Transcribed from the 1857 William Skeffington edition by David Price.  Many thanks to the British Library for making their copy available.

The Truth about Church Extension:

AN EXPOSURE
OF CERTAIN
FALLACIES AND MISSTATEMENTS
CONTAINED
IN THE CENSUS REPORTS
ON
RELIGIOUS WORSHIP AND EDUCATION.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

LONDON:
WILLIAM SKEFFINGTON, 163, PICCADILLY.

1857.

PRICE ONE SHILLING.

p. 1PREFACE.

The entire absence of criticism on the decennial tables contained in the report of Mr. Horace Mann on the Census of Religious Worship has filled the writer with equal surprise and concern.  For a period of nearly three years, hardly a week has passed without some injurious step on the part of the Government, some disastrous admission on the part of a friend, some daring rhodomontade on the part of a foe—all of which have owed their origin more or less directly to the false and mistaken view of the Church’s position engendered by the still more erroneous and misleading statistics so widely disseminated by the Census report.  Nor is there any prospect that the evil will diminish—at least, until the next Census.  On the contrary, the idea that the Church has proved a failure seems to gain strength, and the policy of friends and foes alike appears to shape itself with special reference to that assumed fact.

The writer does not wish to obtrude upon the public his own calculations as if they were absolutely correct; but he is satisfied that the account he has given of the relative growth of Church and Dissent during the past half century is, if anything, an understatement so far as the former is concerned.  Had Mr. Bright’s very remarkable return fallen sooner in his way he would probably have much modified his estimate relating to Dissent; but, as the case was already sufficiently strong for the main object he had in view, namely, to demonstrate the monstrous fallacy of the official report, he did not think it worth while to alter his calculations.  His own conviction, however, is that the gross number of additional sittings supplied by Dissent is much more accurately represented by the table given in page 24 than by that in page 20.

The Census report on Education offers a tempting subject for remark; but the writer has not thought it necessary to go further into the matter than he has done in the note on page 27.  For the reasons there stated, it will appear that there are no grounds whatever for asserting that the parents of this country neglect to provide their children with the means of instruction any p. 2more than they neglect to provide them with food or clothing.  In every class which by any stretch of the term can be called “respectable,” parents do supply their children with what they consider a sufficient education; and their idea of what is sufficient is, after all, not much lower, everything considered, than prevails amongst the middle classes, who, in a country like this, must always fix the standard.  The result of the Census goes to show that the Legislature has adopted the right course—that the way to obtain as large a number of attendants at school as possible is to subsidise, not to supersede, private exertion; and that it is even possible to fix the rate of subsidy too high; for all experience proves that parents will not enforce regular attendance, unless they feel that if their children stay away from school they will not receive something for which they have paid.  Whether the Government ought to hold its hand until children of a certain class are brought to the prison schoolmaster is quite another and a different question; for it is clear that under any circumstances those unfortunates must be treated in an exceptional manner.  Even if we had a national system, children belonging to “the dangerous classes” would not be admitted to the common schools; for no respectable person, however humble, would allow his sons or his daughters to associate with the offspring of habitual thieves or beggars.

It is proper to add, in order to account for certain local illustrations, which it has been thought advisable to retain, that the substance of the following pages first appeared in a somewhat different form in the Nottingham Journal.

December, 1856.

p. 3THE TRUTH, &c.

Among the many changes which the present age has witnessed, none are more remarkable than those we have seen take place in the public mind with regard to the Church of this country.

Thirty or forty years ago, the popular estimate of what was called the Established Religion was as low as can well be conceived.  The laity, for the most part, regarded Churchmanship as a mere empty tradition, or at best as a political symbol, and an excuse for lusty choruses in praise of “a jolly full bottle.”  The Clergy, unless they were grievously maligned, had but two objects in life—the acquirement of “fat livings,” and the enjoyment of amusements not now considered clerical.  Of course, there never was a time when there were not hundreds of exemplary persons in holy orders; but that the prevailing impression was wholly without foundation it would take a bold man to affirm.  The worldliness of the Clergy of the eighteenth century has even left its mark on the language.  The word “curate” literally means a “curé”—a person charged with the cure of souls, one that has the spiritual care of a parish.  Such is its meaning in the Prayer Book, and such was its signification down to the last “Review”; but now it has come to mean only a hireling, or an assistant.  In like manner, “Parson” was the most honourable title a parochial clergyman could possess; and that, no doubt, continued to be the case so late as the time of George Herbert.  The beneficed Clergy under the Hanoverian dynasty, however, so conducted themselves, that the term is now never used, except by those who wish to speak disrespectfully of the profession, or of some individual belonging to it.

It would be wrong, perhaps, to hold the Clergy entirely responsible for the sad phase through which we have lately passed.  That they were what they were was “more their misfortune than their fault.”  At the p. 4worst, they were probably better than the rest of the community, and, save when by a persecution to the death the Church is forced into a position of direct antagonism to the world, it would be idle to expect it to be much in advance of the age.  The short reign of the Puritans so confounded religion with cant that at the Restoration it had come to be thought a sort of virtue to be ungodly.  The Church set itself manfully to resist the evil, and no doubt it would soon have been successful; but, unfortunately, the Nonjuring difficulty supervened.  Now, it is the misery of a crisis of that description, that the community in which it occurs suffers every way.  The men whose labours it actually loses are necessarily amongst the most conscientious, and, therefore, the most valuable, of its ministers; and those who stay behind have their usefulness impaired by the stigma which is cast upon their motives.  For, if there are two men under precisely the same obligations, and one of them feels compelled for conscience’ sake to surrender all his worldly prospects, people will never be persuaded that the other, who does not follow the same example, has not sacrificed his convictions to his material interests.  We have seen many instances in our own time in which this has occurred.  Even at this moment many good Churchmen are reproached with a love of filthy lucre because they do not follow a few who once thought with them, but who have apostatized from the faith of their fathers; whereas, if there be a man in the world to whom secession under any pretext is impossible it is the consistent Anglican—the distinguishing tenet of whose school is the spiritual equality of bishops, and the consequent indefeasible authority of that episcopal line which has from time immemorial been in possession of a given country.  In England, the existing Romanist succession was avowedly created by a Papal bull in the year 1850; and it is, therefore, on the face of it, an intrusion, and a usurpation of the rights which are inherent in the representatives of St. Austin and St. Anselm.  Yet, because a few Anglicans have become Ultramontanists—a step which involved to them as distinct a giving up of all their former principles as it would have been for a Catholic to become a Socinian—the “High Church” clergy are reviled for retaining their benefices, and declining to follow the footsteps of a Faber and a Newman!  In like manner, we may be sure that those Clergymen who conscientiously felt that they might withdraw their allegiance from King James, reaped a loss of influence for good, even among the partisans of King William.  Close upon the Nonjuring troubles followed the scandalous attempt of the Hanoverian Government to undermine the faith of the Church by means of improper episcopal appointments, its resistance by the inferior clergy, and the consequent suppression of Convocation.  The mischief to which this most unconstitutional step has given rise can hardly be overrated.  We can scarcely conceive the confusion and p. 5corruption which would creep into the body politic if Parliament were forcibly silenced for a whole century; and there is no reason why the English Church should prosper without representative institutions and free speech any more than the English nation.  Under any circumstances, the Church, deprived of her parliament, must have greatly suffered; much more so in the face of those vast changes which have come about in the extent and distribution of the population.  The machinery of the existing Church Establishment was designed for a population of five or six million souls.  By 1821 the inhabitants of this country had increased to twelve millions.  A new population exceeding the old one had thus been introduced, for which the Church as a body had no means of providing a single additional bishop or a single new sitting.  Had the increase been evenly spread over the country the mischief would not have been so great; but, unfortunately, the new population chose all kinds of out-of-the-way places in which to settle.  A rural parish suddenly found itself a metropolis; and a district, once traversed only by the shepherd or the ploughboy, became the teeming hive of manufacturing industry.  In such a state of things the parochial system—perfect as it is where the Church has wholly subdued a country—miserably broke down.  A signal failure was in fact inevitable; for what were the solitary parish priests of Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford, St. Pancras, St. Marylebone, Islington, or Lambeth, amongst so many!  For all practical purposes it may be asserted that at least half of the new population were as much beyond the reach of the Church of England as if they had settled in the woods of Canada or on the plains of Hindostan.  Year after year the evil went on increasing, until at last the number of Englishmen who did not belong to the Established Church became so great that a Parliament of Churchmen were obliged to surrender their exclusive right of legislation and government.  The prospects of the Church were at this time truly deplorable.  Its very existence as an establishment was doubtful.  The Whig Premier actually bade the bishops “set their house in order;” and the experiment of confiscation was begun.  Humanly speaking it was only the difficulty of disposing of the plunder that saved the Church of these realms.

