SECOND LETTER ΤΟ ARCHDEACON SINGLETON. MY DEAR SIR, It is a long time since you have heard from me, and in the mean time the poor Church of England has been trembling, from the Bishop who sitteth upon the throne, to the Curate who rideth upon the hackney horse. I began writing on the subject to avoid bursting from indignation; and as it is not my habit to recede, I will go on till the Church of England is either up or down-semianimous on its back, or vigorous on its legs. mer class, the Resident Prebendaries, whom I wish to save. Prebendaries The Non-resident never come near the Cathedral; they are just like so many country gentlemen: the difference is, that their appointments are elective, not hereditary. They have houses, manors, lands, and every appendage of territorial wealth and importance. Their value is very different. I have one, Neasdon, near Willesdon, which consists of a quarter of an acre of land, worth a few shillings per annum, but animated by the burden of repairing a bridge, which sometimes costs the unfortunate Prebendary fifty or sixty pounds. There are other Non-resident Prebendaries, however, of great value; and one, I believe, which would be worth, if the years or lives were run out, from 40,000l. to 60,000l. per annum. Two or three persons have said to me-"Why, after writing an entertaining and successful letter to Archdeacon Singleton, do you venture upon another, in which you may probably fail, and be weak or stupid?" All this I utterly depise: I write upon these matters not to be entertaining, but because the subjects are very important, and because I have strong opinions upon them. If what I write Not only do these Prebendaries is liked, so much the better; but liked do nothing, and are never seen, but or not liked, sold or not sold, Wilson the existence of the preferment is Crokered or not Wilson Crokered, I hardly known; and the abolition of will write. If you ask me who excites the preferment, therefore, would not in me-I answer you, it is that Judge any degree lessen the temptation to who stirs good thoughts in honest enter into the Church, while the mass hearts under whose warrant I im- of these preferments would make an peach the wrong, and by whose help I important fund for the improvement hope to chastise it. of small livings. The Residentiary Prebendaries, on the contrary, perform all the services of the Cathedral Church; their existence is known, their preferment coveted, and to get a stall, and to be preceded by men with silver rods, is the bait which the ambitious squire is perpetually holding out to his second There are in most Cathedrals two sorts of Prebendaries - the one resident, the other non-resident. It is proposed by the Church Commission to abolish all the Prebendaries of the latter and many of the former class; and it is the Prebendaries of the for son. What Prebendary is next to come in the soil for all purposes of cultiva into residence is as important a topic tion*, and a long series of elected to the Cathedral town, and ten miles clergymen is rather more likely to proround it, as what the evening or morn- duce valuable members of the coming star may be to the astronomer. Imunity than a long series of begotten will venture to say, that there is not a squires. Take, for instance, the Catheman of good humour, sense, and worth, dral of Bristol, the whole estates of within ten miles of Worcester, who which are about equal to keeping a does not hail the rising of Archdeacon pack of fox-hounds. If this had been Singleton in the horizon as one of the in the hands of a country gentleman, most agreeable events of the year. If instead of Precentor, Succentor, Dean, such sort of preferments are extin- and Canons, and Sexton, you would guished, a very serious evil (as I have have had huntsman, whipper in, dogoften said before) is done to the Church feeders, and stoppers of earths; the - the service becomes unpopular, old squire, full of foolish opinions, and further spoliation is dreaded, the whole fermented liquids, and a young gentlesystem is considered to be altered and man of gloves, waistcoats, and pantadegraded, capital is withdrawn from loons: and how many generations the Church, and no one enters into the might it be before the fortuitous conprofession but the sons of farmers and course of noodles would produce such a little tradesmen, who would be footmen man as Professor Lee, one of the Preif they were not vicars-or figure on bendaries of Bristol, and by far the the coach-box if they were not lecturing most eminent Oriental scholar in Eufrom the pulpit. rope? The same argument might be applied to every Cathedral in England. How many hundred coveys of squires would it take to supply as much know Dr. Copplestone, or Mr. Tate, of St Paul's? and what a strange thing it is that such a man as Lord John Russell, the Whig leader, should be so squirrelminded as to wish for a movement without object or end! Saving there can be none, for it is merely taking from one Ecclesiastic to give it to another; public clamour, to which the best men must sometimes yield, does not require it; and so far from doing any good, it would be a source of infinite mischief to the Establishment. But what a practical rebuke to the Commissioners, after all their plans and consultations and carvings of Cathedral preferment, to leave it integral, and un-ledge as is condensed in the heads of touched! It is some comfort, however, to me, to think, that the persons of all others to whom this preservation of Cathedral property would give the greatest pleasure are the Ecclesiastical Commissioners themselves. Can any one believe that the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of London really wish for the confiscation of any Cathedral property, or that they were driven to it by anything but fear, mingled, perhaps, with a little vanity of playing the part of great Reformers? They cannot, of course, say for them- If you were to gather a Parliament selves what I say