Page images
PDF
EPUB

so dear to Bishops, and to all others who look to become, or to make, Bishops? What is it that renders it so clear to them that without these judicatories no soul could be saved? Behold the cause. Though not themselves Bishops,-nor, unless as above in a few inconsiderable instances, so much as Priests,-the Judges of these Courts are appointed by Bishops; and, of that portion of the people's substance that can be squeezed out by the hands of those judicial Officers and their subordinates, a portion more or less considerable is employed in giving fatness to the families of Bishops.

Let the same Justice who levied a shilling for the word cursed, levy another or the same shilling for the word whore, you have at once a precedent, upon the model of which you may give exercise to what part soever there may be, if there be any, of the Church discipline exercised upon the people at large, that is fit to be exercised. So doing, you may transfigure all that portion of the hierarchy that belongs to it, into that state of beatitude which is called Sinecure. The misfortune is—that the sine-cure would in this case be also sine pay: and there would be the rub. But,-be the case as it may in regard to this or that division of the non-penal part of the business, -for the profit made out of the penal part, compensation at the public expense, might be even more than adequate, and still not ill-bestowed.

On this part of the field, as in so many others, look, and behold imposture mounted upon imposture. Imposture, the notion that, by money squeezed out by clerical hands, souls are mended more than if the hands were non-clerical ones: imposture, the pretence that the hands thus employed in the exaction of it are clerical ones. But, so long as the people will continue to lie with their heads in a

bush, to be thus vexed and pillaged, where is the imposture, where even the violence, that will be grudged?

As in the profane judicatories, so in the sacred ones-as in all other Christian countries, so in England-technical procedure, cloaking itself in the name of regular, took for its main, if not for its sole object, maximization of delay, vexation, and expense: of expense, for the sake of the profit extractible out of the expense. Among such a cloud of other witnesses, witness the Noble Lord, whose duty, if he did it, would be done by making entries in a book, and who in his share of this profit beholds, and clasps to his heart his "freehold." Witness again that Judge, who numbers among his duties, the duty of checking and punishing any exactions which may happen to be practised to his own use; to whom all those judicatories, by which natural justice is substituted to technical injustice, are as declaredly odious as "hell is false;" and by whom, after his worthy predecessors, the requisite portion of law has been so modelled, as to transfer to the hand of the injured complainant, any punishment that may be due to the exacting and exaction-protecting Judge.

Would you be assured that profit thus extracted was at least a principal, if not the sole, object to the founders of English judicature, read Adam Smith, who unfortunately saw not, or at least has not discovered that he saw, any thing to object to it. Would you behold in all its shapes the mischief of the system by which this profit is extracted, read Bentham, who, in his Protest against Law Taxes, has given a picture of them, and in his Scotch Reform has shewn by what devices the man of law contrived in this country to swell to so exalted a pitch the profit, and for the sake of it the mischief, producible from this

source.

Among the fruits of these devices, behold, as in matters between man and man, a denial of justice, so in respect of the enforcement of pastoral as well as so many other offi cial duties, a palsy in the arm of justice, and, in consequence of that palsy, among the Clergy a general neglect of duty, and towards those parts of the body which apply specially to their function, a generally prevalent and thoroughly confirmed habit of disobedience. In addition to reason operating upon experience, would you be assured of this by authority? call in once more the Earl of Harrowby. In the speech by which his Bill was introduced, "ecclesiastical censures" pronounced (p. 30) as above,

a brutum fulmen :" in the preamble to his Bill (p. 36), the "insufficiency" of the laws declared: throughout the whole tenor of it, the power of enforcing observance being given exclusively to the Bishops, behold it concluding with a clause (p. 40), enacting, "that Bishops shall exer❝cise summarily, and without formal process or suit, the "powers vested in them by this Act."

Ecclesiastical censure an inefficient thunder? whence then came its inefficiency?-The laws in this behalf insufficient? whence came their insufficiency?—Is it that in the substantive part of the law there was any deficiency? No. Of penalties there was no want: of penalties, with reward upon the usual plan, to be sued for and upon conviction be paid to Informers. But,-whatsoever would have been the weight of the penalties, supposing them inflicted, and out of them the Informers paid,-such was the expense and vexation attached to the purchase of an Informer's ticket in this part of the lottery of the law, that for generation after generation none of these tickets had found purchasers. At last an extraordinary concurrence of apparently favourable circumstances presented to one individual* a prospect

• Mr. W. Wright, of whom further on.

of net profit in the event of his accepting the invitation held out by the law, and thus adding his labours to those of the Judge in the service of justice. He accepted it accordingly. He brought his actions. The consequence was-that, to give impunity to the delinquent, the power of Parliament being called in, was employed accordingly in breaking the faith of Parliament, and stopping the course of justice.

Nor, had compensation been given to the listed and then perfidiously discarded minister of justice, would it have been ill employed. Without desiring to see them enforced, the hypocrisy of a tyrannical Government had in the beginning imposed these duties. Each successive Government had, by its negligence, invited men to the violation of them. From first to last, so rotten has been the whole system, nothing but mischief could ever have been the result of whatever could have been done to patch it up.

At them once more, Lord Folkestone! humane, intrepid, generous Lord Folkestone! Piety, morality, whatever is good in government, call upon you with one voice. One more attack upon the poison-tree. Lay your axe now to the root think it not enough now to nibble at the branches. Open once more upon the listed advocatesthe well-sworn and well-subscriptionatized advocates-of whatsoever is evil-adversaries of whatsoever is good. Opposite to you behold Sir William. Give him one other ague. Death to the Church in one of its many senses, that ague will be life to the Church in its only good sense: death to so many of the sins of the ruling few, it will be salvation to the welfare of the subject multitude.

7. State of Discipline, as exhibited by authority, and elucidated by a Diocesan Secretary.

Of the actual state of the Church, the picture exhibited in the under-mentioned Tables, within these few years to and by Parliament, is too instructive to be suffered to pass altogether unnoticed even in so compressed a work as the present. Coupled with the arrangements made by Henry the Eighth at the commencement of that so imperfectly beneficial change, which for want of a better, is spoken of in England by the name of the Reformation, (of which presently), it proves (as will be seen) to demonstration, this fundamental truth, viz. that in the conduct of that change, on the part of the ruling powers, neither at the commencement, nor at any subsequent period, has the welfare, temporal and eternal, say, for shortness, the salvation of souls, or, in one word, salvation,—been the main and ruling object, or end in view, of what has been done. To a sincere eye, that can endure to look the idea in the face, the only points, that will remain susceptible of a question, will be--whether in any degree, and if in any, in what degree, on this or that occasion, to the ruling powers of this or that time, this most sacred and most extensively public object was an object of regard.

The years for and during which the matters in question are exhibited in these Tables, are the three successive years, 1809, 1810, and 1811. “An ABSTRACT of RETURNS respect"ing NON-RESIDENCE; for the Year ending 25th March "1809:"-such is the title of the earliest of these Tables: ABSTRACT of the Number and Classes of NON-RESIDENT INCUMBENTS, and of the Number of RESIDENT INCUMBENTS, according to the Diocesan Returns for the Year 1810: such is the title of the next succeeding one: and in the

« PreviousContinue »