BISHOPS ON THE CHEAP.*
"THE Church of England has lost its hold on the people because the Bishops have too much money." Such is Mr. Handley's contention "writ short." He raises other issues, some of them without any visible connection with this "fatal opulence." He complains, for instance, that no contemporary Churchman has written a book which has caught hold of the multitude in the way that has been done by Mr. Sheldon's In His Steps. But his chief aim is to show that the Bishops are paid far too well, and that this excess is fatal to their useful- ness, and, more or less, to the usefulness of every one else who does, or tries to do, the work of the Church. He thus opens up a very large subject. We have a few words to say about it, and about the treatment which it receives in this volume. One acknowledgment we wish to make at once. This is a remarkably well-written and vigorous book. We think that Mr. Handley makes some mistakes ; he fails to see both sides of the questions which he discusses ; he is not always just. But he has given us an excellent piece of literary work. And he certainly hits some blots. The Church, we are told, has lost, or has failed to gain, hold on the people. " Lost " and "failed to gain" do not mean the same thing. Can we look back to any golden age in which the Church possessed something which she does not possess now P Let us begin with a retrospect as far as the Reformation. What are we to say about the period between the accession of Elizabeth and the Revolution ? Did Whit- gift and Laud preside over an Establishment which com- manded the almost unanimous love of the nation ? What • The Fatal Opulence of Bishops. By Hubert Handiety, M.A.. London:. A. anti C. Elkr..1. [SW] did Butler and Wesley—not by any means good friends—say about the next century? What was the condition of things which Charles Simeon and the Oxford leaders, taking, as they did, very different points of view, agreed in deploring P If we go back to the Reformation times what do we find P Wycliffe and his followers were not satisfied with their own times. The age before Wycliffe was sunk in an apathy so dull that the "coming of the friars" was needed to awaken something like life. The "ages of faith," when we have a chance of looking below the surface, show strata which are certainly not all gold. And the Bishops, a caviller might object, were " opulent " to a degree which dwarfs all modern episcopal revenues, even those of Londcn, Durham, and Winchester before the financial changes of 1837. We acknowledge and lament the fact that great masses of the people are outside the borders of the Church, not hostile, it is true, but simply indifferent. Nor is it only the "working man" who is in this mood of alienation. The same may be said of man generally as distinguished from woman. Go into an ordinary town church and you will find the female worshippers are in the proportion of five, ten, or even twenty to one, as compared with the male. For this we must find some other cause than the "fatal opulence." Mr. Handley certainly fails to prove that the Bishops have something to do with it when he contrasts the crowds that attended the funeral of Mrs. Booth (of the Salvation Army) with the modest assemblage that was present at the obsequies of Arch- bishop Benson. There was a service for Mrs. Booth at Olympia, and the interment took place at Abney Park Cemetery. Dr. Benson was buried at Canterbury. Apparently it did not occur to Mr. Handley to think what would have happened if the circumstances had been reversed, if the last honours had been paid to Mrs. Booth at Canterbury and to the Archbishop in London. All that he says about classes and masses a propos of this comparison is, we think, irrelevant, and proves nothing but his own onesidedness. He makes, we willingly own, some points ; he says some very true things, and says them well ; but we do not think that, on the whole, he makes out his case.
And now about the "fatal opulence." Mr. Handley quotes a Bishop's detailed statement of income and expenditure (given by Dr. Ingram, now suffragan Bishop of Stepney), and criticises it, not, we feel constrained to say, in a very fair or generous spirit. The Bishop, for instance, puts down 22,500 for the expense of keeping up the house, with all the entertainment necessary, or, at least, expedient (all classes condemn, and the clergy even more emphatically than others, the prelate who shows any back- wardness in this respect). One item is the reception of ordination candidates. It is really ridiculous to urge as a criticism upon this that a guest does not cost more than five shillings a day. The establishment has to be habitually kept up on a scale which admits the reception from time to time of twelve guests (the average number of candidates). That means a large house and a, large establishment. The cost of stables must be added, and any one who will take the trouble to see what one of the Co-operative Societies charges for the yearly use of a carriage will see that 2400 would not be too much for this item alone. A house with, say, twenty-four bed- rooms, stables, and appropriately large garden would certainly cost £2,500. Mr. Handley objects, of course, to the scale of the whole. We agree with him to a certain extent. Some of the Bishops' palaces—the word, we allow, is not a happy one—are too large. They were meant for prelates of the old magnificent sort. Sometimes the necessary ex- penses of entry actually limit the choice of the Bishop. At one vacancy of York, for instance, it was currently reported that one qualification for the new Archbishop was this,—he must be young enough to insure his life at a moderate rate. The family of a recent occupant of this See suffered much from this cause. We agree, again, that 2450 for fees is a preposterous charge. But what does Mr. Handley propose ? He would out down the income to 22,500. This, we venture to say, would do no good at all. It would make no difference to the view which the man in the street takes of the affair. If our author had said 1500, there would have been something in it. An eminent Radical politician is credited with the opinion that no man is worth, or ought to have, more than 2500 a year. In secular affairs this condition
of affairs is very remote ; in ecclesiastical it is conceivable. There is even something to be said for it. Dr. Magee once said of Disestablishment : "It would go near to drowning us, but we should get rid of the fleas." There is something in that. If there were no temptation in the way of loaves and fishes there would be no parasites. But should we not be obliged to go further still ? There are vast numbers of persons to whom a maximum of five hundred is as potent a temptation as one of five thousand is to others. We should have the fleas still, only they would be of a meaner kind. There is really no tenable stopping-place till we reach no payment at all. As for taking a whole world of trouble in order to cut down 24,500 to 22,500, it is nothing else than ridiculous. Some details might be changed with advantage, and when a good opportunity offers. This arguable, for instance, that Fulham Palace is of doubtful benefit. Bishopsthorpe, Auckland Castle, Farnham Castle, are inconveniently large. But, on the whole, we are not disposed to make any revolutionary changes. We should like to diminish the expenses of Bishops, but not their incomes. As for their " opulence " under present con- ditions, it is a delusion. But they ought to be well paid, as well paid as the Judges, for instance, especially as they must necessarily be liable to much larger obliga- tions in the way of expenditure. We may well revert to the wit and wisdom of Sydney Smith. He tells us that we must take the English people as they are, and "carve out an Establishment suited to them, however unfit for Early Christianity in barren and conquered Judsa." Of Bishops, indeed, he was not very fond. He thought that they spared themselves and plundered Deans and Canons, and he delighted to make fun of them,—to picture Henry of Exeter refusing to take a light half-sovereign from the Chancellor of the Ex- chequer, and his episcopal brethren objecting to the truck principle, which would give them shovel-hats and sermon- cases instead of cash. But he was a staunch advocate of the "prize" system. Of that system very little is left. It would be folly, indeed, to make high place in the Church a positive penalty. We want a well-educated gentleman, who will be able to educate his sons and daughters as well as he is educated himself, mix on equal terms with the highest classes in society, use an ungrudging hospitality, and keep an open hand for numberless claims. If we can get such Bishops we shall do well. Mr. Handley holds up to our admiration Bishop Fraser of Manchester. That admiration we willingly give. But Bishop Fraser was a bachelor till five years before his death. Had he come to his See with a wife and children, he could not have done what he did. And there are other types of Bishops not less admirable. There was Dr. Christopher Wordsworth of Lincoln, not always very wise, but a true saint. He spent his 24,500 a year, and spent it well, and was not one whit less a saint for so doing. Let us all "clear our minds of cant."
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