all their flocks till shearing time should have also passed.
“But I am afraid we must go a long circuit, before we can get to the ground,” continued he. “This field is too deep in wet for the poor thing to cross. ’Tis like a ditch, from end to end.”
“I should not have thought there had been rain enough of late to soak the meadow in this way,” observed the widow.
“Except by filling the drains,” replied Joseph. “They are choaked up, too, from our having left the whole concern hereabouts to itself, this year. But how in the world am I to get this animal over? She will make herself heard with her bleating after the flock.”
“These are strange times, surely, Joseph, when a ewe may not bleat her own bleat, and when a son of mine skulks under a hedge on his own farm.”
“And the cause is full as strange, mother,—fear of man. I little thought to fear men; but there are two that I would go a mile round to avoid.”
“And they would say it is because thou art trying to cheat them;—in the very act of carrying thy ewes to yean out of their dominions.”
“Let them say so. It is not such a charge that I fear. Disclaiming, as we do, the ordinance of a priesthood altogether, my conscience leaves me free to put my beasts to couch and feed where it is most convenient, without regard to the parson. My fear is that I should hate those men.
They injure me, and I cannot resist; and I have lost patience of late. I would rather walk close under my own hedge, and keep my ewe from bleating than speak, even to myself, as I hear some speak of the collector, and of the vicar, who countenances him in his strictness.”
“I sometimes think that if the vicar’s wife were still living, she would be rather uneasy about his terms with his people. She would hardly like his being much from home after dark.”
“So, that has struck thee too, as well as Charles and me. It was only this morning that I was saying to Charles, that perhaps it is a blessing that Alice is too young to have such fancies as she may live to suffer from. I suppose she is in bed and asleep when he goes and comes through that lonely lane at the back of the vicarage, as he visits his brother of an evening. That lane is hardly the place for a man who has so many enemies.”
“I trust thou hast no apprehension of anything worse than a few insults; or at most a beating, to show contempt.”
“Indeed, I thought of something much worse. There is less contempt than hatred of this man. He is so persuaded that he is right in all that he does that it is impossible to despise him as if he defied the inward witness: but he is the more hated as people see no end to their troubles with him. If I am not mistaken, there are some in the parish who have diligently inquired his age; and not precisely for the purpose of wishing him many happy birth-days.”
“Is the ewe by thy side?” asked Mrs. Lambert, in a low voice, and peering through the gathering twilight; “or was it something else that I heard stirring in this ditch?”
It was not the ewe, but Peterson, who had come, as he said, over a gap in the hedge. In the darkness, it would have been impossible to make out whether he had heard anything of what had been said. Mrs. Lambert therefore asked him.
“Friend, didst thou hear what we were talking about?”
“Tones of voice tell as much as words, mistress: and I wonder at a plain spoken person like you calling me ‘friend,’ when both you and I know that you hate me like the devil. However, I am going to make you hate me more still, I fancy. Mr. Joseph, you have let this land go to waste in a very sad way; and a field yonder, too. The water stands a foot deep in this meadow; and my children play hide and seek among the whins yonder, where you might have corn growing, if you would.”
Joseph supposed he might do as he pleased with the land till his lease was out.
“But my employer is not to suffer for your neglecting your land. The law makes a distinction between land that is really barren, and that which is needlessly inundated, or overgrown with briars. ‘The field of the slothful,’ you know. My eldest girl got her frock so torn with your briars, that she brought a pretty scolding upon herself, I can tell you.”
“Send her up to me, and I will mend her frock,” requested Mrs. Lambert.
“I will give her a new one if thou wilt let my son alone as to whether there shall be briars or anything else in his field.”
“No objection in the world, ma’am, if he pay the due tithe.”
“I’m sure thou art kindly welcome to a tenth of the water in this field, and of the stones in the one above,” observed Joseph. But this offer was declined, and the old composition for these two fields proposed instead.
Before there had been time for the dispute to proceed further, a strange sound from the church tower arrested Peterson’s attention. The bells seemed about to be rung, and Peterson was gone.
