The statute enacts, that "whoever is wilfully absent from his benefice (and which the courts of law have interpreted to be the parsonage house of that benefice), for one month, is liable to a penalty." The courts have of course followed the strict construction, which, as courts of law, they were bound to do, and they have accord ingly determined (as far as can be inferred from the adjudged cases), that a wilful absence is that absence which is not produced by some physical necessity; for I cannot find, in any adjudged case, that any cause of absence has been allowed besides these three: 1st, Imprisonment of the body elsewhere. 2dly, Infirmity of body; and, 3dly, Want of habitation, or of an ubi in the parish; a plea which, I must observe, has been in effect disallowing wife, or parent, or child, or upon any ed, or at least contracted in some late determinations, in which it has not been admitted as a valid defence, unless it has been at the same time shown, that the clerk has approximated his habitation to the parish cy près, or as near as he could in some contiguous parish. These pleas likewise (all of which are merely physical), must be proved in an absolute degree. As to imprisonment of the body, that is not a matter which much admits of plus and minus, but the matter of infirmity of body must be proved to a degree, not merely of discomfort, but of something approaching to actual peril. With respect to habitation, I have only to mention the late case of the rector of Bow church; that clergyman was shown to be one of the most exemplary of his time; it appeared that he not only performed, in an assiduous and edifying manner, the public duties of his church, but in a manner equally assiduous and edifying, the more painful but not less important offices of private and constant ministration to the spiritual wants of his parishioners. It was admitted, on the part of the prosecution, that on these very accounts he was select ed for the purpose of showing that no merit could excuse the legal guilt of nonresidence ; for true it was that he was legally a non-resident, living not in the parish of Bow church, but in the no distant parish of Saint Andrew's, Holborn; and under these circumstances, that the proper parsonage house was of such confined dimensions that the only ground floor room was converted into a shop. Any enlargement of the house was hopeless, not only from the obstructions of the statute of Mortmain, but from the excessive value of ground in that highly commercial part of this capital. Under this representation the jury was instructed, and properly instructed, by the learned and noble judge, to consider whether this habitation, incommodious and uncomfortable as it might be, was not yet one in which a clergyman, submitting to a painful necessity, might contrive to live, and the jury found for the full penalties against the defendant. I mention this case to show the degree in which even these legal pleas must be substantiated. As to pleas of necessity, merely moral, I cannot find the admission of any such in the cases which the practice of 300 years has furnished. I cannot deny that an attendance elsewhere, upon the last months of a declin other of the charities of life, is certainly a wilful absence; for it must be admitted, that it is produced by a mere determination of the will, though the will may be influenced in the particular case, by causes as powerful and as laudable as any that can act upon human volition. In the consistorial courts, acting under the episcopal discretion, or a discretion of the like nature, such pleas can have a reasonable attention paid to them. A court of law, acting upon the express letter of a statute, assumes no such discretion to itself; and it is expressly forbidden by the same statute, to invoke or admit the interposition of episcopal discretion. As far as a court of law contemplates such a subject under such an authority, it has been, and I presume must be, upon the footing of a something very little short of a hard and dry physical necessity. So much as to the general policy. Are the specific provisions more clearly marked with wisdom? The provision made for carrying all its other provisions into effect, is by means of the common informer. Of that personage I shall take care to speak with all due caution, because I perceive, that although he is a very abhorred man, when he is blowing up a conspiracy against the state-not very gracious when he is enforcing a tax-yet that he is received with some degree of kind acceptation, when he betakes himself to the employment of privateering upon the church; all, therefore, that I shall venture to say of him is, that it appears to be but a clumsy sort of policy at best, to make the avarice of mankind the grand instrument of reli gious and moral reformation. But, supposing it ever so decent a thing to de me ask those who shelter this statute_under the apology, that time may perhaps have rendered some of its provisions un [472 throne the bishop, and to put the common | lowed; much fitter to ferment than to informer in his place, look at the penalties compose the passions of mankind. Let with which he is armed! perfectly ruinous to the majority of the clergy at the time, and in that respect directly contrary to every principle of our happy constitution-seasonable, for what times such provisions ten pounds for a month's absence! By the valor beneficiorum, made five years after the passing this statute, a very large proportion of the cures in this kingdom were under ten pounds a year in value; so that the great body of the clergy were put into this state, that if they slept out of their parsonage house for one day above a month, they were deprived of all subsistence for above twelve months following. What was the grand object to be secured to the public by this unnatural change of the ecclesiastical constitution, bearing so hard upon the convenience of individuals? Is it a canonical residence? By no means. What is a canonical residence? Not merely residentia parochialis, but