would expect, from societies so depraved, either charity or hospitality? The rich, the sensual and vicious rarely sympathize with indigence. For their own ease, and, as a motive to indifference, they are mostly prompt to calumniate the poor with unjust suspicions, and represent a lively zeal in their welfare, either as undeserved or mistaken benevolence.

The practice of appropriating livings was first introduced by the Normans; and within three hundred years after, the monks had become the proprietors of one-third of all the benefices in the kingdom, and these for the most part the richest. At the dissolution of the religious houses by the 27 and 31 Hen. VIII. these benefices, by the common law, would have been disappropriated, had not a clause been inserted in these statutes to give them to the king in as ample a manner as the abbots, &c. had held the same at the time of their dissolution. Having thus become the proprietor of one-third of the benefices as well as all the plate, revenues, and wealth of the abbeys, the manner in which this monarch disposed of the wealth he had acquired accounts for the present state of ecclesiastical property. With a part of it he founded new bishoprics, colleges, and deaneries; large masses of it he gave to courtiers and noblemen; a portion he retained in his own hands, and the remainder applied to the maintenance of the reformed religion. Individuals, corporations, and colleges, who obtained grants from the Crown, obtained, also, all the rights annexed to them; and the present proprietors of the abbey-lands are proprietors of the tithes and benefices formerly attached to these lands. Hence it is so large a portion of the tithes are in the hands of laymen. It is calculated there are 3845 impropriations in England; that is, benefices in the hands of persons not engaged in the service of religion, but who receive the great tithes, leaving only the vicarial tithes or other minor endowments for the maintenance of the incumbent.

The effect on society of this new disposition of ecclesiastical property has been differently represented by writers. Discontent is inseparable from the reform of every established practice and institution. Those who profit by abuses and those who are benefited by their removal must view in different lights and hold forth different representations of measures by which they are so oppositely affected. With the dissatisfaction of the monastic orders, there can be no surprise; their condition was that of drones forced from the hives in which they had devoured in idleness the fruits of others' industry; but the dissatisfaction of other classes cannot be so readily explained. Mr. Hallam states that the summary abolition of the religious houses lead to the great northern rebellion:* it is certain, from the popular ballads of the time, this important measure was a subject of regret to the lower orders; and old Harry Jenkins laments that those days were over in which he used to be invited to the Lord Abbot's chamber, to feast on 66 a quarter of a yard of roast beef and wassail in a black jack." Two reasons may be

* Constitutional History of England, vol. i. p. 77.

assigned for the existence of this feeling; either it may be ascribed to the cessation of the almsgiving and hospitality of the conventual bodies, or to the general ignorance of the people. The limited extent of the former has been already shown; if the populace could be conciliated by such miserable charity as we have adverted to, their fatuity may be likened to that of the multitude in more recent times, who are often blinded to their just claims by doles of soup or salt fish, or a bonus of 100 guineas out of an enormous civil list. The extreme ignorance of the people was, doubtless, the principal cause of their hostility to the reformation and disqualified them from duly estimating the advantages likely to ensue from so great a revolution. While the people continue unenlightened they must always be subject to their superiors, or those who possess influence enough to delude or direct them. The FortyShilling freeholders of Ireland were the alternate slaves of aristocratic landlords and fanatic priests, and in the votes they gave at the instigation of each, as well as in the tameness with which they submitted to be disfranchised, they have manifested a like rational view of their ultimate interests. The monks of the time of Henry VIII. were not less omnipotent over the multitude than the priests of Ireland, or those of Spain and Portugal; under the influence of the former the populace sung out whatever note they were directed; and, unquestionably, such views of the tendency of the reformation would be impressed upon them as best accorded with the interests of their spiritual guides.

