The Express.
London, England, 1865-02-17 00:00:00

'OEN BROGDZWB G OLD ALBUM °HAIN&

JOHN BROGDZNII GOLD BROOCIR CHAINS.

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At PRICES SPANISH CIRCUS and HIPPODROME,
AGRICULTURAL RAIL.
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RLONDIN s• the HIGH ROSS and hie great CHARD RATS.

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ghe Oroveoo.

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Mr. —AM TEL WOIJ AND TIN LAMA

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MILL Ol LONDON.—Casuassai aahaltisaiL

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WNDON, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17.

Tar Report of the Royal Commission appointed
to consider the forms of subscription and declara-
tion at present required of the established clergy
has been laid before Parliament. It is a docu-
ment marked throughout by much reserve. The
positive recommendations of the Royal Commis-
sioners are set forth' with all possible plainness,
but there is an apparent unwillingness on the part
of their authors to give a maim for anything they
propose, or do more than express the bare result
of their deliberation's. Whether this happens be-
cause the Commissioner found themselves divided
in opinion, as has been stated, or because the Com-
missioners were willing that their recommendations
should stand upon their merits, and win the sup-
port of persons of various opinions and for opposite
reasons, can only be conjectured. Those recom-
mendations point to two objects—to the re-
duction of the number of subscriptions and
declarations at present required, and to a mo-
dification of some of them, in order to make
them less stringent. The forms of subscription
now in use have grown up since the Reformation,
one after another being enjoined as circumstances
seemed to require ; and, considered as a collec-
tive body of guaranties, they have many of
the defects incident to institutions of historical
growth. They form a confused mites, diffi-
cult to reduce to intelligible principles, and abound-
ing in repetitions. The Royal Commission pro-
pose to simplify them very considerably. A
clergyman at his ordination as deacon has to sub-
scribe to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion in the
mass, and immediately afterwards to subscribe to
three articles of the thirty-sixth canon relating
to the same Thirty-nine Article' of Religion, to the
Royal Supremacy, and the Book of Common Prayer:
he has, moreover, to take the Oath of Supremacy.
On his ordination as priest the same oath and sub-
scriptions are repeated. On being licensed to a
stipendiary curacy the clergyman again subscribes
and swears as before, and in addition signs a
Declaration of Conformity to the Liturgy prescribed
by the Act of Uniformity, besides reading the
Declaration in church, and also a certificate from
the Bishop stating that that Declaration has been
duly made. On institution to a benefice the same
oaths, declarations, and subscriptions are repeated,
together with others relating to canonical oho-
&SIX* and simony, on which we need not dwell. The
Royal Commissioners recommend, among other
things, that in autareon every occasion on which a
subscription or declaration shall be required to be
made with reference to the Articles of Religion or
the Book of Common Prayer, one form shall be used.
This in itself is a great gain apart from the character
of the form proposed. But, as we need hardly
observe, a Royal Commission would never have
been issued for the sake of merely formal improve-
manta. The Commissioners have had to consider
bow far it is expedient to relax the stringency of
the eubscriptiond at present required. Forms of
subscriptions are tendered to the clergy as testa of
doctrinal belief. The defenders of the practice argue
that we ought to know beforehand what doctrine
the clergy will teach, and it is assumed that this
may be ascertained by finding out what they are
willing to subscribe. The system has been esta-
blished now for several hundred yearn, and it is
a matter of fact that when we wish to know
a clergyman's opinions about the most im-
portant doctrines of religion, we do not once
think of his subscription as if it were capable
of throwing the least light on the matter. The
Bishop of OXFORD and the Bishop of NAT/J,
the Bishop of ExEvas and the Bishop of Rao&
have all subscribed the same forms, and are all
ready to subscribe them again. The Declaration
prescribed by the Act of Uniformity for the pur-
pose of driving Puritans from the Church ac-
complished its immediate object, but there
are more Puritans at this moment among
the clergy than there were in the
thirteenth year of the reign of CZAILLES 11. And
yet, ineffective as the present system is for pre-
serving uniformity of doctrine, it is affirmed by
*ow who ought to know the facts to be powerful
in deterring able men from entering the ministry.
The very rigidity of the terms of adhesion to the
formulas of the Church, while it excludes a scru-
pulous few, makes subscription easy to the many.
For, it is argued, words at owe so precise, so
comprehensive, and so strict, cannot be taken
literally, but must be capable of interpretation in
a liberal practical seam. And so the Bishops are

