actly calculating how little they gain on the one hand, and how much they sacrifice on the other. This subject is indeed one which, from the confidence hitherto placed by us in the integrity of government, has, perhaps, been much less investigated than any other of equal importance. But recent changes in the constitution have now so entirely altered the mutual relations of the Church and the Legislature, that what has in past times been a becoming, though perhaps misplaced reliance on authority, would at present be a disgraceful negligence about our most sacred interests. In the following pages, then, it will be my object to consider the gains and losses which we accept jointly, in the Union of Church and State, arranging them under the abovementioned heads: State Protection and State Interference.
I. The Protection which the Church receives from the State consists principally in four things.
1. In securing to us by Law some small portion of those ample endowments which the piety of our forefathers set apart for the maintenance of true religion in this country. Of these endowments far more than half are at this day in the hands of laymen, who may be of any religion or none, and do not consider themselves obliged to spend one farthing of it in the cause of God. But there is still a certain remnant in the hands of the clergy, who are thereby enabled to spread truth over the land, in the poorest and most remote districts; and to live in decency themselves, without being a burden to the poor people for whose good they are labouring. This remnant then the State has forborne to confiscate, as it has confiscated the rest; and in this consists the first kind of State Protection.
2. It further consists in enabling us to raise a tax on real property for the keeping our parish churches in tolerable and decent repair through the country,—which tax, as estimated by those who put it at the highest, amounts to about as many thousands a year as the other taxes amount to millions. This is the only existing law by which Englishmen, as such, are called on to assist in the maintenance of the Church of England.
3. It consists, farther, in allowing Thirty Bishops to sit and vote in the House of Lords, to which House all Bishops, and many
