第18章 Reform Movements(6)

On the Tory view,the relation might be compared to that of man and wife in Christian countries where,though the two are one,the husband is bound to fidelity.On the Whig view it was like a polygamous system,where the wife is in complete subjection,and the husband may take any number of concubines.The Whig noble regarded the church as socially useful,but he was by no means inclined to support its interests when they conflicted with other political considerations.He had been steadily in favour of diminishing the privileges of the establishment,and had taken part in removing the grievances of the old penal laws.He was not prepared to uphold privileges which involved a palpable danger to his order.

This position is illustrated by Sydney Smith,the ideal divine of Holland House.The Plymley Letters 25give his views most pithily.Smith,a man as full of sound sense as of genuine humour,appeals to the principles of toleration,and is keenly alive to the absurdity of a persecution which only irritates without conversion.

But he also appeals to the danger of the situation.'If Bonaparte lives,'26he says,'and something is not done to conciliate the Catholics,it seems to me absolutely impossible but that we must perish.'We are like the captain of a ship attacked by a pirate,who should begin by examining his men in the church catechism,and forbid any one to sponge or ram who had not taken the sacrament according to the forms of the church of England.He confesses frankly that the strength of the Irish is with him a strong motive for listening to their claims.To talk of 'not acting from fear is mere parliamentary cant.'27Although the danger which frightened Smith was evaded,this was the argument which really brought conviction even to Tories in 1829.In any case the Whigs,whose great boast was their support of toleration,would not be prompted by any Quixotic love of the church to encounter tremendous perils in defence of its privileges.

Smith's zeal had its limits.

He observes humorously in his preface that he had found himself after the Reform Bill engaged in the defence of the National Church against the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London.The letters to Archdeacon Singleton,written when the Whigs were flirting with the Radicals,show how much good an old Whig could find in the establishment.This marks the difference between the true Whig and the Utilitarian.The Whig would not risk the country for the sake of church;he would keep the clerical power strictly subordinate to the power of the state,but then,when considered from the political side,it was part of a government system providing him with patronage,and to be guarded from the rude assaults of the Radical reformer.The Utilitarian,though for the moment he was in alliance with the Whig,regarded the common victory as a step to something far more sweeping.He objected to intolerance as decidedly as the Whig,for absolute freedom of opinion was his most cherished doctrine.He objected still more emphatically to persecution on behalf of the church,because he entirely repudiated its doctrines.

The objection to spreading true doctrine by force is a strong one,but hardly so strong as the objection to a forcible spread of false doctrine.

But,besides this,the church represented to the Utilitarian precisely the very worst specimen of the corruptions of the time.The Court of Chancery was bad enough,but the whole ecclesiastical system with its vast prizes,28its opportunities for corrupt patronage,its pluralism and non-residence was an evil on a larger scale.The Radical,therefore,unlike the Whig,was an internecine enemy of the whole system.The 'church of England system,'as Bentham calmly remarks,is 'ripe for dissolution.'29I have already noticed his quaint proposal for giving effect to his views.Mill,in the Westminster Review ,denounced the church of England as the worst of all churches.30To the Utilitarian,in short,the removal of the disqualification of dissenters and Catholics was thus one step to the consummation which their logic demanded --the absolute disestablishment and disendowment of the church,Conservatives in general anticipated the confiscation of church revenues as a necessary result of reform;and so far as the spirit of reformers was represented by the Utilitarians and their Radical allies,they had good grounds for the fear.James Mill's theory is best indicated by a later article published in the London Review of July 1835.After pointing out that the church of England retains all the machinery desired for supporting priests and preventing the growth of intellect and morality,he proceeds to ask what the clergy do for their money.They read prayers,which is a palpable absurdity;they preach sermons to spread superstitious notions of the Supreme Being,and perform ceremonies --baptism,and so forth --which are obviously silly.

The church is a mere state machine worked in subservience to the sinister interest of the governing classes.The way to reform it would be to equalise the pay:let the clergy be appointed by a 'Minister of Public instruction'or the county authorities;abolish the articles,and constitute a church 'without dogmas or ceremonies';and employ the clergy to give lectures on ethics,botany,political economy,and so forth,besides holding Sunday meetings,dances (decent dances are to be specially invented for the purpose),and social meals,which would be a revival of the 'agapai'of the early Christians,For this purpose,however,it might be necessary to substitute tea and coffee for wine.In other words,the church is to be made into a popular London University,the plan illustrates the incapacity of an isolated clique to understand the real tone of public opinion.I need not pronounce upon Mill's scheme,which seems to have some sense in it,but one would like to know whether Newman read his article.