ligious embassies, in consequence, de- | convinced they would behold the loss volve upon the lowest of the people. of our Indian empire, not with the Who wishes to see scrofula and atheism humility of men convinced of erroneous cured by a single sermon in Bengal ? views and projects, but with the pride. who wishes to see the religious hoy the exultation, and the alacrity of riding at anchor in the Hoogley river? martyrs. or shoals of jumpers exhibiting their Of the books which have handled nimble piety before the learned Brah- this subject on either side, we have mans of Benares? This madness is little to say. Major Scott Waring's disgusting and dangerous enough at book is the best against the Missions home :-Why are we to send out little but he wants arrangement and pru. detachments of maniacs to spread over dence. The late resident writes well the fine regions of the world the most but is miserably fanatical towards the unjust and contemptible opinion of the conclusion. Mr. Cunningham has gospel? The wise and rational part been diligent in looking into books of the Christian ministry find they have upon the subject: and though an enough to do at home to combat with evangelical gentleman, is not uncharitpassions unfavourable to human happi- able to those who differ from him in ness, and to make men act up to their professions. But if a tinker is a devout man, he infallibly sets off for the East. Let any man read the Anabaptist missions; -can he do so, without deeming such men pernicious and extravagant in their own country,-and without feeling that they are benefiting us much more by their absence, than the Hindoos by their advice?

It is somewhat strange, in a duty which is stated by one party to be so clear and so indispensable, that no man of moderation and good sense can be found to perform it. And if no other instruments remain but visionary enthusiasts, some doubt may be honestly raised whether it is not better to drop the scheme entirely.

opinion. There is a passage in the publication of his reverend brother, Mr. Owen, which, had we been less accustomed than we have been of late to this kind of writing, would appear to be quite incredible.

"I have not pointed out the comparative indifference, upon Mr. Twining's principles, between one religion and another, to the welfare of a people; nor the impossibility, on those principles, of India being Christianised by any human means, so long the Company; nor the alternative to which Providence is by consequence reduced, of either giving up that country to everlasting superstition, or of working some miracle, in order to accomplish its conversion.”— Owen's Address, p. 28.

as it shall remain under the dominion of

The

This is really beyond anything we Shortly stated, then, our argument ever remember to have read. is this: We see not the slightest hoy, the cock-fight, and the religious prospect of success; we see much newspaper, are pure reason when comdanger in making the attempt;-& - and pared to it.- The idea of reducing we doubt if the conversion of the Hin- Providence to an alternative!! and, by doos would ever be more than nominal, a motion at the India House, carried If it is a duty of general benevolence by ballot! We would not insinuate, to convert the Heathen, it is less a duty in the most distant manner, that Mr. to convert the Hindoos, than any other Owen is not a gentleman of the most people, because they are already highly sincere piety; but the misfortune is, civilized, and because you must intal-all extra superfine persons accustom libly subject them to infamy and present themselves to a familiar phraseology degradation. The instruments em-upon the most sacred subjects, which ployed for these purposes are calculated is quite shocking to the common to bring ridicule and disgrace upon the and inferior orders of Christians.gospel; and on the discretion of those at home, whom we consider as their patrons, we have not the smallest reliance; but, on the contrary, we are

Providence reduced to an alternative!!!!! Let it be remembered, this phrase comes from a member of a religious party, who are loud in their com

about residence, too, by diminishing | question,—and it introduces other evils the total number of curates, will ob- infinitely greater than that which is viously throw that office chiefly into vainly proposes to abolish.

the hands of the well-educated and To this project, however, for increascomparatively independent young ing the salary of curates, Mr. Perceval men, who seek for the situation rather has been so long and so obstinately for practice than profit, and do not partial, that he returned to the charge complain of the want of emolument. in the last session of Parliament, for Still we admit it to be an evil, that the third time; and experienced, in the resident clergyman of a parish spite of his present high situation, the should not be enabled to hold a respect- same defeat which had baffled him in able rank in society from the regular his previous attempts. emoluments of his office. But it is an evil which does not exist exclusively among curates; and which, wherever it exists, we are afraid is irremediable, without the destruction of the Episcopal Church, or the agumentation of its patrimony. More than one half of the livings in England are under 80l. a year; and the whole income of the Church, including that of the bishops, if thrown into a common fund, would not afford above 180l. for each living. Unless Mr. Perceval, therefore, will raise an additional million or two for the Church, there must be poor curates, -and poor rectors also; and unless he is to reduce the Episcopal hierarchy to the republican equality of our Presbyterian model, he must submit to very considerable inequalities in the distribution of this inadequate provision.

