The Sun.
London, England, 1837-04-07 00:00:00

NIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE.

----w110...----
'Pp, e?"°lth, APRIL 5.--This be;ng the first day of
degrees, &c.,
Ith in 4 Con,,crregation was holden for granting &
.Abe
following were conferred •.
The Right Rev. E.
ben,s Lott OF DIVINITY, BY DIPLOMA. —The ...1 (41, Bishop of Salisbury, elect, Merton College. ...em.
t 'irrEas 01, AaTs.—Mr. R. R. Jackson, Scholar, r .
z.olco College Charles Damon, Fellow, Oriel Clolleglie
H.
DigQ. Wade, Fellow, Balliol College; the lion.r V
ntV, Christ Church, Grand Compounder ;
4_,Yd, Christ Church ; the Rev. Geo. Slade, St.NI Edmund's.Thos.
'1); and Mr. W. Bowring, Queen's College.
NAt two o'clock the Proctors elect, the Rev. W. J. Meech,
Col-
-1 " Col;ege; and the Rev. W. J. Butler, Magdalen b
jie, proceed from their respective Colleges, attended y
Ivil: Heads and other Members to the Convocation House,
.ie
4 ti!re the late Proctors laid down their badges of office. The
ler Proctor going out delivered a Latin speech concerning
;cmi._,le (?ceurrences of the late year. Tl.e Vice-Chancellor then
nistered to the new Proctors the oaths of allegiance and
Ith,PrernacY, and the official oath, and afterwards delivered to
3prnt the badges of office, the books and keys. The new
,seoetors then took their Chairs, and nominated each two Mas.
Ft of Arts to be their deputies or pro. Proctors.
1.11-qt the annual election of Fellows at Merton College on the
1,.t
'sn,lllt., iP• There were
n Adams was chosen to fill the vacant Fel-
kci.o-,kine candidates fur it.
r.,,,,......--_

;,co WllO was tried at the late Lancaster As-
.4'or attempting to poison his wife and children at Preston,
,04 st.ilo Was sentenced to transportation for life, attempted to
tzlilt,.` suicide by cutting his throat with a piece of
iren paling
tyer I.,'"‘'lay last, but fortunately he was discovered—not, how-
41ein.`e he had' mangled his throat in a shocking manner.
press at lies in a very precarious state.
—Cuinbcrland
.{ccyee.

WILL YOU HAVE YOUR CHURCH

REPAIRED?"

Ridgway and Sons.
The following are extracts from this important pamphlet :
The factious have told the country that it is a Bill for
the destruction of our Churches. Bishops and Archbishops
meet at Lambeth, mad come down to the House of Lords,
and denounce, in a body, as sacrilege and spoliation, a Bill,
of which there is no notice whatever on the rolls of their
House, and which actually has not been discussed in the
Commons. They, or others, prepare artful forms of petitions,
which will serve their purpose to present to the House of
Lords as from the country, but these country petitions are
actually drawn up and printed in London, and then sent
off to the dependent clergy, in the several dioceses, with
orders to get them signed and returned as speedily as pos-
sible ; whereupon Tory clergymen, like Mr. Coddington, of
Ware, and thousands of others, denounce the unknown Bill
to their parishioners, and entreat them to petition the House
of Lords to save and defend them from having their churches
pulled down.* The country has thus been more surprised
than alarmed ; a reaction is already beginning to take place.
Counter petitions, complaining of the deteits which have
been practised, are beginning to flow in ; and there is a
general call for some matter-o-fact explanation of the Bill,
and of the arguments and objections that have been raised
against it. This will be attempted in the following cursory
remarks.
'We will begin with the objections. One objection, for it
can scarcely be called an argument, raised by the Tories
against admitting even the resolutions upon which this Bill
is founded, consists in the assertion of the antiquity of levy-
ing Church-rates. Certainly the custom of rates for the
support of our Churches goes back to a remote period of
our history. But it is not the most ancient method ; it was
a change or innovation upon one still more ancient; for, if
we search history, we shall find that the earliest customs
and laws of our ancestors for maintaining their Churches,
was to render a portion of the Church property liable.
Augustine the monk first formally established Christianity
in this country in the latter part of the sixth century ; and
in the epistles addressed to him as Bishop of Canterbury
by Pope Gregory, which are still preserved, it is directed,
" that of every stipend which accrued to the Church, four
portions should be made ; one for the Bishop and his family ;
a second for the maintenance of the clergy ; a third for the
relief of the poor ; and a fourth for the repair of the
Churches."—(Smith's Beda, p. 62.)
It may be said that this was when there were no parish
Churches, nor systematic establishments ; but if we descend

