214 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. It is the established religion of the empire. It is maintained at an annual expense fully equal to the cost of carrying on the Government of the United States, previous to 1861. It furnishes "the means of grace," probably, to one-tenth of the population of the Home Empire. It is, therefore, the chosen religion of a small fraction of the English, Scotch, Welsh and Irish people. Most of its revenue is forced from British subjects by due process of laws, enacted for that purpose. Such is the Established Church. REVE II. EVENUES.-It is impossible to arrive at any exact estimate of the revenues of the Church. They consist chiefly in the following items: Church Tithes, REVENUES OF THE CHURCH. Income of Bishoprics, Estates of the Deans and Chapters, Benefices not parochial, Fees for burials, marriages, christenings, etc. 215 Oblations, offerings and compositions for the four great festivals, College and school foundations, Lectureships in towns and populous places, Chaplainships and offices in public institutions, New churches and chapels. Rev. Dr. Heman Humphrey, whom all will acknowledge to have been as incapable of any design to mislead, as he was unlikely to be misled himself, tells us in his "Foreign Tour," that the incomes of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York were, thirty years since, over $250,000, and that he was assured by a gentleman in Durham, in whom he placed the utmost confidence, that the entire revenues of that rich Diocese might be fairly estimated at half a million of dollars. The hamlet of Nottingham, in Kent, is liable to pay annually the sum of £8 13s. 47. to the Dean and Chapter of Rochester. The clergy had granted to a Mr. Clayton, an attorney, the power to levy this sum on the hamlet, in consideration of £250 paid to them once in seven years, making Mr. Clayton's annual payment about £44 7s. 6d. Mr. Clayton, for the annual sum of £100, had granted to a Mr. Morris, a farmer in the vicinity of Nottingham, the power to levy tithes on the hamlet, which has been to the extent of ten shillings an acre, making his income on the six hundred acres in the limits of the hamlet £300 per annum. When this gross abuse was fully understood by the people of the hamlet, a law-suit was instituted to rid themselves of the burden; but although in the entire hamlet there was no church or chapel of ease, or school, or church-service connected with the Establishment, yet the Court decided against the people! In the report of the King's Commission the church revenue from this hamlet was put down at £8 13s. 6d., while the people of the hamlet paid £400 every year. This is a single case, but it illustrates as clearly as a much greater number which might 216 AMOUNT OF REVENUES NEVER KNOWN. be adduced from the ex-parte and deceptive character of that report and all others from the same source.* Mr. Colton's estimate of the Church revenue, thirty years since, exceeded $40,000,000. A respectable authority in England a few years ago, exhibited a table of facts showing that the administration of the Church of England to its hearers, costs as much as the administration of all other forms of Christianity in all parts of the civilized world, to over two hundred millions of Christians. Again, I ask the question, who need be told that this prodigious amount is paid by the people and not by the aristocracy? * Not long after the passage of the Reform Bill, an investigation into the condition and revenue of the Church was so loudly demanded by the people, that a commission on church revenues was appointed by the king to inquire into the matter, and present their report. The king being the head of the church was the last person in the kingdom who should have had anything to do in the appointment of this commission; this was proved by the result-for there was not a man on that commission who was not deeply interested in concealing from the people the real amount of church revenue. Their report was subjected to the severest scrutiny, and all parties were satisfied that they kept back everything they were not compelled to disclose. And yet this report, dated June 16, 1835, stated that the permanent gross annual revenue of the Church on the average of the three years ending 1831, was £3,750,000, or $18,187,500. But this estimate, as the report acknowledges, did not embrace the vast sums derived from glebes, fines paid on the renewal of leases of bishops' and other lands, church rates, Easter offerings, fees on marriages, births and burials, and grants of Parliament for Church extension, which must have vastly swelled the aggregate. No certain knowledge of the amount of Church revenues can be derived from a report thus made out; not because the King's commission did not