Instead of applying any of these remedies, however, instead of proposing to increase the income of the Church, or to raise a fund for its lowest servants by a general assessment upon those who are more opulent, instead of even trying indirectly to raise the pay of curates, by raising their qualifications in respect of regular education, Mr. Perceval has been able, after long and profound study, to find no better cure for the endemic poverty of curates, than to ordain all rectors of a certain income to pay them one fifth part of their emoluments, and to vest certain alarming powers in the bishops for the purpose of controlling their appointment. Now, this scheme, it appears to us, has all the faults which it is possible for such a scheme to have. It is unjust and partial in its principle, it is evidently altogether and utterly inefficient for the correction of the evil in

Though the subject is gone by once more for the present, we cannot abstain from bestowing a little gentle violence to aid its merited descent into the gulf of oblivion, and to extinguish, if possible, that resurgent principle which has so often disturbed the serious business of the country, and averted the attention of the public from the great scenes that are acting in the world-to search for some golden medium between the selfishness of the sacred principal, and the rapacity of the sacred deputy.

If church property is to be preserved, that precedent is not without danger which disposes at once of a fifth of all the valuable livings in England. We do not advance this as an argument of any great importance against the bill, but only as an additional reason why its utility should be placed in the clearest point of view, before it can attain the assent of well-wishers to the English establishment.

Our first and greatest objection to such a measure, is the increase of power which it gives to the bench of Bishops, -an evil which may produce the most serious effects, by placing the whole body of the clergy under the absolute control of men who are themselves so much under the influence of the Crown. This, indeed, has been pretty effectually accomplished by the late Residence bill of Sir William Scott; and our objection to the present bill is, that it tends to augment that excessive power before conferred on the prelacy.

If a clergyman lives in a situation which is destroying his constitution,he cannot exchange with a brother clergyman without the consent of the bishop; in whose hands, under such circumstances, his life and death are

actually placed. If he wishes to culti- | residence must be lodged somewhere vate a little land for his amusement or why not give the bishop a council, better support, he cannot do it with- consisting of two thirds ecclesiastics, out the licence of the bishop. If he and one third laymen: and meeting at wishes to spend the last three or four the same time as the sessions and deputy months with a declining wife or child, sessions;-the bishop's licence for nonat some spot where better medical as- residence to issue, of course, upon their sistance can be procured, he can- recommendations? Considering the not do so without permission of the vexatious bustle of a new and the laxity bishop. If he is struck with palsy, or of an aged bishop, we cannot but think racked with stone,-the bishop can that a diocese would be much more confine him in the most remote village steadily administered under this system, in England. In short, the power which than by the present means. the bishops at present possess over their Examine the constitutional effects of dergy is so enormous, that none but the power now granted to the bench. a fool or a madman would think of What hinders a bishop from becoming, compromising his future happiness, in the hands of the Court, a very imby giving the most remote cause of portant agent in all county elections? offence to his diocesan. We ought to what clergyman would dare to refuse recollect, however, that the clergy con-him his vote? But it will be said that stitute a body of 12 or 15,000 educated no bishop will ever condescend to such persons; that the whole concern of education devolves upon them; that some share of the talents and information which exist in the country must naturally fall to their lot; and that the complete subjugation of such a body of men cannot, in any point of view, be a matter of indifference to a free country.

