The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-09-22 00:00:00

The above passages might be multiplied by hundreds, were
it necessary. Nor are they merely the independent remarks
of casual correspondents. The whole are taken, either from
the editorial articles, or from the papers of a regular contri-
butor, who signs himself " Publicola,'! and who continues
a regular contributor to this hour.
Such is the tone and character of that journal which boasts
of a weekly circulation of 60,000 copies, and of which Mr.
Alderman Harmer is a principal proprietor. A greater moral
pest or public nuisance it is impossible to conceive. And
that a party acknowledging an intimate connexion with it
should be elevated to the first official rank among the citizens
of London is, we trust, scarcely possible. At all events, in
a view of its character, as opposed not only to every institu-
tion of the country, but even to religion itself, and to the
sacred scriptures—the only source of divine truth—we feel
that we have no course open to us but that of opposing the
election of the chief proprietor of the Dispatch as Lord Mayor
of London. In taking this course, many of us do violence
to our personal feelings, having receivecLcourtesies or kind-
nesses at Mr. Harmer's hands ; but the case appears to be
one of such extreme criminality, so far as the paper is con-
cerned, as to compel us utterly to overrule all such considera-
tions.

September 161 h, 1840

SIR ROBERT PEEL AND THE CHURCH

(From the Times of Yesterday,.)

The following important letter has come into our possession ;
we have no doubt of its authenticity, and therefore publish it.
" Whitehall Gardens, February 23, 1835.
" My dear Bsshop of Durham ,—That public busiuess must
be of more than ordinary and pressing importance which I
did not set aside for tee purpose of reading with earnest at-
tention a letter from you, and that letter too on a subject of
such vital importance as the one on which you have ad-
dressed me. _ _ . _ _

" I will, with your permission, refer to the political and the
religious considerations which it involves.
" It is a matter of extreme difficulty to determine when it
is the duty of a Minister of the Crown to undertake the
interference with ancient usages and venerable institutions,
If he determines to do nothing, be may incur the risk of
insuring interference by ruder and more hostile hands. If
he advises and undertakes interference he appears to the un-
thinking to be neediessly departing from principle, to be
unsettling what it may be very dangerous to disturb, and to
be establishing a precedent which may be appealed to against
himself by those dangerous innovators whose intervention
he wishes to avert.
" I know no other guide that he can take to regulate his
course amid such difficulties but his deliberate and con-
scientious conviction of what may be ultimately the beat for
the security and permanent interests of the establishments
he desires to protect and serve.
" The important question connected with the church which
was forced upon me, and which required imniediate decision,
was this : _ .

" Is it prudent and safe on the part of the Crown to de-
cline all interference with the state of the church, and to
leave that question to be disposed of as may seem best to the
House of Commons, trustingimplicitly either to the forbear-
ance and caution of that house, or to the power of the House
of Lords to reject what may be injurious ?
" I canuot with a safe conscience answer that question in
the affirmative. _ _

" I entreat you to look with me at the constitution of the
present House of Commons. We have a decided majority of
the representatives of both Ireland and Scotland hostile to
the church, and I fear no inconsiderable number of the re-
presentatives of England either unfriendly or indifferent to
the interests of the church.
" On the first discussion that takes place in the House of
Commons, after my appointment as Prime Minister, on the
proposal to replace in the chair the late Speaker, who has
served the house for IS years, and during seven successive
Parliaments, I find my; elf in a minority of ten.
" It is in vain for me to disguise from myself that very few
of those who voted in that unijority will prove themselves on
the day of trial friends to the church.
" The minority is composed in great part of members pro-
fessing the utmost attachment to the church, but all, with
few exceptions, requiring the correction of whatever can
justly be called an abuse in the establishment.
" In that minority Lord Stanley and his friends voted, in-
creasing of course to the extent of their numbers the force

we could brinn., into the tield. At his late election for Lan-
cashire, Lord Stanley, a declared friend of the church, who
sacrificed his office in maintainance of the principle that
church property in Ireland should not be applicable to secu-
lar purposes, delivered those opinions on the subject of
church reform :

