MOTION FOR A SELECT COMMITTEE. (Hansard, 21 April 1874)

THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH*

My Lords, in asking your Lordships to grant a Select Committee to inquire into the laws relating to patronage in the Church of England, I am well aware of the difficulty as well as of the importance of the subject which I have undertaken to bring under your Lordships' consideration. I know how many and how important are the interests, spiritual and temporal, involved in any system of Church patronage, and especially in a system so ancient, so extensive, and so complex as that of our Church. I know, too, what burning questions underlie this of Church patronage—questions of Church discipline, and Church polity which have, in our own memory, rent asunder one Church Establishment, and which it may seem dangerous and rash to raise, or even run the risk of raising, in our Established Church. My Lords, I am fully and even painfully conscious of the difficulties and dangers which beset the attempt to deal with this question; but I am even more fully convinced of the still greater danger that must result from neglecting to deal with it. For, my Lords, the evils resulting from the defects of our present system are so patent and so serious, and the demand 901 for then reform so strong and universal that if it be not met, and met speedily, by wise and temperate reform, it may end in changes that will be neither wise nor temperate. In short, this question seems, like some other Church questions, to have reached that critical point at which reform is possible and safe, but at which delay or denial of reform leads to revolution. My Lords, it is because I desire reform, and because I dread and deprecate revolution—it is because I have not the least sympathy with the crude doctrinaire schemes for re-constituting our entire system of Church patronage which one sees put forward on every side—it is because I believe that the evils which all admit to exist may at this moment be remedied by wise measures of reform, that I desire to see this question in the hands of a Committee of your Lordships' House. And, my Lords, whatever there may be of rashness in my mode of dealing with this subject, I am certainly not premature in bringing it under your notice. The reform of Church patronage is no new subject in the Church or in either House of Parliament. It has been fully and frequently discussed in our diocesan conferences and Church congresses, in which the mind of the Church is now so largely and freely expressing itself. It has also been considered and reported on by more than one Committee of both Houses of Convocation, who have produced most careful and valuable reports upon it. It has been incidentally dealt with by the Commission on Clerical Subscription, of which some of your Lordships were members, and whose report as to one part of this subject——the law of simony—is that it "stands in urgent need of revision." Bills dealing with another part of the subject—the sale of next presentations—have been introduced in both Houses of Parliament; in this House by the Duke of Marlborough, in the House of Commons, some years since, by the present Judge of the Court of Arches, and more lately by an hon. Member (Mr. A. Cross) who now holds high place in Her Majesty's Government. And at this moment I am authorized to state that in making this Motion—though, of course, my right rev. Brethren are not pledged by any word I may speak—yet that this Motion itself has their unanimous concurrence. I think, then, my Lords that 902 I may plead that the subject I bring before you is one that is ripe, and even pressing for consideration and for settlement.

My Lords, in order to induce your Lordships to grant the Committee for which I am about to move, I have to show you, not merely that there are evils connected with our present system of Patronage—that is only too easily shown; but I am bound to show you that these evils are removable by legislation. Because it is not to be forgotten that there are evils in every system which are not curable by legislation—evils which are really the imperfections incident to all human institutions, and the attempt to remedy which might only bring in other and worse evils in their stead. I know, my Lords, that any system of patronage you can devise—place the patronage where you will—make it public, private, or popular, is subject to two disturbing influences, which you can never entirely get rid of. Two elements enter into it, which have, as it were, a chemical affinity for each other, and which you can never keep entirely apart by the merely mechanical process of legislation. One of these is money, and the other is human nature; and it is idle to hope that patronage will be so administered as to be free from the disturbance these two elements make in their meeting. And this, too, is to be remembered, that modes of patronage which work, or seem to work admirably, in other communions than our own, will not, therefore, necessarily suit ours. On the contrary, the very fact that they suit so admirably a different system makes it probable mat they will not suit with, but will rather act as foreign bodies in our system, producing feverish and even fatal disturbances. I admit, therefore, my Lords, that I have to show you that, while there are serious practical evils connected with our present system of patronage, it is possible, without any wild or revolutionary change—adhering, on the contrary, strictly to the genius and traditions of our own Church, and to the principles of our own system, to find for most of these safe and sufficient remedies. In the first place, then, I have to show your Lordships that there are evils to be remedied. And in speaking of these I do not mean to dwell at any length on what is generally regarded as the worst and 903 most scandalous of them—I mean the open and notorious, and, I regret to add, the increasing traffic in benefices. My Lords, it is a notorious and a most discreditable