ordaining priests-a regulation feebly enjoined, and vigorously neglected; that the dean should reside ninety days conjunctim aut divisim (unless dispensed with by the bishop), keep hospitality, and see that the vicars-choral study the Scriptures; that both he and the canons should preach while in residence (yet in other churches as well as in the Cathedral); and, finally, that they should inform the bishop of any unsound doctrine preached in their pulpit.* This is certainly a very moderate amount of duty in return for noble emoluments; and such appears to have been the opinion of those who enjoined it. For the Forty-fourth Canon inhibits prebendaries not residentiary from absenting themselves from their benefices, under colour of their prebends;' and further enjoins the residentiaries so 'to sort and proportion' the residence among them (which by the statutes should be kept by all in common), as 'presently to repair to their bene'fices, or some one of them, or to some other charge where the 'law requireth their presence, there to discharge their duties "according to the laws in that case provided. The notion plainly was, that Cathedrals only kept the clergy away from more necessary duties: and this is the notion stamped on all subsequent legislation. A Cathedral dignity is a lucrative preferment without any real employment. The rights of the patron and the doctrine of prizes,' form the chief reasons for its retention; and the efforts of reform are directed towards preventing too many of them from accumulating to one man's share, or to seeing that his legalised otium does not detain the prize-holder too long from the more genuine obligations of a clergyman. Hence our royal statutes and episcopal injunctions have been mostly directed to restraining instead of enforcing residence,—to narrowing instead of extending corporate action. In the true spirit of such legislation, a bishop still living is said, as a matter of conscience, to bestow his Cathedral preferment upon those claimants on his patronage, whom he considers the least qualified for the more important responsibility of a parochial charge!

The legislation of later years is assuredly not to be complimented on exhibiting any deeper insight into the uses of Cathedral establishments. The framers of the Ecclesiastical Commission in 1835 might be thought to have adopted as the basis of their reforms Rob Roy's morality

..the good old rule,

Sufficeth them, the simple plan,

That they should take, who have the power,
And they should keep who can.'

Money was urgently required for the augmentation of poor

Canon xxxv.

2 Canon xlii.

3 Canon xlii,

4 Canon li.

benefices, and the increase of parochial ministrations; the Cathedrals had money, with no duties which the public cared for, to discharge; all the Commission had to do was to seize upon these revenues, and apply them to the more imperative wants of the Church. The process would occasion a sad diminution in the number and splendour of clerical 'prizes;' but as 'existing interests' were to be respected, the loss would chiefly affect the future patronage, and this the Crown and the bishops made up their minds to submit to. Sir R. Peel, in his place in Parliament, went so far as to compliment the hierarchy on the sacrifices' thus made for the good of the Church; though in truth not a single bishop or canon was in any degree injured, while some were largely benefited by the scheme. The loss fell on their unnamed successors, and yet more heavily upon the people who should have benefited by foundations thus directed to another use. No inquiry was instituted, whether the Cathedrals themselves were capable of being invested with a more extended usefulness, or whether any of the existing rights' so scrupulously preserved, might not be flagrant abuses demanding correction by the visitor. No one, either, seems to have much cared what would become of these establishments when the process of depletion should be complete ;-all such considerations were disregarded in the one idea of a fund for parochial purposes. In the well-remembered language of the energetic prelate who championed the design, the wants of the flock were so urgent, that he must have all the money he could lay ⚫ his hands upon.' Hence a deaf ear was turned to the remonstrances of the few who appreciated the spiritual value of capitular establishments. The deans and chapters themselves were only listened to when they could urge some personal pecuniary claim; and too many of these dignitaries—like the witty canon of S. Paul's-dropped their protest as soon as their bargain was made, turned their backs on the sacred rights so solemnly obtested, and contentedly swam with the stream.