personalis ministratio likewise-residere in parochiâ, et deservire in ecclesia. Such is the general language of the canon law; and mere bodily presence in a parish is no sufficient defence, in the ecclesiastical suit, for non-residence, if it is shown that the clerk has not likewise performed the duties which ought to accompany it. But this statute takes the bodily presence, independent of the personal ministration the corpus sine pectore-upon the presumption, which, the experience of the world proves, will often fail, that the man who is compelled to be upon the spot, will perform every thing for which he is compelled to be upon the spot. If a man does but sleep in his parsonage bed, he may sleep there from month's end to month's end; he may live in the most slovenly disregard, or in the most insolent defiance, of every obligation of duty; and yet, as far as this statute reaches him, he may go utterly unwhipped of public justice. The residence which this statute secures to the public, may be a parish nuisance, and a parish scandal, and nothing better. In pointing out such passages in this statute as appear to me to mark it rather as a statute of vengeance than reformation, as uniting in itself the extremes of violence and inefficiency, I cannot help adding, that if such provisions are really, what they have been sometimes called, the First-fruits of the Reformation, they are fruits collected in a state of great acerbity; harsh, and crude, and unmel as these could possibly be fit? That no clergyman, beneficed or not beneficed, should take a house, except in a city, market-town, or borough, under the penalty of ten pounds a month? That no poor vicar could take a lease of the parsonage, to help out his own scanty endow ment, under a penalty of ten times the value of the profits of such lease? That no clergyman can hold a lease of land, though not occupied by himself, and though descended to him from his family, under a penalty of ten times its annual value? That no clergyman possessed of a patrimonial freehold estate, in a grazing country, could buy and sell a cow, without a forfeiture of treble the value of that cow?"-In my apprehension, nothing could have concealed the vices and infirmities of this statute, but its having been consigned, by almost general consent, to almost general inefficiency, ever since its birth, till within the last two years, when it has been made the commercial bank of two or three trading attorneys. Before that time it had rarely been heard of, but occasionally as a postscript to a dispute about tithes, or to some personal squabble between the parishioner and his parson, generally discountenanced in the particular instance by the excellent persons who have presided in the courts, who have repeatedly lamented their own inability to admit pleas highly proper to be attended to, and that they were bound to consider the most conscientious clergyman, who, after twenty years' most sedulous performance of all his duties, absented himself for one month from his parish (or even from his parsonage-house, though doing the duties of his cure), and with the permission of his superiors, as a culprit; and as a culprit who was not to be exonerated on any other plea than that which would exonerate a man from charges of the most atrocious kind-the plea of having acted under something little short of an irresistible necessity. But whatever may be the original character of this statute (on which I have ventured to express an opinion, contrary to opinions which I cannot but respect when I look at those who have entertained them), it is not to be denied that the effects of the Reformation, that, by introducing them to the charities of domestic life, it has taught them the practical knowledge of the duties which belong to those charities. They have family property in other parts of the country; they are called to the capital for the transaction of family concerns; they are called to attend to the declining health of a wife or a child, by a temporary change of air and situation. I am no advocate for dissipation, when I observe they have families of young persons who are not without their claims to reasonable indulgences for the purposes of health, of education, of improvement, and, I venture to add, without fear, even of innocent curiosity and relaxation. change of time and manners has imported into it a degree of incongruity and injustice which no man can be found to defend. In the first place, the money-penalties have acquired an additional injustice by acquiring an additional inequality. Many of the livings of this kingdom, that were meanly endowed with land or tithes, continue in their original poverty; others, better provided with those species of property, have risen into opulence. On the poor livings, the statute operates with its original severity, aggravated by the consideration that it touches the richer benefices, comparatively, with a feather. Its utmost effect upon a living of 1,200/. per annum (of which there are several in this kingdom), is compounded for by the payment of an income tax. In the next place, the general alteration which has taken place in the general system of life and manners, must be adverted to. The native clergy (as far as the statute applied at all to them) were single men, living in the habits of a secluded life. They generally fixed near the places of their nativity. I observe, in most ancient catalogues of the English clergy, both secular and regular, that their names are usually taken from some neighbouring village or borough to that where you find them settled. From the spot where they settled, they had few possible calls; there was little communication between different parts of the country or with the capital; correspondence was rare, and carried on either by special messengers, or by the accident of pilgrims passing that way. The gentry themselves, excepting those who attended parliament, ventured little beyond the sod of their own village, unless to the county-court; the business of the county was transacted in