beginning of 1836, the ministers, justly urging that it was important, in a national point of view, both with regard to the security of titles to property, and to that knowledge of the state of population the value of which was recognized by the establishment of the practice of taking a decennial census, that there should be a general register of all such occurrences, introduced a bill to establish a registry and registrar in every Poor-law union, with a farther registry for each county, and a chief or still more general one in London for the whole kingdom, subject to the authority of the Poor-law Commissioners. And by a second bill they farther proposed that the registries to be thus established should be offices at which those who desired to do so might contract purely civil marriages. Previous clauses in it provided that members of any sect of Protestant Dissenters might be married in their own chapels, and by ministers of their own persuasion. After enactments removing all the civil disabilities under which Nonconformists had labored for one hundred and fifty years had been placed on the statute-book, it was clearly inconsistent in the highest degree to retain still more offensive and unreasonable religious disabilities, and to deny to them the right of being married by their own ministers, according to the rites most agreeable to their consciences or prejudices. And though some of the details of the ministerial measure were objected to and slightly altered in its passage through Parliament, the general principle was admitted by the warmest friends and most recognized champions of the Established Church, who wisely felt that a bulwark which is too ill-placed or too unsubstantial to be defended, is often a treacherous source of weakness rather than strength, and that a temperate recognition of the validity of claims founded on justice was the best protection against others which had no such foundation, and that measures such as these adopted in a spirit of generous conciliation could only strengthen the Church by taking at least one weapon from the hands of its enemies.
Another of the measures relating to the Church, of which Peel had prepared a sketch, had for its object the removal of a grievance of which the members of the Church itself had long been complaining, the mode of the collection of tithe. It would be superfluous here to endeavor to trace the origin of tithes, or the purposes beyond the sustentation of the clergymen to which they were originally applied.[240] They had undoubtedly been established in England some time before the Conquest, and the principle that the land should support the National Church was admitted by a large majority of the population; it may probably be said with something nearly approaching unanimity on the part of those who really paid it, namely, the land-owners. The objection to the tithe system was founded rather on the way in which it worked, operating, as Lord John Russell described it, as 'a discouragement to industry; a penalty on agricultural skill; a heavy mulct on those who expended the most capital and displayed the greatest skill in the cultivation of the land.' The present mode of levying the tithes forced the clergy to forbearance at the expense of what they deemed to be their rights, or led them to enforce them at the expense of the influence which they ought to possess with their parishioners, compelling them to lose either their income by their indulgence, or their proper weight and popularity in the parish by the exaction of what the law gave them for 'the support of themselves and their families.' And this dilemma was felt so keenly by the clergy themselves, that it had become a very general feeling with them that, 'if any sort of commutation could be devised, they would be delighted to be delivered from this objectionable mode of payment.' Indeed, Sir Robert Peel, whose measure of the preceding year had been chiefly directed to the encouragement of voluntary commutations, had stated to the House that there were already two thousand parishes in the kingdom in which a commutation between the clergyman and his parishioners had been agreed upon, and established as a durable settlement by separate acts of Parliament. Indeed, arrangements of this kind existed very generally; the parishes in which the tithe was taken in kind being comparatively few, and the plan usually adopted being for the occupier of land to pay the incumbent a fixed annual sum bearing a certain proportion to his rent. But arrangements which were optional were, of course, liable to be rescinded; and Peel desired to establish a system which should be universal and permanent. And with this view he had designed the appointment of a temporary commission, one member of which should be nominated by the Primate, as the representative of the Church, under whose supervision the tithes of every parish in the kingdom should be commuted into a rent-charge, regulated partly by the composition which had hitherto been paid, and partly by the average price of grain-wheat, barley, and oats. It was no new idea, since as far back as 1791 Pitt had proposed a general commutation of tithes for a corn rent, and had submitted a plan with that object to the Primate, though circumstances of which we have no accurate knowledge prevented him from proceeding with it.[241] Objections[242] were taken to this last part of the arrangement, chiefly because it would render perpetual the terms of existing compositions, the extreme augmentation of them which was provided for in the bill being only ten per cent., while it was notorious that the majority of incumbents had shown such liberality in these matters that the compositions rarely amounted to two-thirds of the sum to which they were legally entitled. And it was hardly denied that the measure did involve some sacrifice of the extreme legal rights of the clergy; but it was urged and generally felt by the most judicious friends of the Church that the peace and harmony which might be expected to be the fruit of the measure was worth some sacrifice, and the bill was passed with very general approval; a bill on similar principles, with such variations as were required by the differences between the two countries, being also passed for Ireland.
