The Express.
London, England, 1856-09-27 00:00:00

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LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 37.

A GOOD deal of something very like nauseam sad
very mischievous nosiness, too, has lately been
written about Curates, sad Use Wearable stipends
they are paid ; and eneouragement in influential
quarters is given to something very bite a prop*.
Mlles or a negation for a *rapids redistribution of
church property. Taking canter ea a body, we wa-
rms we unapt concur in the opinion that they are
an especially ill-used or ill-oared for class; and as for
any such relistribution of church property se would
make the allergy of the Church of England stipendia-
ries of the State, we can conceive few greater politi-
cal Lida-tem Willie, the country.
We say that curates are not as a body an especially
ill-used or ill-oared for ekes. The whole question, be
it remembered, turns on temporalities, and it would
Its a mistake therefore to deal with it on the high
ground of irpirltualkin. In a temporal point of view,
than, curates, as a body, may be regarded generally
ea the younger members of the &dal peeked= ;
sad we knew of so profusion in which young mon
eft sot at fleet very moderately remeasrated. A
mussy is not to be regarded as a settlement in, it is a
sommemeement of, life ; a sort of experimenters
gruel,; a test by which a yosag elergymen'e powers,
Stases, worthiness, are to be aseetained; a sphere in
which his anemias is completed, in which his exp►
rime' is acquired, in which habits of usefulness and
self-rollmop to deal with men are established; is
which, in abort, he has the opportunity of beaming
competent to occupy an independent chugs is the
church. Begirding the clerical body es a profession,
a curacy is always the preliminary, frequently the
avenue, to preferment. A carets on entering the
church has all its " prises" beam him. There is not
a vicar, rector, oases, doss, bishop, or archbishop who
has sot commenced the practice of his profusion es
a curate.

No doubt all curates are not young men; no
doubt than is a considerable number of mature and
even elderly curates whom stipends bear an unfa-
vourable proportion to their yen sad to their
families. Bat in all professions there are and must
be disappointments; and this class reprint@ the
diesppoistemnts la the aura. Now far be it from
en
to deny that it gee taiga any most meritorious per-
sou, many most wad and exemplary clergymen, ,
apse of whom have been unfairly and unjustly weed
nen to the prejudice of the churn sad society. To
admit this, however, is only to plass the church oath.
same fasting as all other Mediating sad professions in
this country, in which a proportion of Moos who have
an bees successful have greater intrinsic powers of
emblem than these who have either achieved mosses
et had semen forced on them. Bat the penal
ehmervatige of most men mast, we think, have led
them to the Inference that, as a rale, susses in
say profeesion is, as the whole. fairly earned its this
country. It is not, Wind, always earned by the
highest Wellcome' salinity, by the greatest learning,
er by the most undoubted morel superiority; bet as
• peers' rale it ie earned by what society is even
more interested to toe its everyday parposss,—by
energy, activity, earnestness, adaptability to einem-
etances—by those qualities. in short, that really
do coda the largest powers of usefelnesa. The
Chun is no exception to this rule; and the
curates who de gamed, and who rise and
bemuse benefited clergy, are we may be tolerably
certain, i more useful *ass than those who haveinen
distanced is the race of compatidoe. If a man at 40
err 00 has attained the average position of his ma-
temporaries is his owe profession, we have a right
to inter, end we shall be quite Ws is inferring,
either that he is generally Werke to the.,
or that he has some special defect, weakens, or
infirmity which has overweighted him le the mate*
and struggles of life. The world generally, and
Inland particularly, ones up its beet men first; and
it is both a sickly and a nor seatimeatalisia which
is always sympsthlaing with the saiats and geniuses
who have idled, and always depreciating the rogues
and dames who have succeeded.

For the your' curate., regarded se the junior
members of a working profession, small salaries and
hard work are the very beat and wisest prepa-
rations for a life of energy and usefulness. Is
nine cases oat of ten they would be worth emir
parativeiy nothing is afterlife without them. And
you might as rationally complala that the junior
clerk at your banker'. had hardly enough to live
upon, and was obliged to dine daily on his chop and
pint of stout at an eating-house, as that a young
curate fresh from Oxford or Cambridge only gets
801. a year salary from his vicar or motor.
As foe the elder class of curate., of those who have
ken distanced, and, on the whole, properly distanced
in the professional raoe—the plain and skald* truth is
that neither State nor Church is bound to provide for
the disappointment of it. weaker members. By as
inevitable law they must and always will, do what
we may, go to the wall. All that can be done for
them, be they curates, or briefs.. barristers,
or frelem physicians, is for all of us in our

respective spheres to show them sympathy, kindness,
cordiality—to do unto these that which we shoald
they would do unto us. That done, our duty has,
we fear, been performed. And we might as ration-
ally pass lows for the relief of disappointed mer-
chants or Won se disappointed curates. As we do not

direg►rd the lowa of political economy for the sake
of the former, why should we be asked to revolu-
tioeise the property of the church for the benefit of
the latter P We all take our chance in this world.
well knowing that the taco is not to the swift we
the battle to the stole& sad we are not to condemn
the world or to expect impossibilities, because we
thiok we ars nedeservedly ■nssceessful.
While wetting, then, ths most absolute power of
the State over the Church of England and the pro-
party, we will not say of the Church, but enjoyed by
the Church, we moot see, either in the small salaries
given to curates or in the inequalities of the incomes
of its beneficed clergy, suffigient reason for a transfer
of all its property to the Baits, with a View to
making the clergy stipendiaries of the State or to
giving them equal incomes. In English society as
it has grown upend now exists, the connexion be.
tween Church and State must be accepted as a fact,
which we cannot, on this side of a revolution, alter
or disturb. But it we are to have a State Church at
all, there can be no doubt that a proprietary clergy is
tar preferable to a stipendiary. As a proprietary