The Sun.
London, England, 1860-02-09 00:00:00

CHURCH-RATES.

The protected growth of the Church-rate feud,
and the anxiety shown by some of our legislators
that it should be permitted to bear its legitimate
fruit, are no novelty in this isle. England is re-
garded by many as a virarian2 of social evils' in
which things confessedly mischievous are to have
fair play, and to be let alone till we see what be-
comes of them. In natural history this zeal for
science is most meritorious. 'Toads and spiders,
grubs of all kinds, vermin of every description,
once placed under a glass case, become interesting
objects of observation. Nothinr, is more delight-
ful than to see animalcule of the most monstrous
forms and rapacious habits of devouring one another
under a microscope. A war rages before you, and
strange races run through all the phases of life with
inconceivable rapidity; but you have only just to turn
your eyes to the object glass, and you see it is all
in a speck of moisture, the mere fraction of a drop
of water. The old rule, " Fiat experimentain in
copore viii," might lead us to be content with physi-
ological curiosities and animalcular warfare. But,
unfortunately, the same ardour of science leads us
to foster, and carefully guard from intrusive legis-
lation, social nuisances, already doing every day a
day's work of evil, and certain to end in disastrous
catastrophes. A clergyman of eccentric tastes and
impracticable temper empties a noble church for 20
years, and stuns the metropolis with his squabbles.
In the interest of social science he must be let alone
till the patience of his parishioners is at last ex-
hausted, and there ensues a church riot. Immedi-
ately all eyes are fixed on this rare and curious de-
velopment ; the glass shade is placed carefully over
the monsters, and the nation waits to see what will
come of it. We are pursuing exactly the same
course with the Church-rate controversy. The whole
country is divided ; some hundred parishes are dis-
tracted by a bitter warfare : the Church which we
are taught to believe the Kingdom of lleaven'is
made to depend on the right of a majority to extract
shillings from a minority. Where there is no quarrel
now itis invited by the law itself, and certain to come;
but, don't interfere; take care how you breathe,
how you tread ; don't shake the stand; let us wait
to soy what will come of it, whether an explosion, a
fire, something alive, or perhaps only a very bad
smell, and results more offensive than mischievous.
Meanwhile the harm done is not speculative, but
actual ; but we leave the victims to their fate, be
they embittered Churchmen or dogged Dissenters.
We deal with the case as Charles Lamb directed his
friend, on presenting him with a puppy—" Should
the dog bite your son, shoot the boy, and shut up
the dog, to see whether he is mad." There is no
question of the number of persons bitten and in-
fected with a most malignant virus. Our scientific
legislators leave them to their fate, and confine their
attention to the controversy, which they want to
see running through all the stages of madness, even
if it should bite a good many more.
On one point all the philosophers are agreed ;
the question is ripening slowly to some development
or other. All agree that " we shall be worse before
we are better." If the " central authority," as Mr.
Disraeli now calls the Queen, Lords, and Commons,
does not interfere, the rate will become more and
more exceptional, anomalous, and unjust. Church
after church will be built, district after district will
be formed, themselves dependent entirely on volun-
tary funds, but liable to be taxed by the majority of
the whole parish for the support of a mother church.
Parish after parish will throw off the burden with
violence, insult, and a lasting resentment on both
sides. The Church, all the time, will suffer the impu-
tation of being a State fixture and a State property.
In fact, the principle of Church and State, which
Mr. Disraeli professes to make the ground of his
vote, will bo maintained in its most ungracious
form, and yet without success, for parish after
parish will do for itself what the " central au-
thority" is too prudish to do for it. Where the
vestry consists of a few tenant farmers, the rate
will be levied at the lowest and shabbiest figure,
for the farmers must pay that much, having taken
it into account in their agreements with their
landlords, but not a sixpence more, to prevent the
roof from falling in. This is what people meant
yesterday by calling this a question of town against
country, as if the rate in rural parishes were so
hearty and genial an affair. Such is the rate which
it is boasted nine parishes out of ten are so glad to
pay that they would consider it a great cruelty
were the central authority to render it quite op-
tional. Here, then, we have the development to
which Lord R. Montagu, Mr. K. Seymer, and Mr.
Disraeli would bring us ; more churches on the
, voluntary system ; more districts taxed for mother
1 churches ; more parishes availing themselves of the
Braintree decision, and throwing off the impost ;
and the rate itself levied on a still parsimonious
scale, to the great injury of the fabrics, and discre-
dit of the Church. The advocates of the rate hold
out no better prospect. This is the inevitable work-
ing of the alternative they recommend; and, strange
to say, they claim to be thought special friends of
the Church, and describe as its enemies all who re-
commend any other course. The development or
solution of the controversy which was implied in
Sir J. Trelawny's bill, read a second time yester-
day by a majority of 29, would put an end to the
very great anomaly of the majority in a vestry
being able to lay on a parish an otherwise volun-
tary rate ; it would reduce all England to the sys-
tem by which nearly all our metropolitan churches
out of the city itself are maintained in high repair ;
and it would cause the immediate introduction
everywhere of a system of Church guardianship,
under which the fabrics would be much better
looked after than they are now.
When gentlemen like Mr. Disraeli undertake to
guard the relations of Church and State, they are
very likely to make great mistakes. The fabrics
of the Church of England are now chiefly main-
tained by voluntary means. What is subscribed
annually for the building, repairing, and adorning
of churches, together with subscriptions for the
proper maintenance of the service has been com-
puted at near a million and a half a year. The
Church-rate is only about a quarter of a mil-
lion, or 17 per cent, of the voluntary collec-
tions. What keeps up the Church really, then,
is the voluntary element; for without it, and with
nothing but the rate, there would be no new
churches, no enlargement of churches, no extensive
repairs, no renovation of the roof and restoration of
the seats ' • no new windows, no organs, no lighting,
no officials ; nothing, in fact, but the barns, not
always weather-tight, in which our fathers wor-
shippedrte till fifty years ago. The church-rate,
of
which Mr. Disraeli holds up as the golden link
a
the mystic union and the palladium of the
rison Estab-
lishment, is bat its pauper's dole, its p
allow-
ance, its penny thrown to the organ-grinder to buy
him out of the street. Till the recent revival of
of the
church architecture the rate was t
rulee
done for a
Church's poverty. Nothing could
village church, because it entailed an addition to
the rate. A window could not be opened or glazed,
the tracery could not be extricated from the brick
stuffing, the communion-table could not be covered
with a-decent cloth, an organ could not be erected,
and even communion could not be celebrated more
than four times a-year, because it entailed an addi-
tion to the rate, which the vestry considered it was
their duty to keep down: The ratepayers might
be liberal enough when it was a matter of choice,
but they felt put on their honour to screw the rate
down to the lowest point. Nor was the vulgarity
of pew-rents, which Mr. K. Seymer so feelingly
deprecates, avoided by the use of the rate. The
farmers enlarged and multiplied the pews in pro-
portion to the rates they paid, till they usurped the
whole area of the churches, and drove the poor who
paid no rates up into the gallery, or under it, or out
of the church altogether into the neighbouring
meeting-house. This was particularly the case in
rural districts, where Mr. K. Sevmer says that
pew-rents aro odious. In truth, like many other
questions stilted up on the top of some sentiment or
other, this is really a question of facts, and the more
the facts are inquired into, the more will it be found
that the Church of England thrives much better on
the voluntary than on the compulsory system.—
Times,