later, when parishes were formed, and the bishops had ob-
tained a separate maintenance, by grants of lands, salt pits,
fisheries, &c., we shall find that, although a different or tri-
partite division of the property bad taken place, yet that the
principle of repairing the Churches out of Church pro-
perty was kept clearly in view. Thus it is laid down by
Archbishop ./Elfric, in his epistle to Wulfsine, Bishop of
Sherborne, concerning the ecclesiastical canons, A. D. 990,
" That the priest shall distribute the tithes into three parts ;
one for the repair of the Church ; the second for the poor ;
and the third for the ministers of God, who have the care of

that Church."—(2E/j, is Con. 25 ; IVilkins's Cana 1, 253.)
This distribution was formally ratified by the great coun-
cil or Parliament of the nation, then called theWitenaae-
mot, which enacted the following law, A. D. 1014 :—" Res-
pecting tithe, the King and his witan (or councillors) have
chosen and enacted, even as right it is, that the third part
of the tithe which belongeth to a Church, shall go to repair
the Church ; the second part to God's servants ; and the
third to God's poor."—(Schmid Gesetse der Angel Sachsen,
1, 132.)t
And later than this, that is to say within the time of

legal memory, there are records of councils as that of York,
A. D. 1195, under Archbishop Hubert, and that of Oxford,
A. D. 1222, under Archbishop Stephen, in which the eccle-
siastical authorities themselves command, " that the decent
maintenance and reparation of the Churches should be pro-
vided for by the several rectors and vicars out of their re-
venues (tithes), as reason dictates and approved custom
commands."—( Concil. 1,40 L-585.)
Mr. Justice Blackstone, in his Commentaries on our Laws,
recognises this ancient distribution of our Church property,
and is corroborated by all other legal authorities who treat
of the matter. Thus, therefore, if antiquity were to decide
the question, Church-rates would be pronounced an innova-
tion, and we should re-enact the law of King Ethelred and
his Parliament.

