York than any other sect. It is not now as it was in your time, in the year 1835; then a poor clergyman, that he might have the means to live, was compelled to travel through two, three, and sometimes four parishes: all these clubbing together to make up the sum of six hundred dollars in a year. Now this was scandalous, when that large trust had such ample means in its power to give liberally to every church in the state."
"Why, yes," said Hastings, "the true intent of accumulating wealth in churches, is to advance religion; for what other purposes are the funds created? I used to smile when I saw the amazing liberality of the trustees of this immense fund; they would, in the most freezing and pompous manner, dole out a thousand dollars to this church, and a thousand to that, making them all understand that nothing more could be done, as they were fearful, even in doing this, that they had gone beyond their charter."
"Just as if they did not know," said Edgar, "that any set of men, in any legislature, would give them full powers to expend the whole income in the cause of their own peculiar religion. Why I cannot tell how many years were suffered to elapse before they raised what was called a Bishop's Fund, and you know better than I do, how it was raised, or rather, how it commenced. And the old Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries, states, that the fund for the support of decayed clergymen and their families, was raised by the poor clergymen themselves. Never were people so hardly used as these ministers of the Gospel. You were an irreverend, exacting race in your day; you expected more from a preacher than from any other person to whom they gave salaries—they were screwed down to the last thread of the screw; people would have their pennyworth out of them. It is no