" know also that ecclesiastical reform must come, and
that it is certain with regard to two great branches, namely,
both as to the temporalities of the church, and also as to her
internal discipline. I too, like my hon. friend, would not
be a consenting party to abstracting one farthing from the
revenues of the clergy, who I believe in my conscience are
not overpaid, but as a body are hardly adequate to supply
the religious wants of the people. But I do say that it is
absolutely necessary to have a different distribution of the
revenues of the church, to afford a more equal distribution
of the means of religious instruction ; that the abuses of non-
residence, the abuses of pluralities, and the abuses of the
present appropriation of chapter and cathedral property
should be got rid of, and that the revenues of the church
should be so disposed of as to give the people of England the
greatest amount of benefit from the exertion of competently,
but not overpaid, ministers.'
" Now, looking at the majority and at the constitution of
the minority, what course is it prudent for us to take ? Shall
we leave church reform in the hands of the House of Com-
mons, or shall we make an honest bond fide attempt to re-
serve to the Crown and to advisers selected by the Crown
the cautious and deliberate review of a question of such ex-
treme delicacy and importance ?
" Believe me, my dear Lord, that I am acting under the
deepest impression that the effort I have made so to reserve
that question affords the best (I had almost said the only)
prospect of any safe and satisfactory adjustment of it.
" So much for the political considerations that are con-
nected with this subject, and their bearing, not on the poli-
tical prospects of an administration, but on the vital interests
of the church.

" May I presume now, with the utmost deference for your
superior knowledge, and with unbounded respect for your
high and venerable character, to say a word to you on much
higher concerns—on the intrinsic merits of the measure I
have advised, and its relation to the spiritual welfare of the
establishment ?

" I admit the force of your observations as to the advantage
of cathedral dignities, their tendency to elevate the general
character of the profession, their utility (if honestly applied)
as retreats for, and encouragement to learning, and I should
be the last person to propose any harsh measures of confis-
cation, or the sudden appropriation of the revenues of deans
and chapters (in the absence of all friendly and confidential
consultation with them) to objects foreign to their original
destination.

" But I do earnestly advise a comprehensive and impartial
consideration of the whole position of the church, and that
our anxiety for one branch of the establishment should not
divert our care from other objects of most important and
pressing concern. Ido earnestly ask, whether it be fit that
the great manufacturing towns and districts of the country
should be; left, as to the means of spiritual instruction, in
their present state ? Is it right (I ask the question on purely
religious grounds) that such a place as Nottingham, for
instance, should remain as it has hitherto remained, with no
provision for the maintenance of the ministers of the church
of England, excepting the scanty means which they can
collect from pew rents or Easter dues ?
" Is it right that the two parishes of St. Margaret and St.
John, Westminster, with a population of 50,000 souls—pa-
rishes dependent on the Dean and Chapter of Westminster
—in the immediate vicinity of the cathedral church—under
the daily eye of parliament, should remain without, in either
case, a decent provision for even a single minister of the
Church of England ! In these parishes there are additional
churches subscribed for, but not built, because there is no
endowment ; and dissent is increasing, not on account of hos-
tility to the church, but because there is a religious feeling
which the Church of England will not conciliate towards
herself.

" Apart from all popular clamour, from all political con-
siderations, is it better for the Church of England, for the
interest of that faith the propagation and maintenance of
which is surely the primary object of her establishment, to
continue the old method of disposing of all the prebends of
Westminster as sinecure dignities, or to make a certain num-
ber of them iustrumental in removing such a scandal from the

