fund as though the preamble had declared the necessity of 'a certain number,' not of 'free,' but of 'pew-rented seats being made therein.' The older Commission, on the contrary, according to their lights, showed at any rate a decent deference to the spirit of the Act. They were no doubt hampered by the original misconception of the Act itself, viz., that to build fabrics first and trust to endowments springing up afterwards was the best way of church-extension. But for this belief in bricks and mortar they were not responsible. It was the excusable error of the age, not of the men. The light of experience was far less abundant then than it has since become. And we do not feel disposed to be censorious on church-builders working from 1815 to 1856 on a mistaken principle, when the result gave so much as 60 per cent. of free places in the churches built. If they were not very far in advance of their age, at least they were by no means behind it. But the earliest grant made by the present Commissioners was, however, in 1859, or just about the time when attention was being drawn to the prevailing violation of the idea of the English parochial system through appropriation, but above all through pew-rents, by Mr. Herford, of Manchester, at the earlier Church Congresses. It is then at once singular and unsatisfactory to find that in the first decade of their inherited powers these Commissioners used them more liberally than in the last. The greater number of instances of churches built by them in which rented pews are only one-third or one-fourth of the whole accommodation are to be found in that earlier decade; and on the contrary, the greater number of instances in which that proportion is inverted or even more grossly violated is to be found in the last decade. Thus they have done, on the whole, even worse than their predecessors, whereas they ought to have done much better; and whereas they ought to have grown in liberality with the times, have grown in narrowness. We never penned a page with greater grief. Here we see in melancholy combination all the traditional evils of a corporate body and of a bureaucracy as well; and yet looking to the individual members of whom the body is composed, it is not too much to say that in it we have the very choice and flower of public virtue, thrice winnowed from the social residuum around them, shielded from numerous temptations by personal, professional, and official prestige; and yet as soon as they come to act as a body, down falls public virtue to the zero of the letter, and it stoops to act in such fashion as we have seen. Probably not even the least sensitive of all the highly eminent persons who form the Commission, or have formed it in times past, would have ventured, acting in and for a local sphere for which he was separately responsible, to have done what the body has thus done. But a corporation is hidebound in red tape and official parchment. Large-hearted individually as many are known to be, into the official pigeon-hole each is duly squeezed, and while each man of them, we believe sincerely, would prefer the right path, the Commission takes the wrong. The members are selected because they individually fill posts of the highest public rank and influence. Their fellowcitizens are entitled to expect of them an example of absolute rectitude in the application of public money to the very end or ends for which it was voted. It was not voted to establish the pew-rent system in cases where otherwise there would be no need of it, and this is the purpose to which it is put; it was voted to promote the building of churches with the maximum of freedom attainable, and this is the purpose to which it is not put. The selfish greed of personal comfort which seeks for proprietorship (whether by purchase or fixed rent matters little) in the House which is individually God's alone, and collectively His people's, is met half-way by their proceedings, and the English laity are encouraged in the notion of making this the very corner-stone of Church extension by the very persons who ought to rebuke that spirit, not a few of whom, as individual prelates, are engaged in earnestly rebuking it. The right of the English parishioner to accommodation in his or her parish church, is one of the most sacred and beneficent principles which the reverence, love, and wisdom of the past have bequeathed to us. If my brother values this birthright at Esau's rate, is it for me to bid him the mess of pottage and buy it of him? But, indeed, the case is far worse than this parallel puts it, for not a penny of my pew-rent goes to benefit him in any way. I buy him out, and then enjoy the purchase-money myself, to guarantee my own accommodation. The root-principle of Christianity, as a social principle, is that of brotherhood in Christ. The first dawn of its system carried this so far that they who believed 'had all things common.' Now the opposite spirit has so far driven this out that there is not even brotherhood to be found in the House of God. In an average town or suburban parish, for every family pewed in, there are probably two or three pewed out. As in a slave-system the one who probably suffers most moral detriment next to the slave himself is the slave-owner, so here the mischief done to the parishioner who is included by the pew-rent in the congregation is only less than to him whom it excludes. The example set by the Commissioners infects our Church system still further. It is assumed, under the countenance which they give it, that pew-rents must be right wherever they are set up. We have no doubt that in the majority of cases where they exist they are as illegal as lotteries. But with such an august body giving them such overwhelming encouragement, who cares to impeach them? The churchwardens do what is right in their own eyes, and may shelter themselves under the shadow of the mitre in so doing. Nor is this all, but a distinct attempt having been made in 1872 by the Legislature to remedy the growing evil by providing for