brought to the amenity of explaining
away until, se an eminent Arleta dal
Moos in the House •f Lords,
comprehensive deeleggtion et assent
Gomm to mean no *ore then that

making it will use the Prayer Book and not preach
against the Articles. But it is only by a certain
class of minds that those explanations can be ac-
cepted. There are others who regard words as
awed things, and cannot be persuaded that the
explanation of any individual, even though he be
a Bishop, can do away with the solemnity of a
declaration made to the Church, and before the
world. A "liberal interpretation" does not
satidy them, for, as Lord AKEZELEY has well ob-
i served, in his pamphlet on this subject :
" Accuracy, not liberality, is the end and purpose
"of interpretation. It is concerned with the rig-
" nification which words Woolly hare, not with
" that which we think they ought to have ; and,
" nukes that sigoifioation is involved in some ob-
" acarity or some doubt, interpretation is
" worse than noshes.' At present every
clergyman subscribes a declaration which
opens with the following words —" I,
"A. 8., do hereby declare my unfeigned
" anent and consent to all and everything oon-
" tamed and prescribed in and by the Book inti-
" Wed The Book of 0003M011Prayer.' " These
words are the plainest and most explicit that the
English language supplies, and neither need nor
admit of interpretation. You may show the im-
possibility of such an unqualified adoption of the
esetents of a large volume as is here expressed ;
you may argue from that impoodbaity that a
less reserved adhesion to the Book of Common
Prayer ought to be accepted ; you may contend
that, in spite of moral and intellectual difficulties,
a person who believes that upon the whole the
ministry of the Established Church is the best
place for him is justified in signing the declaration.
But the meaning of the words cannot be obscured
or subverted. A few of the clergy no doubt sign
the declaration in its literal ulnae, but
a great number subscribe, as they are good
enough to explain, by the aid of artifices
and evasions which they are taught to regard
as innocent if not laudable. The Royal Com-
missioners appear to be of opinion that the prac-
tice now authorised has lasted too long, for they
propose to substitute for the very stringent decla-
ration set forth in the Act of Uniformity a general
form expressed in much lees restrictive language.
They recommend that on every occasion on which
a subscription or declaration shall be required
to be made in England' or Ireland, with
reference to the Articles of Religion, or
the Book of Common Prayer, the following form
be need :—" I, A. 8., do solemnly make the fol-
" lowing declaration :—I meat to the Thirty-nine
" Articles of Religion, and to the Book of Com-
" mon Prayer, and of Ordering of Bishops,
" Priests, and Demons ; I believe the doctrine of
" the United Church of England and Ireland, as
" therein set forth, to be agreeable to the Word of
" GOD • and in Public Prayer end Administration
_ _

" of the Sacnunenta I will nee the form in the
" said book prescribed, and none other, except so
" far as shall be ordered by lawful authority."
Slight as is the verbal difference between this
form and the strictness of the declarations which it
supersede., it gives a much greater liberty than
they do to the subscriber. The simple assent to
the Thirty-nine Articles and the Prayer Book,
and the generally expressed belief in the doctrines
of the Church, is a very different thing from
the " assent and consent" given to every sen-
tence and phrase in the Book of Common Prayer.
The new form of subscription is not inconsistent
with that independence of judgment which the
clergy as well as the laity ought to exercise
upon the best of human compositions, nor
with that liberty of teaching which leaders
of religions thought, who can honestly use
the Prayer Book in public devotion, should
enjoy. That subscription, even as thus amended,
will completely protect the Church from the in-
trusion into her ministry of men who bold reli-
gious truth loosely or not at all, is not what expe-
rience leads us to expect. But if the reforms now
proposed are accepted by Parliament and
the country, those who think of taking upon them•
selves the office of a clergyman in the Established
Church will understand that public opinion has
required • modification in the forms of subscrip-
tion in order to make those forms more solemn and
real, more truthful and fuller of meaning, than
they were before. We want all the liberty which
can be enjoyed consistently with the great ends
which a Church has to fulfil ; to ask for more than
this is to ask that the Church may be destroyed,
• result which might easily be brought about
even while unusual care was being taken to main-
tain its administrative organization and perfect its
outward aspect.

