Paddington: Past and Present

by William Robins

Mr. B. Macaulay tell us, when speaking of the revenues of the State, “experience has fully proved that the voluntary liberality of individuals, even in times of the greatest excitement, is a poor financial resource when compared with severe and methodical taxation, which, presses on the willing and unwilling alike.” Those who govern the state-church, have had experience on this head; and without stopping “voluntary liberality” they deem it necessary, so long as a state-religion is upheld, to use “severe and methodical taxation;” and they employ all the powers the law allows them, to compel the unwilling, as well as the willing, to pay their appointed share of the particular tax raised for its requirements. But it is questioned by some most sincere and learned churchmen, whether this is good policy; whether the people love the church any better for being obliged to pay church-rates, when they see how the property claimed by the church is apportioned; and where they see, as in this parish, church property, much more than sufficient to supply their religious requirements, used, not for their benefit, as it was originally intended, but for individual advantage.

But to shew how thoroughly the religious forms of the state-church can be upheld by the voluntary system alone, even in a parish from which that church has derived vast sums of money, and to which it has returned so little, it is only necessary to mention that

The Chapel of the Lock Hospital,

is not only self-supporting, but a portion of the income derived from the pew-rents annually goes towards the support of the hospital and asylum.

The pew-rents of the Lock Chapel, for the year ending the thirty-first of December, 1851, amounted to £948 3s. 2d., [160] and this department of a charitable Institution, “after bearing all the expenses incident to its services, yielded to the Institution, the sum of £348 19s. 2d.” during the same period.

Another such an example as this, a third, might have proved too much; and it was not allowed to exist, although the foundations of the building were laid, and the means were in hand to raise the superstructure. The correspondence between the proprietor of the intended chapel, and the Bishop of London, on the subject of this new church, proposed to be built at Westbourn Green, must be fresh in the memory of most readers of the daily journals; and it is only necessary to refer those, who wish to know the history of an attempt to erect another church in this parish upon the voluntary principle, to that correspondence.

At the present time, the parish of Paddington is divided into five ecclesiastical districts; and the episcopal form of church-government and the present forms of the state-religion, are supported by accomplished clergymen, attached to the various places of public worship.

The people of Paddington see in their own parish an exemplification of that state of church economy, which is more or less prominently exhibited all over the country; they know the extent of the church-lands here; they know how they were acquired; they know for the performance of what duties these lands were granted; they see how the income from these lands has been disposed of; they know that the duties of providing for religion, and for the poor, have been transferred from the holders of this church-land, to those who occupy the houses which have been built on it; and they know that a second Reformation is inevitable. So that, if the church ministers of this parish could report to their bishop, that no dissenter lived in this very profitable part of his diocese, it would convey to him no more accurate notion of the feeling of the people respecting the management of the state-church than the bishops conveyed to Laud “on the very eve of troubles, fatal to himself, and to his order,” when they reported to him “that not a single dissenter was to be found within their jurisdiction.” [161]

That those dignitaries of the church, who have taken upon themselves the disposal of the church-lands in Paddington, should have made such sorry provisions for the promulgation and protection of their own creed in this place, is much more surprising, than that they should have looked with no favourable eye on the diffusion of doctrines which differed, in any respect, from their own. To prevent, so far as in them lay, the erection of any places of worship, save those in which were taught the particular dogmas they reverenced, is but what experience teaches us, might have been expected, as it is well known to be the common practice of every dominant sect to permit no rival near its throne; or, if a rival is to be tolerated without a systematic opposition, it must be one that is not seriously antagonistic to its principles.

The Bishop of London, in his last Charge to his clergy, while guarding them against a too great leaning to Popish practices, told them there was less danger to fear from Rome, than from Germany. And, so far as danger to the peculiar dogmas, and the histrionic ceremonies we have seen spring up within the last few years, is concerned, all who know anything of the “Reformation of the nineteenth century,” as it is being developed in Germany, will readily admit. To get a good insight into the “Humane Reformation” now in progress not only in Germany, but in England and America, I must refer my readers to the little Work which has been published for the English reader by the great apostle of this Reformation, Johannes Ronge, and to which I have before alluded.