6

After this sort a measure was hurried through Parliament, which it has been the fashion to style a great ecclesiastical reform. That some advantages have resulted, it would be foolish to deny; but at what cost were they purchased?. The Ecclesiastical Commission has unsettled a vast amount of ancient foundations; familiarized men's minds with an enormous traffic in church-lands, livings, and jurisdictions; occasioned no little scandal against particular dignitaries; and proved a 'good thing' to the solicitors and speculators, who have enjoyed the stewardship of ecclesiastical manors, and the fingering of ecclesiastical moneys.

On the other hand, as a scheme for augmenting poor benefices,

it has notoriously failed. It has been obliged to suspend even its own moderate promises to benefices in public patronage, and now only deals with the few which possess a local claim on the revenues coming under its disposal. Its one work, in short, is the endowment of the 'Peel districts;' and, without undervaluing the impetus thus given to church building, or the yet more praiseworthy efforts of the many zealous and self-denying clergymen, who have laboured and died in these home missionary fields, we have yet to be satisfied,-1st, that one bishop, at 5,000l. a-year, and a multitude of district incumbents at 150%., constitute the best ecclesiastical establishment for a wealthy manufacturing town in the nineteenth century:—and, 2dly, that the assistance proffered to such towns by spoliating the religious foundations of other places, has not tended to prevent the application of their overflowing wealth to new endowments of their own.

To whatever extent, however, the Ecclesiastical Commission may have proved advantageous to the parochial branch of the Church's system, it can assuredly lay little claim to the credit of any Cathedral reform. In this respect its idea was simple even to coarseness. The majority of the Cathedrals were perceived

The public is little aware of all that goes to the completion of one of these New Parishes.' The districts are severed from the mother Church at the first stroke, and constituted independent cures. They consist, for the most part, of large masses of labouring and pauper population, sunk in spiritual, intellectual, and material destitution. We know a manufacturing town in which nine of these districts, containing from five to eight thousand souls a-piece, were thus cut off at once from the parish church and the vicar. Some of them received ministers of their own, who forthwith began the hard struggle to erect a church; others lay vacant for three or four years-a greater spiritual waste than ever-and were at last given away in despair to any one in priest's orders who could be got to accept them. Such clergymen, with their miserable stipends, their pauper population, their wretched licensed rooms,' assembling three or four old women-on rare occasions, perhaps a dozen-for Divine service on the Sunday, are the embodiment of meanness in religion. Even the most successful results are sometimes achieved at a fearful price. An ardent young curate is induced to exchange his happy employment for one of these destitute incumbencies. His first object is, of course, a church. By spending and being spent, annoying his friends, irritating his acquaintance, and experiencing rebuffs which would mortify a bankrupt tradesman, he gets heavily forward with a subscription. Then he begins the work, entangles himself in contracts, spends his wife's two or three hundred pounds, (his own has gone in taking his degree,) and dies, broken-hearted and insolvent, before the church is completed. Another, and another yet, may succeed to the charge and continue the struggle, before the edifice, all meanly furnished and saddled still with debt, is declared ready for consecration. And then the bishop's sermon will, perhaps, call on the congregation to rejoice in the rapid extension of the Church; while a couple of widows and a dozen of fatherless children are ruing the bitter day when the poor victims (now forgotten by all but them) cast themselves beneath the wheels of her chariot. Meantime, the laity, in many places, exasperated by the importunity of these clerical duns, are demanding that no more clergymen be appointed than there are churches to officiate in. It is certainly a grievous defect that the parishioners are allowed no voice in these rearrangements of parochial bounds and spiritual relations.