sort of intrigues::-a most miserable answer to a most serious objection. The temptation is admitted, -the absence of all restraint; the dangerous consequences are equally admitted; and the only preservative is the personal character of the individual. If this style of reasoning were general, what would become of law, constitution, and It is in vain to talk of the good cha- every wholesome restraint which we racter of bishops. Bishops are men; have been accumulating for so many not always the wisest of men; not centuries? We have no intention to always preferred for eminent virtues speak disrespectfully of constituted auand talents, or for any good reason thorities; but when men can abuse whatever known to the public. They power with impunity, and recommend are almost always devoid of striking themselves to their superiors by abusand indecorous vices; but a man may ing it, it is but common sense to suppose be very shallow, very arrogant, and that power will be abused; if it is, the very vindictive, though a bishop; and country will hereafter be convulsed to pursue with unrelenting hatred a sub-its very entrails, in tearing away that ordinate clergyman, whose principles power from the prelacy which has been he dislikes, and whose genius he fears. so improvidently conferred upon them. Bishops, besides, are subject to the in- It is useless to talk of the power they firmities of old age, like other men; anciently possessed. They have never and in the decay of strength and under-possessed it since England has been standing, will be governed, as other what it now is. Since we have enthen are, by daughters and wives, and joyed practically a free constitution, the whoever ministers to their daily com- bishops have, in point of fact, possessed forts. We have no doubt that such little or no power of oppression over cases sometimes occur, and produce, their clergy. wherever they do occur, a very capriIt must be remembered, however, cious administration of ecclesiastical that we are speaking only of probaaffairs As the power of enforcing

Bold language for the year 1808. † I have seen in the course of my life, as

the mind of the prelate decayed, wife bishops, daughter bishops, butler bishops, and even cook and housekeeper bishops.

bilities: the fact may turn out to be non-residence, in short, is a kind of quite the reverse; the power vested in delinquency for which they compound the Bench may be exercised for spiritual by this fine to the parish. If more purposes only, and with the greatest than half of the rectories in England moderation. We shall be extremely are under 80l. a year, and some thouhappy to find that this is the case; sands of them under 401., pluralities and it will reflect great honour upon are absolutely necessary; and clergythose who have corrected the impro- men, who have not the gift of ubiquity, vidence of the Legislature by their own must be non-resident at some of them. sense of propriety. Curates, therefore, are not the deputies cf negligent rectors;- -they are an order of priests absolutely necessary in the present form of the Church of England: and a rector incurs no shadow of delinquency by employing one, more than the King docs by appointing a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, or a Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, instead of doing the duty of these offices in person. If the Legislature, therefore, is to interfere to raise the natural, i.e., the actual wages of this order of men, at the expense of the more opulent ministers of the Gospel, there seems to be no sort of reason for exempting the bishops from their share in this pious contribution, or for refusing to make a similar one for the benefit of all rectors who have less than 100l. per annum.

It is contended by the friends of this law, that the respectability of the clergy depends in some measure on their wealth; and that, as the rich bishop reflects a sort of worldly consequence upon the poor bishop, and the rich rector upon the poor rector; so, a rich class of curates could not fail to confer a greater degree of importance upon that class of men in general. This is all very well, if you intend to raise up some new fund in order to enrich curates: but you say that the riches of some constitute the dignity of the whole; and then you immediately take away from the rector the superfluous wealth which, according to your own method of reasoning, is to decorate and dignify the order of men to whom he belongs! The bishops constitute the first class in the church; the beneficed clergy the second; the curates the last. Why are you to take from the second to give to the last? Why not as well from the first* to give to the second, if you really mean to contend that the first and second are already too rich ?

The true reason, however, for exempting my Lords the Bishops from this imposition, is, that they have the privilege of voting upon all bills brought in by Mr. Perceval, and of materially affecting his comfort and security by their parliamentary control It is not true, however, that the class and influence. This, however, is to of rectors is generally either too rich, cure what you believe to be unjust, by or even rich enough. There are 6000 means which you must know to be livings below 80l. per annum, which is unjust; to fly out against abuses which not very much above the average allow-may be remedied without peril, and to ance of a curate. If every rector, how-connive at them when the attempt at ever, who has more than 5004. is obliged a remedy is attended with political to give a fifth part to a curate, there seems to be no reason why every bishop who has more than 1000l. should not give a fifth part among the poor rectors in his diocese. It is in vain to say this assessment upon rectors is reason able and right, because they may reside and do duty themselves, and then they will not need a curate; that their

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danger; to be mute and obsequious towards men who enjoy church property to the amount of 18 or 19,000l. per annum; and to be so scandalised at those who possess as many hundreds, that you must melt their revenues down into curacies, and save to the eye of political economy the spectacle of such flagrant inequality!

In the same style of reasoning it may *The first unfortunately make the laws.be asked, why the lay impropriators