LORD HARTINGTON AND THE NATIONAL CHURCH.
THE Irish Church is disestablished. At first sight this statement may seem near of kin to " Queen Anne is dead." But there is this notable difference between the two. The death of Queen Anne is accepted as a fact. Nobody is found writing or speaking as though she were still alive. The Disestablishment of the Irish Church, on the other hand, seems entirely forgotten by some of our readers. Mr. Stephens apparently has no recollection of it. Yet it happened only twenty-one years ago. In 1869, the whole theory of Disestablishment and Disendowment was thoroughly threshed out, and the view Mr. Stephens takes of it was presented to Parliament with all the advantage that learning' and eloquence could give it. But it was deliberately rejected in favour of the theory put forward by the Government of the day. The ancient property of the Irish Church, its tithes and its glebes, was taken over by the State. All that was left it, apart from the life-interests of the clergy, were the " private endowments," the gifts, that is, made to the Church by individuals after a certain date, and the fabrics, which were restored as useless. It was assumed that the ecclesiastical revenue was a part of the national revenue which the nation had set aside for the main- tenance of religion, and that the time had come for the nation to divert it to fresh uses. The whole process of disestablishing and disendowing the Church of Ireland rested on this assumption. It was adopted by Parliament in the most solemn and deliberate fashion, immediately after a General Election turning specially on this point. So evident was it that the principle of the Bill was accepted by the nation, that the Lords did not think it worth while to delay its passing. Instead of rejecting it, and leaving Mr. Gladstone to appeal to the country in July, as Mr. Disraeli had appealed to it the November before, they passed the Bill at once. From that time forward, the methods of Disestablishment have been generally regarded as settled. Men have specu- lated whether, in the event of its coming to pass in this country, the terms conceded to the Church of Eng- land would be as favourable as those conceded to the Church of Ireland. But until lately no one dreamed that these terms would be more favourable, or supposed that the Church would be allowed to go out into the wilderness with the spoils of Egypt in her hands.
This, however, if we understand him rightly, is Mr. Stephens's expectation. He objects to our remarks on Lord Hartington's speech, on the ground that they " accept, or at any rate acquiesce in, two popular errors— (1), that the endowments of the Church are derived from the State ; (2), that the Church and State, as two distinct bodies, entered into a compact, the one giving and the other receiving certain endowments, on the understanding that a certain amount of work should be discharged. And then he declares his inability to understand " how an account which rests on no foundation of fact, can be in any sense an accurate expression of a principle which underlies the position of our Church." Perhaps an analogy or two will make our meaning clearer. And, most conve- niently for our purpose, the secular constitution of Eng- land is full of them. For example, if Mr. Stephens wanted to " express with sufficient accuracy the principle that now underlies" the existence of the House of Lords, he would say that its function is to delay the passing of important measures until there has been time to ascertain that they are really desired by the nation. But that is not a statement " capable of historical proof." The text-books know nothing of it. They speak of the Lords as a co-ordinate branch of the Legislature, as having power to place an absolute veto on any Bill sent up by the Commons. Or take the relation of the legislative and the executive powers. " No doubt," says Mr. Bagehot, " by the traditional theory, as it exists in all the books, the goodness of our Constitution consists in the entire separa- tion of the legislative and executive authorities; but in truth, its merit consists in their singular approximation." Indeed, the " efficient secret " of the English Constitution may be described as " the nearly complete fusion of the two." So much is this the case, that when we meet with a Constitution in which the theory of the English Consti- tution is really carried out—as it is, for instance, in that of the United States—we are startled by its strangeness. Just the same thing has happened with our Ecclesiastical Constitution. We will concede to Mr. Stephens, that to the eye of the student of history, the endowments of the Church are not derived from the State, and that the Church holds them on no understanding that a certain amount of work should be discharged. We only contend that no trace of this state of things can be found in the Irish Church Act. He will find the principle on which Parliament then acted in the debates of March, 1869. It is the principle which underlies every clause and every sentence of the Irish Church Act, the principle on which, as we are firmly persuaded, any future readjustment of the relation in which the Church stands to the State will be based. The historian may give a quite different account. He may deny that any money has ever been paid to the Church by the State ; he may say that the Church holds her endowments on no tenure save that of obedience to her own conscience, and, historically speaking, he may be quite right. But, to quote Mr. Bagehot once more, " an observer who looks at the living reality will wonder at the contrast to the paper description." He will turn