Ax extension of the area of rating, so far as
applies to unions, will probably be one of the lead-
ing features of the new Poor-law Bill to be laid
before Parliament this evening. The present
system, with its hamlets filled with labourers, and
its parishes without a single poor man dwelling
within their precincts, is obviously responsible for
many of the painful ►nomalies which come to light
from time to time. The squires and landowners
who, acting in concert with neighbours of their
own station, decline to have a single cottage on
their estates, and whose ground is consequently
tilled by labourers residing at some miles distance
from their daily work, virtually shift the duty of
providing for their poor on to other shoulders than
their own. This, combined with the dread of
being sent book ignominiously to their native
parish in the event of breaking down from mis-
chance or ill-health, prevents many a struggling
labourer from seeking employment elsewhere than
in the immediate vicinity of his birthplace. The
poor have as deeply-rooted a horror of being
handed back to the workhouse of their own neigh-
bourhood when misfortune overtakes them as some
of the rich have of seeing cottages on their land.
Though a summary clearance of these objectionable
dwellings is comparatively rare, a tacit under-
standing between master and steward that they shall
under no circumstances be repaired is not un-
common. Thus by degrees they fall into ruin,
and are finally swept away with other rubbish,
leaving their late tenants to house themselves as
beat they may, in parishes where labourers' cot-
tages are still tolerated. The fact of the num-
ber of houses of this character having decreased
throughout the country in inverse proportion to
the increase of population, is advanced in rapport
of this statement, and certainly points to the
1 crying necessity for change. It is thought, them-
, fore, that by equalizing the rating of all the
parishes within each union, and by, at the same
time, extending the area of settlement to a similar
extent, both ratepayers and paupers will be prac-
tically benefited. When the landowner has to pay
his quota towards relieving the pauperism of say
I fifteen parishes, it will be no longer his interest to
thrust those likely to become chargeable over the
boundary line within which his estate is situate.
Raving to assist the poor in the distant hamlet in

rangy the mote impend= as the poor welling
siateil at his peek-gate., the Ineonvenissent el ass-
ploy ill-horsed biboltreres who hart to walk
sem mike to anifrom their fiat'a work, withecome
Itiongly appatent, and the panbable revolt will be
• withdrawal of the present Psobibitions, and as a
natural cone/minims the erection of a better ohms
of labourers' cottages throughout the country. This
is in itself a strong argument in favour of the Bill,
and it is to be regretted that the particular im-
provement to which it points cannot be shared in
by the metropolis. Neither equalisation of rating
nor extension of settlement will in themselves have
nisi affect on the dwellings of the London poor,
and we must content ourselves with the know-
ledge that some approach to • fairer system of
levying poor rates is likely to be introduced. The
ninety-eight parishes composing the City of London
Union, for example, will have to bear the burden
of their poor collectively instead of separately ;
and the Bank of England—forming, as we believe
it does, almost an entire parish in itself—will pro-
bably be charged at a higher rate than now, while
its poor and populous fellow parishes will be bene-
fited in a proportionate degree. Other and mate-
rial modifications of the existing law will not
improbably be submitted to the Howe, but the
clauses making the ratepayers of different districts
op-equal in responsibility, and which are designed
to indirectly benefit the labourer as fully sa they
will protect the interests of the pauper, will be
readily reoognised as important efforts towards the
solution of one of the hardest social problems of
the day.