The hour of danger, however, was not of long duration.  A new school of theologians arose, who boldly asserted that the Church was not a creature of the State, to be dealt with at the pleasure or convenience of politicians, but a Divine institution, with laws, privileges, and a polity of its own; and that the duty of extending its usefulness belonged to individual exertions not less than to the Legislature.  The effect of this new teaching, as it then appeared, was electric.  Churchmen no longer sat with hands folded in blank despair, or amused themselves with irrefutable demonstrations that Parliament ought to do something.  p. 6They set to work themselves.  Sometimes it was the clergy who stimulated the laity; sometimes it was the laity who applied a gentle compulsion to the clergy.  Churches, parsonages, and schools began to spring up in every direction, with a rapidity that would have borne comparison with the palmiest days of the mediæval builders.  The ancient indigenous architecture of the country, and its cognate arts, were in a manner rediscovered, and were brought to a perfection scarcely less than that attained by the greatest masters of antiquity.  Indeed, the spread of this new science of ecclesiology has been not the least marvel of the present century.  It has pervaded every part of the community; it has slain outright the bastard classicalism of the Age of Pigtail; and it has reproduced itself in the Puginism of the Romanists, and the Ruskinism of Dissent.  It has even crossed the Channel, and appeared in the very centre of European taste—in Paris itself—the fount and origin of the whole vast movement being the work of church-building and restoration in this country, which has proved a school of art more effective, because on an infinitely larger scale, than any which modern times have witnessed.

All this has been, moreover, but the symbol of a greater and yet more gratifying change—the gradual rehabilitation of the Church’s character.  Never since the Reformation did it occupy so high a position as that to which it had attained two or three years ago.  Old scandals, and old epithets of abuse founded upon them, had alike disappeared.  We read of Parson Trulliber with much the same feeling of incredulous amazement as we perused the accounts of Professor Owen’s extinct monsters; and we should have looked upon the person who indulged in the sort of Billingsgate which was common half a century ago as if another Rip Van Winkle had stood before us.  The ingenious calculations in which demagogues of the last generation used to indulge, with regard to what might be done with the ecclesiastical revenues, seemed like prospectuses of the South Sea Company.  The very Horsmans, like their Puritan prototypes who made war on the King in the King’s name, had begun to profess a desire only to increase the Church’s efficiency.  The Anti-State-Church Society itself, borne away by the spirit of the times, adopted a clumsy euphemism for its old out-spoken title.  It no longer sought to destroy “the State Church”—its object was the “Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control.”

Once more, alas! the sky has changed.  What the public now think of the Church, it would be difficult exactly to say; but that a strong re-action has set in, it would be vain to deny.  There seems to be an impression abroad that the Church has been taking credit for far more than she was entitled to; that she has had a last trial allowed her, whether she would regain her place as the Church of the people; that her day of grace p. 7has passed, and that she has been found wanting.  Political Dissent, which had fallen into a state of such ludicrous obscurity, has suddenly revived, and in a Parliament elected under Lord Derby has achieved what it could never do even in the worst times which followed the passing of the Reform Bill—it has effected a lodgment in the Universities.  It has several times carried resolutions adverse to Churchrates.  The demands of Mr. Pellatt are now granted almost as a matter of course; and not only so, but the very Government goes out of its way to flatter the prejudices of the Nonconformist.  Thus, the Solicitor-General brings in a Testamentary Jurisdiction Bill, which would saddle the country with an enormous annual charge in the shape of compensations; the sole object being to afford Dissenters the gratification of reading at the commencement of their probates the words “Victoria, by the Grace of God, Queen,” instead of “John Bird, by Divine Providence, Archbishop.”  Some of the concessions which have been made to “the rights of conscience” are absolutely ludicrous.  For example, young ladies and gentlemen of the different denominations complain that ill-natured people call their weddings “workhouse marriages.”  A remedy is instantly found, at the risk of establishing a Gretna Green in every Dissenting place of worship.  In a word, the Legislature seems to say to Dissent “Ask and have.”  Very different is the tone both of Parliament and of the Executive, towards the Church.  The prayer of the Convocation for permission to reform its constitution is, notwithstanding the plighted faith of the Crown, peremptorily refused.  The Royal Letters on behalf of the Church Societies are stopped; the bill drawn up by the bishops to enfranchise the Colonial Church is rejected.  It is perhaps hardly worth while to speak of various shabby acts with regard to money votes, such as the withdrawal of the grants to the Bishop of New Zealand and to the Scottish Church; but the animus which dictated them is only too obvious.  After all, however, the saddest evidence that the public feeling has undergone a great change is to be found in the Education Bill of Sir John Pakington.  Every one knows how fast the Church was becoming, in fact, what she is in theory, the instructress of the people; and till lately no Churchman could have been found to suggest any material alteration in a system which was bringing forth such gratifying fruits.  Suddenly, however, Sir John is seized with a panic.  The task appears in his eyes to be utterly hopeless, and he brings in a bill which would have destroyed the distinctive character of Church schools, and would have deprived Churchmen of all share (save that of paying school taxes) in the education of every district in which they could not command an absolute majority!

That the Church is inefficient, every one now seems to take for granted—the only matter in dispute is, what has been the cause?  Of course the p. 8fault is always laid at the door of the Clergy; but it is amusing to observe the perplexity which appears to be felt as to the manner in which the indictment against them should be framed.  Sometimes the charge is that they cannot preach—just as if orators were a whit more plentiful at the bar or in the senate, on the stage or in the Dissenting pulpit.  Sometimes we are told that the Clergy are not abler men because they are not better paid.  We have actually lived to see it stated by the Times, that the Clergy of the Church of England—the men who a few short years ago were reported to be rolling in wealth—are worse rewarded in this life than persons belonging to any other profession whatever!

The object of the present essay is to strike at the very first step in the sorites—to show that the Church, since the great revival, so far from having proved a failure, has proved herself more than equal to the situation; and finally to point out how grievously both the public and the Legislature have been deceived by the data which have been published for their guidance.

It need hardly be observed that the unfavourable impression to which allusion has been made has been entirely created by Mr. Horace Mann’s Report on the Census of Religious Worship.  That report has been assailed by the Bishop of Oxford, and other right reverend prelates; but their strictures, it is respectfully submitted, do not go quite to the point.  It is not the account given of the present relative positions of Church and Dissent which has done the mischief.  Every one knew that the Church was strongest in the country and Dissent in the towns; and seeing that the rural and the urban population were about equal, the public could scarcely be surprised to learn that the two bodies were also of nearly equal strength.  According to the census, the Church had in 1851, 5,317,915 sittings, and the Dissenters 4,894,648; but the Bishop of Oxford has shown that there are good reasons for believing that the Church sittings have been unfairly diminished, while those belonging to Dissenters have been much exaggerated.  On that point the writer will only add that the number of sittings assigned to the Churches in the tables relating to one large town, the only one he has had occasion to verify, is not above three-fourths of the real amount.

The total number of attendants at Church on the census morning was 2,541,244, against 2,106,238 in the meeting-houses.  Now, without pressing any objection that might be made to these figures on the score of dishonesty in the returns, it must be obvious that they do not fairly represent the average attendance.  In the first place, such institutions as the colleges at the Universities are not taken into account.  In the next place, no reference is made to such places as the workhouses, in most of which service is performed by a chaplain, and from which the dissenting inmates are allowed to attend the meeting-houses of their respective p. 9communities.  Thirdly, the weather on the census Sunday was very inclement, and while the attendance generally would, no doubt, be less than an average, the effect would, beyond all controversy, be much more felt in Churches than in meeting-houses.  The strength of the Church, it has already been said, is in the country, and it is quite a different thing in bad weather to walk a few hundred yards along a well-paved street, and to trudge a mile down a muddy lane.  Fourthly, the attendants at all the morning masses in Roman Catholic chapels are returned, whereas it is well known that devout persons of that persuasion often “assist” at more than one mass on the same morning.  Those persons have thus been counted twice over.  Lastly, the day on which the census was taken was Mid-Lent Sunday, on which rustics in the northern counties are accustomed to pay visits to their friends instead of attending Divine service.  That, in its degree, would also act unfavourably on the church-going of the census Sunday.  If, therefore, we said that on ordinary occasions there were three quarters of a million more people at church on Sunday mornings in 1851 than in all the dissenting places of worship put together, we should probably not be overstating the case; and there would certainly be nothing in a state of things like that to account for any alteration in the public sentiment.

When, however, we come to look at the statements made as to the relative progress of the two bodies during the last half century our wonder at the change which has taken place in public opinion ceases.  The following results, compiled from Tables 5 and 13 of Mr. Mann’s Report, will exhibit at a glance the amount of population and the number of sittings in 1801, as well as the subsequent increase at each decennial period since then:—

So that during the last ten years, while the Church was supposed to be making unheard-of exertions, the amount of new accommodation she really provided was not one-half of that supplied by the dissenting bodies!  The Wesleyan sects alone provided no less than 630,498 sittings, against the 542,079 found by the Church!  The case may be made yet more clear from the following table, which p. 10exhibits the number of sittings provided at each period for every thousand of the population:—

So that while the Church has lost 185 sittings, Dissent has gained 174.  In other words, the Church has experienced a total relative loss of 359 sittings per thousand of the population during the last 50 years.  Even since 1831 her loss, as compared with Dissent, has not been less than 118 per thousand!

