CHURCH PATRONAGE.
NEITHER the resolution which Mr. Leatham moved on Tuesday, nor the speech in which he introduced it, was particularly calculated to further the object he professed to have in view. Indeed, he frankly admitted that he could see but one cure for the abuses incident to the sale, exchange, or resignation of Ecclesiastical benefices, and that was the disesta- blishment of the Church. Until this potent remedy is applied, these abuses must, he thinks, go on unchecked. Read in the light of his speech, Mr. Leatham's motion is intelligible enough. When he asked the House of Commons to declare that the "scandals connected with the exercise and disposal of private patronage in the Church of England are such as to call for remedial measures of the most stringent and radical character," he was thinking more of the medicine than of either the disease or the patient. No doubt, Mr. Leatham is quite consistent in feeling that if the scandals connected with the exercise and disposal of private patronage in the Church of England should prove to be curable by gentle measures, his interest in the question would he gone. He is in the position of a man who, finding an old house in his way, is suspiciously anxious that it should undergo a thorough repair. Everybody knows what mostly happens under such circumstances, and Mr. Leathern is not likely to be ignorant of the result which would probably follow upon the application of stringent and radical reforms to so very complex a fabric as the Established Church.
Mr. Stuart Wortley, who moved an amendment to Mr. Leatham's resolution, did nothing to help matters forward. It is quite true that the reports of the Lords Committee, and of the Royal Commission, " disclose evils connected with the exer- cise and disposal of Church patronage which call for legislation at the earliest possible moment." But to ask the House of Commons to say this, was to ask it to be guilty of the vainest of vain repetitions. Everybody admits that legislation is needed, and nothing whatever is gained by swelling the chorus which proclaims this unchallenged and fruitless truth. What is needed is not another declaration that legislation is called for, but a serious attempt to give that legislation a definite shape. It is fair to Mr. Stuart Wortley to say that he has not shrunk from making this attempt. His name appears at the back of Mr. Stanhope's Bill to amend the law relating to Church Patronage, and though opinions may differ as to the merits of the specific proposals contained in this measure, no one will deny that it answers our description of what is wanted. Why, under these circumstances, Mr. Stuart Wortley should have aided Mr. Leatham to waste the time of the House of Commons upon the discussion of abstract resolutions, it is hard to see. Still, the debate had one good result. It drew from Mr. Gladstone a declaration that., if Mr. Stanhope's Bill should prove to contain little disputable matter, it would receive the support of the Government. It is clear that in the present state of public business, even the support of the Government would do the Bill no good, unless it satisfied this condition. Urgency is not likely to be voted for a Church Patronage Bill, and a very moderate amount of opposition would be quite enough to bar its progress, under the ordinary restrictions of Parliamentary procedure. But Mr. Stanhope and his friends will do well to consider whether they cannot so shape their Bill as to make it one which every simoniacal clergyman will not venture to oppose openly. A measure which shall deal comprehensively with the law of patron- age is one thing, and a measure which shall remedy the crying abuses incident to patronage under the present law is another. For the moment, the former is a wholly unattain- able good. It would probably be impossible to achieve anything of the kind without provisions in the way of com- pensation, which would raise all manner of controversies that had better be let sleep. So soon as the basis of a law of patronage came to be debated, the position of the lay element in the Church, and the mutual relations of Bishops and congregations, would have to be considered, and long before any agreement had been arrived at the several parties in tire Established Church would find themselves landed in Voluntaryism, On the other hand, the worst abuses of patron- age—those which have to do with the presentation of unfit persons to livings, and with the sale of next presentations—may easily be dealt with. Mr. Stanhope's Bill, indeed, does deal with them in a manner which, on the whole, seems satisfactory; but it would be well if he would lighten it of all but its most necessary clauses. For example, the seventh and following clauses empower the Bishop to issue a Commission to inquire whether the presentee to a benefice. is unable, from bodily infirmity or mental incapacity, to perform adequately the duties of the benefice, and whether he has committed an offence for which he would, if he were an incumbent, be liable to deprivation, and has not sufficiently purged the same by good-conduct. The Commissioners are to have the same power of examining upon oath, and of requiring the attendance of witnesses and the production of evidence, as a Judge of tho High Court of Justice. These may be excellent provisions in themselves,—that is a question into which we shall not enter.. But they are provisions which are certain to give rise to a great deal of discnssion,and if there is to be much discussion in Committee, the Bill cannot possibly pass this Session.
Supposing that these clauses are omitted, the Bill will still contain three limitations ou, the right of patronage as at pre- sent exercised, which, with some modification, would consti- tute an immense improvement on the existing law. The first is that the Bishop may, if he think fit, refuse to institute a presentee, on the ground that he is under twenty-five or over seventy years of age. Considering that priests' orders are not conferred until a man is twenty-four, and that three years are not too long a time to give to learning his work, we should be disposed to make twenty-seven the earliest age at which a Bishop shall be bound, in the absence of other objections, to give institution. By the provision thus amended, one of the worst abuses incident to family livings would be done away with, and the practice of putting in aged but not venerable clergymen as" warming- pans" would be greatly restricted. By the second limitation, the Bishop may refuse to institute a presentee without a testi- monial, under the hands of three beneficed clergymen, to his good life and behaviour. If any of the three are not beneficed in the instituting Bishop's own diocese, the testimonial must be countersigned by the Bishop of the diocese in which he or they are beneficed ; and as regards such of the three as are beneficed in the instituting Bishop's own diocese, he may refuse to accept the testimonial, on the ground that they are not worthy of credit. If it were further stipulated that one of the three signatories should be the Archdeacon or Rural Dean within whose jurisdiction the presentee has been living, this testimonial would become by no means a thing of course, and would probably strike at the root of such scandals as those described by the Bishop of Peterborough, in his evidence before the Royal Commission. The third limitation is one which absolutely prohibits the sale of next presentations, apart from the whole advowson, and declares any presentation made in disregard of this prohibition to be, to all intents and purposes, void. To this it would be well to add a provision that in such cases the right of presenting to the benefice shall, for this time only, lapse to the Bishop of the diocese. In face of these enactments, the sale of next presentations would become exceedingly difficult.
A Bill containing these three provisions, and no more, would be an immense boon to the Church of England, and would, we fancy, receive the support of the Government. We com- mend the suggested omissions to Mr. Stanhope's attention. If by moans of them he is enabled to carry out his object this year, his name will be associated with a most necessary and salutary reform.
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