fact that there are offices in London where benefices are not publicly sold—I wish they were—but publicly advertised and privately sold, on a system that combines the worst scandals of publicity with the worst evils of privacy. And we are, of course, all of us familiar with the manner in which the clerical agents who sell these benefices puff their wares. "We know only too well the announcements of "eligible livings," with "charming neighbourhood," "good society and bracing air" to strengthen the purchaser' for the "light duty" attaching to the cure, with its "good trout stream" and "adjacent coverts," and the "incumbent in advanced years," and—worst of all—the ominous announcement of "immediate possession," which means in nine cases out of ten, immediate breach or evasion of the laws against simony. My Lords, I am not about to waste your time in expressing my indignation against this detestable benefice mongering, simply because I know of no one who attempts to defend it. I have never yet met the churchman who was not heartily ashamed of it, and did not long for its suppression. All that I have ever heard said for it is not in justification, but by way of excuse and palliation. The evil, we are sometimes told, is really not so great as it appears. The Church is not responsible, after all, for the vulgar greed and coarse puffery of these clerical agents. Many of the benefices thus offensively advertised are bought by clergymen who really and honestly desire to do their duty in the benefice they have bought, and who care for the souls of their parishioners and not for the trout-stream and the adjacent coverts; and that, in fact, these advertisements are rather a scandal than an evil. My Lords, I thankfully admit that there is some truth in this plea—I admit that good men do sometimes honestly buy, for a good motive, these advertised livings. If it were not so, the evil, bad as it is, would be simply intolerable. But granting that this plea were valid in a much larger degree than it really is, still those who urge it seem to me quite to forget that a great scandal is in itself a great evil. It is a weakness to the friends and a strength to the enemies of the 904 institution that suffers from it, for no institution can continue with safety to offend the moral sense of the community in which it exists. For this reason alone, then, even if there were no other, all true friends of the Church should desire the suppression of this traffic in benefices. But, my Lords, there is another reason why I do not dwell at any length on the evils of this traffic. It is because—bad as these are—I regard them only as symptoms of a deeper evil; for, if there be nothing objectionable in the fact of the sale of livings, why should we be so much shocked at these advertisements for the sale of them? If the thing that is done be lawful and expedient, why this squeamishness as to the persons who undertake to effect it for us? It seems to me that on this supposition these clerical agents should rather be regarded as useful members of society engaged in a very honourable calling, and should be respected accordingly. But if there be that in the selling and buying of livings which is in itself wrong and mischievous, then it is against this wrong thing, and not against the mere agents for the doing of it, that our indignation and our efforts for reform should be directed; otherwise we should be legislating only against the symptoms of the evil, not against the evil itself. My Lords, I believe that there is such an evil—a deep-seated one, which taints much of our patronage, public as well as private—and it is this—that patronage has come to be regarded too much as a property and too little as a trust. My Lords, we sometimes hear patronage spoken of as if it were a trust only. Too often we see it dealt with as if it were property only. Neither of these views is the true one. Patronage is really both a property and a trust. It may be defined as "the right to execute a trust." Primarily, therefore, and mainly, it is a trust, and the most solemn and responsible of all conceivable trusts—a trust to select the fittest person to be given the cure and government of the souls of men. But the right to exercise this trust is unquestionably property. It may not be always—I wish that it were never—marketable property; but it is at least enjoyable property. It is a right, a privilegium, which confers on its possessor powers and opportunities which he may abuse for his own ends. Or, in other 905 words, the interests, or if not the interests, the partialities and the prejudices even of the patron, may come into collision with the interests of the parishioners. And this, my Lords, is the real strain and difficulty in the whole question of patronage—it is the collision of interests between the trustee—that is, the patron—and those interested under the trust—the parishioners; and here, as it seems to me, lies the proper object of all legislation on this subject. It is not to attempt to destroy cither of these elements in patronage—they are really indestructible and inevitable—but to regulate them. It is to see that property keep its true place as subordinate to trust; that it be dealt with as what it really is in this case—not as property pure and simple, but as property submodo only, existing only under certain conditions, and charged with certain duties. In a word, the aim of legislation should be to give practical effect to the principle that, in the matter of patronage, property is the incident of a trust, and not trust the incident of a property. That this principle has always been asserted in the law of patronage in our Church a brief sketch of its origin and history will show. From the first, in our Church, cure of souls in the whole of each diocese resided, as it does now, in the Bishop; and in those earlier days, when Christianity was still a missionary religion in the country, the Bishop used to send out from the cathedral church of the yet unevangelized