Comment on this would be superfluous.  If such be really the state of the case it would be idle to waste time in wrangling over inaccuracies in the returns.  If Dissent is gaining on the Church at the rate of 50,000, sittings per year, whatever may be wrong in the present totals must soon be corrected; and the Church must make up its mind, ere long, to sink down into a minority.

The only question is, does the Census Report state the truth?  It does not.  On the contrary, it states the very reverse of the truth.  It is not merely inaccurate, but altogether false.  Mr. Mann’s figures—although they have hitherto been accepted on all sides as if they were “proofs of Holy Writ”—rest upon no positive data whatever.  So far, indeed, are they from possessing any claim upon the confidence of the public, the smallest effort of common sense, the most transient recollection of principles laid down by the immortal Cocker, would have warned Mr. Mann that the process he has adopted could not possibly lead to a correct result.

It appears that as soon as the 30,610 districts into which the country was divided for the purposes of the census had been marked out, the enumerator in each was directed to return to the head office a list of all the places of worship within his jurisdiction.  The result was to obtain information respecting 14,077 churches or chapels, and 20,390 dissenting meetings.  Circulars were then sent out to the clergy, the ministers, or other official persons, requesting to know, amongst other things, the number of attendants on Sunday, the 30th of March, 1851, the number of sittings, and the date at which the building was erected, or first appropriated to religious worship (if since 1801).  The report adds that—“When delivering the schedules to the proper parties, the enumerators told them it was not compulsory upon them to reply to the inquiries; but that their compliance with the invitation was entirely left to their own sense of the importance and the value to the public of the information sought.”  As might have been expected there were very many instances p. 11in which no returns were made.  These instances were “principally places of worship in connexion with the Church of England,—several of the clergy having entertained some scruples about complying with an invitation not proceeding from episcopal authority.  In all such cases, a second application was made direct from the Census-office, and this generally was favoured by a courteous return of the particulars desired.  The few remaining cases were remitted to the registrar, who either got the necessary information from the secular officers of the church, or else supplied, from his own knowledge, or from the most attainable and accurate sources, an estimate of the number of sittings and of the usual congregation.”  After all, the number of sittings could not be obtained in 2,134 cases, the number of attendants in 1,004, and the number either of sittings or attendants in 390.

With regard to the tables more immediately under notice, namely those which profess to show the comparative progress of Church and Dissent during the last half-century, the mode of proceeding was as follows:—The buildings were first of all arranged under six heads—those erected or appropriated to religious purposes prior to 1801, and those erected or so appropriated during five subsequent periods.  Thus:—

Mr. Mann’s next step was to distribute the last line amongst the six previous ones, “according to the proportion which the number actually assigned to each of the intervals bears towards the total having dates assigned at all.”  Multiplying the results so arrived at by the present average number of sittings in churches (377), and by that in Dissenting meeting houses (240), Mr. Mann obtained two tables (5 and 13) of which the following is a summary:—

It would be uncandid not to state that Mr. Mann admits this estimate to be open to some objection.  His words are:—“It is probable that an inference as to the position of affairs in former times can be drawn from p. 12the dates of existing buildings with more correctness in the ease of the Church of England, as the edifices are more permanent and less likely to change hands than are the buildings used by the dissenters.  Still there is a possibility that too great an amount of accommodation has been ascribed to the earlier periods.”  The tables are, therefore, to be taken with a “certain degree of qualification from this cause.”  With respect to the Nonconformists, he observes in a note:—“In 1801, according to the estimate from dates, * * * the Dissenters had only 3,701 buildings.  This, however, is scarcely probable, and seems to prove that many Dissenters’ buildings, existing in former years, have since become disused, or have been replaced by others.  As so much depends upon the extent to which this disuse and substitution have prevailed, these calculations, in the absence of any facts upon those points, must necessarily be open to some doubts.”  Now, it may be taken for granted that no one reading these very mild qualifications would suppose that they were intended to cover any serious error.  Everybody would conclude that the mere fact of Mr. Mann’s tables appearing in a grave public document was a guarantee that they were in the main correct.  Indeed, the suspicion that they were not perfectly trustworthy never seemed to have entered into anyone’s head.  The Society for the Liberation of Religion lost no time in issuing a manifesto grounded upon them, and the dissenting prints have dwelt on them with great emphasis.  Thus the Patriot, some time ago, declared, with a sort of oath, that “as surely as the morrow’s sun would rise,” so surely would Dissent be in a majority at the next census.  On the faith of these tables, too, Mr. Hadfield announced, at the close of last session, that a spirit was growing up which would not much longer tolerate such an abomination as a religious establishment; and Mr. Gurney, in his sermon at the consecration of the Bishops of Gloucester and Christchurch, admitted that Dissent was gaining ground.

Proceeding, without further comment, to examine the Tables in detail, it must be remarked that Mr. Mann’s formula for distributing the dateless buildings is open to very strong objections.  It is not, however, necessary to enter upon those objections at this point, because the operation of the rule with regard to the churches (which shall be dealt with first) happens by accident to be very nearly right—the number assigned to the year 1831 corresponding pretty closely with the number arrived at by the census inquiries in that year.  Mr. Mann’s next step, however, is begging the question with a vengeance.  The circumstance that churches now-a-days contain on the average 377 sittings, affords not the least ground for supposing that the average capacity of churches was 377, fifty years ago.  On the contrary, it is absolutely impossible, from the nature of church extension in modern times, that the average p. 13should have remained stationary.  First of all, everybody knows that churches in large towns are, generally speaking, much more spacious than those in the rest of the country; and unless, therefore, the proportion of large town and country churches has remained exactly the same, the general average capacity of churches must have been disturbed.  Mr. Mann’s Table 14 deprives him of any excuse he might have had for overlooking this obvious fact.  From that table we learn that there were in 1851:—

—exactly the same as in the general table given above.  In 1801, however, matters were different.  There were then—

The number of churches is the same as in the general table, but the number of sittings is less by 158,198.  The discrepancy, however, is soon explained.  The average capacity of the larger town churches is 577 sittings, or 200 above the general average, while that of the country churches is 312, or only 65 less; and, while as many as 1,294 new buildings of the former class have been erected, the number of the latter class has only been 1,404.  On Mr. Mann’s own showing, therefore, his principle is erroneous, and his Table 13 has cheated the Church of nearly 160,000 sittings.  But this is by no means the whole of the injustice of which he has been guilty.  Not merely have there been more churches built in large towns than is consistent with maintaining the old average on the country at large, but the new structures both in town and country are of far greater dimensions than those anciently erected.  An Englishman is not naturally fond of large communities of any kind.  He has a passion for privacy; and his pet phrases are “snug,” “nice little,” “not numerous, but select.”  This feeling breaks out in everything.  Take the matter of lodging.  Abroad, many families club together, and occupy a mansion.  The plan has been tried in this country; but it meets with little success.  Most men would regard themselves as “flats” indeed, if they put up with a floor when they could get a house; and working men regard model lodging-houses as little better than barracks, or, as they still term them, “bastiles.”  So in ecclesiastical arrangements, John Bull, looking upon the parish as but an extension of the family, cannot have it too little for his taste.  Abroad, the parish is regarded more in the light of a city within a city; and hence parochial churches on the continent were always less numerous and far p. 14larger than was anciently the case in this country.  Even when we had large churches they were not fitted up for many worshippers—size being regarded more a matter of dignity than of practical utility.  London, before the Great Fire, with its vast cathedral, and its hundred and ten parish churches; or Norwich, with its spacious minster, and its forty churches, fairly represent the true English idea.  In modern times, however, we are forced to act differently.  The sudden increase of population, and the utter unpreparedness of the Church to grapple with the difficulty, have produced an emergency of which our forefathers had no experience.  We adopt the continental custom from sheer necessity, just as in London a third of the population are obliged, though much against their will, to live in lodgings.  We build our churches large because that is the cheapest mode of supplying our immediate wants.  The two systems may be well illustrated by contrasting Norwich, with its 41 churches and 17,000 sittings, with Manchester, which has 32 churches and 44,000 sittings; or by comparing the City with its 73 churches and 42,000 sittings with the Tower Hamlets which have 65 churches and 68,000 sittings.  The census tables contain many materials for an inferential argument with regard to the size of our new churches, but it is hardly necessary to pursue the matter further, because we have ample direct evidence bearing upon the point.  The Metropolis Church Building Society has assisted in the erection of 85 churches, which contain 106,000 sittings, or an average of 1,247 each.  The Church Building Commissioners have aided 520 churches, and have thus assisted in providing 565,780 sittings, which would give an average of 1,088 each.  Even Mr. Mann himself admits, with amusing naïveté, that “for many reasons the churches in large towns are constructed of considerable size, and rarely with accommodation for less than 1,000 persons!”  [Report page clxii.]  Precisely the same reasoning will apply to the Church extension of the rural districts; and the reader who has duly weighed the facts just stated will be little disposed to doubt that in both cases the average size of modern churches is at least double that of the churches which were in existence prior to 1801.  On that hypothesis it would be found by an easy arithmetical problem that the capacity of town churches, in 1801, was 420 sittings, and of country ones, 276.  The increase in the former class would thus have been 1,086,960 sittings, and in the latter 775,008—making together 1,861,968.  Probably it was much more; but at all events the calculation omits a very important element, namely, the new sittings which have been obtained by the enlargement or the re-arrangement of old fabrics.  From the statistics of above a score of Church Building Societies, it would appear that for every additional structure at least two old ones are rebuilt or enlarged.  There must thus have been at least 5,000 of these cases; and though p. 15there are no accessible data on which to calculate the amount of new accommodation in this manner afforded, it must have been very considerable.