What the occasion of rejoicing could be, the Lamberts did not know; nor did they very much care. They had grown listless about good news, and were now most anxious to conclude the business of the evening. As Peterson had crossed the meadow, it must be possible for them and their charge to do so too. The little ridge which stood out of the water was found, and, one by one, several of the teeming ewes were removed and penned into their new inclosures before Joseph went home; and no tormentor appeared.
Joseph told his mother that the labourers who had cut the osiers for hurdles had been questioned whether the article was intended for sale or gift, or for use on the farm. The labourers were glad to be able for once to repulse the tithing man, whom they were weary of having for ever at their heels. There was no small pleasure in seeing the meek animals comfortably provided for on the outskirts of the farm; as if they were as conscious as their owners of the inhospitable character of the parish whose bounds they had crossed. It does not appear that lambs know a tithing-man by instinct; but Joseph put expressions of pity into his farewell for the night which might seem to imply that he felt them to be fellow-sufferers with himself under the rule of the parish tyrant.
After running home in the dark, with sleet pelting in their faces, the mother and son liked the aspect of their house, with its old-fashioned windows lighted from within.
“See what it is not to wear curled hair,” cried Mrs. Lambert, wiping the cold drops from her short, grey locks, combed straight down on her forehead. “If I had had such ringlets as some fine ladies, now, what a figure my sons would have thought me all this evening, with hair as lank as a melancholy queen’s in a tragedy! I call it neat as it is.”
Joseph had not observed his mother’s hair, he was so taken up with examining a letter which had lain among the tea-things on the table. He guessed its contents; and they were indeed such as would have damped a far greater cheerfulness than could arise from the aspect of a warm parlour on a chilly evening. Mrs. Lambert’s only sister, a widow, was dead, and had left five children with a very inadequate provision, if any.
When Charles entered, a short time afterwards, he knew from the first glance at his mother, sitting with crossed hands and a countenance of placid gravity, that something was the matter. Joseph was standing in the chimney corner, gazing into the fire. Charles looked from one to the other. His mother roused herself.
“We are not made to choose our own duties, son,” said she. “I know that it is thy wish to be a husband, Charles; and Joseph and I wish it for thee. But here are thy five cousins left helpless. Their mother is dead; and while I live, they must be my children, as much as you. I must take them into this house, and let them eat at my table.”
“And do you think we will not help you, mother? I will go to-morrow and bring them; and if it shall please God always to disappoint me, I must bear it as well as I can.”
“I hope he will let it be with thee as it has been with me, Charles. All the worst troubles that I have known have been unlooked for; and every thing that I have particularly dreaded has turned out better than I expected. I know that this is a blow to thee, though thou bearest it well at present. I hope that thou wilt not have to wait so long for Henrietta as we now expect.”
“I wish thou wouldst not speak of me, mother, when I know that this death is a matter of great concern to thee. When my aunt was last here, and every one said that she looked more like thy daughter than thy sister, we did not think that we should not see her again.”
The crossing of the hands again, and the slight change of countenance showed that this subject was very painful. Next to her sons, there was no one in the world that Mrs. Lambert loved so much as this sister—many years younger than herself, to whom she had been, in early life, as a mother.
Presently she moved about, much as usual, doing all that she would have done if no bad news had come,—only with somewhat more gravity and silence. She did not forget to put on the dry root to burn; and it blazed and crackled as busily as if it had been ministering to the comfort of the merriest tea-party in the world.
“There are the bells again!” cried Charles. “I thought I had stopped them. I wish thou wouldst go down, and try to stop them, Joseph.”
There was an odd reason for the ringing of these bells. A stranger who had been seen loitering in the parish for a day or two was supposed to be the person who had told the publican that the vicar had received a remonstrance from his ordinary respecting his strictness in the exaction of his tithes; and that it was probable that he might be removed ere long, to give place to some one more acceptable to the parishioners. The publican had made the most of the news; and some of his customers, warmed with his good ale, had sallied forth, and found easy means of setting the bells ringing. Peterson was trying in vain to silence them, when Charles went down to enquire; but Charles had prevailed where the tithe-gatherer had met with only defiance. The bells, however, were now ringing again.