diocese missionary clergy chosen by himself, and partly sustained by the offerings of the faithful in the Mother Church of the diocese. As in process of time the remoter parts of the diocese were won to Christianity, the resident nobles or lords of manors, desirous of obtaining for themselves, or for their vassals or tenantry, the benefit of a resident ministry, would offer to build a church, or provide sustenance for a pastor, provided they might, in requital for this endowment, present to the Bishop a pastor for the parish thus endowed. They thus became the patrons of such parishes. They had not, however, then or since, the right to appoint a pastor; they had only the right of presenting one to the Bishop, who, on the other hand, was to judge of his fitness to be entrusted with cure of souls, and to grant or refuse him institution accordingly. Your Lordships will observe 906 here the essential principles of patronage distinctly appearing. The patron was really trustee for the parishioners, with the right of selection of a pastor for them, based on endowment and guarded from abuse by joining with the patron, as it were, as co-trustee, the Bishop of the diocese, who was special guardian of the spiritualities, as the patron was of the temporalities, of the benefice. But the principle of trust is still more clearly asserted in the law, which from the first expressly forbid the patron to present any one for money. This, my Lords, is that sin of simony which the Church has always strongly denounced and protested against as "detestable," and "execrable before God and man," and which is accordingly forbidden by the laws both of the Church and of the State. And still further to prevent such abuse of the patron's trust, an oath at first, and now a declaration against simony is imposed upon every clergyman presented by a patron to the Bishop for institution. Now, my Lords, assuming for the moment that selection of a pastor for the people is preferable to election of a pastor by the people, I maintain that no better system of selection—none more carefully guarded against abuse—could possibly have been desired than this which I have described. Under it the patron, resident in, or at least having the deepest material and moral interest in, the parish for which a pastor was to be chosen, had, by virtue of an endowment which secured to the parishioners a provision for their pastor, the right, not of appointing whom he pleased, but of selecting from a number of clergymen previously approved of and licensed by the Bishop, one to whom, provided he could conscientiously swear that he had offered no corrupt consideration for such selection, might, if again approved of by the Bishop, be given the cure of souls in that parish. My Lords, it seems to me impossible to devise a system of selection better calculated to secure the great object of all patronage, purity and fitness of choice, than this. Now, my Lords, between a presentation effected on such principles as these and a presentation effected through the medium of a broker in a back street in London selling benefices across the counter, as he might sell so many forfeited pledges, there seems a very wide distance indeed; and yet it has been 907 very rapidly travelled. The change, startling as it is, has been the, result mainly of one or two changes effected by common law. I am not about to say anything in disparagement of our English law, and, were I rash enough to do so in this Assembly, I would bring upon myself swift and condign punishment at the hands of the noble and learned Lords, the ornaments of their profession, who are Members of this House. But I trust I may be permitted to say that English law has ever been remarkable for its almost idolatrous veneration of property. Property of any kind, in the hands of law, is made the object of an affectionate and tender solicitude, which reminds me of nothing so much as of the manner in which we are told the Egyptian priests of old used to deal with their god Apis. They chose him by certain marks and tokens when he was a calf, and having nourished him on the most abundant and costly food until he arrived at the, goodliest taurine proportions, they fell down and worshipped him, and called on all the nation to do the same. Very much like this has certainly bean the dealing of law with patronage. The law having to deal with the patron's property-right in an advowson, began by allowing this advowson to be severed from the estate of the patron, and to be sold separately. Advowsons thus become distinguished into two classes, namely, advowsons appendant, that is, still attached to the manor, and passing with it; and advowsons in gross, that is, saleable to persons having no local interest whatever in the parish or parishioners. This in itself was a great weakening of the principle of trust as opposed to that of mere property. But the next change was a far worse one—it allowed of the sale, not of the entire trust, that is, the advowson, but of the power for one or more times of acting under the trust—that is to say, it allowed of the sale of next presentations. Now, it is clear that in the case of these the idea of selection has almost entirely vanished; the owner of an advowson has, or may be supposed to have, a permanent interest in a trust which is all his own, and he may be supposed at least to exercise his choice of a pastor from out of a number of eligible persons. But the purchaser of a next presentation has but a fleeting and momentary interest in the trust; his connection with it 908 ends the moment he has made his presentation, and in most cases he has purchased that presentation for one particular person previously chosen. In fact, he does not so much choose the man for the living, as the living for the man. Under this system it is clear that the idea of trust, if not actually destroyed, is reduced to the most attenuated and shadowy form, and the idea of property in its most gross and material form has taken its place.

