The Sun.
London, England, 1837-03-06 00:00:00

principles which it betrayed. He said, he "had oS-
jected to Lord Spencer's plan of _commuting the Church-
rates, and charging them on the consolidated fund, and
he was pleased to find that four years of reflection had
convinced the Right Hon. Gentleman and his colleagues
in the -Government that the plan was untenable, the
reasons assigned to that effect on the present oeeasion by
the Right Hon. Gentleman being precisely those which he
(Mr. Hume) had urged on the former occasion." He added,
" a few years had effected a great change, and they had
now, he was pleased to think, come round to him." This
Whig scheme, then, is the very one which Mr. Hume,
had he been Chancellor of the Exchequer, would have
himself proposed. It ;is the one to whose principle Mr.
Spring Rice gage the most decided opposition four years
ago, and precisely upon the ground that it would leave a
National Church without national support. Indeed, Mr.
Spring Rice does not now with more apparent sincerity
decry the voluntary system than four years ago lie decried
the principle of the scheme which he has the assurance
to-day to submit to Parliament. In another four years he
is not less likely to become as zealous an advocate for the
voluntary system, -as he is to-day for the Church-robbing
plan, which excited his horror, and called forth his indignant
reprobation four years ago. We recollect when Mr.
Spring Rice was as sensitive as Lord Plunket, on the sub-
ject of profane invasion of the sacredness of Church pro-
perty. Both have come round, however, as Mr. Hume
expresses it, to the principles of one, who is not only the
avowed enemy of the national Establishment, but who at-
tempted in his place in Parliament, some years ago, to de-
pose even" Divine Providence," and to relieve the Supreme
Governor of the world from the controul and direction of hu-
m in sffairs. The legislation relative to the Church and its in-
teiests, which is accommodated to the wishes and the views
of such a man, must be just such legislation as, when applied
to the shepherd's fold, would meet with the approbation of
the wolf. Two distinguishing characteristics of the pro-
posed measure, apart from all other considerations, must
have tended strongly to recommend it to the adoption of
our Whig Ministers. It holds out the inducements of plun-
der and patronage. The favourite machinery of a com-
mission is to be established. A Central Board, with three
well-paid Commissioners, and several unpaid ones, is to
work the spoliation project, and Church property is to be
regulated after the same centralized fashion as the affairs of
the poor. Indeed the poor have an interest in the Church-
rates, of which, to a certain extent, the Church is a quasi
trustee for their Aenefit. Lord Sandon put that part of
the question better than any one else when he said that
" the Church Commissioners represented the destitution
existing in the Church of England to be very great, and
also declared that the Establishment was totally inadequate
to supply the acknowledged deficiency of spiritual instruc-
tion. The Right Hon. Gentleman (Mr. Rice) said that
this measure would not diminish the patrimony of the poor.
He (Lord Sandon) maintained that it would deprive the
poor,of the only patrimony they possessed—that it would:
withdraw not only from the existing poor, but from millions:.
who were to Come after them, their only hope of possess-
ing the inestimable blessing of an efficient and well-en-
dowed ecclesiastical establishment." But is it to be ex-
pected that the Ministers, who by their Malthusian poor
law have resolved that poverty shall be treated as crime
—is it to be expected, we ask, that the Mimisters who.
labour to expel the vital mercies of Christianity from the
law of England, will feel their " tender consciences " much
disturbed by robbing the poor of their national means of
religious instruction, which our pious and patriotic ances-
tors
had ordained that they should derive through the
Church of England, "without money and without price ?"
Tho amount of Church-rates, we believe, is between.
600,000(. and 700,000/. The sum to be handed over to
the Church out of its own property, to compensate for:
their confiscation, is to be 250,0001. The original sum 'is
so light an impost, diffused over all the parishes of Englate
and Wales, that it can hardly be called a burden ; but the
230,000/. to be raised out of the Church property, by the
screwing system of rack-renting, will be a very serious
burden to the limited portion of the community upon whom
the sum is to be raised. This is the gross injustice of the
measure, as applied to individuals, but the grand objections
upon which the principal Conservative Members in the
House of Commons ought at once to have denounced it in
no mitigated terms of reprobation is, that it plunders the
Church of its immemorial property and destroys its national
character, under pretence of relieving the tender consci-
ences of Dissenters. As we said on a former occasion, the
same reasoning, as Mr. Rice employs to convince the House
of the propriety of the measure would be equally valid to
relieve all persons of republican opinioos from paying
taxes to the support of the national Government. Why
shook( not the consciences of the members of " So-
ciety of Friends," and others who are, on principle, op-
posed to war, be relieved against paying taxes to the
support of a standing army and a navy, more especially
when our military means are employed in such useless,
unnecessary, and dishonourable slaughter as that which re-
sults from Lord Palmerston's non-intervention war in
Spain. But that this measure of confiscatiors will satisfy
the political Dissenters, and the Romanists and infidels,
who are leagued with them fer tho destruction of Ow na-
tional Church, there is not the slightest ground for IssAieving.
