Practical Politics; or, the Liberalism of To-day

by Alfred Farthing Robbins

For what is the first question that naturally arises? It is as to the source from which the Church originally derived her revenues. “Pious benefactors, stimulated by the wish to benefit their fellows and save themselves,” is the reply of the average Church defender. But any attempt to prove this fails. Does a solitary person believe that every proprietor of land in each parish of England and Wales voluntarily and spontaneously imposed a tithe upon his possessions? Is it not an admitted fact that it was by royal ordinance such an impost was first levied, and by force of law that it has since been maintained?

This most ancient property of the Church in England, the tithe, is a law-created and law-extorted impost for the benefit of a particular sect. As far back as the Heptarchy, royal ordinances were given in various of the kingdoms of which England was composed directing the payment of tithes; and that the far greater portion of these were not voluntary offerings is indicated in Hume’s account of the West Saxon grant in 854. “Though parishes,” he observes, “had been instituted in England by Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury, two centuries before, the ecclesiastics had never yet been able to get possession of the tithes; they therefore seized the present favourable opportunity of making that acquisition when a weak, superstitious prince filled the throne, and when the people, discouraged by their losses from the Danes and terrified with the fear of future invasions, were susceptible of any impression which bore the appearance of religion.”

When England became one kingdom, and tithes were extended by royal decree to the whole realm, penalties soon began to be provided for non-payment, Alfred ordaining “that if any man shall withhold his tithes, and not faithfully and duly pay them to the Church, if he be a Dane he shall be fined in the sum of twenty shillings, and if an Englishman in the sum of thirty shillings;” and William the Norman, speedily after the Conquest, directed that “whosoever shall withhold this tenth part shall, by the justice of the bishop and the king, be forced to the payment of it, if need be.” These provisions are part of the common law of England, and they effectually dispose of the idea that the tithe was a voluntary offering which the farmer to-day ought to pay because of the supposed piety of unknown ancestors.

The proceeds of the tithe—which originally, according to Blackstone, were “distributed in a fourfold division: one for the use of the bishop, one for maintaining the fabric of the church, a third for the poor, and a fourth to provide for the incumbent”—were the first great source of revenue to the Church; but in the course of centuries that revenue was largely added to by gifts. It was not uncommon for a man to hand over his property to a monastery upon condition that he was allowed a sufficiency to keep him; while the money given for the provision of masses for the dead was a considerable aid to the Church in the Middle Ages. And as the monks were exceedingly keen traders, their wealth was increased by farming, buying, and selling to a degree that at length tempted the cupidity of a rapacious king. It was during that period that our great cathedrals and all our old parish churches were built; and when, because of a divorce dispute, the Eighth Henry resolved to cut the Church in England altogether adrift from the Church of Rome, he adopted a measure of Disendowment which, though not complete, was very sweeping, and proved in the most absolute form the right of the State to deal as it willed with the property of the Church.

In the preamble of the Act dissolving the lesser monasteries, it is declared that “the Lords and Commons, by a great deliberation, finally be resolved that it is and shall be much more to the pleasure of Almighty God, and for the honour of this His realm, that the possessions of such small religious houses, now being spent, spoiled, and wasted for increase and maintenance of sin, should be used and committed to better uses.” The State in this asserted a right it had never forfeited, and which, by successive Acts of Parliament, has been specifically retained. No one to-day would defend the fashion in which Henry took property which had been devoted to certain public uses and lavished it upon favourites and friends. The main point, however, is not the manner of disposal, but the fact that it could be disposed of at all; and when any one doubts the power of the State regarding the property of the Church, a reference to what Parliament has done in the matter is sufficient to show constitutional precedent for Disendowment.

But though much was taken from the Church at the Reformation period, much was left, and it was left to a body differing in many important particulars from that which had been despoiled. As Mr. Arthur Elliott, M.P., a Whig writer, observes in his book “The State and the Church,” “It would be to give a very false notion of the position of the Church towards the State to omit all mention of the sources from which, as regards its edifices, the Church of England finds itself so magnificently endowed. In the main, the wealth of the Church in this respect was inherited, or rather acquired, at the time of the Reformation, from the Roman Catholics, who had created it. The Roman Catholics and the English nation had been formerly one and the same. When the nation, for the most part, ceased to be Catholic, these edifices, like other endowments devoted to the religious instruction of the people, became the property of the Protestant Church of England, as by law established.”

The new Act of Parliament Church—for it had its doctrines and its discipline defined by statute—became possessed, therefore, of the cathedrals, the churches, much of the glebe, and a large portion of the tithe that had been given or granted to the Roman Catholic communion, which had held the ground for centuries. And succeeding monarchs, with the exception of Mary, so confirmed and added to these gifts that “the Judicious Hooker” was led to exclaim—“It might deservedly be at this day the joyful song of innumerable multitudes, and (which must be eternally confessed, even with tears of thankfulness) the true inscription, style, or title of all churches as yet standing within this realm, ‘By the goodness of Almighty God and His servant Elizabeth, we are.’”

And it was not only “His servant Elizabeth” who, among monarchs since the Reformation, has assisted the Houses of the Legislature to pecuniarily aid the Church. Queen Anne surrendered the first fruits, or profits of one year, of all spiritual promotions, and the tithe of the revenue of all sees, in order to create a fund for increasing the incomes of the poor clergy; but Queen Anne’s Bounty comes straight out of the national pocket, for, had our monarchs retained this source of income, it would have been taken into account when the Civil List was settled at the commencement of the reign, and at least £100,000 a year saved to the Exchequer. And the nation has even more directly helped the fund, Parliament having, between 1809 and 1829, voted considerably over a million towards it.

But this is not all. Dealing merely with national money appropriated to Church purposes during the present century, it may be added that in 1818 Parliament voted a million sterling for the purpose of building churches, that in 1824 a further sum of half a million was granted for the same purpose, and that a subsequent amount of close upon ninety thousand pounds has to be added to the total. And not only by large grants did Parliament help the Church. In the old days of Protection, when almost every conceivable article was taxed, the duty chargeable on the materials used in the building of churches was remitted, this amounting between 1817 and 1845 to over £336,000. A drawback was also granted on the paper used in printing the Prayer Book, and this, while the paper duty was levied, could scarcely have averaged less than a thousand a year. In small things, as in great, Parliament helped the Church, for an Act of George IV. specifically exempted from toll the carriage and horses used by a clergyman when driving to visit a sick parishioner.