My Lords, I will not now stop to inquire how far this sale of advowsons in gross and of next presentations is right or wrong in principle—I shall speak of this presently. All I now contend for is this—that if these changes have, as they must have, weakened the local and personal interest of the patron in the due administration of his trust—in the same degree in which they may have done this, the law should have strengthened the safeguards originally devised to prevent abuse of trust. The law, however, has done exactly the opposite of this. Instead of strengthening these safeguards, it has very greatly weakened them. It has done so, in the first place, as regards the offence of simony. By a process of subtle evasions by interested persons on the one hand, and of subtle and nice distinctions such as English law delights in, on the other hand—the laws against simony have been brought into such a state that it is hard to know what is and what is not simony; and, when we do know this, harder still to say why one particular transaction should be legally simony, and another not so. It is simony, for instance, to buy an advowson or presentation when the benefice is vacant, but not when it is full; and yet it is not simony to buy either advowson or presentation when the incumbent is actually in articulo mortis. It is simony for a spiritual person to buy the next presentation to a living, and present himself; but it is not simony for him to buy the advowson, then present himself on vacancy, and then to sell the advowson. Nay, it is simony for a presentee to contract to marry a patron's daughter, but not simony for him to contract to marry a patron's sister or niece, or widowed mother-in-law. The force of legal absurdity could hardly, I imagine, go beyond this last distinction. But my Lords, the practical results of 909 these absurd distinctions are most seriously mischievous. In the first place they completely destroy all moral sanctions for the law of simony. The difference between what this law allows and what it forbids is, in most cases, so purely technical and conventional, that it touches no man's conscience; and consequently, evasions of a law so utterly unreasonable come to be but lightly regarded. In fact, simony as a legal offence has completely lost its original meaning—as that of the "execrable and detestable offence of buying or selling spiritual things"—and has come to mean simply the buying or selling of benefices under conditions forbidden by law. The law of simony has thus, as it were, slipped from off its moral basis, and been broken into shapeless fragments in its fall. But, in the next place, it is evident that all these nice distinctions afford abundant occasion, not only for honest ignorance, but for dishonest evasion of the law. Men are tempted to put their consciences in the hands of those clerical agents who pledge their honour—whatever that may be worth—that there is no simony in the transaction. I have known clergymen who, on such assurances, have been led into bargains which, when in the progress of the business they had discovered its real nature, they would gladly have shrunk from, because it appeared to them to be simoniacal; but under threats, they had weakly, though perhaps not unnaturally, carried out their contract. And this facility of evasion is still further enhanced by the present form of declaration required of the presentee. He is required to declare to the Bishop that he "has not made for himself," and "will not satisfy" if made for him by others, "any promise or contract" which, to the best of his knowledge and belief, "is simoniacal." My Lords, what is this but to hold out a premium to induce men to cultivate ignorance as to the law of simony? Such a declaration is a snare to weak consciences, and a mere cobweb to strong ones. Against simony, if a man wishes to commit it, it is absolutely no protection whatever. I venture to think then, my Lords, that you will agree with mo, that the laws respecting simony "are in urgent need of revision." But it may be said, although this law against simony be so weak and ineffectual, there is still the safeguard of the 910 Bishop. He may refuse institution to an unfit clerk, no matter how he may have obtained his presentation. And accordingly, it is to the Bishop that parishioners make their complaint when threatened with an unfit appointment to their parish. Unhappily, my Lords, the Bishop has little or no power to help them in such a case—I mean, of course, the Bishop of real life, not the Bishop of religious newspapers and much excited speakers, who, as we all know, is a being possessed of vast and indefinite powers, which, however, he is too cowardly or too selfish ever to use, except for his own aggrandizement. The Bishop of real life, is I hope, a passably honest man, really and sincerely desirous of governing his diocese fairly and impartially, and of enforcing the law and preserving the peace and purity of the Church; but possessed for this purpose of the most limited powers, and constantly doomed to find each weapon of law that he takes up break in his hand as he uses it. Such a Bishop must tell the complaining parishioners that there are, indeed, certain specified grounds on which he may refuse to institute a clerk—as, for instance, heresy, immorality, or ignorance; but that the proof even of these is extremely difficult, and that to attempt it he must begin by making himself a defendant in a costly law suit; and that when he has done this—when he has braved the terrors of Duplex Querela and Quare impedit—the most likely result will be that he will be saddled with heavy costs, and the parishioners with an obnoxious minister. In addition, however, to this difficulty in the way of the Bishop's discharge of duty, there is this further one, that physical incapacity forms no legal ground of objection. A patron may present a clerk of 80 or 00 years of age to the largest and most important parish in the diocese, and yet the Bishop cannot refuse, on that ground, to institute him. And here, my Lords, I touch on one of the most grievous evils and scandals connected with patronage—I mean the practice of putting into a vacant living the oldest man the patron can find, in order to sell the living over Iris head.