To this cause we ascribe the popular feeling as regards the dissolution of monastic establishments. The same spirit opposed the opening of turnpike-roads, and the introduction of cow-pox and machinery. But it is extremely erroneous to maintain that the Reformation was not a great blessing to the country, and tended, most essentially, to better the condition of the working classes. Had popery (such popery we mean as existed at that day) continued the established religion, the present condition of the people would have been no better than that of the degraded rabble who have restored Don Miguel and Don Ferdinand, and whose miseries, in spite of the almsgiving and hospitality of convents, are sufficiently acute to prevent an increase in their numbers. From the general poverty of the Peninsula, and the state of its agriculture, commerce, and population, fettered and oppressed by aristocratic, ecclesiastic, and corporate immunities, we may form an idea of what England would have been without the Reformation. Knowledge was incompatible with the power of the monks, whose influence was founded on the general belief of miracles, the sanctity of relics, and other pious frauds, to which popular illumination would have been fatal. Without, therefore, the excitement produced by their dispersion, and the freedom of discussion with which it was accompanied, the people would have remained intellectually debased; their ignorance was necessary to the ascendency of those in whose hands they were, and of course they would have been kept in that state, and withheld from the only means by which their condition in society could be ameliorated. If more substantial benefits have not resulted from the Reformation,

it may be easily traced to other causes. That great event certainly put the people in possession, by removing the mental incubus of a degrading superstition, of the most powerful instrument, by which this can be obtained.

It is to be regretted that, at the dissolution of the abbeys, the immense revenue at the disposal of the Crown was not appropriated in a manner more advantageous to the community. One of the great evils in our social economy is the unequal division of property-the vast masses in which it is accumulated by entails and rights of primogeniture in the hands of individuals. This evil was aggravated by transferring the endowments of the monks to the aristocracy, and thus was lost a favourable juncture, for obtaining better security for the liberties of the people, by a more equal partition of proprietary influence. Instead of wasting the spoils of the church on rapacious courtiers, it might have been appropriated, as in Scotland, to the establishment of a system of parochial education; or, it might have been applied to sustain the dignity of the Crown, or defray the charges of government without burthening the people, or to other undertakings of general and permanent interest. Of the magnitude of the opportunity thrown away, we may form some idea from the almost incredible wealth of the monastic institutions.

Of the annual value of 388 religious houses, we have no estimate; but, computing the value of these in the same proportion, as of the 653 of which we have the returns, the total revenue of the 1041 houses in England and Wales was £273,106. A prodigious sum in those days if we consider the relative value of money, and the smallness of the national income. But incredible as this revenue is, it was only the reserved rents of manors and demesnes, without including the tithes of appropriations, fines, heriots, renewals, deodands, &c. which would probably have amounted to twice as much. Upon good authority it is stated the clergy were proprietors of seven-tenths of the whole kingdom; and, out of the three remaining tenths, thus kindly left to king, lords, and commons, were the four numerous orders of mendicants to be maintained, against whom no gate could be shut, to whom no provision could be denied, and from whom no secret could be concealed.

Mr. Cobbett often amuses his readers by turning up his eyes, and uttering moon-struck exclamations, in contemplating the splendid cathedrals of Lincoln, Ely, Canterbury, and Winchester; it was not necessary, however, either the population, or general wealth of the community should be very great to enable the clergy to erect these magnificent, but comparatively useless, structures. Pious souls! they had possessed themselves of nearly the whole land and labour of the community, and would have grasped the remainder, had it not been for the interference of the legislature. Such have been the religious propensities of the English, at all times, that the fervour of their piety has oftener required checking than encouraging by their rulers. It was with this view the Mortmain Act was passed, in the reign of Henry VII. which, by prohibiting the bequest of property to the ecclesiastical bodies, prevented

the patrimony of almost every family in the kingdom from being engulphed by the cunning and insatiable monks. Had the vast amount of landed property acquired by spiritual corporations, previously to the passing of this statute, remained tied up in their hands, it must have formed an insuperable obstacle to the developement of the productive powers of the country, and under such a system, neither the riches nor numbers of the people could have greatly augmented.

The statements of church property before the Reformation would appear exaggerated had we not illustrative proof in the present state of Ireland and other countries. The mere remnant of the estates of the church, now held by the Irish Protestant Establishment, is calculated at two elevenths of the entire soil of the kingdom. In Tuscany, before the French Revolution had partially regenerated the dukedom, the priesthood was found, from inquiries instituted by the grand duke, to enjoy seventeen parts in twenty of the land. In Spain and Portugal, and in France, the monopoly of the church was nearly as great.