Joseph thought that enough had been done. In a better cause, he would not have regarded the sleet and the north wind that he must encounter in his way to the church; but he now preferred sitting in the chimney corner, hearing the merry peal by fits, as the gust rattled at the window and passed on. Besides, his mother wanted him to help to lay plans for these orphan children.
When the Lamberts had been more prosperous than they were now, they had planned an enlargement of their house, which was scarcely large enough for themselves, and would have required an addition on Charles’s marriage, if only from respect to Henrietta. It was particularly conveniently placed for receiving an addition of two or three rooms on the south side; and a pretty parlour, with a bay-window, was to have ornamented the dwelling. Prudential considerations had caused the scheme to be given up; but this evening it was revived. Charles produced the plans which his brother had drawn, and which he had hoped would next see the light in Henrietta’s service. He suppressed a sigh when his mother’s decided pencil scored out the bay-window; and he roused his best powers of judgment to discuss the necessary questions of convenience and economy.—There was some good brick clay in one corner of the farm, and timber enough for their purpose; and the young men thought that, by dint of their working like labourers, and their mother’s superintending during their unavoidable absence, the enlargement of their dwelling might be effected without any very ruinous expense. The brick making was to be set about immediately, if the weather should but prove fine enough. Bricks were very dear this wet season; and the supply now wanted must be made at home, if possible.
CHAPTER VI.
COMMUTATION.
The bells, or the rumours of them, made themselves heard beyond the parish. The vicar was little moved by them; but uncle Jerom was seen by Alice, the next morning, approaching in a state of sad perturbation. As he could not prevail upon his brother to modify his system through a consideration for his personal safety and dignity, he now tried a different kind of appeal. He asked whether it was not a deplorable scandal to the church that there should be bell-ringing at the prospect of a clergyman being taken from his flock.
“It was less that than the belief that I had been rebuked by my superior which caused the exultation,” quietly replied the vicar. “But you know that neither the one nor the other is true. I will not, by yielding my own claims, give occasion for the supposition that my superior yields those of the church.”
“But if you allow proprietors to buy up the tithes on their own lands,— Parker for instance,—you will cease to have such for enemies; and it will be a very different thing from selling the dues of the church to an intermediate layman.”
“Ah! Jerom, there you touch my conscience in the only tender part. I have long repented letting my tithes to Peterson, as you recommended. It was bad advice, Jerom, as is all advice to rate at an average a revenue for sacred objects, of which revenue it is the primary quality that, as God’s seasons vary, it must vary. Jerom, yours was bad advice.”
“Indeed it seems to have been so, by the aggravation of your troubles since Peterson became your lessee. But I find from him that Sir William Hood is about to allow the great tithes to be bought up, in order to put a stop to the deterioration of husbandry in the parish; and I really think you could not do a better thing than follow his example when so good an opportunity offers.”
The vicar spread both hands before his brother, in emphatic refusal.
“Papa,” said Alice, “I wish you would do as you are bid, sometimes, as you are always telling me to do. Why don’t you mind what uncle Jerom says, and what every body says? Well, it may not be every body’s business; but I know what Jane says; and I am sure she is as fond of you as any body can be.”
The being fond of him argued such a right mind towards the church, that the vicar was immediately prepared to hear what Mrs. Byrne had to say.
“She says that she is frightened to hear how people talk; and that she shall never be easy to see you out walking till you have somehow put other people into your place about collecting the tithes. If there must be tithes, so that Mr. Parker must always look out of humour, and the Lamberts grow sad, and Mr. Byrne give up more and more things in his garden, the blame ought to go where it is due, she says; and that is to the church, and not to you. And it would be so, she thinks, if people all bought their own, and there was an end of the quarrelling that there is now, twice a year.”