My Lords, I wish to avoid strong-language in dealing with evils which are of long standing, and which from use and long habit seem to many less odious than they really are. But here is an 911 evil for which no such excuse can be I made. No patron who docs this can be ignorant of the cruel wrong that he is inflicting on the parish. My Lords, I solemnly denounce as nothing short of a most wicked breach of trust that a patron, bound before God and man to find the fittest pastor for the parish in his gift, should deliberately and for the lucre of gain choose a man, not for his fitness, but for his unfitness—not because he thinks him capable, but because he knows him to be utterly incapable of discharging the duties of the parish into which he thrusts him, in defiance alike of indignant parishioners and indignant and protesting Bishop. Imagine, my Lords, the smouldering indignation, the chronic discontent and alienation from the Church that must exist in the parish in which this thing has been done. My Lords, there is no sadder or bitterer moment in a Bishop's life than that in which he finds himself reluctantly compelled to give to such a clerk, presented by such a patron, the care and government of souls within his diocese. And yet, suck is the present state of our laws ecclesiastical, that the Bishop must do this. So much, my Lords, for the safeguard of Bishop's power of objecting to unfit presentations. But this is not all. The Bishop's power of preventing corrupt transactions is still further and most mischievously limited by the Statute Law as to the resignation of benefices. By law all resignations of benefices must be made to the Bishop, who has the absolute power of refusing to accept the resignation, except—strange to say—in the very case in which there is the greatest probability of its being corrupt—I mean in the case of what are called resignation bonds. These, as your Lordships are probably aware, were long regarded as illegal, and have only been made certainly legal under certain conditions by special statute within the last 100 years, in all such cases the Bishop is deprived of his absolute right to refuse to accept resignations. Now, my Lords, I do not stop to inquire whether these resignation bonds should over have been legalized—I entertain a very strong opinion that, they should not. All that I now contend for is, that there is nothing whatever in the nature of these that should exempt them, above all others, from the check of the Bishop's veto. I quite understand the proposal to take 912 this veto from the Bishop altogether; but I cannot understand why, if he is to have it in any case, he should be deprived of it precisely in that very case in which, à priori, one would expect that there would be most need for its exercise. There is, however, one further limitation of a Bishop's power in the matter of patronage, which seems to me the most unreasonable and the most mischievous of all—I refer to the peculiar privileges attached to donatives. A donative, my Lords, is a benefice to which the patron nominates directly, without presenting his clerk to the Bishop, and in which the clerk resigns, not to the Bishop, but direct to his patron. That is to say, a donative is a benefice, in respect to which there is no check or safeguard whatsoever against any form or kind of simony or corrupt resignation whatsoever. This seems bad enough; but still worse is the manner in which these donatives are made use of to help out corrupt exchanges. The acceptance of a donative voids, ipso facto, any benefice previously held by the presentee. The effect of this is, that an incumbent, whose resignation of his benefice the Bishop, for good and sufficient reason, may have refused to accept, has only to get appointed to a donative, which he need not hold for more than one day, vacating his benefice by so doing, and then go on to complete some simoniacal bargain, or exchange, in defiance of the Bishop. I have heard of a donative which, has been sold and re-sold in this way as many as five times in one year, and the selling price of which is said to be £20. When I add that some of these donatives are said to be in the possession of certain clerical agents, who advertise sales and exchanges, to be effected with "strict privacy," I think I have said enough to show your Lordships the evils that lurk under the existing anomalous privileges attaching to donatives. My Lords, I claim to have proved my first assertion—that there are serious evils connected with our present system of patronage, and that these have arisen from the undue preponderance given by law to property over trust.

And now, my Lords, as to the remedies I would propose for these evils. Let me, in the first place, say what are the remedies I would not propose. I would not propose, as some do, to sweep away all patronage, and resort to the popular 913 election of ministers. Popular election is, in my opinion, the very worst of all possible modes of appointing ministers, In the first place, it fails utterly to secure the very advantages which are claimed for it; and, in the second place, it is fraught with special evils and dangers of its own. The advantages of popular election are supposed to be greater purity of choice and greater acceptability of the persons chosen. I maintain that it secures neither of those things. Not greater purity, for I fail to sec why popular elections must necessarily, or even probably be pure. This is the old democratic fallacy as to the virtue of numbers. A. B. abuses some trust or power with which he is entrusted, not because he is A. B. but simply because he is a human being, and subject to the infirmities of human nature. To cure this evil it is proposed to add to A. B. 500 or 5,000 other human beings, and it is assumed that, for some mysterious reason, their actions will be free from all human infirmities. I confess I cannot see this. Electors have sons and sons-in-law and friends, just as much as Patrons have; and bribery, intimidation, and jobbery, are things not altogether unknown at popular elections. And as to non-intrusion, which is supposed to be the special and peculiar advantage of the election of ministers by the people, this is another fallacy. Non-intrusion will follow from popular elections only in the very rare case where the electors are unanimous in their choice. When they are not, the majority selects a pastor for the minority quite as much as ever patron does for a parish; and with this addititional aggravation, that the minority have in all probability been strongly opposing the appointment of their now pastor, and busily engaged during the contested election that preceded his appointment in raking together everything that could be discovered or alleged to his disadvantage. But popular election, while thus failing to secure its alleged advantages, brings with it all the degrading incidents of public competition that necessarily belong to it,—the public addresses