British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV / July and October, 1871

by Various

Heretical stomachs that thus dissent,

Is to burden all that won't eat meat,

With a costly Meat Establishment."'

Sir Roundell Palmer thinks that he has conceded everything which equity requires when he expresses entire agreement with Mr. Miall that 'no State authority ought to interfere with any man's religious belief,' and he clenches that admission by the bold assertion, that the ascendancy of the Church of England no longer involves 'any civil rights, privileges, or advantages whatever.' It might have occurred to him that, even if his statement were strictly accurate, the words 'no longer' pointed to a history of suffering and of struggle which resulted from the existence of an Establishment, and in which Nonconformists have figured as the victims. But is it accurate? Why at the moment the statement was made there was before Parliament—as there is likely to be for some time to come—a measure for extinguishing the clerical monopoly in parochial churchyards; the disabilities of Dissenters at Oxford and Cambridge had not been removed,[41] and there had just been published the new Statutes of Winchester and Harrow schools, which expressly insist that none but members of the Church shall be qualified to act as members of the governing bodies of those institutions! And, even when these grounds of just complaint have been removed, there will still exist in numerous Statutes, or Trusts, or Schemes, or Regulations, affecting matters of parochial, educational, or charitable administration, provisions which, directly or indirectly, exclude Dissenters from the national Church from the enjoyment of rights, privileges, and advantages, which Sir Roundell Palmer would have us believe are as much within the reach of Nonconformists as of Conformists.

That, however, is a very limited view of the subject which supposes that the principle of religious equality is violated only by means of Statutes of the realm which, in so many words, place the members of unestablished bodies on a different footing, as regards civil rights, from that occupied by members of the Establishment. For it may be safely asserted that for every act of exclusion, and every violation of the principle of equity, for which the legislature is responsible, in connection with an Established system, there are twenty others which are the indirect, though inevitable, result of that system. Establishment is a name for more than a collection of Statutes, and a particular mode of appropriating national property: it represents a powerful source of influence—a spring the force of which is felt throughout all the ramifications of society, and is often experienced by those who are unconsciously affected by it. Notwithstanding the lip-homage now paid to the principle of religious equality, even by politicians who once persistently fought against it, the ascendancy of the Church Establishment is sought to be upheld by public functionaries, by corporate bodies, and by individuals, organized and unorganized, in a hundred ways which are independent of legislation, but which, nevertheless, inflict, whether intentionally or not, great injustice on those who are attached to other religious communities.

No one would now venture to declare, as a Conservative journal did years ago, that a 'Dissenter is only half an Englishman,' but, so far as a right to share in all the advantages afforded by civilized society is concerned, that is the position in which he is, or is sought to be placed, even now. The question with which Mr. Leatham fairly startled Mr. Gladstone, 'How long are we, a party of Dissenters, to be led by a cabinet of Churchmen?' suggests other inquiries, of a more searching kind, which are even more strictly relevant to the point we are now considering. Take the public functionaries throughout the kingdom—the Commissioners who administer the affairs of important departments, some of which decide matters vitally affecting the interests of Nonconformists—the occupants of the magisterial bench—the trustees of public charities—the holders of municipal and parochial offices, great and small, and it will be seen that the large majority are connected with the State-favoured Church, and that offices of responsibility and influence, as well as of emolument, are filled by Dissenters in an inverse proportion to their numbers, their intelligence, and their energetic devotion to public duty.

These are some of the allegations with which we meet Sir Roundell Palmer's assertion that the Establishment no longer inflicts wrong on those who think it right to dissent; but there are others, the aptness of which will be still more apparent, because the facts come within the knowledge of a far larger class. Whatever may be the case in the great centres of population, it is certain that in the small towns, and especially in those rural districts, in which, we are told, the Establishment is so great a blessing, petty persecution, aiming at the repression of dissent, is as rife as when that Establishment could persecute by law. Is the dissenter a farmer? He is kept by Church landlords and landladies out of a whole district, as carefully as the rinderpest itself; or if he happens to be already in it, he is deported as quickly as lease, or agreement, will allow. Is he a shopkeeper? He must hold his head low, and consent to sell his principles with his wares, or he loses half his customers. Does he require education for his children? The day-school is, indeed, open to them, but attendance at the Sunday-school and the church is insisted upon, as part of the price to be paid for the education for which he, in common with other tax-payers, largely pays. Is he poor? So much the worse for him, when coals, blankets, and soup are distributed at Christmas; when parochial charities, intended to be unsectarian, are dispensed, or when misfortune makes him a fitting object for the help and sympathy of all his neighbours. Nay! he may be wholly independent of all around in regard to pecuniary circumstances—may have fortune, culture, and all the gifts and graces of refined and of Christian life; yet, if in the matter of the Lord his God he differs from those who worship at the altars of the Establishment, he, too, pays the penalty for conscientious Nonconformity, in the social exclusion, and the haughty contempt, which to certain minds make country life one of the hardest things to bear, and strongly tempt the children of wealthy Nonconformists to desert, and ultimately to despise, the communities to which they were once attached.

