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7. State of Discipline, as exhibited by authority, and elucidated by a Diocesan Secretary.

Of the actual state of the Church, the picture exhibited in the under-mentioned Tables, within these few years to and by Parliament, is too instructive to be suffered to pass altogether unnoticed even in so compressed a work as the present. Coupled with the arrangements made by Henry the Eighth at the commencement of that so imperfectly beneficial change, which for want of a better, is spoken of in England by the name of the Reformation, (of which presently), it proves (as will be seen) to demonstration, this fundamental truth, viz. that in the conduct of that change, on the part of the ruling powers, neither at the commencement, nor at any subsequent period, has the welfare, temporal and eternal,—say, for shortness, the salvation of souls, or, in one word, salvation,―been the main and ruling object, or end in view, of what has been done. To a sincere eye, that can endure to look the idea in the face, the only points, that will remain susceptible of a question, will be--whether in any degree, and if in any, in what degree, on this or that occasion, to the ruling powers of this or that time, this most sacred and most extensively public object was an object of regard.

The years for and during which the matters in question are exhibited in these Tables, are the three successive years, 1809, 1810, and 1811. "An ABSTRACT OF RETURNS respect"ing NON-RESIDENCE; for the Year ending 25th March "1809:"-such is the title of the earliest of these Tables: ABSTRACT of the Number and Classes of NON-RESIDENT INCUMBENTS, and of the Number of RESIDENT INCUMBENTS, according to the Diocesan Returns for the Year 1810: such is the title of the next succeeding one: and in the

same form, with the exception of the name of the year, is that for 1811.

It is in the copies printed by and for the House of Commons, that these Tables have been consulted:-date of the Order for that of 1811, 26th March, 1813. Of no later date has any information on this subject been printed by the Order of the House of Commons. By the body of information thus collected, the object, by the contemplation of which the collection of it håd been produced, had been accomplished: viz. the forming a ground for the plan of reform, or whatever else it is to be called, began by the late Minister, Mr. Perceval, and supported, continued, and still continuing, by the President of the Council, the Earl of Harrowby.

Of this valuable body of information-for such it will truly be seen to be the immediate source and efficient cause may be seen in the Act of the year 1803: 43 G. III. c. 84. 7th July, 1803. For the various lights thus cast upon her whole fabric, Excellent Church appears to have been indebted to the confederacy of political saints, and, in an especial manner, to the pious policy and professional skill of Sir William Scott. Among the schemes which for her confirmation appear to have been formed by this Holy Brotherhood, one was-the peopling with Curates a number, more or less considerable, of the parsonages deserted by Sinecurist Incumbents. For this and other purposes, an article of information, which, now for the first time, was deemed necessary to be possessed by any body, was-in each diocese, of the whole number of Incumbents, by whom, by reading over and over again a quantity of matter, out of a modern book, souls were to be saved, how many there were, whose bodies were occasionally to be seen, in the several

places in which, if in this or any other shape service were rendered by them, it would be necessary they should be to render it,—and how many others, whose equally consecrated bodies, how replete soever with the Holy Ghost, were never at any time thus visible.

For this service it is that, for the causing of it to be in every parish rendered, and rendered in a proper manner,— under the names of Bishops and Archbishops, a set of men, dressed out to this day in the popish habits of the fifteenth century, are kept in a Protestant House of Legislature,→→ where, every day, that there may be something for them to do, some one of them is seen mumbling over the same page or two, out of that same book, to unconscious ears. For this service,-still more empty and unprofitable than the service for the enforcing of which it professes to be employed for this service it is, that pay is received from about 10,000l. to above 20,000l. a year,—with a more or less rich mass of patronage to each, for the enrichment of families and dependents, and a seat for life in that Upper House of Legislation: besides additions to the pay of each to an indefinite amount,-in the shape of standing Sinecures, and Cures occasionally improved, as will be seen, for the purpose, into Sinecures.

To know whether a man, who in a particular place has service to perform, performs it rightly,-to know even so much as whether he so much as makes a show of performing it, two preliminary points of knowledge are necessary, viz. who the man is, and whether the place— the only place-in which such duty, if done, can be done, is at any time among the places in which his body is to be found. Under the system which the act found existing,not, unless by accident, was so much as this preliminary stock of knowledge, slender and barren as it is, in the possession of any of these Right Reverend and Most

Reverend Figurantes on the politico-religious theatre, whose sole essential duty, if they had any, would have been the causing of that other duty, such as it is, to be done. Not any thing did they know about the matter : never had it been intended that they should: they found not in their hands any tolerably sufficient means for the obtainment of such knowledge. This ignorance, does it stand in need of proof? Behold it then in the Act: for, of the objects and functions of it, one part, and that a necessary one, is-not only the furnishing of that information by the Bishops to Parliament, but the antecedently necessary furnishing of this same information, by the Incumbents to these same Bishops.

The Act being thus necessarily brought to view-some sort of intimation, how brief soever, of the other matters, about which it occupied itself, may in this place be expected.-1. To give confirmation and extension to NonResidence, with the complete and wilful neglect of duty therein included:-2. to authorize the conversion of Cure into Sinecure, for the purpose of putting, in addition to the regularly allotted revenues of their Sees and Provinces, more and more money, without stint, into the pockets of Archbishops as well as Bishops :-3. to establish by various means, in those holy hands, a pure despotism, placing under it the whole body of the Non-Resident Parochial Clergy and their Curates, together with an unlimited proportion of Residents :-4. to give to delinquency indemnity for the past, as well as security for the future, punishing at the same time with disappointment and loss such persons as, by invitation, had engaged in the service of the law, for the enforcing the execution of it upon delinquents;-these may be mentioned as the most material of the objects provided for in this Act, in addition to the giving continuance to the already men

tioned supply of ecclesiastico-statistical information, which will be seen exhibited in the ensuing Tables.

July 7th, 1803, is the date given to this Act. March 25th, 1809, is the concluding day of the earliest year, for and in relation to which, any of the information which it undertook to bring to light, made its appearance: length of the interval between the issuing of the order and the time of the facts stated in the earliest document exhibited in consequence, near six years. April 18th, 1810, is the date of the House of Commons' Address, in compliance with which it was furnished by the Council Board: June 2d, 1810, is the date of the Abstract made of the above Returns by the Reverend Thomas Brooke Clarke, by order of that Board: being the earliest of all the Abstracts, three in number, that have ever made their appearance, and the earliest of those same three, which will here be seen consolidated into one. June 13th, 1812, and no earlier, is the date of the House of Commons' Order, from which, for the first time, it received the sort of half-publicity, which accompanies those unpurchaseable papers, the distribution of which is confined to the Members of that House. Little less than nine years had thus elapsed, before any part of that information had transpired, the obtainment of which was one of the main objects of this Act: and, when at last it did come forth, that it came forth teeming with gaps and misrepresentations-with both defects upon a prodigiously extensive scale-is what will be visible in an instant to any eye; visible by any the slightest glance at the difference between the numbers standing under the three different years, in cases where the real facts admitted not of any but a comparatively minute proportion of such difference. Even to this very day might the nakedness of Excellent Church have remained concealed from all profane eyes, had not the zeal of some of

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