On the whole, therefore, we may safely adopt the statistics of the Incorporated Society for Building and Enlarging Churches as our guide.  This society has laboured impartially for the advantage of town and country; and up to the year 1851 it had assisted in erecting 884 new churches, and in rebuilding or enlarging 2,174 old ones.  The total amount of new sittings it had thus been instrumental in providing was 835,000; so that each new church would represent an increase of accommodation to the extent of 944 sittings.  As, however, the society probably assisted the more urgent cases, it would perhaps be safer to assume that each new church has only represented an increase of 850 new sittings—in other words, that the new churches not assisted by the society represent about 800 each.  The result will then be as follows:—

Turning now to the Dissenting tables, we shall find that Mr. Mann’s formula leads to still more absurd results than when it is applied to the churches.  It has, however, the curious felicity of operating in the two cases in a manner diametrically opposite; for while it robs the Church of more than half the new accommodation which she has provided, it obligingly credits Dissent with about the same number of sittings, to which it has not the ghost of a claim.

It is the proper place to offer here a few remarks upon the mode which has been adopted for distributing the dateless buildings amongst the six periods.  Every one is, of course, aware that in many cases “there is much virtue” in an average.  In such problems as determining the number of letters which will be posted in a given year without being addressed, it operates with almost infallible certainty.  But it must be clear that 2,428 out of 20,390 places could not have been returned without dates by mere accident.  In a large proportion of cases the omission must have been intentional; and it is obvious that those cases would include very few new buildings.  The enumerators, being all persons possessed of local knowledge, could have had no difficulty in determining whether a building had or had not been erected within the last ten, twenty, or thirty years.  It would only be in cases where the p. 16structure was of what is called in ladies’ sometimes “a certain,” sometimes “an uncertain” age, that they would be unable to ascertain when it was erected or appropriated to public worship.  The number of such instances would bear no relation whatever to the number having dates assigned.  The case is wholly beyond the province of the Rule of Three; and to attempt to adjust the table by means of proportion is, on the face of it, unfair.  Out of the 2,118 dateless churches, no fewer than 1,712 are relegated to the number of those erected before 1801, whereas of the 2,428 dateless meeting-houses, only 465 would be placed in the same category.  In point of fact, however, there are not so many; for Mr. Mann has hit on a plan, which is a miracle of perverse ingenuity, in order to make the growth of Dissent during the half century look larger than ever.  Ninety-nine persons out of a hundred would have applied the rule first to the churches, then to the meeting-houses, and then they would have added the results together.  Mr. Mann has adopted precisely the opposite course.  He has, first of all, dealt with the total column, then with the Church, and he has lastly subtracted the one set of results from the other.  The consequence is he has assigned no more than 274 of the dateless meeting-houses to the period before 1801.  The total number he has distributed amongst the first three periods is only 737, whereas he has divided no fewer than 1,691 amongst the last three.  It need scarcely be said that all the probabilities would be all in favour of reversing the process.

At the outset, therefore, Mr. Mann’s estimate comes before us under circumstances of extreme suspicion; but, granting, for the sake of argument, that his distribution of the existing meeting-houses were correct, it must be obvious that any inference from dates would be preposterous unless we could be certain that there were no buildings in existence at the earlier periods, other than those included in the table.  It has been seen that Mr. Mann has not overlooked this circumstance.  He admits that the small number assigned to 1801 “seems to prove that many dissenters’ buildings existing in former years have since become disused or have been replaced by others;” but no one would suspect from this statement the vast number of these disused buildings.  Take, for example, the case of Nottingham.  From Mr. Wylie’s local history it would appear that of the 29 meeting-houses returned to the Census Office, only six dated back to the commencement of the present century.  In other words, dissent in Nottingham, on Mr. Mann’s hypothesis, all but quintupled itself during the 50 years.  In point of fact, however, there were, not six, but thirteen or fourteen, dissenting congregations in 1801, and probably several more whose “memorial has perished with them.”

The absurdity of the Census estimate may be still further illustrated p. 17by a reference once more to Tables 6 and 14.  Those tables are to Mr. Mann’s calculation not very different from the proof of an addition sum.  If his estimate were right they would agree with Tables 5 and 13; but instead of doing so, they lead to the following astounding results:—In 1851, there were in the

This is, of course, quite correct.  But now see what the tables say of 1801—

The late Mr. Hume’s emphatic appreciation of a certain “modest assurance” as a means towards getting through life will be remembered.  How the lamented sage would have envied the courage of Mr. Mann in putting his name to a document embodying these statements!  It is really much the same as if the Astronomer Royal had presented to Parliament an elaborate calculation, signed with his proper name, in which he proved the diameter of the earth to be 25,000 miles, and its circumference 8,000!  Seriously, the very least one might have expected from a public servant performing an important official duty would have been to abandon calculations which he must have observed led to nonsensical consequences; and not to put forth statements which, while they involved a gross libel upon the most venerable institution in the country, were calculated to prove, as they have proved, so fatally misleading.  These very Tables 6 and 14 are of great importance.  We are constantly hearing that the great towns monopolise the intelligence of the age, and that it is they which are to govern the country.  What then, has been the verdict of the great towns on the question—Church versus Dissent?  According to these tables, the Church, in the large towns, has provided only 747,027 sittings to meet an increase in the population of 5,621,096 souls.  Dissent, in the meantime, has furnished 1,873,305, or more than twice as many.  The Church’s increase is not two-thirds the number of sittings she originally possessed; the increase of Dissent is more than sevenfold!  If these figures were only correct, it would hardly be possible to conceive a more complete condemnation of the Church’s system; if they are not—and there is no reason to think that Dissent has materially altered its position in the large towns since 1801—it is impossible to imagine a more scandalous or a more gratuitous calumny.

Mr. Mann’s formula proving utterly untrustworthy, the question arises, are there any data on which a substantially correct notion of the number of Dissenting sittings in 1801 may be arrived at?  To the writer, it appears that there are.  Thus, from the statistics of the different p. 18Wesleyan bodies appended to Mr. Mann’s report, it would appear that the old and new Connections in 1801 had at least 100,000 members.  It would further appear, that for every member the Wesleyans have about four sittings, so that in 1801 the Wesleyans must have had at least 400,000 sittings.  The next question is, what proportion did the Wesleyans bear to the aggregate Nonconformity of 1801?  At present, the Wesleyan sects have about 11/24ths of the entire number of Dissenting sittings; but their ratio of progress has confessedly been double that of their fellow Nonconformists.  Mr. Mann’s process of calculating from dates, unsatisfactory as it is in other respects, may, perhaps, be allowed to decide how much of the entire Dissenting accommodation of 1801 was possessed by the Wesleyan bodies.  According to table 17, the old and new Connections had between them only 165,000 sittings, out of the 881,240.  It has been shown, however, that they had, in reality, not less than 400,000; and, raising the sittings belonging to the other sects in the same proportion, we get a total of 2,136,339.  This result receives complete corroboration from Mr. Mann’s own returns.  First of all, it is clear that meeting-houses which have remained in existence half a century must be buildings of some importance.  Dissenting places of worship are of two classes—those which have regular congregations and a regular ministry attached to them, and those which are merely temporary preaching stations.  The number of these latter will surprise the reader.  Mr. Edward Baines, in his evidence before the Churchrates Committee, estimated that no fewer than 7,360 of the 19,000 which he supposed belonged to “the three denominations” were of this description.  The total number of mere preaching stations, however, may be easily ascertained.  It may be safely assumed that all places which have a regular ministry are opened both on Sunday mornings and on Sunday afternoons or evenings.  The total number of this class in 1851 was only 10,583; so that each would represent an average of 462 sittings.  Now, as the number of Dissenting places of worship which date back to 1801 cannot be less, even if calculated on Mr. Mann’s principle, than 3900, the number of sittings in that year must have been upwards of 1,800,000.  But it would be a great fallacy to suppose that even first-class Dissenting congregations are exempt from the tendency to decay and disappear.  If Nottingham may be taken as a fair example, it would seem that not two-thirds of the regularly organised congregations existing in 1801 survive to this day.  The total number of sittings at the commencement of the present century would thus be at least 2,700,000.