It has been said that a very ancient Church-due, which
was called Church-shot (sceat), is the type, and was the
same, as a Church-rate, but neither is this so ; for Church-
shot was a first-fruit offering to the clergy of a measure of
corn, at Martinmas, and the shadow of a similar gift, in the
form of Easter offerings, is preserved to this day. It is
probable that Church-rates crept in as an occasional aid to
the appointed third portion of the tithes, when extensive
repairs or rebuildings were required ; and that as the as-
cendency of the clergy and monks increased, they succeeded
in turning these aids into a constant substitute for this third
portion, which they then appropriated to themselves. And
it is to be remarked that no positive or direct law has ever
yet been discovered which authorises this perversion of
the whole property of the Church to the sole use of the
clergy. In the beginning of the fifteenth century Lind-
wood states that the rector was bound at common law to
keep the Church in repair, but that this duty had, in most
instances, devolved on the parishioners.
But after all we do not attach much value to these ar-
guments, founded upon the antiquity of Church-rates, al-
though since the decriers of the present measure for main-
taining our Churches have laid such stress on their being
the most ancient institution, it has been thought worth
while to prove they are as wrong in this, as it will be
shown they are in their other assertions. The simple fact
is, that Church-rates were an innovation in the distribution
of the property of the Church, and an encroachment on the
poc•/:ets of the people. They may, or they may not, have
been useful in their day ; that which most concerns us is,
whether they answer their purposes now—whether they
can be made to answer those purposes ; and if not,
what substitute can be found for them ; for it is quite
clear that our Churches must not, for the gratification
of party spite, he left to fall to ruin.
The present purpose of Church-rates is to keep the
Church in repair ; formerly they were used as an engine to
worm out and punish dissent. He who did not pay his
Church-rates was stigmatised as a schismatic, or heretic,
and marked out for persecution. We have not now the
power, and but few of us have the will, to persecute, al-
though there are more than choose to acknowledge it.
Many who profess and call themselves good Christians have
still a lurking satisfaction in seeing a staid dissenting
neighbour fined, or humbled, for differing from them on
religious matters ; and it is this feeling which makes them,
perhaps, unconsciously, loudest in their cry for Church-
rates, which have always afforded them a triumph of this
kind over the chapelmen.
Church-rates depend entirely on the will of the house-
holders of each parish ; whether they can formally refuse
them or no, may possibly be a question ; but that they can
indefinitely-postpone them, or reduce them to an insignifi-
cant and useless amount, is undeniable. In fact, they
are sometimes directly, often virtually refused, and still
more frequently, thus reduced. Of late years this prac-
tice has greatly increased, and at present a large
.number of
parishes throughout the country are either wrangling about
their rates, or declining to pay for them at all. When once
a rate is voted, the levying it can be enforced by law, and
many grievous distraints and vexatious sales of household
furniture have lately taken place ; so that the law has been
brought into disesteem, and the system of Church-rates
grown more unpopular. It is also becoming yearly, and
now we may say daily, less effective and productive. The
consequence is, that our Churches, which have never been
kept in a slate of good repair under this system, are
filling more and more to decay; and the decent celebra-
tion .of the rites and ceremonies of our Church within its
walls is offensively impaired.
This state of things is generally acknowledged by
men of all parties. Even Sir Robert Peel, when he was
Prime Minister, felt these dangers so strongly that he
pointed to the relief of Church-rates in the King's Speech,
and still more distinctly avowed his intention, by his own
speech from the Treasury Bench. Lord Stanley also brought
in and carried a Bill for their abolition in Ireland ; and
Lord Spencer (then Lord Althorn), under the ministry of
Lord Grey, and when Lord Stanley was a member of
the Cabinet, proposed their abolition in England. He
was supported by nearly all the Tories, who then dis-
played none of that affection for them which they now
profess. Lord Spencer's Bill proposed to transfer to the
consolidated fund, the charges which had hitherto been
defrayed by the Church-rates ; but it was objected, that
the Dissenters, whose relief from the payment of rates
formed one of the objects of this Bill, would have re-
ceived a very questionable benefit ; for although the amount
of payment made by each individual, might have been
lessened, still the rate itself, over which the dissenting
parishioners had hitherto exercised a direct control, would
have been changed into an absolute government tax t. But

• 'Yet, notwithstanding all these exertions, the last published
report of the number of Petitions presented to the House of
Commons, gives : _

For abolition of Church-rates
Number of Petitioners ... 190,981
Against abolition of Church-rates
Number of Petitioners

t We are indebted for much of the above matter to an ex-
cellent little pamphlet, entitled, " Historical Remarks upon
;he supposed Antiquity of Church-rates, and the Tripartite
Division of Tithes ;" recently published by Messrs. Ridgway,
London. _

Practically, the present system gives those who might de-
sire ruin our Churches, the means of effecting their purpose.
They need only, in any parish where they form The majority,
continue to postpone Church-rates, and the Church must then
lecessarily decay, or be supported by the voluntary contribu-
tions of the Chnrehmen.

