made Benefices; or that whoever fills any one of them, fhould be enabled to live in comfort, and fhould be refpected, according to his rank and authority, by all different orders of the people. He fhould alfo have power of doing good, by alms, hofpitality, and study. No minifter fhould be contemptuously regarded by those whom he inftructs; (" let no man defpife thee." Titus ii. 15.) or by any whofe refpect for him will improve their own moral and religious principles. Such an institution muft ftrike all thinking men, and lovers of the general happiness, as indifpenfable; but on an approach to the actual formation of it, this question muft foon occur; who fhall fix upon the perfons to fill thefe offices? the general anfwer must be, those who can beft judge of the fitnefs of different men to undertake the duties of the offices; and who are least likely to be drawn afide from appointing the fitteft, by the emoluments which have been annexed to the offices, for purposes of public utility. On this ground it would be fettled, that Kings fhould appoint a confiderable number of minifters of religion, they being perfons of liberal education, able to converse with men of the most improved minds, and poffeffing a degree of opulence, to which the provision for any churchminifter could bear no proportion. Befides that, they muft be particularly fenfible of the incalculable benefit of maintaining general virtue and religion.-In the next place, fuppofing Kings thus to nominate those who were fittest to bear rule in the church, the perfons fo appointed, whom we call Bishops, fhould be entrusted with fixing upon minifters to fill a confiderable number of the offices below their own, in dignity and wealth for they must be very good judges of learning and clerical merit; must have an uncommon fhare of fagacity in difcerning genuine worth from fpurious; and their ample incomes and fpiritual characters must cause them to regard the profits of benefices in no other light but as conducing to the ends for which they were originally defigned.-Again, Noblemen, and Gentlemen of large eftates, muft, if not very much corrupted, think it extremely important that their tenants and dependants fhould receive wholesome inftruction, and be thoroughly honeft, faithful and well-principled. And the education of the nobility and gentry muft be, as to the general nature of it, confiderably better than that of ranks much lower than their own; and their wealth and delicacy of honor must make them difdain to draw any profit to themselves, from what either laws or charitable benefactors had dedicated to the public good: nobles therefore and gentlemen

Z

Vol. XIII. Churchm. Mag. for Sep. 1807.

gentlemen of large eflates feem proper to fix upon fome clerical minifters, particularly to inftruct and exhort their own tenants and dependants.*

I cannot conceive ecclefiaftical Patronage to have arisen otherwife than as now defcribed; when it has got into lower hands, where the emoluments have been important to the patron, it has probably been owing to the Patronage having been attached to fome fmaller portion of land, a part of a large eftate divided for fome particular purposes; but it is of the last importance to keep continually in mind, that to whomfoever the power is delegated of naming to offices in the church, whether to kings, or bifhops, or nobles, or more private perfons, the profits by which minifters are supported, all come from other fources, and are only committed to them in truft. They either came from laws, as taxes come into the national treasury; that is, from all citizens, according to fome certain regulations; or from pious and charitable donors. A king has no more private property in the emoluments annexed to the offices to which he names, than he has in the taxes, raised to pay the army and the navy. A bifhop no more than in the revenues of an hofpital; a nobleman no more than in a fubfcription purfe. Every act therefore, every thought or arrangement, in a Patron, whilft he is about naming a church-minifter, which is, in any way, founded on the idea or nature of private property, is effentially wrong, unjust, dishoneft.

This plain general account of ecclefiaftical Patronage is really the whole of the matter and any man who made it familiar to his mind, and acted from it, steadily and habitually,

* Sir Wm. Blackstone speaks (vol. ii. p. 21, 8vo.) of gentlemen of large estates as anciently endowing their own churches, and, on that account, having the right of Patronage; but this does not make any material difference in the duties and obligations of their successors. Nor does it account for large Patronage vested in kings or bishops. What was needful to be done, if it were not executed in one way would be in another; therefore the particular mode is not necessary to be known. In matters of very remote antiquity, the reason of the thing is as much to be trusted to, as very obscure information, or conjectures, concerning facts.

+ In Mr. H. Thornton's speech, Friday, May 8, 1807, on his being elected for Southwark, what he says of the elective franchise may be applied to ecclesiastical Patronage. "The elective fran"chise was no longer considered as an important trust, but as some"thing profitable to the individual who exercised it.

"

would

would act rightly. But when men come to apply general rules, from which they had rather be free, to particular cafes, they can, in every cafe, find fome excufe, or difpenfation: or they can fummon up forces to refift even the general rule itfelf. This is the only reafon why we fhould proceed farther, or enter into more particular obfervations. Such power, and fuch defire of evading, might juflify a few deductions, in the way of corollaries.

A Patron who names his Son to a benefice, as a provifion, because he is his fon, is guilty of a breach of truft.-For as he is intrufted with power for the public good, and as being one of the perfons most likely to name a minifter who will beft teach the people, and perform all minifterial duties, the confideration of providing for a son, than which nothing can be more proper in itfelf, fhould be entirely out of fight, whilft he is acting in the character of a Patron. From whomfoever the profit annexed to the benefice came, it was never meant as a provision for his fon.