The matter does not, however, rest even here.  These estimates are purely conjectural; but since the writer first turned his attention to the subject, a valuable piece of positive evidence has fallen in his way.  It p. 19is a Parliamentary return obtained by Mr. Bright last year, which professes to show the number of places of worship licensed under the Toleration Act.  It is very imperfect in its earlier tables, but those since 1800 seem to be tolerably complete.  Comparing the number of places licensed during each of the last five decennial periods with the number of existing buildings returned to Mr. Mann as opened in each, we get the following remarkable results:—[19]

This is a comparison which cannot fail to startle the editor of the Patriot, and to shake the nerves of the Society for the Liberation of Religion.  It proves beyond the possibility of cavil that the enormous and constantly increasing growth which Mr. Mann’s tables assign to modern Dissent is “a mockery, a delusion, and a snare.”  It shows, moreover (which is the matter more immediately in hand), that barely two in seven (21/75ths) of the Dissenting places of worship which were in existence in 1801, are still remaining.  The number of such places was not 3,701, as Mr. Mann states, but between 13,000 and 14,000; and the estimate of sittings first made, after every conceivable allowance for increase of average capacity, and other sources of error, is thus greatly under rather than over the mark.  The Dissenting increase may, therefore, be safely taken at 2,758,309 sittings instead of 4,013,408; and if it be distributed according to the proportion of places licensed, matters will stand thus:—

If it be objected that the average capacity of Dissenting buildings has increased of late years, there are two answers—first, there is no evidence of such increase to any material extent; and, secondly, that there is an antagonistic influence at work, which would counterbalance such increase if it existed.  It must be clear that the number of “causes” which annually collapse becomes greater in the same ratio as the congregations themselves increase.  Thus, almost the same number of places were licensed in the ten years ending 1810 as in the same period ending 1850; but the number of places discontinued out of 13,000 would obviously be p. 20less than the number discontinued out of, say 18,500; so that unless the new Dissenting meeting-houses are larger nowadays than was formerly the case, the amount of sittings attributed to the latter periods is too large, rather than too small.

We have now materials for the reconstruction of our table:—

The number of sittings per thousand of the population was, at the different periods, as follows:—

Thus it will be seen that every inference drawn from Mr. Mann’s tables has proved false.

Dissent has not, during the half century, supplied four times as much new accommodation as the Church—if it has supplied any more at all, the excess does not amount to a fourth.

Dissent has not, during the last 20 years, supplied three times as much accommodation as the Church—it has barely supplied half as much.

Dissent is not advancing at a pace twice as rapid as the Church; on the contrary, the Church is advancing at nearly three times the speed of Dissent.

Dissent has not improved its position, and the Church has not lost position since 1831; on the contrary, the Church has gained, and Dissent has lost, ground since that year.

Finally, as churches, save only where there is an excess of accommodation as compared with the population, are at least as well attended as dissenting places of worship, the charge of comparative inefficiency which has been so rashly brought against the clergy proves to be utterly without foundation.

Here, then, the present inquiry might be brought to a close; and yet it would be palpably unfair to the Church to rest the case upon a mere comparison of the additional sittings supplied by her rivals and by herself.  A new church, generally speaking, means a very different thing from a p. 21new meeting-house.  It means a substantially built and even highly-decorative structure, the freehold of which is the property of the community to which it belongs; it means decent and becoming furniture for the performance of divine service; provision for a properly educated minister in perpetuity; service performed at least twice every Sunday, or even twice every day; a house for the resident minister; a day-school, or rather a group of day-schools; and a host of other benevolent and educational agencies.  If the establishment of the day-school be taken as a criterion how far the parochial machinery has been completed, the following table from the report of the Educational Census will be instructive:—

Day Schools Supported by Religious Bodies.

What, on the other hand, is the status of a majority of the 20,390 buildings returned to the Census office as “chapels” may be guessed from the fact that the total number of professional dissenting ministers of every description in 1851 was only 8,658.

A very tangible mode of settling the question which body has done most to evangelise the people would be to inquire how much each has spent?  The “Society for the Liberation of Religion,” in a tract they have put forth, grounded on the Census report, states that the achievements of voluntaryism during the half century have been “astonishing.”  On the authority of Mr. Edward Baines, they assume that of the 16,689 dissenting chapels opened since 1801, “only” 10,000 are separate buildings, and that the cost of each has been “but” £1,500—in other words, that dissenters have spent £15,000,000 on their meeting-houses during the last fifty years!  That would, indeed, be an “astonishing” result, but it is not half so surprising as the perfervid imagination which dictated the calculation.  In point of fact, it is equivalent to saying that the dissenters have provided three millions of permanent sittings, at the rate of five pounds per sitting.  The real truth, however, is that they have not supplied more than two millions and three quarters of new sittings of any kind; and when it is considered in how many cases opening a new meeting-house means hiring a room or building, in the popular phrase, “on tick”; when it is further borne in mind that the average cost of churches is not above £5 or £6 per sitting, it will be admitted that five or six millions sterling would be a remarkably liberal sum to put down for the amount really raised by dissenters for the purpose of self-extension p. 22during the half century.  On the other hand, the sum which must have been spent on churches cannot have been less than ten or twelve millions—of which one-half has been raised during the ten years 1841–51.  The expenditure on church extension at the present moment is at least five times as great as that of all the dissenters put together.

The votaries of Iscariotism, or the “cheap and nasty” in religion, will perhaps turn this fact to account, and abuse Churchmen for lavishing such large sums of money on a few buildings, while there is so much spiritual destitution calling for relief.  They will perhaps say, “Look what an amount of spiritual agency the Dissenters bring to bear for half the sum you expend; and, after all, the Dissenters ‘get more out of’ their buildings than Churchmen.”  At first sight, Mr. Mann’s tables appear to justify this assertion; but here, as in every other respect, they only mislead.  According to Table 16 there were on the Census Sunday 190 services in every 100 dissenting places of worship; whereas, there were only 171 in the same number of churches.  But if this table be any criterion, it would appear that the machinery of Dissent is, by comparison, more efficient in the rural districts than in the towns; for while the Non-conformists opened their town buildings on the average 2.10 times, and the Churchmen 2.06 times, they opened their country buildings 1.84 times and the Churchmen only 1.64 times.  Yet it must be obvious that the proportion of country congregations which possess a regular ministry must be very small, the greater part of the 8,658 professional Dissenting preachers being required for the towns.  The fact is, the majority of country meeting-houses are served by non-professional persons.  As soon as the morning service is over in the towns, a swarm of “Spiritual Bashi-Bazooks,” issue forth, who, for the rest of the day, play the more ambitious, if not more edifying, rôle of preacher.  The sort of congregations to which they minister may be gathered from a comparison of the number of meeting-houses and the number of sittings open at the different periods of the day:—

So that in the afternoon, with only 537 fewer places open, the number of sittings was 1,139,759 fewer than in the morning.  In the evening (when, of course, all the more important buildings which were open in the morning were again accessible to the public) the exertions of 3,744 additional preachers, nearly a third more, only rendered available 337,850 additional sittings, or about one-eleventh more; and they attracted only 97,668 additional hearers, an increase of less than one in twenty-one!  It may, perhaps, be allowable to doubt whether the labours of non-resident, non-professional preachers can be attended with any p. 23results worth speaking of; but, at all events, their irregular ministrations can have no real bearing on the question whether the regular meeting-houses are used more or less frequently than the churches.  Obviously, the fairest way would be to inquire which class of buildings are opened the oftener throughout the whole week; and, in that case, there is no doubt that the comparison would show greatly in favour of the churches.  If, however, we must confine ourselves to Sunday, the proper question to ask would be—in how many cases there is a service before, and another after, noon?  The answer, according to Table 16, would be as follows:—

If the investigation could be limited to the new accommodation, the result would strikingly show that the extra outlay on the churches had in no sense been thrown away.

After all, the number of sittings a religious body can open in the morning is the real test of its strength.  Amongst persons of every denomination there is a strong feeling that they ought to frequent their own place of worship in the morning, but in the after part of the day many persons do not consider themselves called upon to attend again, or they feel themselves at liberty to visit other churches or meetings.  In short, to speak technically, the morning service is looked upon by everybody as a service of “obligation,” while all the rest are regarded as mere services of “devotion.”  Now, of the 5,317,915 sittings belonging to the Church, no fewer than 4,852,645 were actually available on the Census morning.  The remaining 465,270 were almost exclusively in the country, where one clergyman has still often to serve more than one parish or chapelry.  Cases of this kind have of late years been much diminished, owing to the operation of the Pluralities Act, and still more in consequence of the increased zeal, both of the clergy and the laity.  The Bishop of Salisbury stated in his primary charge that the number of churches in that diocese having two sermons on Sunday had increased during the episcopate of Dr. Denison (16 years) from 143 to 426; and the number having monthly communions from 35 to 181.  The increase in the number of church sittings during the past half century may be considered as nett, for there can be no doubt that nearly all the new buildings have the double service.  At all events, if there are any that have not, they are more than compensated for by those ancient churches where there was formerly only one service on the Lord’s Day, but where there are now two.  On the other hand, the Dissenters are not able to open quite three-fourths of their sittings on the Sunday morning; and as there is no reason whatever for supposing that their new accommodation p. 24is exempt from this deduction, we may subtract one-fourth from the gross number assigned in the tables to each period.

The following table, compiled on the assumption that 58 per cent. of the population might attend divine worship on any Sunday morning, will show at a glance the number of sittings really required at each decennial period, and the real provision made to supply the deficiency:—

Or, exhibiting the same results in a somewhat different form:—

Church loss since 1801, 17; Dissenting gain, 26: total Church loss, 43.