to possess two sorts of canons or prebendaries,-the one residentiary, the other not, the former burdened with no very important duties, the latter with none at all. The residentiaries, again, varied in number and emolument in different Cathedrals; and deaneries were found to range from 600l. a-year to hard upon 5,000l. Let the deans be equalized at 1,000%. a-year, and the residentiaries at 500l.; perhaps as much as public opinion would stand' for dignities confessedly of no great practical utility. Let there be four residentiaries in every Cathedral,one for each of the four seasons-and abolish the non-residentiary members altogether: their duties-the duties they might, could, would, or should have done-to be thrown to the winds, their patronage to escheat to the bishops, and their endowments, with the surplus revenue from the residentiaries, to form the fund for pastoral extension. Such, with a little garnishing in the case of two or three Cathedrals, where the larger haul seemed to warrant a little more liberality, was the scheme of the Ecclesiastical Commission. No consideration was given to differences in the original foundation; all difficulties connected with the statutes being surmounted by a summary power of repeal granted to the Chapters themselves. Neither were local circumstances deemed worthy of any greater discrimination. No larger Chapter was provided for the metropolitical city of York than for the country town of Wells,-the Cathedral being of no very definite advantage (it must have been surmised) to either. On the other hand, a fourth residentiary was set up at Lincoln, where the statutes required but three: and the whole four were imported into Ripon, which had never enjoyed nor discovered the want of any!' Such additions in violation of the leading principle-money for pastoral purposes-could only have been introduced on the profound theory of uniformity which obtains in the compo style of church architecture:-unless, indeed, it was thought that one bishop ought to have as many 'prizes' to bestow as another.

It was happily suggested by somebody, that since the money only was needed for the Ecclesiastical Commission, they might be content, with regard to the non-residentiary stalls, to

The Bishop of Ripon actually complains of this importation, as injurious to the Cathedral congregation, who are positively suffering from an embarras de richesses :— "I cannot refrain from observing, that experience convinces me of the disadvantage that results to the spiritual interests of a parish church, such as Ripon Minster, from the great variety and frequent change of preachers. In truth, with us they are so many, and the several parties are so willing, that the great difficulty is to find turns enough to satisfy all. I should only have aggravated this embarrassment by the appointment of honorary canons: and this is one reason why I have hitherto refrained from exercising my privilege of creating them. I cannot but feel that the poor and less educated are sufferers by the multiplication of preachers, as systematic and consecutive teaching becomes impossible.'- App. p. 591.

'take all they had, and spare their lives.' The dignity would still be acceptable to deserving clergymen, if conferred only as an honorary mark of professional merit. It was, as a living Bishop expresses it, a stall without a manger. The idea took prodigiously the bishops were glad of small change to pay off some of the claimants on their patronage, and Parliament was so tickled with the notion of a Cathedral dignitary gratis, that they extended the privilege to all the bishops, by founding 'honorary canonries '-the one ecclesiastical foundation of the nineteenth century-in the Cathedrals which possessed no nonresident prebends.

As it happened, however, this preservation of the non-resident stalls was something more than a feather in clerical caps. The bishops, it is true, forgot to restore the patronage which, on the notion of the suppression of the prebends, had been transferred to themselves; but all other rights and duties, according to the existing statutes of the Cathedral, were preserved by the act of Parliament. Hence the corporate bodies have remained unmutilated, and, the power of repealing whatever did not accord with this crude legislation having been but sparingly exercised, the means are still providentially retained for effecting a more genuine measure of Cathedral reform.

To this inquiry attention has at last been directed, in a manner commensurate with its importance. One of the few instances in which Lord Derby's short-lived administration fulfilled the expectations it had excited in the minds of many Churchmen, was the issue of the Royal Commission, whose First Report is now lying before us and we cannot forbear from noting, as a proof how such measures are appreciated by the clergy, that the Address to the Throne which the Archbishop of York prevented his Convocation from adopting in Synod, and which they were consequently compelled to submit to Her Majesty as individuals, selected this act of her royal authority for grateful acknowledgment.1

The Cathedral Commission, avoiding the fatal mistake of their predecessors, began by seeking to acquire a true conception of the actual constitution of the several capitular bodies, with the objects had in view by their founders, the modifications subsequently introduced, and the practice at the present time. For this purpose they addressed a series of questions to

We recognise the same pious and affectionate care for the practical efficiency of the Church, in the desire, which your Majesty has ever evinced, to render our ecclesiastical establishments more conducive to the purposes for which they have been founded-the glory of God, and the edification of his people.' The first signature to this Address is Charles Thorpe, Archdeacon of Durham;' and among those which follow, are those of the proctor for the Chapter of Carlisle, a canonresidentiary of Ripon, and three non-resident canons of York.