Littell's Living Age/Volume 134/Issue 1729/The Debate on the Sale of Livings
THE DEBATE ON THE SALE OF LIVINGS.
The House of Commons passed a resolution which may prove to be a mere "counsel of perfection," or a condemnation of an incurable evil, but may also prove to be the first serious blow at the existing system of patronage in the Church. It resolved, without a division and with the full consent of both parties, that measures must be adopted "to prevent simoniacal evasions of the law (intended) to check abuses in the sale of livings in private patronage," and the tone of the debate rendered the words a much more definite expression of legislators' opinion. It had been opened by Mr. Leatham, in a speech intended to denounce the sale of ecclesiastical patronage altogether, and throughout the practice was given up as indefensible, except upon grounds of practical expediency. Mr. Hardcastle, who moved the amendment which was carried, and which is quoted above, admitted the righteousness of Mr. Leatham's argument; and the home secretary, while he extenuated the sale of advowsons, denounced that of next presentations as almost infamous, "as a breach of a sacred trust," and as discreditable as the sale of a vote for the election of a member of Parliament. He unhesitatingly supported the amended resolution; not one single member in the most Conservative House of our time ventured to oppose it, and it was passed unanimously, amid expressions of regret, a very strong one in particular from Mr. Fawcett, that it was not quite broad enough. The direct sale of a presentation has in fact been pronounced by a Tory House of Commons an inexcusable, and indeed, shameful breach of trust.
Considering the excessive frequency of the practice, the enormous number of livings at present for sale, or exchange — the agents engaged in the traffic estimate the number at 1,676, and Mr. Leatham at two thousand — and the high character of many of those who buy and sell, this is a remarkable explosion of indignation, but it is not difficult to understand the unanimity of the House. An advowson is legally a property, and the right to sell it is, of course, defended by all those who are alarmed when any kind of property is attacked; while it is also protected by the extreme difficulty of discovering any other mode of transfer which should not destroy private patronage altogether, and so either place all benefices at the disposal of the State — a most dangerous course, in a country where governments must conciliate political opponents — or turn the Church into a self-appointing, self-renewing corporation of ecclesiastics. But the right to sell next presentations is not a property question. The sale never has been legal; the practice, even in the worst times of the Church, has always been discreditable; and it has never been defended by the official defenders of property, the great owners, who have regarded their claim to present as a source of power, not of pelf, and as a rule no more sell their livings than they sell their recommendations to the magistracy. The lawyers, who defend so many abuses, have always denounced this one, which is opposed to their instinct of obedience to definite law; and the Church, so often silent when profits are concerned — for instance, it is very doubtful if she would defend marriage fees from the religious side of her head — has no interest what ever in this practice, and has steadily discountenanced it. A bishop who sold his patronage, which is as much his as it is a layman's, and pocketed the proceeds, would be considered by every clergyman in England a mere scoundrel, wholly unworthy of the lowest as well as of the highest position in the Church. The whole body of the clergy, including those who have bought their livings, feel that the system is a scandal; while the laymen who side with them, and who are often more conservative than they are, are uneasily sensible that here is a weak place, a point upon which every Dissenting sect has an obvious advantage. The Nonconformist may, on occasion, appoint or dismiss a minister from motives which they would not care too frankly to avow; but at all events, they do not sell an office regarded as sacred for a price in tangible cash. They are not bribed to nominate this man or that man to the pastorate. There are, therefore, no official defenders of the practice, and for disinterested friends of the Church the task has long proved itself too hard. When we have said that the practice does not work all the mischief it ought to work, we have made the only defence any human being with a conscience can suggest. That a trust should be entrusted to a man for money may be defensible — though we begin to doubt it — and in a country where men inherit legislative and judicial power, and are vested with secular patronge, as in the case of lord-lieutenants, solely because they are rich, it is certainly not without precedent, but that he should sell the patronage so trusted to him is even in England indefensible. The secular patron who does so is disgraced, — the very suspicion of it unseated a chancellor — and when the appointment sold is a cure of souls, every instinct of Christians, however careless they may be of the precepts of Christianity, is revolted. Whatever mode of distributing patronage is right, it cannot be right to select a pastor for a sum down, to put up a cure to the highest bidder, or to make a pecuniary profit out of one of the highest imaginable trusts. A judge might almost as well sell decisions by auction, or a clergyman limit the communion to those who can outbid other applicants for his ministrations. The private patron, even though he purchased his right, is from the moment he purchases it a trustee, and has no more right to use his trust to make money than a minister has to recommend officers for promotion because they have sent him cheques.