Church gain since 1831, 56; Dissenting loss, 9; total Church gain, 65.

This, then, is really the rate at which each body “is advancing in the path of self extension;” and the best proof of its accuracy is, that it exactly tallies with what one would have expected beforehand.  Mr. Mann’s tables, on the contrary, are absolutely incredible.  We must never forget, that during the Great Rebellion, Puritanism was actually the dominant faction; and even at the Restoration it cannot be supposed that the Dissenters were a small or an uninfluential class.  In 1662 no fewer than 2,000 ministers were ejected under the new Act of Uniformity; and as at the last census there were only 6405 professional Protestant Ministers, it will be seen that the ejected preachers alone formed a larger body, in comparison with the existing population, than the Protestant Dissenting Ministry does now.  It cannot be doubted that every one of those men had a greater or less following; and it must be remembered that in the days of the Commonwealth there was always a rabble of sects who might even then be called Dissenters.  It is true that, after the Restoration, Nonconformity was subjected to severe repressive laws, but those laws were not enforced with unvarying rigour.  In 1672 there was the Indulgence, and in 1681 the House of Commons passed a strong resolution against the prosecution of Protestant Dissenters.  Besides, after all, the Conventicle Acts only continued in force about 23 years—not much longer, in fact, than Episcopacy had p. 25been proscribed by law.  The natural result which would follow the famous proclamation of James II., and the subsequent passing of the Toleration Act, would be a great and sudden revival of Dissent.  How small was the church-feeling of Parliament at the Revolution may be gathered from a curious fact mentioned in Mr. Macaulay’s third volume.  It was proposed that the Commons should sit on Easter Monday.  The Churchmen vigorously protested against the innovation; but they did not dare to divide, and the House did sit on the festival in question.  Without at all straining the inference to be drawn from this incident, it would be difficult, indeed, to suppose that Churchmen had matters their own way.  Even under the penal laws, the Dissenters must have been a large body; for James the Second’s scheme for forming a coalition of Roman Catholic and Protestant Dissenters against the Establishment would have been stark folly unless the two bodies, when combined, would have made up, at least, a powerful minority.  From the Revolution to 1801 the Dissenters had more than a century to increase and multiply; and all the circumstances of the case were in their favour.  Worn out by the political struggles of a century and a half, during which she had been made the tool of contending factions; deprived of her Legislative powers; silenced and frowned upon by the powers that were, the Church had sunk into that fatal lethargy from which the present generation has only just seen her awake.  During that long and dreary period, all the prominent theologians, with a few bright exceptions, were either Dissenters or inclined to Dissent.  The eighteenth century, too, was the golden age of popular Nonconformist preachers.  Not to mention a host of smaller names, Wesley and Whitfield both rose, flourished, and died before its close.  And yet, if we are to believe Mr. Mann, the Dissenters in 1801 were a much smaller body, compared with the whole population, than they were under the penal laws! [25]  On the other hand, all who remember the obloquy and contempt under which the Church continued until the passing of the Reform Act, will reject, without a moment’s hesitation, the notion that, in 1831, she actually possessed more accommodation, in proportion to the population, than at the present day.  The change which has taken place in the popular sentiment towards her has not been caused by any document like this Census report, which suddenly appeared and disabused the public mind of its preconceived ideas.  It has, on the contrary, been brought about by the silent influence of those spectacles of zeal and self-denying liberality which have been witnessed p. 26in every corner of the land.  The Church has, in fact, lived down her traducers.  A hundred proverbs bear witness to the vast amount of good deeds which are required to remove an evil reputation; and yet Mr. Mann calls upon us to believe that the Establishment has achieved this, although, with all her numbers and all her wealth, she has not, since 1831, done so much as the Wesleyan sects alone, towards supplying the people with the means of religious instruction and worship!  One has no language to characterize such a daring attempt on the public credulity.  The most charitable hypothesis will be to conclude that Mr. Mann, though an arithmetician by his office, knows nothing about arithmetic; and so remit him to the consideration of Mr. Roebuck and the Administrative Reform Society. [26]

The inquiry through which the reader has been invited to travel will probably suggest several considerations; and first of all the importance of putting a stop to the statistical nuisance which has of late years flourished with so rank a growth.  Surely it is time that members of both Houses of Parliament, who resent so jealously any attempt on the part of Government officials to exceed or fall short of the precise instructions given them, in making returns, should raise their voices against the system of publishing with official statistics the crude, and, as it has been seen, the nonsensical but pernicious theorizings of the persons entrusted with the task of compiling reports.  Like Mr. Mantalini, the majority of persons never trouble themselves to examine a numerical process, but content themselves with simply asking what is the total; and it therefore becomes the duty of Parliament to see that the unsuspecting confidence of the public is not abused.  The reader must not suppose that the Report on Religious Worship is the only recent one which is open to objection.  The Census Report on Schools is just as full of fallacies; and it has certainly been one of the strangest phenomena ever witnessed in the history of public discussion, that the schemes of Lord John Russell and Sir John Pakington, assailed as they were on p. 27every side, should have escaped what would, after all, have been the most effective blow that could have been aimed against them—the simple but conclusive fact, so easily deducible from the premises of the Report on Schools, that nearly as many children were under education as could be induced to attend unless they were driven to the class of the teacher by the policeman’s staff. [27]

Again, the inquiry will probably satisfy the reader that the anti-Church legislation of the day ought to proceed no further.  It is easy to assign the cause which in the first instance gave it birth.  Most statesmen, it may be presumed, will be ready to adopt, with regard to the multifarious sects of modern Christianity, the last clause, at least, of Gibbon’s famous dictum respecting the ancient religions of Pagan Rome—“to the people equally true, to the philosopher equally false, to the magistrate equally useful.”  Persons who profess with sincerity almost any form of Christian doctrine are comparatively easy to govern; they throw but a light burden upon the poor-rate and they cost nothing at all in the shape of police.  A statesman, then, might dislike Dissent, but what was he to say to a state of things like that revealed in the Census report?  The Church, according to Mr. Mann’s tables, could not, by dint of the utmost exertions she is ever likely to put forth, find accommodation for half the souls who are year by year added to the population.  On the other hand the Dissenters, who are far less wealthy, and have few endowments, provide without difficulty and without fuss more than twice the amount of new accommodation supplied by the Church.  The irresistible inference in the mind of a mere statesman would be that Dissent ought to be aided and encouraged.  But if p. 28it turns out that the facts are precisely the reverse of what has been represented—if in reality Dissent is making no progress, while the Church is providing new accommodation sufficient for the whole of the new population—why should the Legislature go out of its path to foster mere religious discord, and to impede the spread of what the country has, after all, long since recognised as the “more excellent way.”  Why, for instance, should Churchrates be abolished?  If they were right in 1831, when there were more Dissenters and fewer Churchmen, why are they wrong now?  If Parliament has conferred upon parishes, as a boon, the right to tax themselves (if a majority of the ratepayers think fit) for the purpose of building and maintaining public baths, museums, and libraries, why should parishes now be deprived of a right which they possessed before there was a Chancellor of the Exchequer or a budget—before the Norman set foot upon our shores, or there was a House of Commons worthy of the name—the right to tax themselves in order to maintain edifices which may be museums second in interest to none, and which may have been centres of enlightenment long before the days of Caxton and Guttenberg?

There is another view of the case which ought not to be overlooked by statesmen who regard a religious Establishment as a mere matter of police.  Granting that Dissent teaches men to be neither drunkards nor thieves, is it calculated to make them as good citizens and as good neighbours as the Church?  The answer must surely be a negative.  The common consent of mankind has pronounced the famous descriptions of the old Puritans in “Hudibras” to be almost as applicable to modern Dissenters as to their ancient prototypes.  Nor, indeed, would it be easy, if they were not, to account for the popularity of Butler’s oft-quoted lines; for even just satires, to say nothing of unjustifiable lampoons, rarely survive the persons against whom they are directed.  Of course, men are often much better than the system to which they belong.  There are hundreds—nay, thousands—of Dissenters whose Dissent is a mere accident of birth and education, and who are truly catholic at heart; but of Dissent in the abstract, no one who has either studied its history or is acquainted with its practical working will deny the applicability to it not only of Butler’s portraiture, but of another yet more famous description, qualified in the latter case, however, with the insertion or omission throughout of the important word—“not.”  Dissent suffers not long, and is not kind—Dissent is envious—behaves itself unseemly—vaunts itself, and is puffed up—seeks every tittle of its “rights”—is easily provoked—thinks evil—gloats over every slip on the part of its opponents—attributes what is good in them to a wrong motive—will bear nothing of which it can rid itself by agitation or clamour—will put a good construction upon nothing when an evil one p. 29is possible—hopes nothing—endures nothing.  If this were not so, how would it be possible to account for its inveterate propensity to internal schism?  The scriptural account of the Kingdom of Heaven is that it should grow as from a seed; but Dissent is propagated chiefly by cuttings.  It is not yet two hundred years since the Kirk was established in Scotland, and yet there are no fewer than six sorts of Presbyterians.  The case of Wesleyanism is still worse.  Within sixty years after the death of its founder it had split into seven antagonistic sects.  Whitfield himself quarrelled with Wesley, and his followers have, since his death, separated into two bodies.  There are four sorts of Baptists.  Of the Independents, Mr. Mann speaks with refreshing innocence as forming “a compact and undivided body.”  It would be nearer the truth to say that they consist of nearly as many sects as there are meeting-houses.  Nearly every congregation is of volcanic origin, and every one contains within it elements which might at any moment explode and shatter the whole concern.

