right had a country vicar to suppose that the
great commissioners were not aware of
everything? Said the secretary, Mr. Chalk, to Mr.
Griffith, the vicar, "What business is it of yours
to meddle in this matter, which does not concern
you at all?" Mr. Griffith was so bold as to
think that the interests of the Church did concern
him and every member of it. The vicar's
mistake was the not understanding, what nearly
every inferior clergyman who does business at
the office of the Ecclesiastical Commission
complains that he is made to understand, how very
magnificently high and mighty the commission
is, and how entirely it is cream of the first
skimming.

Like their magnificence, is the sense of
spiritual destitution the commissioners have
shown. When they had given ten thousand
pounds to build a palace for the bishopric of
Ripon, upon its being represented that the new
bishop wanted standing room for four carriages
instead of two, and "four additional stables to
best stables," also that he had laid out four
hundred pounds beyond his allowance on paper-
hangings, and two hundred and fifty pounds
upon a flower-garden, the ten thousand were
made nearly fifteen, for here was destitution!
Four stables too few, and only allowance of
room for two carriages! Then, for the Bishop
of Lincoln (and, without intervention of a
valuer, from the agent of the bishop, who had
himself become owner of the estate), Riseholme
was bought at a price that made the land pay
less than two per cent because the house was
certified to be a fit and convenient residence.
But, fourteen thousand pounds were afterwards
allowed by the commission for "repair" of this
fit and convenient residence, which was, doubtless,
destitute of many necessaries. Stapleton
House having been bought as a second residence
for the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol,
and twelve thousand spent upon repairs and
alterations—the whole property being bought
without survey and valuation, because in their
all-sufficiency the commissioners "were satisfied
that the estate was worth the money that was
paid for it"—cost in all not a hundred less than
four-and-twenty thousand pounds.  Afterwards
it was sold for twelve thousand, because, said
the commissioners—reliant still on their own
self-sufficiency—"it appears to us that the said
sum of twelve thousand pounds is a fair and
reasonable price for the said house, with the
lands and premises attached."

For the Bishop of Rochester, Danbury Park
was bought at eighty or ninety pounds an
acre, when similar estates adjacent to it had
been bought at an average of little more than
fifty pounds an acre. Eight or ten thousand
pounds too much—according to the vulgar
computation of the lower race of men—was
paid for that property. In common life, nobody
makes such a fool of himself, or gets so much
taken in, as the pompous Sir Oracle, who
bases all his business and all his argument
upon the sublime ground of an "it appears
to me." Perhaps there may be a rule of the
same sort governing the lives of some
commissions.

The Ecclesiastical Commissioners have spent
upon episcopal residences one hundred and
seventy thousand pounds, and "cannot withhold
the expression of their deep regret that
the limited amount of their present means must
still leave untouched a considerable portion
of that spiritual destitution the removal of
which was the main object of the crown in
issuing the original commission of inquiry, and
of parliament in confirming its
recommendations."

The commission had a discretionary power of
augmenting the incomes of archdeacons; and
that power they have used without regard to
the large incomes which many archdeacons derive
from other sources. No less than fifty-two
archdeacons have been thus enriched to the full
measure permitted by the law. We all remember
how, the other day, the income of a rich Dean of
York was raised from one to two thousand a
year by this commission, with a lively sense of
the destitution of the higher clergy.

By Sir Robert Peel's act of the year 'forty-
three, empowering the Ecclesiastical Commissioners
to borrow six hundred thousand pounds
from the governors of Queen Anne's Bounty
for the formation of additional church districts,
with an ultimate endowment of not less than
one hundred and fifty pounds a year, the formation
of what are now called the Peel districts
was set on foot. The commissioners looking,
properly enough, to populous places, have
marked out large flocks for about two hundred
and fifty shepherds, now and then giving as
many as twelve thousand persons to the charge
of one minister: and here they economise. For,
while they spend the most that the law suffers
on the comforts of dignitaries, they spend quite
as uniformly the least that the law suffers upon
the necessities of the poor and hard-working
priests. Ths least sum named by the act is the
highest sum paid for work in a Peel district. No
doubt a great many districts are manned in this
way for a little money, and a show of great
results is made; but surely it is not upon the
bread-and-cheese of the working clergy that
the economy of the commission is most usefully
enforced. The Dean of Chichester, respected
for twenty years as the earnest and
indefatigable Vicar of Leeds, knew in Leeds
five of these Peel districts, and of town livings
generally he has said, they are, "with few exceptions,
the worst endowed livings in the Church.
The more highly educated of our clergy, therefore,
remain at the universities until they retire
to country parishes, where the work might be
done by men of inferior ability, and of less intellectual
power. And this being the evil complained
of, instead of supplying a remedy, we
are actually increasing it by the formation of
our Peel districts. By the formation of Peel
districts we are creating an additional number
of pauper benefices, and by so doing we are,
for the reasons already assigned, retarding the
extension of the Church."  If the commission