The Dissenters, when soliciting the repeal of the 'Test and
Corporation Acts, as vehemently protested their respect for
the Church Establishment, and the utter absence of any in-
tention to injure it on their part, as the Roman Catholic
agitatorS did when looking for " emancipation." We see
how bath these parties have kept their faith, and rewarded
the generous credulity of the Churchmen in both Houses
of Parliament who relieved them from all the civil disa-
bilities which had been formerly imposed in consequence of
tick efforts to overturn the constitution and governasent
of the country. Mr. Joseph Hume mentions very Signi-
ficantly that the Dissenters had resolved not to crab arrass
Ministers by asking for any thing more at present.
So a besieging army establishes its first parallel be-
fore it establishes the second ; but it is not because
it proceeds by degrees in making :ti approaches, that it
is therefore the less determined upon reducing the place
besieged, which in the present instance is the citadel of our
holy religion, whose ancient battlements its enemies, with
the aid of the present Ministers, expect to raze to the
ground. We must confess we do not like the tone and
manner in which some of our leading Conservatives spoke
of the Ministerial scheme. Somewhat more energy,
sion, and judicious boldness in the defence of great_ prin-
ciples would surely not produce detriment, but tlr reverfte,
to the Conservative cause. The conapliments,sy effusions
of Sir R. Inglis to Mr. Spring Rice, in rrjference to his,
vague and insincere expressions of respe'et, for the Protes-
tant Establishment, while he was aimirag a deadly blow at
its existence, seemed to us to be sadly out of place. But
the Protestant community, we have no doubt, will speak
out, and they who would lead in so great a cause must show
that they feel its inspiration. Our argument is confined
to the principle-of the Bill, which is so bad, that we trust
it may never be necessary for us to enter into a considera-
tion of its details. Holding that principle in abhorrence
as we do, why should we enter into the minor topic of
making profits by the sale of Church pews and other mat-
ters of that sort, while we hope that the principle on which
all the rest depends will never be sanctioned by the Legis-
lature of England, of which the House of Lords yet forms
a component part.—Morning Herald.

Are the present revenues of the Chtrech sufficient or
insufficient to provide amply for all drat a national Eccle-
siastical Establishment requires fe'e the decent splendour'
of its hierarchy, the comfortable. independence of its Clergy,
the repair from time to time of its venerable edifices, the
performance throughout the entire kingdom of its sacred
offices? We know that, for the due accomplishment,
these purposes, the revenues of the Church are certainty
and lamentably insufficient. Whence else the pe,_ petual
applications to private benevolence for the effectinr, of that
which the Church has not funds to effect ? W'nence the
Church accomuiodation societies, and the pastoral aid so-
cieties ? Whence the necessity for the; exertion of tho
pious munificence of our Relies and Netwcastles ? Whence.,
the letter of his most gracious Majesty orderin
an appeal to be made to the religious spirit of his;
people, from every o'arish pulpit, for the contribue'ion
of the funds, wi',.'eOut which thousands in a Chris.'
tian land must visit no church, learn no religion,.
know no Gott, ':" This state of facts is notorious. Setting'
aside the ore tors who inveigh against bloated Bishops, and
pampered, pluralists, and corpulent canons, and similarly
faceti.ons alliterations—the Humes, and the Bull crs, and
the Molesworths—we have found no political ty.an of any
eminence asserting that the revenues of the Church of
England are more than adequate for the objects to which
they are devoted. Now the revenues of the Church of
England consist party of the property 'ecoLar,:athed by the
piety of our ancestors for religious tmes, the lands in the
possession of bishoprics, chapters, &e. ; and partly of contre-.
butions levied under different. 'regulations upon every indi-
vidual in the commienitv oeming certain descriptions of pro-
perty, whatever his par.t*eular creed, for the maintenance
of an institution -which is, in the most extdanded.
sense; of the word—national. Such contributions arc
Tithes and Church-rates. They are of date from.
time immemorial. They are no new taxest against fhe bur-
thenscime imposition of which an unprepared vie tim may
have a right to complain. The. Anabaptist; took. his farm
knowing as well the amount of his tithe as of his rent. The
S.ocinian entered his house contemplating the. payment of
Sewer-rate and Church-rate with eqr.ial certainty. It is
now proposed to deprive the Claurel', of the Church-rates,
a part of her long undispute",' income ; and to leave her, in.
so far as the direct contributions of the people are concerned,.
250,000/. per annum poorer than she has hitherto been,.
Upon what pretence it is that Mr. Spring Rice threatens
to take 250,0001, per annum from a. Church whose .present
income is so flu. inadequate to her wants, that anotell!Y
weekly, daily, •Re-fie4-the yphiot.ory ripciplc called 'in aid