the county. All this has undergone a great alteration; the different classes of men are no longer gleba adscriptitii; communication is opened; much of the business of the kingdom is transacted in this town. The clergy are most generally beneficed in parts of the island remote from the places of their birth and education, and they have calls of family affection and duty to the relations they have quitted. Being invited by the Reformation to marry, they form new family connexions, which again produce calls of a similar nature; and, I presume, no reasonable man would wish that they should be deaf to such calls, and should turn their backs on the happy intercourses of family kindness. It is one of the best In the next place, the change, not only of the manners, but of that which is every day assuming a greater importance in the country, its agriculture, makes a change of the provisions of the statute, relative to farming, quite indispensable. It is impossible for me to state this effect half so well in any words of my own, as in those which compose a letter written to me by two most respectable clergymen of the west of England, and which, with the permission of the House, I beg leave to read, as a part of what I have to offer." Whilst we were thus indulging in what we conceived to be innocent pursuits, we find ourselves amenable to that part of the statute of Henry 8th, which interdicts us from buying and selling; and an avowed informer, who has come into the country with an express intention of prosecuting the clergy on the other parts of the act, has just began to enforce this tremendous clause. What constitutes the peculiar hardship of the modern clergy is, that the restraint in question did not materially, if at all, affect their predecessors at the time the act was made, but has, for the most part, been occasioned by the alteration that has taken place in the general state of society, and our habits of life. The facility with which all our wants are at present supplied, was in the sixteenth century wholly unknown. Our ancestors, who resided in the country, derived from their estates the most ample maintenance for themselves and dependants. The provisions which were laid up against winter in the great mansions, fill with astonishment the mind of a modern housekeeper. In conformity to this general practice, the resident country clergyman had, comparatively speaking, few demands for money, the glebe and tithes supply all his necessaries; his wheat cidental to the farming of his glebe; he is provided bread, and the barley, under his not carrying on a traffic, which is eviown eye, was converted into malt-most dently the offence prohibited, but only in of the old rectorial houses having, even conformity with the improved mode of now, a building formerly appropriated to husbandry, cultivating his ground to the that purpose; the wool was spun under best advantage. Enforce the statute litehis own roof, and wrought into cloth in rally, and at once he is deprived of his the neighbouring towns; the cattle, fat- principal support; it will be impossible tened during the summer (there was no for him to farm his glebe, which he must winter feeding), were slaughtered and laid immediately let, to the incalculable loss up for the remainder of the year; and, as of himself and the community; as inhis family must have been large, the day stead of being (which whilst in the hands labourer and occasional artificer being fed of the clergy it will generally be found to from his table, it is reasonable to suppose be) in a progressive state of improvement, that he had little to spare beyond his own it will gradually become worse, no tenant consumption: add to this, that he was choosing to risk his money in manuring then a solitary being, deprived by super- premises, the possession of which cannot stition of those endearing connections, be assured to him for a single day. The which impel mankind to look beyond foregoing observations apply for the most themselves, to the welfare of those who part to our own case, but it would be are of far more importance to them. His selfish in the extreme were we not to resituation is now totally changed-com- mark, that there are many of our brethren merce and the influx of wealth have en- of opulence and great respectability, who, tirely overthrown his domestic arrange- actuated by the most politic motives, ments: money is the medium through have, by occupying their own estates as which all his wants are to be supplied; well as their glebes, held up a superior he therefore sells his wheat to pay his mode of husbandry to their neighbourworkmen barley, the laws of his country hood, and done essential service to the restrain him from making into malt, he country. "To take them also out of the sends it to a market, and with the money hands of informers, would be conceived to received in return purchases beer-the be an act well worthy your serious consi wool is disposed of to a distant manufac- deration. Any undue restraint on their turer, and with its value himself and family exertions must prove a manifest injury to are clothed the fat cattle are sold instead the community at large, and agriculture of being salted, and the profit ensures a in its present state may be considered so weekly supply of fresh meat till the re- far from an illiberal pursuit, that it is hard turn of summer. The expenses also at to say how any clergyman can employ his tendant on a marriage state (to say no- hours of relaxation (and such hours must thing of the various and heavy taxes), occur in every profession), with more inoccasion repeated demands on him for nocence to himself, and benefit to the money, which were wholly unknown to public, than in the moderated study and the clergy at the time of Henry 8th. A practice of its various branches." revolution equally great has taken place even in our system of agriculture. Formerly a part of every farm was appropriated to tillage, another to pasture, and a due proportion of calves and lambs were annually reared; but by