“I wonder who suggested the idea to her,” observed the vicar. “If I thought it was Mr. Mackintosh——” “I think it was not Mr. Mackintosh, papa. I think it was the man that——” “I know whom you mean,” said Jerom; “the stranger who has been hanging about the parish lately,—no one can tell why. Some of my people suspect that he is an agent in the rick-burning plot. I am sorry that Byrne lets him within his doors.”
“And so is Jane, I think,” said Alice. “She always tries to prevent my seeing him, if he happens to be in the cottage; and once I observed her cry the moment she saw her husband bringing him up the road. Perhaps he will go away, papa, if you will do as they wish you should.”
This was not the very best kind of appeal that Alice could have used. He yielded so far, however, as to allow his brother to bring him word how the bargains for the great tithes between Peterson and the payers were framed, and what effect they appeared to produce on the minds and manners of the discontented. He would determine accordingly as to revising his scruples, or dismissing the matter entirely from his thoughts.
Of course, those who were visited by Mr. Peterson and his companion varied in their eagerness to buy up their tithes, in proportion to the duration of their interest in the land. A farmer who had just entered upon a long lease offered a twenty years’ purchase at 7_l._ per acre, all round,—arable and pasture. Others who were near the end of their lease, and were discouraged by the unfavourable aspect of the season, desired to buy up their tithes year by year, if they could but be secure against competition. Mr. Parker was willing to make a liberal thirty years’ purchase, in order to free his own estate, and leave himself at liberty to improve it without discouragement, or bequeath it to his son without disadvantage. The sum demanded from him, as a hop-grower, was, however, so enormous, that he declared he would rather give up growing hops, as others had done before him, than pay such a merciless impost.
Peterson asked him what he would have; and showed him that other people’s hop-grounds had yielded at the rate of 3_l._ per acre. Mr.
Parker wished to proceed upon the basis of an average of the last five or seven years; but this was declared to be the most fallacious of guides. Peterson contended that the seasons had been peculiarly unfavourable, and that the modes of management had so varied within six years as to leave no reasonable average. He proposed to value the land and the tithe, deducting the poor-rate and a per centage for the owner’s trouble in stacking, thatching, and threshing his farm produce, and carrying his hops to market. He considered it very liberal to offer a further reduction of 20 per cent. in consideration of the security of the impropriator from the accidents of chance and change: but Mr. Parker hesitated and grumbled, and treated Peterson’s companion with nearly as fine a lament over the assimilating qualities of the church as Mr.
Mackintosh himself could have offered. He related that he had a pretty farm near town which had never before been let by him for less than 5_l._ per acre. It was with difficulty that he could now get 3_l._, on account of the enormous tithe. It was bad enough to have the poor’s-rate as high as 13_s._ per acre, and the sewer’s-rate perhaps 7_s._ or 8_s._ more; but the amount of tithe paid in addition was intolerable. The three rates together amounted to nearly 3_l._ per acre over the whole farm. He hoped Mr. Hellyer thought he contributed his share towards promoting the piety of the nation, when his land thus paid 3_l._ per acre to maintaining a single clergyman.
Peterson wished to know in what proportion the different kinds of produce yielded. Mr. Parker was remarkable for a good memory as to the several amounts of tithe.
Wheat paid 20_s._ per acre.
Barley and oats 16_s._ ” Clover 24_s._ ” Tares 16_s._ ” First crop of potatoes 25_s._ ” After which (on the same land) turnips 16_s._ ” Second crop of potatoes 20_s._ ” Hay 8_s._ ” Onions 40_s._ ” Collards 16_s._ ” A sow 10_s._ 6_d._ A cow 15_s._ And garden and farm-yard poultry according to circumstances. A certain amount was to be paid for all small tithes, whether the tenant produced the titheable articles or not.