SINGULAR AND FATAL OCCURRENCE.—A fatal and
novel accident has happened at Bilston, in Staffordshire.
On Monday morning, about 4 o'clock
the lodgers in he
house in High-street, in that town, occupied by John Welsth,
shoemaker and broker, were alarmed by a crash over their
heads, which they deecribe ac resembling the report of a
cannon. The crash was accompanied by screams from one
of the rooms on the attic floor, used as the sleeping-room of
Welsh, his wits, and his two children, one in its sixth and
time other in its fourth year. It was then discovered that the
roof of the house had given in immediately over that part of
the room in which the family wero at rest, and that they
were all buried beneath the debris. When the sufferers
were liberated it was found that they were all more or less
injured, Welsh so much so that his life was despaired of.
lie died at 10 o'clock the same morning, notwithstanding-
the prompt attendance of a surgeon. Death is attributed to
Spinal injuries, caused by the accident, as there are no ex-
ternal marks on the body. The house is a large one, be-
longed t• Mr. Thomas Baker, a grocer, was let for 4s. 2d.
a-week, and, notwithstanding that it had a heavy roof of
brick tiling, the rafters were composed of comparatively
slender strips of flr wood, now greatly decayed. A short time
ago the corresponding portion of the roof situated above the
adjoining room to that occupied by Welsh, fell in, and an
old man who had just left his bed narrowly escaped a s6iiilar
fate to that which has now befallen the deceased. Great
excitement prevaile in the neighbourhood of the ill-fated
house, as there are ',aural similarly constructed not far
front it,