The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-07-15 00:00:00

THE BISHOPS' REVENUES

EVERY new event corroborates our opinion that
Churchmen must take seriously in hand the reform-
ation of Church Temporalities. We are not going
to inflict on our readers the well-used allusions to
Ccczar's wife, but surely if there is one thing more
than any other important to the progress of true
religion in the country, it is that nothing whatever
mercenary should be laid to the charge of the
Bishops of the Church of England: When the
arrangement of 1835 was made as to episcopal
incomes, it is greatly to be regretted that there was
not made a firm and absolute settlement of the
question, without any further involvements as
to rents of lands or other fluctuating profits. This,
however, has not been done. While professing to
settle episcopal incomes, the act of 1835 has done
nothing whatever of the sort. Many elements
were still left to tempt cupidity and to provoke
slander, elements which, having no concern with
the proper office of a bishop, could in their very
nature be only productive of evil. The misfortune
of such a pretended settlement is this—that while
it really arranges nothing, it leaves to the designing
or the ignorant the opportunity of saying that the
Parliament did this and the Bishops conjointly did
the contrary. By the act of 1835, it was supposed
to be arranged that in future the incomes of the
various sees were to be settled as follows :—Canter-
bury, £15,000, York, £lO,OOO, London, £lO,OOO,
Durham, £B,OOO, Winchester, £7,000, and all the
other £5,000 or £4,500, according to circumstances.
Now we do not think that much complaint could
be made against this arrangement, on the score of
want of liberality, but it has not been carried out,
in its integrity, doubtless not by any fault or desire
of the prelates who are concerned, but because
there still was left in the arrangement the vicious
circumstance that fines and rents were not reserved
for general Church purposes, and their probable
produce calculated, perhaps, in a slovenly manner.
In such a matter as the income of a Bishop there
should be none of this huxtering of one source and
another, The act of Parliament should either have
left alone the matter or should have effectuated
what it pretended to do. But what is the fact? In
1848 the Bishop of London, instead of his stipulated
£lO,OOO, received £24,272 13s. Bd., in 1849,
£18,974 Bs. 5d., in 1850, 19,895 10s: The Bishop
of Winchester, also, instead of his £7,000, received
in 1848, £11,313 14s. 7d., in 1849, £10,792 19s. 2d.,
and in 1850, £28,388 7s.

It may be said that these Bishops should not be
included in the new arrangement. Morally we can
give the argument no weight, but let us turn to the
Bishop of Durham and the Bishop of Oxford. Dr.
Maltby is a great reformer. He is a senator of the
London University and a stickler for cheap know-
ledge. Well, this Whig prelate, after paying to the
ecclesiastical commissioners the sum of £11,200
per annum, the estimated, or rather the conjectured,
amount of his rent and fines, instead of his £B,OOO
under the act, takes, in 1850, the sum of £27,419
Bs. /d.! The Bishop of Oxford's case is an exam-
ple of another abuse. It was stipulated that poor
sees not amounting to £5,000 revenue should be
made up to that sum by the ecclesiastical commis-
sioners. The Bishop of Oxford seems, while his
see was paying, by revenues, fines, and leases, the
sum of £5,265, to have taken £3,500 a-year from
the ecclesiastical commissioners, making his income
£9,691. This is decidedly the worst case. No
man having the true interests- of the Church of
England at heart, will regret that attention ill