“There are plenty of men like you,” observed Mr. Parker to Peterson, “who talk of an average of a few years on each separate estate,—five or seven years,—and would have any commutation that is proposed proceed upon such an average. Now, here is a case which shows you the injustice of such a principle. My interest in my land would be almost annihilated if I allowed it to be calculated to yield 2_l._ per acre to the church.
To perpetuate such a charge as this would be to ruin the owners of land near London, and in many other situations. They say the price of produce would rise accordingly; but before it could rise enough to repay me for such a sacrifice, the people would be boiling acorns and stewing nettles for food.”
“And it would ruin the church in some other districts,—” Jerom was going on to say; but Mr. Parker interrupted him with,— “Not so completely as the present plan, sir. The worst enemy of the church,—Mr. Mackintosh himself,—could not desire more than to see the church consuming the state, as it is doing now. As for men that we think wiser than Mr. Mackintosh, they are of opinion that religion was given us to bless our bread, to prosper us in basket and store, and not to devour our plenty. The people cannot but see that the reverse is the case with the established religion of this country;—that in plentiful seasons, the clergy take much, (legally, I allow,)—and that in bad seasons they take more, (legally, and therefore the more gallingly.) The people cannot but feel that as the net produce of the nation grows smaller in proportion to the gross, and as the clergy seize a larger proportion of the net produce, the question must come to this,—whether the people shall have state-priests or bread. How the clergy are likely to fare in such an alternative, I leave it to you to guess.”
“So, you allow that this is a question pertaining to the people. You allow that the landlord does not alone support the church.”
“Look at the owners of tithe-free lands, and see the folly of such a question. They are getting rich under the operation of our precious system of inequality. And how? Not merely because their farms are in an universally better condition than the tithed: not only because the abbey farm is better worth 20_s._ per acre rent than the Quarry Wood farm is worth 13_s._, for the reason that the one does not pay tithe and the other does,—and so on, through all farms that bear this distinction; but because these landowners are profiting by the high prices of produce which must cover the sacrifice of the tithe-payer. No, no: landowner as I am, I never was heard to say that the landlord pays the tithe, in a general way, any more than the farmer. They both have their grievances, and their occasional losses under the system;—they are vexed from month to month, and eat dear bread and meat in their own families, and pay high wages to their labourers; but these sacrifices are made by them in their character of consumers; and it is the people who pay the tithes; the poor Stockport weaver in his garret, and the half-starved apple-vender in her cellar, as truly as the Lamberts and myself.”
“You would sweep away tithe, at once and for ever, I suppose, in pity to these poor people; and set your vicar and myself to weave in a garret, or sell apples in a cellar.”
“No; it may be left to Mackintosh to preach up such a scheme of spoliation as that. If the clergy alone were concerned, I might be willing,—not that they should weave and sell apples,—but that they should obtain their support, like other servants of society, from the hands of those whom they serve. But tithe property has become so complicated with other property as to be equally sacred with that other property: and I should cry out as vehemently against its abolition (without compensation) as against reducing the interest of the debt. No wise man—no man of honour—can advocate either kind of public robbery.”
“Since there is this complication of tithe with other property, it had better be let alone. You can no more disentangle it than you can pay the debt. You will never achieve a scheme which will satisfy both tithe and land owner.”
“Probably. It would be strange if a perfectly unobjectionable plan could be formed to lead us out of the mischiefs of a pernicious system whose evil influences have been accumulating for centuries. But, if the church and the landowners understand anything of their own state and prospects, they will be anxious for a final settlement of their accounts within a defined and early period. Such a settlement must take place, sooner or later, since this tax involves the very principle of perpetual growth.
Nothing but absolute transformation can prevent it enlarging till it swallows up everything.”
“I am sure my brother and I do not find it so.”