the erection of churches which might at any rate be free from pew-rents, the Commissioners have laboured to defeat its object. To take one instance. We are informed that the Marquis of Northampton offered, at a moderate cost, a site for a church in a very poor district, but where it happened that an ample endowment existed; merely requiring that this condition of the building remaining wholly free from appropriation should appear in the title-deeds. The Commissioners refused to accept the site on these terms, Lord Northampton refused to part with the site on any others, and the chance of it was lost. How many eloquent episcopal charges have denounced the mischief of pew-rents since? But the Commission works in a groove, outside that groove it refuses to look, and so declines to encourage any better model than that set up by official routine. We revert to the fact that the fund which they thus pervert to spread the taint and perpetuate the bane of pewrents, is part of the national thank-offering, the last, we believe, which the nation has made, the last, we fear, which it is ever likely to make. It is committed to the hands of those who are looked upon as the living fathers of the Church, and it is so dealt with as to perpetuate an abuse which they ought to be the first to set themselves with the whole force of their influence to sweep away. But leaving abuse out of the question, what, we repeat, would be the position of a private trustee who should thus deal with trust money placed in his hands to administer? And lastly, we are constrained to add that there is a paltry spirit about the whole contrivance worthy only of an electioneering agent manufacturing fagot votes. The very 1 The Bill was brought in by Earl Nelson; the resulting statute is known as the Church Seats Act, 1872. notion of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners doling out a petty remnant of a fund, public but sacred, as a corban of mammon, in order to build pews and let them, professing to give a five-pound note, and that only 'nominal,' is too astounding for people to credit. The enormity in the eyes of the more enlightened is too great for any proof to cover it, and therefore men prefer not to believe it, in spite of the candid admission of Mr. Pringle, the Secretary to the Commission. In the view of the more case-hardened, nobody is hurt by it. The pewed-in hundreds get their comforts; the pewed-out thousands lose only what they have ceased to care for, and therefore there is nobody to appeal against the wrong. Thus the evil has been exposed more than once by the Free and Open Church Association, but nothing comes of it. Appropriation has become so deeply rooted in the average English layman, that the cause of Free and Open Churches has an uphill game to play. But many who would countenance appropriation as practically useful, would feel outraged and scandalised at this persistent policy, now pursued for twenty years, of saddling our churches with pew-rents, and making a national ex voto a perpetual source of 'nominal' grants for the purpose. Is there any independent member of Convocation quixotic enough to get up in his place, and denounce it as a gravamen grosser than any with which Public Worship Acts are likely to have to deal, as one deserving a niche alongside of 'donatives,' simoniacal transfers, marketable benefices, et hoc genus omne? How it can be sinful to buy or sell a cure of souls, and sinless to let or hire a right of worship, it would indeed puzzle casuistry to say. And the last stronghold of the malpractice is the unblemished personal character and high official elevation of the personages who maintain it. It is an obliquity only possible in men raised above the suspicion of personal wrong-doing; and, therefore, there is all the more need that the corporate wrong-doing should be plainly spoken of. We have only to add, that not one word that we have written can be plainer than the words of the evidence actually given, to which we have referred. ART. IX.-COMMUNISM AND CO-OPERATION. Von 1. Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie. KARL MARX. Erster Band. Zweite, verbesserte Auf lage. 8vo. pp. 830. (Hamburg, 1863.) 2. Arbeiterprogramm. Ueber den besondern Zusammenhang der gegenwärtigen Geschichtsperiode mit der Idee des Arbeiterstandes. Von FERDINAND LASSALLE. Pp. 36. (Braunschweig, 1874.) 3. Zur Arbeiterfrage. Lassalle's Rede bei der am 16. April 1863 in Leipzig abgehaltenen Arbeiterversammlung. Siebente Auflage. (Berlin, 1876.) 4. Report and Balance Sheet of the Co-operative Wholesale Society. (Manchester, 1878.) 5. Co-operation: its Position, its Policy, and its Prospects. By LLOYD JONES. (London, 1877.) HISTORY may never repeat itself, but very similar political dangers are certainly recurrent; and it is in regard to the secret springs of social disorder that the greatest store of wisdom for the present may be gleaned from the historians and doctrinaires of the past. Their conception of a State was very different from ours; the city life which Plato idealised, and Aristotle sought to invigorate, would seem strangely narrow to a people that has a part in Christendom and in an age which professes an enthusiasm for humanity. We find ourselves strangely out of sympathy with their description of the aspirations, and virtues, and duties of a good citizen; but when we turn to their account of the causes of seditions, we realise at once that the evil in human nature is much the same now as it was in days gone by. We find the same verbal admissions of differences of intellectual and moral degree among men; we find the same evidence of the working of a latent tendency which would fain bring about a complete equality in social conditions. Those who are equal in political power come to think they should be equal in everything else.' This is still the state of feeling that indicates an impending revolution, and a trivial occasion may be enough to fire the mine. We need only add that the conditions which 1 Aristotle, Pol. viii. 2. |