tell the truth, but because they only told a part of it. "This Report is incomplete," say the commissioners, "in that it does not embrace all the items which would be considered in a complete table of the revenue." So it appears; for instance: the entire annual revenue of all the arch-episcopal and episcopal sees of England and Wales, according to the Report, is less than $900,000, while the London Times, which is usually not far from the truth in such matters, said in 1835, that the annual income of the Bishop of London was $100,000, independent of fines imposed for the renewal of leases, "which occasionally happened to amount to a hundred thousand pounds at a single windfall,” as it is called, and that "the income of the Bishop of London will soon be sixty thousand pounds, or three hundred thousand dollars per annum. ARISTOCRACY OF THE CHURCH. 217 The poor man who raises ten bushels of wheat, must give one of them, or its equivalent, towards the revenue of a proud priest he never sets eyes on. A tenth of the gross income of the people goes into the pockets of the clergy. Captain Ross, a Tory, in Parliament said, to the evident uneasiness of his friends, that one-fifth of the rent of the country went to the clergy. For it must be remembered that the tithe is a tenth of the gross income without any allowance for the expense of cultivation. If the poor man has any thing left, after being thus fleeced by his shepherd, and a child dies, he must pay the curate a burial fee, and last of all a fee for the privilege of erecting a tomb-stone over the ashes of his dead. While his earnings are thus taken from him, how does the prelate expend his income? In building palaces, and rivaling the luxury and magnificence of princes. This is the extortion of the clergy. III. A RISTOCRACY is its twin sister. The Bishops are exofficio members of the House of Lords, bear titles, use worldly civil power, and mingle actively in the affairs of the state, as peers of the realm-"It is no uncommon spectacle," says an English writer, " to see the Lord Bishops hurrying down to the House of Lords on what is called 'a field day,' to vote down the liberties of the people." As aristocrats of the land, they are every day becoming more and more opulent, while distress is overwhelming all the lower, and many of the middle classes. One and all, they were firm advocates of the Corn Laws, which were urging the people into famine and revolution. They are allied in their interests to the land owners, whose wealth increased just in proportion as bread was taxed into starvation prices. They resisted all propositions to make the necessaries of life cheap, for the splendor of their equipagesthe magnificence of their dwellings and pleasure-grounds depended upon keeping bread at a high price-for a tenth of the 218 A MITRE-HUNTING PRIESTHOOD. produce of the soil coming into their pockets, it matters very much that wheat shall be made to sell for 80s. a quarter, and not 40s.—for the difference in price will double their income. Thus it becomes the interest of thirteen thousand clergymen to bring all their influence to support the aristocracy of the Empire and we find the whole weight of the Established Church thrown into the scale of oppressive legislation. How wide asunder from the benevolence of the Gospel, is the organization of a church whose interests are so violently at war with the good of the people! We confess that in searching for anything apostolic in the practice of the Established Church, we meet with poor success. Thus to sustain its princely dignity, and continue its extortion in the midst of general distress, it must resort to oppression. IV. PPRESSION.-The whole system of tithes and Church rates is one of oppression. The London Times of July 25th, 1831, said: "If venality be imputed to any class of Englishmen, look not to the columns of a newspaper for your proofs, look to the Red Book, to the Reports of Parliament, to the list of pensions and sinecures, to colonial functionaries, to mercenary lords, to pamphleteering, jobbing, mitre-hunting dignitaries of the Church, to the innumerable tribe of vermin bred within the folds of that poisonous mantle which has wrapped for ages and gradually numbed the Herculean power of England." Two years after, the same paper said: "The Church of Ireland is finally one which has for centuries, in any measure of severity, of exaction, of oppression, signalized itself by more than concurrence with the tyrannical spirit of the civil government. It is felt at once to be a weight upon the country, and a degradation." The Church arrogates to herself the control of the Universities, where a son of a Dissenter is forbidden to enter; because he cannot subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles, he must be shut |