of rival candidates, the house to house canvassing of electors, the trial sermon and the competition prayer; the church left pastorless for months while the congregation are making up their minds as to which of the many probationers they will accept; 914 the party spirit that the contest generates, the rancour and bitterness that survive it. As to the extent of these evils, let me read to your Lordships the testimony of an eminent Dissenting minister, the Rev. John Angell James;—"Secret canvassing,"—"cabals, intrigues,"—"the most disgusting exercise of the most disgusting tyranny,"—"fires of contentious,"—"the greatest disorder and confusion,"—"peculiar and dishonourable fickleness of disposition on the part of churches who soon grow tired of the man they choose,"—"affairs of religious societies in chancery,"—"strife, ill-will, confusion, and every evil work,"—tyrannical deacons "who are patrons of the living, bibles of the minister, and wolves of the flock,"—"hasty choice of unsuitable ministers,"—"injudicious congregations inviting ignorant and incompetent pastors,"—"relaxation of discipline,"—"many churches exhibiting the sad spectacle of a house divided against itself,"—"schisms at the time of choosing a minister,"—"church meetings exhibiting scenes of confusion, little recommendatory of the democratic form of church government,"—"distraction and division;"—these are some of the results of popular election, enumerated by Mr. Angell James. My Lords, after such testimony from a witness so impartial and so capable, I may, I think, safely assume that popular election will not find favour with your Lordships as a substitute for private or public Patronage in our Church. Nor can I venture to recommend to your Lordships the device of a Board of Nomination in each diocese, in which all appointments are to vest, which just now finds much favour with many amateur reformers of Church Patronage. Such a Board of nomination would necessarily reflect the views of the predominant theological party in the diocese, and its necessarily one-sided appointments would destroy all that freedom and variety of thought in the ministry which it is the especial glory of our Church to cultivate and to protect. Such a mode of appointing ministers would, in short, destroy what is now the great merit of our present system of Church Patronage—its variety of sources and the consequent independence of the clergy, who do not owe, and who are not looking for their appointments to anyone single source of preferment, and who, therefore, represent the views and 915 the feeling of all those parties which find their legitimate place in our National Church. It would destroy, too, that relation between the owners of the soil and the clergy of the Church, at which it is just now so much the fashion to sneer as the alliance between "squire and parson," but which nevertheless I hold to be most beneficial, serving as it does in a thousand ways to make the clergy a bond of union between the rich and the poor; and constituting, as I believe, a far safer alliance than that which, if you destroy it, would in all probability replace it—the alliance between the fanatic and the demagogue. One other proposal I mention, only to dismiss as quire unnecessary to waste time in considering—and that is promotion by seniority. I can hardly suppose that anyone who considers the subject for a moment could seriously propose that the oldest clergyman in a diocese, simply because he is the oldest, should be appointed to what might happen to be the most important and populous parish in it. Seniority—other things being equal—may and ought to have its weight in the selection of a pastor. But the true and only ground for selection in the first instance, is not seniority nor even merit, but fitness. To claim promotion on any other ground is to set up a vested interest for the clergy, as a profession, against the only real and legitimate vested interest that can exist in the case—the vested interest, of the parishioners in having for their pastor the fittest man that can be found. And as to the analogy that is sometimes insisted on between promotion by seniority in the Army and in the Church, it will be time enough to discuss it when the Church possesses those other institutions which exist in the Army, and without which promotion by seniority would be intolerable there—compulsory retirement and half-pay. Dismissing, then, my Lords, these and all like merely visionary and impracticable schemes of reform, I would propose, instead of inventing new systems of patronage, to fall back upon the lines of the old. I would revert to the original idea of Church Patronage as I endeavoured to set it before your Lordships, as that of a trust involving certain rights of property. And I would endeavour to restore the balance between these two, which, as I have attempted to 916 show, has been so seriously disturbed. It is clear that you may do this in one of two ways. You may either attempt to restore the original close relations between the patron and the parish for which he is trustee; or you may increase and strengthen the safeguards originally designed to prevent his abusing that trust. In other words, you may diminish existing facilities for transferring patronage, or you may give greater power of objecting to the choice of the patron. The former of these two courses would lead to the prohibition of all sales of advowsons and of next presentations. My Lords, as regards the sale of advowsons, I cannot go the length which some do of saying that it is a wrong and sinful thing in itself, and should, therefore, be made absolutely illegal. If I desire the suppression ultimately of advowsons in gross, it is rather because of the evils that result from it in practice than because I regard it as in itself and on principle wrong. The sale of an advowson is the complete and absolute transfer of a trust from one person to another. To this I can see no objection in principle. I would only desire to see such safeguards, if possible, introduced in connection with such sales as should prevent those evasions of the law which now shelter themselves under them. And I should further be glad to see some facilities given for the purchasing by some Church body constituted for the purpose of advowsons in gross, and for transferring them either to public patronage, or to private patronage under such conditions as should make them once more advowsons appendant; that is to say, advowsons attached to property in the parish to which they belong. But as to sales of next presentations, I would abolish them utterly. I would do so, not merely because all the worst evils and scandals connected with the traffic in livings arise out of them, but because they seem to me essentially wrong in principle. They are malum in se, and not malum prohibitum. My Lords, I especially entreat your Lordships' attention to what appears to me the essential difference in principle between the sale