experience it is found, that some districts are fitter for each separate purpose, so that a glebe may be wholly given up to corn, or pasture, according to its soil, to the great advantage of the proprietor and the public. In one instance, different sorts of grain will be sent to market: in the other, the return must be in fat cattle. By occupying his lands in this manner, the modern clergyman doth not violate the spirit of the act: though he buys to sell again, yet it is a buying and a selling in I have my doubts, from what passed within these walls last year, whether the House will quite go along with the senti ments expressed in the last paragraph. I confess that my own sentiments are considerably mollified, since the last year, in favour of farming; I see that in this country the parish priest is, by the very constitution of his office, in some degree, an agriculturist; he is, ex officio, in part a farmer. He is to take care, undoubtedly, that the ecclesiastic shall not merge in the farmer, but shall continue the presiding and predominating character; but the moderated and subordinate practice of farming supplies many means of cheap subsistence for the clergyman and his family; many means of easy kindness and hospitality to his poorer parishioners; the monks the glebe and tithes which many opportunities of distinguishing the they formerly possessed; but their grand industrious and well-disposed by the resource was in the authority of the favour of employment; and many motives bishops, who had a power, and occaof pleasing attachment to the place, which sionally exercised it, to compel the monks furnishes the healthy and amusing occu- to raise their stipends, as the times repation of his vacant hours. Personal de- quired. Temporary vicars, who answer basement must be guarded against; but to modern curates, had been raised sucwhen I recollect that it has been the opi- cessively up to ten marks, considerata nion of all antiquity that agriculturâ libero temporum qualitate, which Spelman comhomine nihil dignius, and that the practice putes to be equal to 60%. a year, and the of modern times reconciles it with the dig- perpetual vicar was raised to twelve marks, nity, and even the majesty of the most equal to 70l. a year. They were single exalted stations, I am not prepared to men, of small wants, and generally smaller admit that personal debasement is a ne- learning: he who had Latin enough to cessary consequence; and in the example read the office to those who could not of the illustrious Hooker tending his sheep read English, had no call for an expenon Barham Downs, I think I 'see, that sive library. This statute, followed by even some of its humble occupations may the Reformation, struck a severe blow at be performed without degradation. their means of resistance. In the country it put an end to their farming the glebe and tithes, a grievance bitterly complained of by the convocation of the same year with this statute, which represented that the statute had non-nihil iniquitatis in it, by robbing the miseros vicarios, the miserable vicars, of this advantage. The Reformation swept away in towns all the traffic of private superstitious offices; but the great blow was struck by the statute of Alienations, or rather by the construction which has since grown upon it, and which has now exonerated the impropriated parsonages, from any power of the bishops to provide for the better maintenance of the officiating minister; for though the statute expressly reserved all rights, and transferred these church revenues to the crown, and consequently to its grantees, in the same state and condition" as they now be, as held by the religious houses";" yet it is settled law, in later times, that these impropriations, being lay fees, are no longer subject to the authority of the bishop. but what above all creates a necessity for new moulding this statute, is the ex treme depauperated state of many of the churches and parochial clergy of this kingdom. The statute makes one uniform demand of universal residence, under one uniform penalty; and universal residence cannot be had without universal competency. If all the benefices in the kingdom were equal and competent, an equal obligation, enforced by an equal penalty, might be applied to them all universally. But the fact is, that the inequality is great, and has greatly increased since the passing of this act; since it is certain, that if many benefices have increased in value, many have been comparatively depauperated by the Reformation. The appropriation of the church revenues to the religious houses, was, in ancient times, a subject of loud and energetic complaint from parliament. This House represented, "That the religious men mischievously, under divers colours, appropriated benefices, and grievously threw down the houses of the same to the ground, and cruelly did take It is now, Sir, too late to undo what away and destroy divine service, hospi. was done at the Reformation in this mattality, and other marks of charity; and ter. The property has for 300 years the clergy from promotion did bar, in passed into circulation, is become family offence to God, confusion of their own inheritance, possessed by as good a title souls, grievous desolation of their country, and as safe a conscience, as other family final destruction of the clergy, great im- inheritance; but when I observe that it is poverishment of the kingdom, and irrevoc- to be lamented that a better provision was able ruin of the church of England." But not at that time made out of these revethe clergy, though pillaged of their glebe nues for the support of the national reliand tithes by the monks, had their region, I say no more than what is supportsources. In market towns they had a variety of small devotional offices to perform for individuals, for which they were paid. In the country they farmed from ed by high authority, particularly by that of a person who was a great favourite and ornament of this House, and no partial friend to ecclesiastical claims-Mr. Sel |