“Because you cannot recover your dues; but the farmer can instruct you here. My father had a favourite little farm of a hundred acres, which was left to him in 1791, and came into my hands in 1812. When he first let it, the rent was 80_l._, and the tithe 14_l._ 9_s._; in 1798, the tithe had risen to 17_l._ 12_s._; in 1805, rent was 95_l._, tithe 23_l._ 7_s._; in 1812 the tithe had risen to 29_l._ A farm of mine, which let, a few years ago, for 240_l._, then paid 30_l._ in tithes. It now lets for 689_l._, and the tithes are 140_l._: that is, the tithes are nearer five-fold than the rent three-fold what was paid before. And, in like manner, there must be an increase all over the country, since the same proportion of the gross produce must be paid in tithe, through every increase of the expense of such production. Therefore, above all things, let us know, in rectifying our tithe system, that we really are to have done with it by and by; and when.”
“And how do you propose to reconcile the clergy to the tithe system thus being brought to an end?”
“Those of them who understand their own position see, like other men, the folly of the clergy stickling for tithes. The clergy have only a life-interest in tithes; and the possession of a certain income is the circumstance which is of most consequence to them. Some contend for tithes as if they were the most secure source of income in the world, or as if they were an inheritance for a future generation; but many more would be glad to depend on a fund less precarious, and less odious in the collection.”
“Do you allow nothing for attachment to ancient ecclesiastical institutions?”
“In your simple brother: but there are faithful churchmen, just as much attached as he to ancient ecclesiastical institutions, who have eyes to see the different effects of the tithe systems of Ireland and Scotland, and who reason from them. They see how, in Ireland, the farmer becomes a peasant, and then is hunted out of house and home by the proctor, and then turns on the proctor to maim and murder him; while in Scotland, the farmer carries home his harvest without interruption, and looks with compassion on his English brother. In the first case, appears an aggravated repetition of the abuses of the English system; in the other, the tithes are drawn with comparative harmlessness, whether by the crown, the clergy, or laymen, in the form of a fixed rent. So long ago as Pitt’s time, there were not wanting bishops to approve of the church being supported by a civil fund. It is true, the plan would have been all for the benefit of the clergy, in the very point in which it is most important to obtain relief.”
“In that of the perpetual increase of which you complain?”
“Yes. When the tithe should have been bought up, in the same way that it was intended that the land-tax should be, and the proceeds invested in the funds, the people were not to flatter themselves that they had done with the tax. The income was to be so adjusted as to admit an increase, from time to time, in proportion to the rise in the price of grain. The bishop who recorded this scheme breathed no syllable about the desecration of the church by this mode of augmenting its funded income: and the objections of his brethren were of a different cast.”
“As different, probably, as mine from my brother’s, when we sit down to talk over the prospects of the church. I have not the least objection, as he will tell you, to an alteration in the source of our incomes, if the change could be innocently brought about; but I never could see how injustice and tyranny, towards one party or the other, are to be avoided. It is tyranny to the landowner to compel the universal and immediate purchase of the tithe; and it is injustice to the clergy to prohibit that natural increase of their revenue which they consider to have been guaranteed to them by the very institution of tithes?”
“Suppose a plan which should contain an alternative by which both these objections should be answered. Suppose a scheme of commutation under which a tithe-rate should be instituted, subject to increase upon a demand for a revaluation of land, from time to time; while an option should be given to the landowner, to be subject to this increase, or to make a twenty or thirty years’ purchase,—that is, a final purchase of the tithe. I think there might be such a plan.”
“And then those who paid the most tithe would be the first to redeem.
But how would you set about ascertaining a _tithe-rate_, afraid as you are of taking an average of a few years as a rule?”
“That objection applies only to perpetuating the limited average of an individual estate. If the average is extended over a parish, or over a county, the calculation becomes a much fairer one. I see no other principle to proceed upon than that of taking an average; and the question of fairness lies between taking in a longer period of time and a larger extent of space. I feel that it would be hard upon me to perpetuate the tithe of my farm near town at 2_l._ per acre; and though it would be fairer to take for a basis the average of tithe which it has paid for fifty years, a better plan still would be to find out the proportion of tithe to yearly value of land all through the county, and to fix the tithe-rate according to this proportion.”
