CHAPTER XL.
Disestablished, but Vivified.
Had the long-talked-of disestablishment of the Church of England been carried out in the years preceding the Revolution of 189—, that great, highly-cultivated, and in some sense national religious body would simply have been reduced to the level of other denominations; and no place or pretext would have been found now for violent innovations affecting it, and it alone. Family ties, formed in parsonages, but ramifying thence all through the upper strata of English society, would have counted heavily against depriving the established clergy of their social status after they were disestablished; courtesy and regard would have made good the loss of caste decreed by the law, and probably the zeal of adherents would have more than made good the pecuniary loss by disendowment.
But, as Napoleon is reported to have said, Les Anglais sont toujours trop tard. As in the case of Irish Home Rule, so in this case the needful change, instead of being made in good time with a good grace, was deferred until it became compulsory and came with a crash. And now in the mêlée of the Revolution, the disestablished and disendowed clergy felt that they had no longer any professional dignity to lose, and had nothing but a flimsy, dubious fence of religious, or rather doctrinal, principle between themselves and the in-
