must vote pine-apple money to bishops, let
it at least economise by dividing its crumbs
among a smaller number of what it would call
the inferior clergy, and endow its new livings
with means for the pastor and his family
actually to taste meat every day.

But the all-wise commissioners, not stopping
at the mismanagement of what they have to
distribute, actually divert gifts from the Church,
and slam their doors in the faces of men who
bring offerings for the service of God and for
the maintenance of an efficient clergy. They
are known to some of their brethren as
Commissioners for the Prevention of Church-
building. If any man, having a good practical title
to his land, wishes to give a part of it to the
commissioners for a church, down they come
upon him with a solicitor, who, instead of being
paid by a salary for making requisite inquiries,
makes, as the valuer does, his separate charges
for every bit of work, and in this case inflicts
his charge on the benevolent donor for a searching
scrutiny into his title to his own estate. No
offer of land is entertained by the commission
till the donor agrees to pay law charges for
investigation of his titles, and will run the risk of
having a flaw found for him that may damage
the value of his whole estate. A wise man will
think twice before he gives land upon such ungracious
terms. A salaried law adviser might include
in the duty, for which he should be paid by
the commission, all requisite inquiry of this sort,
and nothing would have been easier than for the
commissioners to have obtained long since a
short act, giving them, under proper restriction,
parliamentary titles to gifts of this sort. But
even this incredible energy of obstruction to the
cause they are bound to support is not enough
for the most mighty commissioners. Why must
they deny to a man who will build or endow a
church the patronage of the living he has given,
and insist that it shall go to enrich patrons of
the adjoining living? The Dissenters, free from
all these arbitrary and offensive trammels upon
generosity, are always eager to meet spiritual
destitution, and the chapel-building, as we
know, goes on where church-building is at a
stand-still.

There was, indeed, a fund given to the
commissioners twenty-one years ago, by the Catiiedral
Act, for the augmentation of benefices. Good
resolutions were made as the conditions of
augmentation in February, 'forty-four, and, for want
of means, suspended in the following August for
the next twelve years, at the end of which time
there was again a surplus; and the earlier
resolutions having been rescinded, it was determined
that grants, no longer of annual aids, but of
capital sums, never exceeding six hundred pounds,
should be made, only when met by a benefaction
of equivalent amount. The common fund has
been mixed with the episcopal fund since eighteen
fifty. The deficiencies, therefore, arising out of
grants to bishops, when in excess of the episcopal
fund, are covered by deduction from the
fund available for augmentation of small benefices;
and that fund has accordingly been lessened
by very considerably more than a hundred thousand
pounds. More than a hundred and twelve
thousand have thus been transferred from the
account of the poor clergy to meet the wants of
bishops. Even the augmentation of poor livings
has gone on most actively among men who, if
they are not the rose, live near the rose. Before
the year 'forty-four, less money had gone to the
great populous towns and town districts than to
the cathedral cities blessed already with large
and strong bodies of clergy. More money had
been allotted to Norwich than to Manchester;
more to York than to Liverpool; more to Ripon
than to Birmingham. From that year to the
end of 'fifty-nine, the small towns enjoyed not
less favour. Manchester had fifty pounds,
Liverpool nothing. The grants of additional income
went to two hundred and thirty-one places
with a population under a thousand, and to
three hundred and twenty-four with a population
under two thousand, but only to a hundred
and fifty-nine with a population greater than two
thousand.

In respect of local claims on account of tithes,
there has been the same inequality. Thus, while
a hundred and thirty-five pounds a year is
practically considered an extreme income for the
hard-working town clergy, we find that the vicar
of West Tarring, with a population of about a
thousand, has granted to him three hundred and
eighty pounds a year from the Ecclesiastical
Commission, raising his income to four hundred and
seventy-four. Similarly the vicar of Figheldean,
with a population of five hundred and twenty-
seven, receives within ten pounds of the sum of
the grants made to the whole of Manchester,
besides two acres of land, to raise to three
hundred and fifty pounds a year an income
already greater than the commissioners' ideal
for a clergyman in a populous town district!
The hard-working posts in those town districts,
were they twice as well paid as they are, could
not be given away as matters of favour or
reward. The favour—if there is to be any in
question—is conferred by the man who, with a
stout heart and earnest Christian spirit,
undertakes to do the work. Is it for this reason that
so much of the money entrusted to the commission
for increasing the efficiency of the Church,
is diverted from the populous places ill furnished
with religious instruction, and spent on those
quiet country livings, of which the enrichment
goes to the bettering of a great man's
patronage?

The accounts of this bad commission are imperfect
and confused. As the secretary has testified,
"capital and income and all sorts of things are
mixed up together." The commissioners themselves
said, in their second report, that the accounts
did not include all sums paid—agent's
charges, for example, are habitually omitted.
But upon the best calculation that can be made,
the gross result appears to be, that of the large
funds entrusted, for the benefit of the poor
clergy and of populous town districts needing
spiritual aid, to the mismanagement of this
precious commission, one-third part has been