of an advowson and the sale of a next presentation. The former is, as I have said, simply the transfer of a trust. The latter appears to me to be the breach, or at least the abuse of a trust. For in the latter case the trustee does not 917 divest himself once and for all of his trust; but still retaining it, with all its attendant advantages and privileges, he, in consideration of a sum of money paid to him by another, allows that other person to step in and to perform what is really his own most sacred duty under the trust, and which he should delegate to none. He makes himself, in short. pro hac vice, the mere dead hand of a stranger who has no real connection with and no interest in the trust. What would be thought, my Lords, of the trustee in some cestuique trust, who having the right under the terms of the trust to appoint some officer connected with it—say that of agent or solicitor to the trust—should deliberately advertise in the papers that he would give to anyone who would pay him a certain sum of money the right to appoint that agent or solicitor? My Lords, I am not sufficiently learned in the law to say whether this would or not be legally a breach of trust; but, morally, I am sure it would be, and that of the very gravest kind. And I must say that I am unable to see the slightest difference in principle between such a case as this and the case of a patron who sells to anyone who will buy it from him the right to the next presentation to a living of which he retains the advowson. I would, then absolutely forbid all sales of next presentations. But I confess that I place far more reliance upon those remedies which proceed in the second of those directions of which I have spoken—namely, in that of strengthening the safeguards against improper selections by patrons. For it is clear that if these could be sufficiently strengthened, the great practical wrong of the appointment of unfit pastors would be prevented, even if the scandals as to the manner of their appointment were left,—as I trust they may not be left,—untouched. Of these remedies I would venture to suggest the following;—1. I would enlarge the area of objection on the part of the Bishop. At present there are certain grounds on which a Bishop may refuse institution to the presentee of a patron,—such for instance as heresy, ignorance, and immorality. I would add to these one more—the most obvious, the most reasonable, and the most easily ascertainable of all—physical incapacity. I would give the Bishop the right to say, I refuse institution to this man, because he is physically 918 incapable of discharging the duties of the benefice. 2. I would free the Bishop from the present heavy and unjust costs attaching to any exercise of his right of objection. Why, my Lords, in the name of common justice and decency, should the Bishop, who has not the slightest personal interest in the matter,—who is acting solely as a public officer, in protection of public interest,—be mulcted in ruinous costs simply for attempting to discharge a solemn public duty? I ask that this gross injustice and serious hindrance to discipline be removed—simply by enacting that in all cases of suits respecting institutions between Bishop and patron, costs should follow, not as they do now the judgment, but the discretion of the Court. In that case, if the Bishop's objections were, in the opinion of the Court, frivolous and vexatious, he would most property bear the costs of the suit; on the other hand, if they proved reasonable and valid, the patron should bear, in the shape of costs, the penalty of this improper selection, while, in the event of there appearing fair and reasonable ground for doubt on both sides, then the costs should, as they do in like cases in temporal trusts, come out of the Trust Fund.—that is to say, in this case, should be a charge on the benefice. 3. I would give to parishioners, within carefuly guarded and clearly defined limits—for I am quite aware of the dangers in this direction—the power of stating their objections to the selection of the patron; such objections to be personal and not theological. Certainly, I would go at least this length in the direction of popular objections to presentees. I would give the parishioners the same right of objecting to the discretion of a patron in selecting a minister that they now have to objecting to the previous discretion of the Bishop in ordaining one. I would have a form of Si Quis, analogous to that now required before ordination, read in the parish church, both of the parish from which the new incumbent was leaving, and that to which he was coming; I would have objections made under this Si Quis regarded as privileged communications, and not leave the objecting parishioner, as he now is left, exposed to an action for libel if he ventures to inform the Bishop of any reason why he should not institute the presentee of the patron. I would go even further in this 919 direction, and I would allow of such, objections under such a Si Quis being transmitted to the Archbishop of the province in all cases where a Bishop is the patron. For I fully admit that, when this is the case, the safeguard of the double trusteeship of Bishop and patron is gone, and the guardian of the temporalities and of the spiritualities is one and the same person. For my own part—and I think I might say on the part of my right row Brethren—we should rejoice if that or any other opportunity could be given us of defending the exercise of our patronage from aspersions that are often as cruel as they are unreasonable and unjust. I would limit the area of selection by the patron. It is already so far limited that he may not present a clergyman not in priest's orders. I would further limit it by enacting that he should not present any clergyman who had not been at least three years in priest's orders. This would prevent the present scandal of some boy-rector, utterly inexperienced in the duties of his office, being placed in charge of, it may be, the largest and most important parish in a diocese. 5. I would reform the existing law against simony by legislating, not against the name of the tiling, but against the thing itself. I would distinctly specify what transactions, in the sale of advowsons, the law wolud forbid, and what, if any, it permitted; and I would have the declaration to be taken by the presentee to set forth distinctly that he had not done any one of the things forbidden, and also which of the things permitted he had done; and I would also require this declaration to be made by the patron as well as by the presentee. 6. I would increase the power of the Bishop to prevent corrupt exchanges, and at the same time I would allow of certain arrangements in effecting exchanges, which, though now technically simoniacal, have in them really nothing of the nature of simony. 7. Lastly, I would do away with the gross evils connected with donatives by making them all presentative benefices.