“You could never get such a valuation made fairly. When you meet with a modus, what are you to do with it? And how are you to settle what is arable land and what pasture? And every farmer will protest against some kinds of produce that are particularly profitable being no more taxed than others. There would be complaints of you,—a hop-grower,—being let off as easily as a grower of corn.”
“All these matters of detail might be settled when once the general principle is agreed upon. If hop-grounds now pay considerably more, from the nature of their produce, than other lands, let them be subject to a fair extra charge. Let a term be fixed,—five years, perhaps,—within which the tillage of lands shall cause those lands to be called arable.
And what is easier than to deduct any modus from the tithe-rate? Give us the principle of a good scheme, and its application will not be long delayed by difficulties about these minor matters of detail?”
“Your plan would be to have an ascertainment of the annual value of the land, and of the tithe, upon an average of a few years. You would settle their relative value, and declare it in the form of a poundage upon rent for the county. You would allow a periodical revaluation on the application of the tithe-owner——” “Or of the landowner.”
“Of either party, of course. So the tithe remains liable to increase or decrease——” “It would be increase. The nature of the tax insures its perpetual increase. But the bad effects of this increase would be guarded against by obliging the tithe-taker to accept from the tithe-payer a twenty-five years’ purchase of the tithes, as a final redemption of his land from tithes. If this tax be really the grievance it is declared to be, the permission to redeem will be made ample use of. And the church——” “Ah! how do you propose to reconcile the church to the extinction of tithes?”
“To the perpetuation, I suppose you mean. If you should happen to live a few years longer under the present system, you might chance to be taught a little more correctly what extinction is. If you now find it impossible to collect all that is due to you, you may have no chance of collecting any thing twenty-five years hence. The church may be very thankful to have its present amount of revenue secured to it, and to be allowed the opportunity of making a permanent property of it. My great doubt is——” “Under what agency the commutation is to be effected so as to satisfy the parties. Who will undertake it?”
“Agents so various as to secure impartiality. Royal Commissioners, perhaps, might make the original valuation: and they might be followed by arbitrators who should settle disputes. Then the mechanical part of the business,—the ascertainment of the tithe-rate,—might be done by the justices. The business which most nearly concerns the church,—the final bargain with the landowner, and the investment of the purchase-money either in land for glebe, in the funds, or in mortgages, might be managed by a corporation of churchmen.”
“But how many landowners who may wish to redeem will be ready with the cash?”
“Why must the church be paid in cash? A mortgage on the land to be redeemed, with a good rate of interest,—say 4 per cent.,—would suit the convenience of all parties. A small per centage on the tithe-rate collected would defray all expences.—I do not see how any difficulties which can attend a scheme like this can be shown to bear any comparison with the evils daily endured under the present system. The doubt I spoke of is whether the great body of the people would not complain of the church being too well treated, its chances of existence being too favourably computed, under such a scheme as I have given you an outline of. I, for one, should say so, if I supposed that the church must either retain its present form or perish. But, believing that there is an alternative, I am willing to do my part in such a compromise as I have proposed.”
“What kind of an alternative?”
“The transformation of the church, so that it may fulfil the original purposes of its establishment. When the church was established for the promotion of religion, religion was the only kind of education which could be given to the people. The time is come when not only must the church be made an educational institution, in order to fulfil its original design, but the religion which it professes to protect cannot be supported without the aid of education. If it could be, it would be superstition, and not religion.—Yes, the days of the present mode of existence of the Church of England are numbered. Religion flourishes so much more eminently, so much more extensively when supported by the free-will of the worshippers, and has been so indisputably proved incapable of an incorrupt union with the state, as to leave no doubt that the Church of England, already a very minute sect among the worshippers of christendom, will soon become too insignificant and weak to maintain its place, unless it quits the ground of its present monstrous assumption, and takes its stand on the cultivated reason of its supporters. I do not know why you,—a clergyman as you are,—should look surprised at what is far from surprising to those who are not clergymen. Look at the map of christendom, and see what space is occupied by our church. Look at Great Britain alone, and mark what