The last measure on ecclesiastical subjects was also chiefly of a financial character, though its details were calculated, some directly, others indirectly, to produce benefits of a still more important nature. The condition of the property of the bishops and the ecclesiastical chapters had long been a subject of censorious remark. The various dioceses differed greatly in extent, as did, therefore, the labors of the diocesans. Some sees contained above 1000, one (London) even above 1200 parishes; others contained under 150. The revenues of some were very large, in one or two instances approaching L20,000 a year, while those of others scarcely exceeded L1000 or L1500 a year, thus affording incomes palpably inadequate to the support of the Episcopal dignity; so inadequate, indeed, that they were generally supplemented by the addition of some better endowed deanery or canonry. It was universally felt that such a deficiency and such a mode of supplying it were in themselves a scandal, which was greatly augmented by the system of translations to which it had given birth. The poorer bishoprics would hardly have been accepted at all had they not been regarded as stepping-stones to others of greater value; and the hope of such promotion had in some cases the not unnatural, however deplorable, effect of making the bishop anxious to please the minister of the day, to whom alone he could look for translation, by parliamentary subservience; and the still more mischievous result (if possible) of rendering the whole Bench liable to the same degrading suspicion; while the canonries and prebends in the different chapters, whose revenues also varied greatly, were in every diocese so numerous that they had become nearly sinecures, the duties rarely exceeding residence for a month, or, at the outside, six weeks in a year.
These abuses (for such they could not be denied to be) had attracted the attention of Sir Robert Peel, who had appointed a commission, of which many of the highest dignitaries of the Church were members, and who, after very careful investigation and deliberation, presented a series of reports on which the ministry framed its measure. They proposed, as has already been mentioned in connection with the labors of Sir Robert Peel, an amalgamation of four of the smaller bishoprics at their next vacancy, in order hereafter to provide for the addition of two new ones at Manchester, or Lancaster, and Ripon, without augmenting the number of bishops. Lord Melbourne apparently feared to provoke the hostility of some of the extreme Reformers, who had recently proposed to deprive the bishops of their seats in the House of Lords, if he should attempt to increase the number of the spiritual peers; though, as their number had been stationary ever since the Reformation, while that of the lay peers had been quadrupled, such an objection hardly seemed entitled to so much consideration. Another clause was directed toward the establishment of greater equality between the revenues of the different bishoprics, a step which, besides its inherent reasonableness and equity, would extinguish the desire of promotion by translation, except in a few specified instances. Various reasons, sufficiently obvious and notorious, rendered the two archbishoprics, and the bishoprics of London, Durham, and Winchester, more costly to the occupants than the other dioceses; and these were, therefore, left in possession of larger revenues than the rest, proportionate to their wider duties or heavier charges. But all the others were to be nearly equal, none exceeding L5500, and none falling below L4500; while the five richer sees were also the only ones to which a prelate could be translated from another diocese. It followed, almost as a matter of course, that the practice of allowing a bishop to hold any other preferment was to cease with the cessation of the cause that had led to such an abuse.
Another part of the bill provided for the suppression of such canonries or prebends as might fairly be considered superfluous. Four were considered sufficient for the proper performance of the duties of each cathedral; and the extinction (after the lives of the present holders) of the rest was designed to form a large fund, to be at the disposal of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners,[243] and to be applied by them chiefly to meet the wants of the more populous parishes in different large towns, for which it had hitherto been difficult to make any provision,[244] by contributing to the erection of additional churches, by increasing the incomes of the incumbents in cases where it