Such, my Lords, are the remedies which I would venture to submit for the consideration of your Committee, should you sec fit to grant it. They are not exhaustive remedies, and, doubtless, other and possibly better may be devised by your Committee. But I trust 920 that I have at least succeeded in showing to your Lordships that the evils I have described are not irremediable, and may be safely dealt with by legislation; that, in short, they are of the accidents, and not of the essence, of our system of patronage. I trust, therefore, that I may with some confidence appeal to your Lordships to enter on the task of reforming these evils. I have, indeed, been assured of the difficulty of preferring such an appeal in a House so largely composed of patrons as this is. My Lords, I have felt no such difficulty. For even if I could suppose for a moment that your Lordships, in dealing with this great question, could be influenced by merely personal motives, it would be to those very motives I should most confidently appeal in favour of my Motion. For none have so deep an interest in the reform of abuses connected with patronage as patrons themselves. If we would preserve private patronage—and I, for one, most earnestly desire its preservation as an element of real value in our patronage system—we shall best preserve by purifying it of all abuses. But, my Lords, I am also aware that, in addressing your Lordships, I am addressing a body of patrons who, least of all patrons, are likely to be under the influences of such merely personal motives in considering the reform of patronage. I know that I am addressing patrons who, by their position and their circumstances, are removed from the two great temptations that specially beset the patron—need and obscurity—the need which tempts to mercenary dealing, the obscurity which conceals it. What your Lordships do, in this as in other matters, you do in that full blaze of public opinion and criticism which beats on all who hold high and prominent place in this country; and, as I gratefully acknowledge, under the influence of that maxim, noblesse oblige, which binds you to pure motives and high aims in the discharge of a great public trust like this of patronage. In no place, then, my Lords, do I believe that the reform of Church patronage could be more fitly initiated than in your Lordships' House; from none could proposals for its reform come more gracefully, or be more grateful to the country, than from your Lordships. Never, too, as I believe, had your Lordships so golden an opportunity 921 for Church Reform as the present moment—an opportunity precious, it may be, for its briefness as well as for its rarity. My Lords, our Church at this moment in her history seems, as regards her political assailants from without, to be passing through that kind of lull which, we are told, sometimes occurs in the centre of some great cyclone—the still spot in the heart of some furious storm. Let us beware of mistaking this for the entire cessation of the storm. The forces engaged for and against the Church of England are permanent forces in the life of the nation, and they will ere long be as furiously as ever at war. Meanwhile we have a brief breathing space. If the Church shall use wisely that passing interval of comparative calm in clearing the decks of the ship of their dangerous lumber, in strengthening the tackle, in repairing what is weak and decayed by time or damaged by the elements—she will yet safely bravo the redoubled fury of the tempest into which she is assuredly sailing. But if we spend this interval in a fool's paradise of mutual congratulations, drifting along with quiet and easy confidence, as men drift along on quiet summer seas, unconscious of the gathering storm, then so surely as the Church shall thus neglect and waste her opportunity, will the tempest smite her with a sudden and a deserved destruction. Happily, my Lords, there seems at present but little danger of such a calamity as this. Never was the Church more fully alive at once to her need of reform, and to the urgent necessity of attempting it, than she is at this moment. This reform, which I ask at your Lordships' hands, I ask in the name of the entire Church, which pleads for it earnestly and anxiously. I trust and believe that your Lordships will not only allow of this first stop towards this reform that I am asking for to-night, but that of it will come, as the result of the deliberation of your Committee and with the ultimate sanction of your Lordships, such a measure of reform at once wise, just, and efficient, as shall remedy these evils and scandals that are weakening the strength and hindering the efficiency of our Church for her great work in this land—a reform which will deepen her hold on the affections of her own children, and win to her in largo measure the respect and affections of alienated 922 multitudes—a reform by which your Lordships will have added one more to the many titles which this House has already won to the gratitude of the Church and of the nation.

Abp. York.	Bp. Winchester.
D. Marlborough.	Bp. Peterborough.
Ld. Steward.	Bp. Carlisle.
E. Shaftesbury.	E. Brodrick.
E. Chichester.	B. Overstone.
E. Nelson.	L. Belper.
E. Harrowby.	B. Blachford.
Bp. London.	L. Selborne.