The Trials of a Country Parson

by Augustus Jessopp

Moreover, if you begin to “do away with the tithes,” are you going to do away with them only in the case where the parson receives them and does something—at any rate something—in return for the income he derives from them? Are you going to let the tithes be levied as before where they are paid to laymen, to corporations, or colleges? Are those tithes which are necessarily spent in the parish by the resident parson to be “done away with,” but all such tithes as are necessarily carried out of the parish and paid to a London company, an alien, or a college at Oxford or Cambridge, to be levied as before? Is it a gravamen against the parson that he spends his tithe where it is paid him, and among the people who pay it, and that he is bound in return for it to do the payers some services which they may exact on demand? Are you going to confiscate the tithe where the receiver does something for it, and to let the man who does nothing for it collect it as before? Imagine the amazement and disgust of a farmer who should be told that his neighbour on the other side of the hedge is never to pay tithe again because in that parish there has been a parson to pillage; but that he, on this side of the hedge, is to pay it as before, because Mr. Tomkins, or Mrs. John Smith, or the Saddlers’ Company is the lay impropriator, and the rights of property are to be respected. It would not be long, I imagine, before our friend the farmer would go for the lay impropriator, and with a will too.

But, if the labourer and the tenant-farmer are not to be cajoled by promises that must needs be illusory, least of all are the landlords to be gained over by the inducement held out to them that they, of all men, are to benefit by the change. They more than any other class are responsible for the loud outcry that has been raised. The tithe-rent-charge is a first charge upon the produce of the land. They are the landlords who, as a class, have done their best to make people forget this fact. How often have we heard of a landlord or his agent declaring loudly, “I have nothing to do with the tithe—that is a matter between the tenant and the parson!” A more monstrous assertion it would be difficult to invent! Far more true would be the direct opposite, if the parson, or the impropriator, should say, “I, as receiver of tithe, have nothing to do with you, the tenant—the tithe is no concern of yours; my claim is upon the owner of the soil!” In point of fact, it is in the last resort upon the landlord, and the landlord alone, that the tithe-owner, lay or clerical, has his claim.

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But, if we should only aggravate the incidence of the immense calamity which would ensue from the confiscation of the clergy reserve by handing over the spoils to the labourers, or the proletariate, or the farmers, or the landlords, and yet the electorate should resolve to carry out this great spoliation, and call upon the executive to sweep away the clerical incomes, and lay its hand upon the property from which these incomes are derived; what is to be done with this huge fund so confiscated, and how are we to prevent the landlords being in some form or other the only gainers by the change?

If confiscation comes, let it come, say I, as no half-measure. Let there be no bargaining, no tinkering, no compromise—in fact, no mercy! No—no mercy! Let this thing be done in root-and-branch fashion. Let the nation set its face like a flint; let the Church—it would be the Church then—begin its new life naked and bare. Both sides will have a bad time of it. It takes little to decide which will have the worst time of it, the starved Church or the starved people.

Set the two forces foot to foot,
And every man knows who’ll be winner,
Whose faith in God has e’er a root
That goes down deeper than his dinner.

Therefore, if indeed this nation decides that it can do without religious teachers, and that these shall live of those who want them, let us put up our parish churches to auction, and dispose of the glebes to the highest bidder, and flood the market with comfortable parsonage-houses, sold without reserve, and let the tithe be levied by the tax-gatherer, and let it be levied from the owner of the soil, as the land-tax is. Furthermore, let us have no assignment of any share of the plunder to any class or any special fund. Let us hand over the proceeds of the sale of churches and houses and lands to the Commissioners for the Extinguishing of the National Debt, and not to the ratepayers, not to the Education Commissioners, nor to the Commissioners in Lunacy for building madhouses, or any other cheerful and heroic object. Let us have a measure which shall be simple and thorough, with the fewest possible details to vex and embarrass us all. As the parsons die, sell their houses, their glebes and their churches, and let the State at once appropriate the tithe. Let us be brought face to face with the real meaning of a revolution, the tremendous magnitude of which few men can have the faintest conception of. In less than a year after the measure had become law, we should begin to know in what an experiment we had embarked. The sooner our eyes were opened the better for us all. The logic of facts is better than gabble.

Nevertheless, firmly convinced as I am that such a revolution would be an immeasurable calamity to the people of this country, and especially so to the agricultural districts, I am quite as firmly convinced that the present condition of affairs as regards the tenure and administration of the property now constituting the clergy reserves cannot possibly go on much longer; that the mere mockery and pretence of discipline among the clergy themselves must be replaced by something much more real and effective; that, in short, some large and radical measures of Church reform are being called for, such as the nation feels must and shall be carried out, though the great body of the people do not yet see, and cannot yet be expected to see, on what fundamental principles such reform should be advocated, or on what lines such reform should travel.

As a preliminary, as a sine quâ non of all really effective Church reform, it seems to me that, first and foremost, you must begin, not by disestablishing, but by establishing, the Church. As things are among us, it seems to me that the very word establishment is a confession on the part of those who use it that they have failed to discover the right word for that which they would fain obliterate.

We say the Church is a great landlord and wealthy owner of property. Ought not such an owner to have some control over its own and some voice in the disposition of that property. Every railroad company in the land, every joint-stock bank or co-operative association for the providing of milk and butter, every society for the protection of cats and dogs, has a constitution. It has its directors or governors, its recognized officers, its power to make or to alter at least its own bye-laws, its liberty to dispose of its own funds within certain limits, the privilege of meeting and of discussing its own affairs when and where it pleases, and the right of applying to the Legislature of the country for larger powers if such shall appear necessary for the carrying out of objects not dreamt of at its first start.