church, as that which two great neglected parishes in the
heart of the metropolis, and in immediate connexion with the
chapter, are exhibiting at this hour !
" Let me take another case—that of Colne, a parish in
Lancashire, the centre of a large manufacturing district. It
contains about 18,000 inhabitants, has one minister with a
stipend of about £l6O. a year, £lOO. of which is raised by
Easter dues, paid with the utmost reluctance and ill will,
each cottager having to pay 51d. a head, and frequently re-
sisting payment until after an order of a magistrate, which
increases the charge tenfold.
" 1 have mentioned three examples of parishes—one in
the metropolis, one in a large town, one in a great manufac-
turing district; and they are not unfair instances of the
miserable provision made for divine worship in very many
parishes similarly circumstanced. Can we reconcile it to
ourselves in a religious point of view that these things should
remain as they are? If we cannot, if we must admit that
they are wrong, is there the shadow of a hope that parliament
will be content merely to supply the deficiency—will leave
cathedral dignities and cathedral revenues precisely on their
present footing, and make provision out of the public funds
for the increase of all livings inadequately provided for?
Suppose there were a vacancy to-morrow in the deanery of
Durham, would it he prudent for me, either as a minister or
as a conscientious friend of the church, to advise the king to
fill up the appointment, leaving it with its present emolu-
of £9OOO a year, and with no other spiritual functions than
those which belong properly to the dean? There would cer-
tainly be, on the one hand, the advantage of strict adherence
to the letter at least of the statutes of the chapter, there
would be the gain to the minister of a great aristocratic ap-
pointment which might possibly be well bestowed on some
man of pre-eminent worth and extraordinary learning ; but
would such advantages compensate for the alienation of thou-
sands from the church, who would witness this appointment,
with all its emoluments intact, devOlving on an individual,
and at the same time populous districts in the neighbourhood
of Durham overrun with dissent from no other cause than
that there is no adequate provision for the performance of
the rites of the church of England ?
" If the deanery of Durham were retained with all its
functions, and with ample emoluments for the station, and if
at the same time some mode could be devised for making a
portion of the revenues (surely the excessive revenues) now
attached to the deanery instrumental in planting a new
bishopric in the north of England, and relieving the see of
Chester from some portion of labours above human strength,
could it be truly said that this would be undermining the
foundations of the church ?
prebenda
opopun\l-NaT7toiyuoonlnfed
,(Dsaoeulrrenhel
teath
Durham
(selecting, if
fps olui fcc
application
this n
rectory
of kind,o eo
emolumentsar
sthe a attachment
otafc hs meowef neata ofspt
rl
pre-
bend bend to the spiritlauapatiiioecirnimnfpooapofgrrovement of immense masses of
property
eri
ot
any
ne tyrl
greater
r oeaft chaptertehr e violation
byho possible,
higobei
rdl epl,
purpose
principlecr thoseia)ols ties)—would
ewos
f)ht
endowing
doan tohurweel
ns agslueacnhofatcht connectedes
uni-
versity, or the attachment of prebends to the professorships
in that university ?
" Does any reasonable man complain that a prebend of
Lichfield has been attached to an unendowed
parish in
Birmingham, or doubt the advantage to the church, to the
temporal as well as the spiritual interests of the church, of
such an application of it ?
" Under any circumstances, I should say not; but under
the present circumstances the practical question for decision
is this,—shall these precedents be cautiously acted upon by
friends of the church for the bona fide purpose of extending
the influence of the church, or shall church reform be left to
reckless innovators and undisguised enemies ?
" I have written this letter amid so many interruptions,
and so hastily, that I ought, perhaps, to apologize to you for
an apparent abruptness and peremptoriness in the manner
and tone of it—perhaps for its unconnectedness and want of
clearness.
" 1 have been obliged to have it re-copied, that I might
not inflict upon you the double penalty of a tedious and an
illegible letter.—
I "
Most faithfully yours,
" ROBERT PEEL.
" P.S.—I omitted to state in my letter that I entirely con-
IrNiav7eiththteb honour
lon
greatestou r to
esteem, be,mydear Lord,
"
con-
cur in your opinion that it could not be politic or just, under
any circumstances, to contract the means of the chapter of
Durham to give effect in the fullest degree to their wise and
liberal intentions in respect to the university which has been
founded under their auspices.