to his Has Bard for 1869, and marvel at the dis- crepancy between the narrative of the historian and the action of Parliament. He will see endowments which, Nor is this claim so unjust as it may at first sight of the first marauder who might think it worth while to appear. The property of the Church is derived from the rob him. Absurd as it sounds, we do not doubt, however, gifts of innumerable private persons in past ages. But that this instinctive desire on the part of English the institution to which these gifts were made, combined founders of empire to wear a mask of humility is in the first instance characteristics one of which it has grounded in reason. It has certainly answered better lost already, and another of which it would lose in the than the plan of applying pure reason to Colonial event of Disestablishment. Previous to the fifteenth extension usually adopted by the French. The system century, the Church of England was in communion with of sharing a portion of the revenues with a native the Pope. How can we be sure that gifts then made to it overlord adopted by the East India Company, has also would have been made to it when that condition no been followed by the British East Africa Company. longer held good ? It is arguable, of course, that when a At present, the Company pay the Sultan of Zanzibar man made a gift to the Church of England, he meant it to a fixed rent of $56,000 per annum, plus 50 per cent. follow the fortunes of the Church of England. But we of any net surplus revenue derived from the Customs after cannot be sure of this. We know, for instance, that if payment of all administrative and other charges. This is Sir Thomas More had given money to the Church in 1525, always the first stage in the evolution of an Eastern State he would have wished to take it back in 1535 ; and who pensioner. How many years, we wonder, will pass before shall say how many pious founders before the Reformation the Sultan of Zanzibar finds himself in the position of a would have gone with Sir Thomas More if they had lived mediatised Indian Rajah? to see the same changes ? Then, coming down to a The progress already achieved by the Company has been later date, have we any right to assume that the old extraordinarily rapid ; but now that they have really Church and State men who left money to ecclesi- succeeded in putting their house in order, we may look for astical uses in the eighteenth century would have wished an even quicker advance. How firmly they have now that money to be retained by a mere voluntary religious established themselves in their territory, is clearly brought body ? They " mout," as Uncle Remus says ; but then, out in the Report. In the first place, they have got their again, they " mouten't." Thus, for every pre-Reformation boundaries distinctly marked out, and really know what does endowment there are three possible claimants,—the Church and what does not belong to them. The negotiations with of England, the English Roman Catholics, and the State ; the Germans, with Italy, and with various native chiefs, and for every post-Reformation endowment down to the make their territorial limits as follows. They own a coast- days when Disestablishment came to be regarded as at line of four hundred miles, extending from Wang& at the least conceivable, there are two claimants,—the Church of mouth of the UMW, River on the south, the place where England, and the State. In this way, the notion that the the German territory begins, to the Juba River on the State has at least as good a right to ecclesiastical property north, whence stretch the recent Italian annexations,— as either of the other two, becomes, we think, intelligible. the little isolated German settlement of Witu being In addition to this, it is eminently to the advantage of absorbed. Inland, Germany marches with the Com- -the Church that this view should be accepted by Church- pany on the south up to the Congo State, which men. So long as ecclesiastical endowments are regarded forms their western limit ; while to the northward, the as national property appropriated to a use which still finds course of the Juba and the western and northern favour with the majority of the people, there is no tempta- borders of Abyssinia, form well-defined landmarks to tion to assert the right of the State to them in any overt the Company's possessions. In a word, their territory way. The principle of State ownership being admitted, is now definitely marked off, except as regards the there is no need to apply it in practice. But if once it region which may roughly be described as lying between came to be believed that the Church claims in her endow- the most northern corner of the Congo State and ments a property just as complete as that which any the most southern point of Abyssinia,—the region in private owner claims in his lands or goods, we are convinced which Emin Pasha's province was situated. This gap that it would not be long before the nation took some looks down the Nile Valley, and, if the Soudan actually positive step towards asserting an effectual ownership, as well as nominally belonged to Egypt, would make the where now it is content with a nominal and dormant one. Company's borderers Germany, the Congo State, Egypt, Mr. Stephens might prove to demonstration that what the Abyssinia, and Italy. Speaking approximately, the Com- State had never given it could never take away ; but the pang's possessions have an area of 750,000 square miles, answer, we fear, would take the form of a solvitur spoliando. or over eight times that of Great Britain. Access is given
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