That the writer may not be thought to be unsupported by facts, he will here summarize the history of Anabaptistic and Congregational Dissent in the first town to the annals of which he has ready access—Nottingham, his authority being Mr. Wylie’s local history, published in 1853.  Nottingham, however, is a remarkably good example for the purpose.  It has a manufacturing population of 57,000, having doubled itself since 1801.  It is almost at the head of those places in which Dissent is most rampant, and the Church most depressed.  It possessed, according to Mr. Mann’s table K, 35.2 Dissenting sittings to every hundred inhabitants, the only other places equal or superior to it in that respect being Merthyr Tydvil (52.4), Sunderland (35.2), Rochdale (36.5), and Swansea (42.8).  It boasts of 74.1 per cent. of the whole religious accommodation within its boundaries, the only places having more being Merthyr (89.7), and Rochdale (78.7).

About the middle of the last century, then, the Presbyterian congregation on the High Pavement adopted Socinian tenets; and many families thereupon left it and joined a small congregation of Calvinistic Independents in Castle-gate.  Their meeting-house was immediately enlarged, and it has ever since been considered the leading Dissenting place of worship.  In 1761, a second secession from High Pavement, this time of Sabellians, built themselves a new meeting-house in Halifax-place.  In 1801, they erected themselves a new building in St. Mary’s-gate, which has long since been closed.  In 1798, a third swarm, again Calvinistic Independents, left High Pavement, and settled in the Halifax-place meeting-house, vacated by their Sabellian predecessors.  In 1819, they built themselves a new meeting-house, called “Zion Chapel,” in Fletcher-gate, the old one being now a school.  In 1822, a secession from Castle-gate built a new meeting-house in St. James’s-street; and six years later a secession from St. James’s-street built a meeting-house in Friar-lane.  In 1804, a secession from Zion Chapel erected “Hephzibah Chapel,” which being in debt, was sold to the Universalists in 1808, and was soon afterwards converted into a National School.  In 1828, another secession from “Zion Chapel” erected a meeting called “Bethesda Chapel.”

The General Baptists at first met in a disused Wesleyan meeting-house, called “The Tabernacle,” which has long since been pulled down.  In 1799 they built themselves a place in Stoney-street.  In 1817 a quarrel arose between Mr. Smith, the senior pastor, and his junior, of whose pulpit talents he was said to be jealous.  The congregation dismissed them both, and appointed a Mr. George.  On Sunday, the 3rd of August, in p. 30the same year, there was a personal conflict after the Donnybrook manner, between the partisans of Smith and George.  The friends of Smith being beaten drew off, and built themselves a meeting-house in Broad-street.  In 1850 there was another secession from Stoney-street, who built themselves a meeting-house on the Mansfield-road.

The Particular Baptists originally occupied an ancient meeting-house in Park-street: but in 1815 they built themselves a larger place in George-street.  In 1847 there was a secession of extra-Particulars.  These met first in a room in Clinton-street, then in an old building which had been disused by the Quakers, and finally, in a splendid gothic edifice, which they built for themselves on Derby-road.  The old meeting-house in Park-street fell into the hands of a congregation of the Scotch variety of the sect, whose peace has only been disturbed by the Bethesdians, who joined them in 1828, until they decided upon setting up for themselves.

Thus it will be seen that of the nine new congregations enumerated above, not one was originated without a quarrel—a quarrel, too, of the worst kind, a personal one.  Nobody can study the history of religious polemics without perceiving that the root of all that bitterness which has made the odium theologicum a proverb, is to be found in the tendency there is in men to transfer the indignation they might reasonably feel against error, from the error itself to those who hold it.  If people would only consent to forget history and would conduct the argument upon purely abstract principles, even the Roman controversy might be made instructive and edifying; but somehow, before long, the debate wanders away from the truth or falsehood of the creed under discussion to that most irrelevant of all issues, the virtues or failings of those by whom it is professed.  What shall we say, then, of a system which gives rise to controversies which, from their commencement to their close, are purely personal?  Lest it should be supposed that the case of Nottingham is an isolated instance, here is an extract on which the writer stumbled the other day in a tract written in praise of Congregationalism, and stated on the title page to be “commended by J. Bennett, D.D.”  It appears to be quoted from a work called “The Library of Ecclesiastical Knowledge,” and the scene of the incident is stated to be “one of the principal cities of the United States:”—

A Baptist congregation, originally small, had increased so rapidly that an enlargement of the chapel became necessary.  It was immediately effected.  The congregation still continued to increase, and a second time it became necessary to enlarge.  Everything still going on prosperously, a third enlargement, some time after, was proposed.  The noble-minded pastor, however, thinking that he had already as much on his hands as any mere mortal could conscientiously discharge, with a generous contempt for his own interests, opposed this step, and suggested that they should exert themselves to raise a new interest, entirely independent of the old one.  The people entered cheerfully into his design; nay, they made a nobler sacrifice than that of their money.  For as soon as the new building was finished, one of the deacons, with a few of the most respectable members of the old church, voluntarily separated from it, and proceeded to form the infant colony that had branched off from the mother church.  What is still more delightful, the two churches formed a common fund for the erection of a third chapel.  This was soon accomplished.  In a short time a large and flourishing church was the result; and, at the time our informant related this fact, all three churches were actually subscribing towards a fourth chapel.  This is noble conduct.  Who can tell how soon cities and towns might be evangelised, if this principle were sternly (!) acted upon?  A somewhat similar fact has, we understand, been recently witnessed in a city of our own country, where some congregational churches have imitated their Baptist brethren of America.  When will all ministers “go and do likewise?”

p. 31This is truly edifying and amusing.  First of all, mark the habitat of this Nonconformist phœnix, a congregation which has actually given birth to another without a preliminary quarrel.  We must actually cross the Atlantic, and seek the phenomenon in the land where the penny-a-liner places his sea-serpents, and his other choicer wonders.  To increase without envy, hatred, and uncharitableness is, it seems, to a Dissenter, something inexpressibly “noble”—and brotherly love is something that must be “sternly” acted upon!  We may be quite certain that it is something the congregational sects very rarely see, or it would not throw them into such lamentable, and yet, in some sense, ludicrous contortions of surprise.

Perhaps some Dissenter will be whispering, after the manner of Mr. Roebuck, the three words, Gorham, Liddell, Denison; but the tu quoque wholly fails.  In the first place, it is the surprising peculiarity of the present Church controversies that the noisiest, if not the weightiest, disputants are not Churchmen at all.  In the next place, those who are Churchmen, and enter with any bitterness into the strife, are remarkable neither for their number nor their influence.  The great party in the Church of England is, after all, the middle party; and however fierce the cannonade which the extreme left, and its allies outside the pale, may direct against the extreme right, their missiles fly harmlessly over the vast body which lies between.  The truth is, the recent outburst of controversy, so far as the Church herself is responsible for it, is nothing but the natural recoil of that conservative sentiment which must always be a powerful feeling in a religious community, from doctrines and usages which had become unfamiliar.  As the unfamiliarity passes away, the controversy will also gradually cease.  Already the doctrines and usages in question have been unconsciously adopted by many of those who fancy themselves most opposed to them; and, indeed, if our doughtiest combatants would only take pains to understand what it is their antagonists really hold, they would often find that they are fighting against mere shadows.  The recent suits in the ecclesiastical courts cannot but open the eyes of Churchmen to the extreme tenuity of the points in dispute.  Take the S. Barnabas case.  Everybody will remember the language which was applied to the “practices” revived by Mr. Bennett.  “Popish,” “histrionic,” “mummery,” were the mildest terms in the repertory of that gentleman’s assailants.  Those “practices” remain to this day—if anything, they have been elaborated rather than subjected to any mitigating process.  Messrs. Westerton and Beal bring the matter before the proper tribunal; but what are the only issues they can find to raise?  Such notable questions as whether the cross, which glitters on the crown, the orb, and sceptre of the Sovereign, which glows on the national banner, which crowns almost every church p. 32gable in the land, with which every Churchman is marked at his baptism, which the very Socinians place upon their buildings, is, forsooth, a lawful ornament?—whether a table ceases to be a table by being made of stone?—whether the altar which has never been moved these two hundred years, and which nobody wants to move, must nevertheless be movable?—whether the altar vestments and the “fair linen cloths” used during Communion time, may have fringes, or must be plain-hemmed?  Even if Dr. Lushington’s judgment should eventually be confirmed, if in this age of schools of design, Mr. Westerton’s crusade against art should prove successful, the alterations that would be made at S. Barnabas would be discernible by none out the keenest eyes—so little can there be found in matters ritual to fight about.  Even in the Denison case the points of difference are almost as infinitesimal.  It is true that under the revived act of Elizabeth—compared with which the laws of Draco seem a mild and considerate code—the Archdeacon has been sentenced to lose his preferments; but his doctrine on the Real Presence has, in sober fact, never been so much as challenged.  His opponents, passing over all that was material in his propositions, have only attacked a quasi corollary which he has added to his main position, but which is, in reality, a complete non-sequitur.  Whether Dr. Lushington is right or wrong, it is clear that a person holding the dogma of transubstantiation itself might, with perfect logical consistency, accept the ruling of the Court.

