in one place and a form of instruction in the other is maintained in order that the incomes appropriated to their support may not be sacrificed. The clergyman lives ten, fifteen, or twenty miles distant. He has no parish, and in some instances no congregation, but he comes to the church and goes through a form of religious service once or twice on Sunday. In one instance it was discovered that one man constituted the entire audience, and that he was paid a certain sum each week for playing congregation while the clergyman conducted the service!
In the city of London there are several parishes whose limits do not extend beyond the walls of the church-building—but which are in receipt of very generous incomes. In an article on the Bank of England, by Henry May, in the "Fortnightly Review," we are told that "this edifice" (the Bank) "was greatly enlarged between the years 1770 and 1786, and was completed pretty much as it now stands in 1786; an act having been procured in 1780 to enable the directors to buy the adjoining church, land, and parsonage—in fact, the whole parish of Christopher Le Stock—to the rector of which non-existent parish the bank pays four hundred pounds sterling per year to this day."
I am not aware of anything in America which parallels this condition of affairs. Our country is not as yet old enough for this; our conservatism is not of the right type, nor our veneration for such a class of "vested rights" sufficiently pronounced to afford favorable conditions for the existence of such abuses. I do not think it probable that they could maintain an assured footing among us. But we may be well warned against a system which tends in this direction, which is in itself vicious, and which must ultimately involve us in greater embarrassments.
The efficiency and success of a municipal government depend in a great measure upon its police establishment. The protection of life and property, the security of peace and good order, the suppression of crime and the arrest of criminals, are the special care of this department. Failure in these particulars is a fatal defect. Success in this branch of the government would palliate and atone for many shortcomings elsewhere. So far as I am able to learn, our American cities have no well-organized and well-sustained police force. Almost everywhere the police organization is used as a partisan political machine. If we recall the events of the past eighteen months, the statement will be confirmed, and we will find that the Republicans of Cincinnati and the Democrats of Chicago seem to vie with each other for an unenviable supremacy in this direction, and that each seems likely enough in its turn to surpass the other. The difficulty is fundamental, and relates to the theory of organization. Appointments to the police force, and promotions in the service, are made at the dictation of professional politicians, and as a reward for partisan services. A