the Scotch and the Irish raised still stronger objections.
The Scotch contended, that their lands and their pockets
were liable for the maintenance of their own established
Kirks, and that it would be contrary to the Act of Union
and to justice, to saddle them with the mainter?anee of
the Churches of England also : and the Irish said, that,
since it was considered just to relieve them from the pay-
ment of their own Church cess, it would be a manifest
contradiction of justice to impose on them, in the form
of a tax, a portion of the English Church-rates. These
objections were not easily controverted ; and Lord Spencer
did not press the adoption of his Bill. But he was right,
and has been supported by all subsequent authorities and
experience, in its main object, which was to abolish
Church-rates ; his only error was in looking to the Conso-
lidated fund for a substitute for them.
Surely these repeated votes of the Commons, the assent
of the leading men of all parties, and more especially the
intimation from the Throne, of a relief from Church-
rates, as recommended and avowed by Sir Robert Peel
in 1835, must be considered by all practical men as a
virtual abolition ; they may or may not linger some
time longer on the letter book of the law, but it is
clear to every one that there is a very near end of their
effeCtual collection ; each year the returns will decrease in
amount, till they reach nothing, and in the meanwhile
what is to become of our Churches ? ,Are their services
and their ceremonies to he gradually curtailed of their usual
ornaments and decencies ; are fire and lights to be refused
—vergers, clerks, and organists, to be dismissed—commu-
nion tables and reading desks to be neglected, and the gene-
ral fabric of their venerable buildings, to which a little
repair applied in time, might now be of effectual stability,
to be left to fall into dangerous and expensive decay ? We
do not say that such is already the case, but we know that
these evils have partially occurred in many instances, and
that they threaten to spread rapidly.
It is to remedy this state of things—to promote concord,
and to provide a fixed fund for the decent maintenance and
thorough repair of our Churches, that the Ministers have
proposed measures which the real enemies of our establish-
ment (who proclaim themselves its friends, while they make
it their party tool) call spoliation and sacrilege.
Let us now examine the Bill itself, which has two dis-
tinct objects in view : the one, effective repairs ; the other,
permanent funds to pay for them.
In the first place, then, this Bill, which has been called
a Bill jiff the destruction of our Churches, provides for
their efficient and constant inspection and repair. Hitherto
the Churchwardens, Ministers, Archdeacons, and Bishops
have taken a very loose care (with certain exceptions) of
the sacred buildings committed to their charge. Every one
who is accustomed to visit our country Churches, more
especially in winter, knows full well the air of cold and
damp dreariness, with cob-webbed windows, and mildewed
walls, which too many of them present within ; they have
seen the benches for the poor, inconvenient, confined, ex-
posed to drafts, and ill situated for hearing ; and without,
they have found upturned or defaced graves and headstones,
with grazing cattle, and a ruinous broken down fence, en-
croached on by the ale-house, bespeaking the negligence
with which those who are now perhaps loudest in their pro-
testations of affection for our Churches are in the habit of
treating them. Something of this may have been caused by
the inadequacy and unpopularity of the rates themselves.
But there has been too much of negligence ; and, to remedy
this, the new Bill proposes to give the Archdeacons more
power, and to render their duties and responsibility more
clear. They are, under the sanction of their Bishops, to
appoint surveyors with permanent salaries, whose constant
duty it will be to inspect every Church and Chapel com-
mitted to their charge ; and who will annually make written
reports to the Archdeacon of the state of every Church
building, of the walls and fences, of the Church-yards, and
other enclosures, together wits► detailed estimates of the
repairs necessary for each Church or Chapel during the
ensuing year. A copy of this report is to be left with
the officiating Minister, for his observations, who will
also make his own special report to his Archdeacon, of the
sum requisite for defraying the annual expenses for con-
ducting the service of his Church. The Archdeacons will
then collect and present to their Bishops these reports and
estimates ; and each Bishop will forward the reports of
his whole diocese, thus certified and collected, to the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners in London, who then, having
before them the reports and estimates of the repairs
necessary for all the Churches and Chapels of the whole
kingdom— will decide upon their merits, and certify the
amount which they may consider requisite, to the Com-
missioners of the Church Fund, who will forthwith cause
it to be paid to them. It appears, by returns that have
been made to Parliament, that the sum hitherto spent in
the repair of parish Churches, is about 250,000/. a-year,
and the Commissioners will not be entitled to go beyond
this sum, which is admitted by every one to be amply suf-
ficient. The ecclesiastical Commissioners will then remit
to the several Archdeacons the sums appointed, and they
in their turn will allot to the Churches and Chapels within
their archdeaconry their several portions, according to the
estimates forwarded, and the works to be executed un-
der the diocesan surveyor, and certified by the officiating
Minister.