for them; but of of Curates on the hottest Sunday in the what is really passing in the ecclesias-year, after all the services, sermons, tical minds of these great personages, burials, and baptisms of the day, were I have no more doubt than I have of over, and to offer them such increase of what passes in the mind of the prisoner when the prosecutor recommends and relents, and the Judge says he shall attend to the recommendation. What harm does a Prebend do, in a politico-economical point of view? The alienation of the property for three lives, or twenty-one years, and the almost certainty that the tenant has of newing, give him sufficient interest The Church, it has been urged, do not plant-they do not extend their woods; but almost all Cathedrals possess woods, and regularly plant a succession, so as to keep them up. A single evening of dice and ba zard does not doom their woods to sudden destruction; a life-tenant does not cut down all the timber to make the most of his estate; the woods of ecclesiastical bodies are managed upon a fixed and settled plan, and considering the sudden prodigalities of Laymen, I should not be afraid of a comparison. to thing is at an end. From Lord John after degradation. The Church is Russell, the present improver of the gone, and what remains is not life, Church, we shall descend to Hume, but sickness, spasm, and struggle. from Hume to Roebuck, and after Whatever happens, I am not Roebuck we shall receive our last im- blame; I have fought my fight. provements from Dr. Wade: plunder Farewell. will follow after plunder, degradation | SYDNEY SMITH. MY LORD, THOUGH, upon the whole, your Residence and Plurality Bill is a good Bill, and although I think it (thanks to your kind attention to the suggestions of various Clergymen) a much better Bill than that of last year, there are still some important defects in it, which deserve amendment and correction. logue of vexations entailed upon the rural Clergy. Is every man to go before the rural Dean, twenty or thirty miles off, perhaps? Is he to go through a cross-examination by the rural Dean, as to the minute circumstances of twenty or thirty questions, to enter into reasonings upon them, and to produce wit nesses? This is a most degrading Page 13. Sect. 31.-It would seem, and vexatious enactment, if all this be from this Section, that the repairs are to intended; but if the rural Dean is to depend upon the will of the Bishop and believe the assertion of every Clergynot upon the present law of the land. A man upon his word only, why may not Bishop enters into the house of a non- a Bishop do so? and what is gained resident Clergyman, and finds it neither by the enactment? But the Commispapered, nor painted-he orders these sioners seem to have been a set of decorative repairs. In the meantime Noblemen and Gentlemen, who met the Court of Queen's Bench have de-once a week to see how they could cided that substantial repairs only, and not decorative repairs, can be recovered by an Incumbent from his predecessor: the following words should be added: -Provided always, that no other repairs shall be required by the Bishop, than such as any Incumbent could recover as dilapidations from the person preceding him in the said Benefice." Page 19. Sect. 42.-Incumbents are to answer questions transmitted by the Bishop, and these are to be countersigned by the rural Dean. This is another vexation to the numerous cata harass the working Clergy, and how they could make everything smooth and pleasing to the Bishops. The clause for holding two Livings, at the interval of ten miles, is perfectly ridiculous. If you are to abolish Pluralities, do it at once, or leave a man only in possession of such Benefices as he can serve himseif; and then the distance should be two miles, and not a yard more. But common justice requires that there should be exceptions to your rules. For two hundred years Pluralities, thing of the Monarchy, or of any other of our institutions; and there is in the declaration a permissiveness and good humour which in public men has seldom been exceeded. Carelessness, however, is but a poor imitation of genius, and the formation of a wise and well-reflected plan of Reform conduces more to the lasting fame of a Minister than that affected contempt of duty which every man sees to be mere vanity, and a vanity of no very high description. his caution has more than once arrested the gigantic projects of the Lycurgus of the Lower House. I am sorry to hurt any man's feelings, and to brush away the magnificent fabric of levity and gaiety he has reared; but I accuse our Minister of honesty and diligence: I deny that he is careless or rash: he is nothing more than a man of good understanding, and good principle, disguised in the eternal and somewhat wearisome affectation of a political Roué. One of the most foolish circumstances attending this destruction of Cathedral property is the great sacrifice of the patronage of the Crown: the Crown gives up eight Prebends of Westminster, two at Worcester, 1500/. per annum at St. Paul's, two Prebends at Bristol, and a great deal of other preferment all over the kingdom; and this at a moment when such extraordinary power has been suddenly conferred upon the people, and when every atom of power and patronage ought to be husbanded for the Crown. A Prebend of Westminster for my second son would soften the Catos of Cornhill, and lull the Gracchi of the Metropolitan Boroughs. Lives there a man so absurd, as to suppose that Government can be carried on without those gentle allurements? You may as well attempt to poultice off the humps of a camel's back as to cure mankind of these little corruptions. But if the truth must be told, our Viscount is somewhat of an impostor. Everything about him seems to betoken careless desolation: any one would suppose from his manner that he was playing at chuck-farthing with human happiness; that he was always on the heel of pastime; that he would giggle away the