous and unpopular an
experiment.