It is, however, waste of time to denounce a practice which the law forbids, which the Church denounces, and which no Tory, even in this Parliament, can be found to defend, and it is more profitable to inquire in what direction a remedy can be found. It would be very difficult to strengthen the law, without a more radical change than the country is as yet prepared to accept. Suppose, for example, we prohibit the sale of "next presentations" altogether, by a penal statute, if you like, and still while the sale of advowsons is allowed nothing will have been accomplished. The keen-witted lawyers who deal in such wares will only purchase the advowson subject to an obligation, to resell when the next presentation has fallen in, and will be worse patrons than the young clergymen whose fathers or friends now pay down the money in order to ensure to them a profession and maintenance for life. The law as it is, only renders evasion more elaborate and perjury deeper, and a penal statute would only, we greatly fear, still further corrupt men's consciences, and give a further advantage to a still more unscrupulous class of candidates for benefices. The remedy must, we believe, be sought in a measure making purchase impossible or improbable, too great a risk, too insecure a chance for anybody with money at command to risk it in such a lottery. And we are inclined to suspect, with Mr. Hibbert, a stout Churchman, that the only measure which will secure this is one making lay patronage more complete, by giving some kind of veto to the parish council, the ratepayers, or the congregation. We would not give an absolute veto. That might be to transfer all advowsons to the parish, and establish a system of popular elections which works exceedingly ill, which deprives clergymen, as in America it deprives judges, of their independence; and which, in the existing condition of English opinion, would be fatal to variety and comprehensiveness within the Church itself. No one would be elected except a pronounced Low-Churchman. But we think the congregation, or the ratepayers, or the communicants — we are purposely avoiding for the moment that vexed question — might fairly be allowed to exercise their veto once or more, with a distinct understanding that they would exercise it and ought to exercise it, if they suspected that money had passed. The effect of that would instantly be the prohibition of purchase by the candidate himself, his agents, or his friends. The chance of being elected, or of defeating all the inquiries of all parishioners, would be too small a temptation on which to risk any considerable sum of money. The candidate would be questioned, too, closely questioned, and a lie under such circumstances — a lie from the pulpit, a lie sure to be found out, a lie made to men among whom he is to live all his life — is, to say the least, excessively improbable. It would not be accepted as a conventional lie, as unfortunately some of the declarations now made are, but as a deliberate breach of faith, intended to cheat a parish out of its veto, and it would never be forgiven. At the same time, this veto would not deprive the ordinary patron, except in the most exceptional instances, of the power he values, the right of vetoing an appointment personally unacceptable to himself. He could not indeed put in an unworthy relative merely because he chose, but he could put in any relative not unpopular enough to induce the parish to quarrel with the lord of the manor in order to keep him out. The people of Doddington, to quote a well-known instance, do not hate Stanleys and Hornbys, and the rest of the great clan of which Knowsley is the headquarters, enough to veto a nomination merely because it has fallen on one of them. If they do, that is a good reason for not appointing a man who is so weighted by local prejudice. The patron would retain to the full his right of selecting among the eligible, which is all the law gives him now, would have done just as great a favor to his presentee, and would, in nine cases out of ten, have had his choice ratified by a popular election. Of course if he is actually deprived of money — as might be the case in the instance of a hereditary living — he ought to be compensated, but in the majority of cases he would lose so little, that we believe the peers, with their immense ecclesiastical patronage, could be induced to pass the act. Mr. Cross may propose any palliative he pleases, and we do not doubt his capacity to suggest a very clever one, but to this — a strictly limited but efficacious lay veto — it must come at last, if all patronage is not to be entrusted to a patronage commission, under the crown.