Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

of the Bishop for ground rents of a part of the glebe.

Dr. Humphrey, whom all will acknowledge to be as incapable of any design to mislead his reader, as he is unlikely to be misled himself, tells us in his Foreign Tour that the incomes of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York are over $250,000, and that he was assured by a gentleman in Durham, in whom he placed the utmost confidence, that the entire revenues of that rich Diocese might be fairly estimated at half a million of dollars. Mr. Colton quotes the following statements from an undoubted authority.

The hamlet of Mottingham, in Kent, is liable to pay annually the sum of £8 13s. 4d. to the Dean and Chapter of Rochester. The Clergy had granted to a Mr. Clayton, an attorney, the power to levy this sum on the hamlet in consideration of £250 paid to them once in seven years, making Mr. Clayton's annual payment about £44 7s. 6d. Mr. Clayton for the annual sum of £200, had granted to a Mr. Morris, a farmer in the vicinity of Mottingham, the power to levy tithes on the hamlet, which has been to the extent of ten shillings an acre, making his income on the 600 acres in the limits of the hamlet £300 per annum !!

When this gross abuse was fully understood by the people of the hamlet, a law-suit was instituted to rid themselves of the burden; but although in the entire hamlet there was no church or chapel

of ease, or school, or church-service connected with the Establisment, yet the Court decided against the people!

Now notice that in the Report of the King's Commission the Church Revenue from this hamlet is put down at £8 13s. 4d., while the people of the hamlet pay £300 every year. This is a single case, but it illustrates as clearly as a much greater number which might be adduced from the ex-parte and deceptive character of that Report.

Seven years ago, Mr. Colton presented the following table of Church Revenues as made out by the Reformers.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[ocr errors]

80,000

[ocr errors]

682,150

[ocr errors]

60,000

[ocr errors]

Institutions

10,000

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

94,050

Oblations, Offerings, and Compositions
for the Four Great Festivals -

"C College and School Foundations
Lectureships in Towns and populous
places

Chaplainships and Offices in Public

New Churches and Chapels

Total Revenues of the Established Clergy, £9,459,565

Or $45,405,912!! As the great proportion of this sum comes from tithes, and the value of tithes depends on the price of corn, the revenues of the

church must have been much greater for the last seven years—for the price of corn since 1834 has been nearly doubled in England. Besides in this estimate, Mr. Colton has omitted several points. He says "If we add the church rates, somewhat more than half a million, which item has not been noticed, the cost of litigation between the people and the clergy, and the building of new churches out of the appropriation by Parliament of £1,500, 000 for this purpose, it will raise the sum to nearly or quite half of the expenses of the government!!!"

I shall risk nothing by saying that no person can carefully and candidly weigh the evidence that has been accumulated on this subject by the Reformers in England, without coming to the conclusion that not less than FIFTY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS are paid by the people of England, Ireland and Wales every year to maintain the established church! A church to which more than one half of Great Britain, and probably nine tenths of Ireland are utterly opposed!

A respectable authority in England a few years ago, exhibited a table of facts showing that the administration of the Church of England to six and a half millions of hearers, costs as much as the administration of all other forms of Christianity in all parts of the civilized world to over two hundred million hearers!

Again, I ask the question, who need be told that this prodigious amount is paid by the people and not by the aristocracy. The poor man who

raises ten bushels of wheat, must give one of them towards the revenue of a proud priest he never sets eye on. A tenth of the gross income of the people, goes into the pockets of the clergy.

Captain Ross, a Tory, said this present year in Parliament to the evident uneasiness of his friends, that one fifth of the rent of the country went to the clergy. For it must be remembered that the tithe is a tenth of the gross income without any allowance for the expense of cultivation. If the poor man has any thing left, after being thus fleeced by his shepherd, and a child dies he must pay the curate a burial fee, and last of all a fee for the privilege of erecting a tomb stone over the ashes of his dead.

While his earnings are thus taken from him, how does the prelate expend his income? In building palaces, and rivaling the luxury and magnificence of princes. This is the extortion of the clergy.

ARISTOCRACY is its twin sister. The Bishops are ex-officio members of the House of Lordsbear titles,-use worldly civil power, and mingle actively in all the affairs of the state, as peers of the realm—" It is no uncommon spectacle," says an English writer, "to see the Lord Bishops hurrying down to the House of Lords on what is called, 'a field day,' to vote down the liberties of

the people." As aristocrats of the land, they are every day becoming more and more opulent, while distress is overwhelming all the lower, and many of the middle classes. One and all they are firm defenders of the Corn Laws, which are urging the people into famine and revolution. They are allied in their interests to the land owners, whose wealth increases just in proportion as bread is taxed into starvation prices. They resist any proposition to make the necessaries of life cheap, for the splendour of their equipage-the magnificence of their dwellings, and pleasuring grounds depend upon keeping bread at a high price for a tenth of the produce of the soil coming into their pockets, and it matters very much that wheat shall be made to sell for 80s. a quarter, and not 40s.—for the difference in price will double their income. Thus it becomes the interest of twelve thousand clergymen to bring all their influence to support the aristocracy of the Empire-and we find the whole weight of the established church thrown into the scale of oppressive legislation. How wide asunder from the benevolence of the Gospel, is the organization of a church whose. interests are so violently at war with the good of the people! We confess that in searching for anything apostolic in the practice of the established church, we meet with poor success. Thus to sustain its princely dignity and continue its extortion in the midst of general distress, it must

resort to oPPRESSION.

« AnteriorContinuar »