Any Patron who confers a benefice as a reward for paft fervices, done either in education, elections, or in any other way, acts as difhoneftly as the treasurer of an hofpital would do, who fhould pay his fervants their wages out of the money entrusted to him by the governors of the hofpital.

All things provided by the public, in order to excite right fentiments of religion in the minds of the people, are upon one and the fame footing; drefs, pulpit, organ, building, tithes and glebe. Whatever is right with regard to the tithes and glebe, must be right with regard to the reft. He who turns the tithes and glebe, in any way, to his private advantage, may be equally juftified in taking part of the furplice for his wearing apparel, leaving juft enough to cover the fhoulders of the minifter; or in adorning his children with the laced velvet pulpit-cloth, putting a homely ferge in its room; or in making his blackfmith organift (as Mr. Mafon, the poet, told me he did with his barrel-organ at Afton); or in cutting off a corner of the church for a commodious ftable. All these liberties might be taken without putting a ftop to the performance of divine fervice; which is quite as much as can be faid when a Patron appoints an unfit minifter, instead of one, who would have made devotion and instruction pleafing and interefting, as well as improving; who would have ferved God, and caused many others to ferve him, in the beauty of holiness.

Z 2

It should seem alfo, that any Patron, who fells an advowfon, embezzles as much of the property of the church as the price amounts to. If there is any exception, it is in the cafe of him who has bought the living at the fame price.-What makes me speak here with some degree of diffidence is a difficulty which came into my mind whilft I was musing on the fubject; namely, that the church feems to be as rich after the fale as before it; because if a living was worth £50 a year before it was fold, it is worth £500 a year after it is fold. But ftill, on farther confideration, I think the value of the living is diminished by the fale. For fuppose the buyer gives £2,000 for it; though he receives £500 a year from the living, yet he lofes the intereft of

2,000; fo that the living is now only worth £400 a year, reckoning intereft at five per cent.-Befides, if the nomination is vested in A as a trustee, because he is the most likely perfon to answer purposes of public utility, he has no right to trnsfer that truft to B, perhaps a very unfit perfon to hold it, without permiffion from that authority which judged him, A, to be a proper perfon.-Nor does the evil ftop with B; as he paid 2,000 for the benefice he will expect to be reimburfed; and fo it becomes a marketable commodity, and gets into the loweft hands, widely different from those to which the public wisdom firft entrusted it; the church is robbed of an £100 a year, which goes into the pocket of the original Patron; and the fitness of the minifter is a point totally forgotten.

When the Patronage of a benefice comes into a family with which the profits are the principal object, it approaches to the cafe of Reverfions, all which must be wrong, at least in clerical employments, as it can never be known beforehand, that a man not yet born, or not yet educated, will be the most fit to fill any office; the probability must be extremely great against such a prefumption.

These corollaries may be fufficient to illuftrate the general account of Patronage here given; let us then proceed to fomething else. And firft, it may be proper to confider what objections are likely to be urged against what has been advanced could they be cleared away, any additional confiderations would find a better reception.

The objection which I fhould fuppofe moft readily to occur, is this. The Theory of Trufts here laid down, is vifionary, groundless, Utopian.-Language of this fort has acquired fome credit by the difloyal attempts of feditious re

formers;

formers; but it is mere eloquence, or rhetoric; it does not contain any folid reafon. If this objection were to be allowed, many old foundations and old wills must be set aside. -We are by no means in "the fairy-land of fancy" when we fay, that one tenth part of the produce of the earth was defigned, and ordered by good authority, to be employed in promoting virtue and religion in the nation, by fupporting in a decent independence those who could most effectually teach and reform the people; or when we fay, that pious perfons have by will left property for the fame purpose. Changes in government, civil or ecclefiaftical, may occafion alterations in modes and fubordinate circumftances, as will be obferved by and by; but the main general end of fuch provifions continues, and must be perpetual. To give us a right feeling of this, we need only put ourselves in the place of those, who, with the best intentions, made the provifions, and afk ourselves what we fhould wish to have done, in cafe we were to make any fimilar ones. Several profefforfhips, lectureships, prizes for compofitions, have been lately founded in our universities. If you founded any, did you not wish above all things, that your profefforfhip fhould be given, in fpite of partiality and felf-intereft, to him who would best perform the duties of it? and that your prize fhould be adjudged to that compofition which had the moft merit, by whom foever it was written? and did it ever ftrike you as reasonable that your ardent wifh fhould lofe its force and effect by time? or that men fhould hereafter be derided as fanciful vifionaries who endeavoured to execute your wish after fome centuries, as exactly as when it was first published? It is impoffible to conceive that any inftitutions, however beneficial, fhould answer their ends, if those who conduct them, refuse to confider themselves as Trustees. In univerfities, profeffors are to be chofen; in colleges, fellows are to be elected; in hofpitals, medical advifers, furgeons, matrons, are to be fixed upon; patients are to be admitted and attended: can any of these things be carried on according to the true intent and meaning of the feveral inftitutions, if those who have power, act on any other principles but thofe of trustees? Why fhould an uncommon thoughtleffness and difregard of original intention, be allowed with respect to the appointment of minifters of the church? You may as well fay that commiffioners for roads, canals, taxes, are not trustees, as that Patrons of livings are not.

Suppofing