who worked for large populations on
inadequate stipends, and addition to the church-
room in districts where it was most deficient, by
the founding of new churches and the endowment
of more clergy.  There was a most honest
desire to do what had to be done.

For the proper application to these two appointed
uses of the surplus revenues created by
a wise retrenchment, commissioners, styled the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners of England, were
appointed, with full powers to work, by means
of orders in council. It was thus that in
August, 'thirty-six, established with a righteous
purpose, in which—though there was a party
that resisted—the Church even as represented
by its dignitaries who would be the chief worldly
losers by the change, took a right Christian
part, the Ecclesiastical Commission came into
existence. The first commissioners were the
two archbishops and three bishops—five in all—
on the part of the Church, an equal number of
members of the government, and three laymen.
Four years later, parliament, dealing with the
revenues of the cathedral chapters, enlarged the
number of commissioners to forty-nine. For,
the affairs of all cathedrals being brought into
question, all the bishops of England and Wales
obtained the right to sit in the commission,
besides three deans; so that there were twenty-
nine of the clergy, and to balance these there were
added twenty laymen, two of them to be nominees
of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The
provision of additional church room was the
use to which these commissioners were directed
to put the surplus revenues under their control.

Three years later the commissioners received a
loan of six hundred thousand pounds from Queen
Anne's Bounty, towards the endowment (with
not less than one hundred and fifty pounds
a year) of additional church districts. Another
change was made when, in eighteen fifty, the
three Church Estates Commissioners were added
to the forty-nine. Of these three, the first, appointed
by the crown, was to receive a salary of
not less than twelve hundred a year, and in him
were to be vested all the estates held in trust
for the commission. The three, with two out
of the forty-nine, were to form a "Church
Estates Committee" for exclusive management
of all the property of the Ecclesiastical Commission.

Six years afterwards, namely, in 'fifty-six,
the elder "Church Building Commission" being
extinguished, all its powers were transferred to
the Ecclesiastical Commission. And last year
an act was passed giving to the commission all
the estates of each see from the close of the
tenure by its occupant at the date of the act's
passing, and providing that in place of the
money payments hitherto secured to the
archbishops and bishops there shall be secured to
each see other estates calculated to yield the
amount of the stipend enjoyed at the time of
transfer.  These arrangements represent the
main principles governing the sixty or more acts
by which the Ecclesiastical Commission as it
now exists is defined and regulated, while more
than a thousand orders in council have given
validity to its decisions.

The practical result of all this legislation is,
that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners are the
greatest buyers and sellers of landed estates in
the kingdom. No other corporation holds so
large an amount of national property in trust.
Stewardship by a cumbrous commission is not
likely to be of the best. In April, 'forty-five,
nine years after the commission was established,
a Board minute stated that "no definite principles
had as yet been laid down respecting the
general mode of dealing with lessees of Church
property." The manner of sale was precisely
that of the costermonger, who asks tenpence
for a basket of strawberries when he means to
take sixpence. As the agent of the commissioners
put this principle of trade to a committee
of the House of Commons—using, no doubt,
finer phrases than the costermonger would
employ—"in negotiating, the prices respectively
fixed to each property were treated by us as the
upset price, and, for the purpose of negotiating
a larger amount was asked in the majority of
cases." This was, he says, "quite the usual
plan," the exceptions were "not one in a hundred."
If a gentleman accustomed to plain
dealing assumed the straightforwardness of a
transaction thus carried out under episcopal
superintendence and paid the overcharge, did
the commission return the excess with an
explanation of the mistake under which its customer
was labouring, or did it rejoice in having
pigeoned a simpleton, and put the gains to the
account of the Church? They might, however,
be entitled to the money, for as they were in the
habit of calculating the value of reversions by
the obsolete and erroneous Northampton tables,
the price set by them on an estate was
sometimes ten per cent below, sometimes even as
much as ninety per cent above, the market value.
Until the use of these tables was taken away
from them by act of parliament seven years
ago, the Ecclesiastical Commission always stuck
by them as a chosen guide, although they had
been in disuse almost everywhere for half a
century.

No doubt the most irreproachable commissioners
were often told of their mistake, but
they seem to resent being spoken to by anybody
so audacious as to suppose they can require to
be further edified. The vicar of Aberdare,
witness before a committee of the House five years
ago, testified that he had informed the commissioners
of the real value of property held by
them in his parish; indeed, for the good of the
Church, he had troubled himself to come up to
London and make known in the proper quarter
that land yielding the commissioners only a
nominal revenue had increased in value, so that
if let for building it would be worth fifteen
hundred a year, while thirty thousand pounds
might be got for the lease of another part of the
land because of its containing mineral.
The Ecclesiastical Commission, though it acted
on the information, took it unkindly. What