| Founded before | Church Schools. | Dissenting Schools. | Total. |
| 1801 | 709 | 57 | 766 |
| 1811 | 350 | 60 | 410 |
| 1821 | 756 | 123 | 879 |
| 1831 | 897 | 124 | 1,021 |
| 1841 | 2,002 | 415 | 2,417 |
| 1855 | 3,448 | 1,156 | 4,604 |
| Not stated | 409 | 89 | 498 |
| 8,571 | 2,024 | 10,595 |
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 during 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:—
| Meeting Houses (open). | Sittings (open). | |
| Morning | 11,875 | 3,645,875 |
| Afternoon | 11,338 | 2,506,116 |
| Evening | 15,619 | 3,983,725 |
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 results 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:—
| Churches. (per cent.) | Meeting Houses. (per cent.) | |
| Town districts | 85 | 75 |
| Rural ditto | 62 | 43 |
| Whole country | 66 | 51 |
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 is 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:—