The differences between the highest and the lowest schools being so impalpable, it would seem absurd to suppose that the present controversies can have a much longer continuance.  But whether that be so or not, there is a very important distinction (and one that is well worth the notice of statesmen) between the extension of the Church and the spread of Dissent.  Church extension, as far as it goes, tends to compose differences.  The consecration of a new church is almost invariably regarded as an occasion when party differences should be laid aside—the opening of a new meeting-house is too commonly the crowning act of an irreparable schism.

Another lesson which the report of Mr. Mann ought to teach Churchmen is the necessity there is for insisting upon the next religious census being made a complete and accurate one.  The next religious census ought to include all such institutions as colleges, workhouses, hospitals, and the like—it ought to be enforced by the same penalties as the civil census; and it ought to be understood that all the returns would be printed in a blue book.  With these precautions the Church need not fear the result.  Even if the census of 1861 should prove no more trustworthy than that of 1851, it will remove a great deal of the misconceptions to which the latter has given rise.  As far as one may judge, the work of church extension is progressing just as rapidly now p. 33as it was ten years ago; the number of the clergy is just as rapidly augmenting; [33] and as all additional clergymen have now to be supported on the voluntary principle, we may presume that they follow the ordinary laws of supply and demand.  We may, therefore, confidently expect that the number of church sittings open on the census morning in 1861 will not be fewer than six millions; and if there be an average attendance (which there was not on the last occasion) the number of persons present will be about three millions and a half.  That the Dissenters will be able to open any more sittings than in 1851, is doubtful; for it must be remembered that since 1841 the Church has been annually absorbing a population equal to the entire yearly increase.  But allowing them the same increase as has been assigned to them for the decade 1841–51, they will not be able to open more than four million sittings, and they will not have more than two millions and a half of attendants.  This estimate is formed on the supposition that the next census will be made on the voluntary principle like the last.  If a more complete and accurate account is taken, the result may be very different.  It is quite within the bounds of possibility that the number of church attendants may turn out to be near four millions, while that of the Dissenters may not much exceed two.

Looking at all the facts of the case, there is every reason why the Church should take courage.  Never since the Reformation has she had so much real power for good—never has she been so free from abuses.  Each year sees thousands returning to the fold from which they or their parents had strayed; each year sees her enemies more and more “dwindle, peak, and pine.”  Everything, too, points to a daily acceleration of the process.  At the very time that Convocation is resuming its functions, the Non-conformist Union is compelled by internal dissentions to abandon their yearly meeting.  What Mr. Miall calls “the dissidence of dissent”—that is to say, all in it that is pre-eminently narrow-minded, ignorant, and infected with bigotry—is concentrating itself, and is thus getting free the more respectable elements of modern non-conformity.  Meanwhile the better class of Dissenters are doing all in their power to cut the ground from under their own feet.  They are building “steeple-houses,” inventing liturgies, and adopting even choral services; in other words they are expressing in the most emphatic manner their opinion that the whole theory of dissent is wrong.  For a short time a Brummagem ecclesiology may satisfy them; but in the end they will no doubt rank themselves amongst the best sons of the Church.  The truth is, there is no other religious community at the present day which can bid p. 34so high for the reverent attachment of Englishmen.  Whatever the claims of Rome—her antiquity, her catholicity, her apostolicity—they are equally the Church of England’s.  Her succession of bishops is the same, her regard for the primitive church greater, her conception of Christendom far more grand.  The glories of the ancient rituals belong equally to the Book of Common Prayer.  It contains nothing material which was not in them, there was nothing material in them (save only certain invocations and legends of the saints) which is not in it.  The Prayer Book is, in fact, nothing but a translation (magnificently done) of the older offices, a little compressed and simplified.  The structure is the same—the mode of using it the same; and if it has lost somewhat of the multiplied ceremonies which were anciently observed, it has gained far more in the majesty and breadth which it has acquired from its thoroughly congregational character.  Besides, it is throughout a reality, whereas the office books of the Latin Communion have, to some extent at least, become a sham.  Thus the Breviary has long since been practically abolished as a public form of prayer, and even as a manual of private devotions for the clergy, that which forms its staple, the Book of Psalms, has been virtually reduced to a fourth its bulk.  In nearly a thousand churches belonging to the Anglican communion the whole Psalter is publicly recited every month, and in twenty times that number it is said through twice every year.

If Protestant Dissenters boast of their enlightenment or of their reverence for Scripture, the Church may meet them on that ground likewise with the utmost confidence.  The Prayer-book scarcely recognises a person to be a Churchman if he cannot read; and she directs some forty psalms and some thirty chapters of the Bible to be gone through every week.  In a word, approach the Church of England from the most opposite points, and she will be found to possess exactly that attribute which a person might think is most admirable.  The man who reverences antiquity—who has a taste for art—who has a passion for ritual—who would have everything “understanded of the people,”—he who insists upon ranks and orders—and he who stands up for popular rights, will equally find in the Church of this country the very quality which he deems important.  Never was there any institution so “many-sided;” never one that became with so much success “all things to all men.”  How she could ever have lost her hold on the affections of Englishmen is indeed wonderful; but, in truth, until lately, she has never had a chance of making herself understood.  Now, for the first time, her theory is beginning to be appreciated; and the success which has attended her, wonderful as it has been, is probably but the foretaste of a future more brilliant than anything of which we can now form an idea.

FOOTNOTES.

[11]  The above tables, it is right to say, have been obtained by subtracting Mr. Mann’s tables relating to the Church from the tables relating to places of worship in the aggregate.

[19]  It is right to say that the decennial periods do not exactly agree.  In Mr. Mann’s tables they are from 1801–11, &c.; in Mr. Bright’s return, from 1800–10, &c.  It is not, however, apprehended that this circumstance would materially affect the calculation.

[25]  Neale estimates the Nonconformists, in the time of Charles II., at a hundred and fifty thousand families, or three quarters of a million persons; in other words, at about a sixth of the population.  If the Dissenters had in 1801 only 881,240 sittings, their number of morning attendants would be considerably less than 400,000; and, allowing each attendant to represent three persons, that would give a Dissenting population of about 1,100,000.

[26]  The faculty of reasoning correctly in figures is not so ordinary an accomplishment as might have been supposed.  Even so intelligent a writer as Mr. Henry Mayhew prints, at page 391 of his “Great World of London,” a table, of which the following is a specimen:—

—the average being found by adding together the two lines and dividing the sum by two.  It need hardly, however, be pointed out that the result so arrived at could not be true unless the number of persons in each class was exactly the same.  A man who had invested in the Great Western Railway £900 which yielded him two per cent., and £100 in the South Western which paid him six, might say, on Mr. Mayhew’s principle, that he had invested £1000 at 4 per cent; but he would soon find out that he would have to receive only £24 for his yearly dividend instead of £40—£2.8 percent. instead of £4.

[27]  Mr. Mann calculates that without in the least interfering with juvenile labour, and without questioning the discretion of parents who kept children between the ages of 3 and 5 and 12 and 15 at home, there ought to have been more than three million children at school in 1851.  It would be easy to show that this estimate is based upon nothing better than a series of blunders and bad guesses, but there is a much shorter mode of dealing with it.  The children of the middle and upper classes do not remain under professional instructors at home or at school for a longer average period than six years.  Now, the total number of children in 1851 between the ages of 4 and 10 was 2,484,866, or 13.8 per cent. of the entire population.  The number actually on the school books was 2,200,000, or 12.2 per cent.  So that either all the children in the country were at school, but the average time was one-eighth too short; or the average time was of the right length, but the number of scholars was one-eighth too few.  The truth, of course, lay somewhere between these two alternatives.  Since 1851 considerable progress has no doubt been made; but it unfortunately turns out that the effect of improved machinery is not to improve the general education, but merely to shorten the time allotted to schooling.  It is found that if by better modes of tuition a child can be made sooner to acquire what its parents think sufficient for it to know, it is only so much the sooner taken away.  It would therefore be vain to expect that the school per centage will ever be much higher than it was in 1851—at least, until the middle classes raise their own standard.  Of the children on the schoolbooks in 1851, the per centage of actual daily attendants was 83—91 for the private, and 79 for the public scholar.  In America, where the schools are wholly free, the per centage was still less.  In Massachusetts, for example, it was only 75.  In other words, the attendance in England and Wales in 1851 was 1,826,000 daily.  If the 2,200,000 had all been private scholars, it would have been 2,002,000.  On the other hand if there had been 2,400,000 free scholars, it would only have been 1,800,000.  These figures will speak for themselves.

[33]  The number of additional clergy ordained every year is stated to be 300.  The number required to maintain the proportion of clergy to population which existed in 1851 would be under 200.