Churches. Sittings.
In large town districts 2,163 1,248,702
In residue of the country 9,216 2,882,983
11,379 4,131,685

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 larger 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 there 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:—

No. of Churches.

Sittings.

1801

11,379

3,024,615

Decennialincrease:

1811

65

55,250

1821

114

96,900

1831

325

276,250

1841

785

667,250

1851

1,409

1,197,650

Total Increase

2,698

2,293,300

Total

14,077

5,317,915

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 structure 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 by 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

Meeting Houses. Sittings. Average Sittings.
Large town districts 6,129 2,131,515 347 each.
Residue of country 14,261 2,763,133 193 „

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