But we shall now leave the subject. We could not treat on the origin of church property in this country, without adverting to the changes effected by the Reformation. We shall next advert to the tenure on which the property of the church devolved, and continues to be holden by our Protestant Establishment.

It seems almost a work of supererogation to set about proving that the property of the established church is public property, the bare terms of the proposition apparently involving the demonstration. What can be understood by an established church, but a church endowed by the state, and, if so endowed, subordinate to the state, and for the benefit thereof? This principle has been recognized in every country in Europe. Wherever church property has been interfered with, (and we know none where it has not been interfered with,) it never appears to have been surmised that the state had not only the power but the right to give a new disposition to ecclesiastical endowments, either by appropriating them to the maintenance of a different religion, or to the necessities of the community. In England this power has been distinctly admitted, as appears from the measures adopted at the Reformation: at that period a commission was appointed to investigate the abuses of the church; a return was made of the value of all monasteries and religious houses, of parochial livings, episcopal and cathedral dignitaries, and every other species of ecclesiastical revenue, and the whole entered in a book, called Liber Regalis, or the King's Book. This important document has been recently reprinted by the Commissioners of Public Records; it is the only authentic survey of the revenues of the church; and the result was, as before described, an entire new disposition of ecclesiastical property. No claim appears to have been set up that the property was sacred, and in every succeeding period it has been treated in a similar manner. It has been always considered public property, and the government, for the time being, whether a monarchy under a Tudor, or a commonwealth under Cromwell, has always exercised the right of applying it to secular uses, or to the maintenance of

whatever form of faith might be in vogue, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Presbyterian.

Down to our own time the same principle has been constantly acted upon by parliament. In the numerous acts of parliament, at the close of the last reign, for regulating the sale and exchange of parsonagehouses and glebe-lands, of mortgages in cases of buildings and repairs, church property is invariably treated as public property, the ownership of which is vested in the State. Were it not so, the legislature could have no more right to interfere in the disposal of the property of the church than the property of other persons. It could have no right to pass the act for prohibiting the sale of spiritual preferment, by making it penal to present to any benefice for money, gift, or reward. It could have no right to pass the act, by which an incumbent is compelled to pay to his curate the whole, or a proportionate part of the income of his benefice. It could have no right to pass the Church-Building Acts, authorizing the division of parishes, glebes, and tithes; nor the various statutes for regulating the discipline of the clergy, by compelling them to reside on their benefices, or refrain from exercising any trade, or taking to farm more than eighty acres of land. It is never attempted by such legislative interference, to control the conduct and possessions of laymen. The possessor of an estate can sell it to another in his lifetime, or, after his death, bequeath it to posterity; but the clergy have no such power over their possessions. They have, at most, only a life-interest; and even of that they may be disinherited at the pleasure of their diocesan. The tenure of their property is similar to that by which Lord ABERDEEN holds the office of Secretary of State, or Mr. CROKER the Secretaryship of the Admiralty.

Mr. Campbell, Mr. Thackeray, and others, attempt to defend the claims of the clergy, upon the principle that they possess corporate rights, and hence contend that, though existing ecclesiastics might compromise their interests with the State, they could have no right to enter into any arrangement for the future, by which their successors might be deprived of the reversion of church-property. But for this analogy there appears no foundation. The church enjoys no prescriptive term of duration, but is always liable, at any time, to be re-modelled or dissolved by the legislature; and what more completely refutes its corporate pretensions, and establishes its entire dissimilarity to any civil institution of the kind, is its having no perpetual succession, either by descent or election, but is compelled, by the intervention of laypatrons, to have its numbers kept up by the nominations of a third and alien party.

But though the Church cannot be likened to a corporation, there is a great resemblance between its rights and constitution, and those of our military establishment. Like the army, the clergy have their own laws, and may be tried by their own courts. A regular subordination exists from the lowest to the highest; from the curates, who are privates in the ecclesiastical corps, to the rectors and vicars, who are regimental officers; from thence to the bishops and archbishops, who are generals