Now, in all this arrangement, we defy any one to point
out anything like an interference on the part of the laity, or
of the State. All the control of the repairs, the machinery
fOr ascertaining and reporting their urgency and extent, as
well as for granting the funds, are in the hands of the
Clergy ; and yet this is called a Bill for degrading the
Clergy, and pulling clown their and our Churches. If we
had any fault to find, it would be with the marked exclusion
of all lay supervision.
We now come to the question of funds. We have al-
ready seen that Church-rates are in a course of inevitable
abolition. It is mere folly or faction, to talk of strengthen-
ing the arm of the law—you crnnot in fact strengthen it ;
for to strengthen the law, that is to render rates compul-
sory, would be not to strengths.►, but to change the law.
For the very essence. of the Church-rate system is, that the
rate should be freely voted in vestry. Now it is impos-
sible to make people vote as you wish ; and we do not think
any one wrongheaded enough to propose, that the ultimate
power of levying a rate, that is of taxing the peeple, should
he transferred from the people, that is the vestry, to the
Magistrates or Clergy. Even if such a measure could be
forced through Parliament, is it probable that it would be
effective ? There are now no less than twelve hundred
summonses for arrears of rates in the single parish of St.
Mary Abbotts, Kensington, and these are for rates voted
by the parish vestry. How many would there be, if a rate
were ordered by the Magistrates or the Clergy ? We
should soon have!the disgraceful exhibitions of a Church-rate
war in England, as we now have of a tithe war in Ireland.
We eau conceive nothing more pregnant with mischief to
the best interests of the Church, than to bring it in collision
with the people. by means of a compulsory Act for levying
rates. After all, the House of Commons is the sovereign
authority for the imposition of taxes, and it has in two suc-
cessive Parliaments pronounced against Church-rates. This
is decisive ; and so it has been accepted ; for the payment
of rates has already been refused on the grounds that the
Chancellor of the Exchequer has declared against them
in Parliament. The main object, then, of all well-wishers
of the Church, is to find a substitute for them, and speedily.
Lord Althorp condemned them, and sought in vain in
the general taxes of the country for their substitute.
Sir Robert Peel condemned them, and did nothing,
except to tell the agriculturists, and to counsel the
King to tell them too, that he would relieve them from

_ .. ........„,..
their burden, " which bears very unfairly on ..
the, land."#
He was in (ffice then, and coaxing the fa, viers ; but he
is in opposition now, and coaxiny the high Au, chmen, and

so has 'discovered that the agriculturists would disgrace
themselves in the eyes of posterity, if they were to accept
this very relief; which he, not the less, counselled his King
to pomise to them t !
Lord Stanley condemned and executed them in Ireland.
lie sought for, and found a substitute, in a tax upon the
richer clergy, in the shape of bona-fide Tenths of their cleri-
cal revenues, instead of the nominal sums they had hitherto
paid : he sought for it also in the revenues of the Irish
shoprics (ten of which he demolished at one fell swoop,) and
in the improved value of Church property to be obtained by
an Act of Parliament allowing its enfranchisement.
Sir Robert Peel objected that this improved value of the
property of the Church belonged to the Church just as
much as the original property itself ; but Lord Stanley drew
a distinction, saying emphatically, " to whom then shall be
the benefit of this payment'!" The Right Hon. Baronet
(Sir Robert Peel, now his Lordship's Right lion. Friend and
Tory colleague) says, " to the Church :"—I say, " to the
State."

This is stout and strong enough, but he was in dice
then, and anxious to carry his measure : he is an opposition
now, and equally anxious to defeat a similar measure of his
Arnie?. colleagaes ; and so has discovered that the cases are
different, anfintimates, though he has not had the hardi-
hood to assert, that this improved value of Church property
in England must go to the Church.
It is not possible to dive into the recesses of the human
heart ; but a plain unsophisticated man might quote his
Lordship's own coarse expression, and say, this is a " thim-
ble rig" of the shallowest performance.
Hocus-pocus—lrish Church Property—Act of Parliament—
Property of the State.
Hocus-pocus—Enzlish Church Property—Act of Parliament
Property of the Church.
The present Government have been more consistent ;

" I think the charge of providing fcr the repair ofChurchcs
bears very unfairly on the land, and that subject is one which I
had in view when, in the King's Speech, reference was made to
"a method for mitigating the pressure-of those local charges
which bear heavily on the owners and occupiers of land, and
for distributing the burthen of them more equally over other
descriptions of property."—Mirror cf Padiantent.—Debate
on the Address, Feb. 24, 1835.

j• Mirror of Parliament.—Debate on Churel-rates Mara,
!,837.