Great Charter, and decide by the method of tee-totum whether my Lords the Bishops should or should not retain their seats in the House of Lords. All this is the mere vanity of surprising, and making us believe that he can play with kingdoms as other men can with nine-pins. Instead of this lofty nebulo, this miracle of moral and intellectual felicities, he is nothing more than a sensible honest man, who means to do his duty to the Sovereign and to the Country: instead of being the ignorant man he pretends to be, before he meets the deputation of Tallow-Chandlers in the morning, he sits up half the night talking with I am terribly alarmed by a comThomas Young about melting and mittee of Cathedrals now sitting in skimming, and then, though he has London, and planning a petition to the acquired knowledge enough to work Legislature to be heard by counsel. off a whole vat of prime Leicester They will take such high ground, and tallow, he pretends next morning not talk a language so utterly at variance to know the difference between a dip with the feelings of the age about and a mould. In the same way, when Church Property, that I am much he has been employed in reading Acts afraid they will do more harm than of Parliament, he would persuade you good. In the time of Lord George that he has been reading Cleghorn on Gordon's riots, the Guards said they the Beatitudes, or Pickler on the Nine did not care for the mob, if the GentleDifficult Points. Neither can I allow men Volunteers behind would be so to this Minister (however he may be good as not to hold their muskets in irritated by the denial) the extreme such a dangerous manner. I don't merit of indifference to the conse-care for popular clamour, and think it quences of his measures. I believe might now be defied; but I confess him to be conscientiously alive to the the Gentleman Volunteers alarm me. od or evil that he is doing, and that They have unfortunately, too, collected jealousies and quarrels. Little do you know, my dear Lord, of the state of that country you govern, if you suppose this will not happen. I have now a diocese in my eye where I am positively certain, that in less than six months after the passing of this Bill, there will not be a single parish of 2000 persons, in which you will not find a Subscription Curate, of Evangelical habits, canting and crowing over the regular and established Clergyman of the parish. In the draft of the Fifth Report, upon which I presume your Dean and Chapter Bill is to be founded, I see the rights of patronage are to be conceded to present incumbents. This is very high and honourable conduct in the Commissioners, and such as deserves the warmest thanks of the Clergy; it is always difficult to retract, much more difficult to retract to inferiors; but it is very virtuous to do so when there can be no motive for it but a love of justice. no danger of measures which are sanctioned by the highest Prelates of the Church; but you have chased away the bearers, and taken the Ark into your own possession. Do not forget, however, if you have deviated from the plan of your brother Commissioners, that you have given to them a perfect right to oppose you. This unfair and wasteful creation of new Canons produces a great and scandalous injustice to St. Paul's and Lincoln, in the distribution of their patronage. The old members of all other Cathedrals will enjoy the benefit of survivorship, till they subside into the magic number of four; up to that point, then, every fresh death will add to the patronage of the remaining old members; but in the Churches of Lincoln and St. Paul's, the old members will immediately have one fifth of their patronage taken away by the creation of a fifth Canon to share it. This injustice and partiality is so monstrous, that the two Prelates in question will Your Dean and Chapter Bill will, I am afraid, cut down the great preferments of the Church too much. Your whole Bill is to be one of re-sce that it is necessary to their own trenchment, and amputation; why add character to apply a remedy. Nothing fresh Canons to St. Paul's and Lincoln? is more easy than to do so. Let the Nobody wants them; the Cathedrals Bishop's Canon have no share in the go on perfectly well without them, distribution of the patronage, till after they take away each of them 1500l. or the death of all those who were Resi1600l. per annum, from the fund for dentiaries at the passing of the Bill.* the improvement of small Livings; they give, to be sure, a considerable piece of patronage to the Bishops of London and Lincoln, who are Com- Take for your fund only the Nonmissioners, and they preserve a childish Resident Prebends, and leave the numand pattern-like uniformity in Cathe-ber of Resident Prebends as they are, drals. But the first of these motives annexing some of them to poor Livings is corrupt, and the last silly; and with large populations. I am sure therefore they cannot be your motives. this is all (besides the abolition of You cannot plead the recommenda- | Pluralities) which ought to be done, tion of the Commission for the creation and all that would be done, if the of these new Canons, for you have Commissioners were to begin de novo flung the Commission overboard; and the Reformers of the Church are no longer Archbishops and Bishops, but Lord John Russell;-not those persons to whom the Crown has entrusted the task, but Lord Martin Luther, bred and born in our own island, and nourished by the Woburn spoils and confiscations of the Church. The Church is not without friends, but those friends have said there can be from this period, when Bishops have recovered from their fright, Dissenters shrunk into their just dimensions, and the foolish and exaggerated expectations from Reform have vanished away. The great prizes of the Church induce men to carry, and fathers and uncles to send into the Church considerable capitals, and in this way, enable the All objected to in this paragraph has been granted. |