To these representations, as well as to others relating to the social discord created by an Establishment, it has been replied that they describe as much the result of the caste-feeling, which, rightly or wrongly, exists among us, as the result of the Church being established; that hard and fast lines will be drawn by individuals even when State-made distinctions have ceased; that we 'shall not get rid of the Church of England by disestablishing it;' and that 'so far from being less energetic in the assertion of its claims,' it will be 'more energetic than ever.' The rejoinder is, that the existence of a state-maintained Church aggravates social tendencies sufficiently bad enough in themselves to require no encouragement—that, when the possessors of invidious privileges find their privileges endangered, they think themselves justified in doing what they would otherwise condemn—that acts such as we have indicated are committed to a far greater extent by the members of established than of unestablished bodies, and that Episcopalianism in America, and in our own colonies, does not adopt the repressive, and the oppressive, policy to which it resorts at home. Sir Roundell Palmer's dictum that 'One of the advantages of a union which subsists between Church and State is, that it gives to the former an inducement to act in a more liberal and conciliatory spirit than can be relied upon if the relations between the two were different,' is, in our judgment, contrary to the facts of history; and if the Church is, at the present time, 'bound over to keep the peace' as it has not been before, it is just because the ties between Church and State are loosened, and liberality and moderation are necessary to prevent their being quickly severed.

There is one other aspect of the case to which, perhaps, full justice was not done by any of the speakers in the late debate, and that is the influence exerted by the Establishment, in regard to opinion, as affecting both theological belief and ecclesiastical practice. The Nonconformist objection to an Establishment, as popularly put, is, that it appropriates public property to the maintenance of a Church, the advantages of which cannot be shared by large sections of the community. That is true, but it is not the whole truth; for even if the Church found its own capital, and the State gave nothing but authority and privilege, the Nonconformist would still have ground to complain of the injustice done to him by the junction of the two bodies. The pocket objection, strong as it is, is, after all, neither the strongest nor the highest. To the man who, in these days of shifting and uncertain belief, holds definite views of truth, and especially of the highest forms of truth, it is less a grievance that the State should deprive him of his share of public property than that it should exert its influence on behalf of what he believes to be mischievous error—error, possibly, dishonouring to God, as well as detrimental to men. The member for Richmond says that he is at one with the member for Bradford in thinking that 'no State authority ought to interfere with any man's religious belief;' but what is interference with man's religious belief? Is no one's belief interfered with when the Canons of a national Church excommunicate ipso facto all impugners of the Articles, the worship, or the government of that Church, until they have repented, and publicly revoked, their 'wicked errors?' Is the Unitarian belief not interfered with by the state-sanctioned Athanasian creed? Or the Baptist belief by the baptismal service? Or the Quaker belief by the eucharistic doctrines of the Church? Or, to put the question in the broadest form, is the Roman Catholic's belief not interfered with when there is established a Protestant Church, which asserts that the leading tenets, or practices, of the Romish Church are damnable and idolatrous?

It is true that everybody in the country is free to protest against the creed and practices of the Establishment, but why should anyone have to protest at all? The Nonconformist may enforce his own views of truth and religious duty, but why should the State, which is invested with authority derived from him, in common with his fellow-citizens, not only compel him to become a Nonconformist, but put a heavy premium on the acceptance of that which he feels it to be his duty to denounce? This is a question, the force of which increases in proportion as the Established clergy assert their right to set at defiance authorized doctrinal standards and rubrics, as well as to disregard the most solemn judicial decisions; for the points of theological antagonism between their teaching and the views of Nonconformists will multiply as confusion grows within the Church. But we are content to enforce our present point by an illustration drawn from a state of things with which we have long been familiar, rather than from any new development of clerical extravagance. Here, for instance, are specimens of the teaching of one of the authorized instructors of the people, taken from a twopenny catechism, entitled Some questions of the Church Catechism, and doctrines involved, briefly explained, for the use of families and parochial schools; by the Rev. J. A. Gace, M.A., Vicar of Great Barling, Essex,[42] and which, we understand, is circulated widely in many parishes far distant from the author's.