Part 5
The differences between the highest and the lowest schools being so impalpable, it would seem absurd to suppose that the present controversies can have a much longer continuance. But whether that be so or not, there is a very important distinction (and one that is well worth the notice of statesmen) between the extension of the Church and the spread of Dissent. Church extension, as far as it goes, tends to compose differences. The consecration of a new church is almost invariably regarded as an occasion when party differences should be laid aside—the opening of a new meeting-house is too commonly the crowning act of an irreparable schism.
Another lesson which the report of Mr. Mann ought to teach Churchmen is the necessity there is for insisting upon the next religious census being made a complete and accurate one. The next religious census ought to include all such institutions as colleges, workhouses, hospitals, and the like—it ought to be enforced by the same penalties as the civil census; and it ought to be understood that all the returns would be printed in a blue book. With these precautions the Church need not fear the result. Even if the census of 1861 should prove no more trustworthy than that of 1851, it will remove a great deal of the misconceptions to which the latter has given rise. As far as one may judge, the work of church extension is progressing just as rapidly now as it was ten years ago; the number of the clergy is just as rapidly augmenting; {33} and as all additional clergymen have now to be supported on the voluntary principle, we may presume that they follow the ordinary laws of supply and demand. We may, therefore, confidently expect that the number of church sittings open on the census morning in 1861 will not be fewer than six millions; and if there be an average attendance (which there was not on the last occasion) the number of persons present will be about three millions and a half. That the Dissenters will be able to open any more sittings than in 1851, is doubtful; for it must be remembered that since 1841 the Church has been annually absorbing a population equal to the entire yearly increase. But allowing them the same increase as has been assigned to them for the decade 1841–51, they will not be able to open more than four million sittings, and they will not have more than two millions and a half of attendants. This estimate is formed on the supposition that the next census will be made on the voluntary principle like the last. If a more complete and accurate account is taken, the result may be very different. It is quite within the bounds of possibility that the number of church attendants may turn out to be near four millions, while that of the Dissenters may not much exceed two.
Looking at all the facts of the case, there is every reason why the Church should take courage. Never since the Reformation has she had so much real power for good—never has she been so free from abuses. Each year sees thousands returning to the fold from which they or their parents had strayed; each year sees her enemies more and more “dwindle, peak, and pine.” Everything, too, points to a daily acceleration of the process. At the very time that Convocation is resuming its functions, the Non-conformist Union is compelled by internal dissentions to abandon their yearly meeting. What Mr. Miall calls “the dissidence of dissent”—that is to say, all in it that is pre-eminently narrow-minded, ignorant, and infected with bigotry—is concentrating itself, and is thus getting free the more respectable elements of modern non-conformity. Meanwhile the better class of Dissenters are doing all in their power to cut the ground from under their own feet. They are building “steeple-houses,” inventing liturgies, and adopting even choral services; in other words they are expressing in the most emphatic manner their opinion that the whole theory of dissent is wrong. For a short time a Brummagem ecclesiology may satisfy them; but in the end they will no doubt rank themselves amongst the best sons of the Church. The truth is, there is no other religious community at the present day which can bid so high for the reverent attachment of Englishmen. Whatever the claims of Rome—her antiquity, her catholicity, her apostolicity—they are equally the Church of England’s. Her succession of bishops is the same, her regard for the primitive church greater, her conception of Christendom far more grand. The glories of the ancient rituals belong equally to the Book of Common Prayer. It contains nothing material which was not in them, there was nothing material in them (save only certain invocations and legends of the saints) which is not in it. The Prayer Book is, in fact, nothing but a translation (magnificently done) of the older offices, a little compressed and simplified. The structure is the same—the mode of using it the same; and if it has lost somewhat of the multiplied ceremonies which were anciently observed, it has gained far more in the majesty and breadth which it has acquired from its thoroughly congregational character. Besides, it is throughout a reality, whereas the office books of the Latin Communion have, to some extent at least, become a sham. Thus the Breviary has long since been practically abolished as a public form of prayer, and even as a manual of private devotions for the clergy, that which forms its staple, the Book of Psalms, has been virtually reduced to a fourth its bulk. In nearly a thousand churches belonging to the Anglican communion the whole Psalter is publicly recited every month, and in twenty times that number it is said through twice every year.
If Protestant Dissenters boast of their enlightenment or of their reverence for Scripture, the Church may meet them on that ground likewise with the utmost confidence. The Prayer-book scarcely recognises a person to be a Churchman if he cannot read; and she directs some forty psalms and some thirty chapters of the Bible to be gone through every week. In a word, approach the Church of England from the most opposite points, and she will be found to possess exactly that attribute which a person might think is most admirable. The man who reverences antiquity—who has a taste for art—who has a passion for ritual—who would have everything “understanded of the people,”—he who insists upon ranks and orders—and he who stands up for popular rights, will equally find in the Church of this country the very quality which he deems important. Never was there any institution so “many-sided;” never one that became with so much success “all things to all men.” How she could ever have lost her hold on the affections of Englishmen is indeed wonderful; but, in truth, until lately, she has never had a chance of making herself understood. _Now_, for the first time, her theory is beginning to be appreciated; and the success which has attended her, wonderful as it has been, is probably but the foretaste of a future more brilliant than anything of which we can now form an idea.
FOOTNOTES.
{11} The above tables, it is right to say, have been obtained by subtracting Mr. Mann’s tables relating to the Church from the tables relating to places of worship in the aggregate.
{19} It is right to say that the decennial periods do not exactly agree. In Mr. Mann’s tables they are from 1801–11, &c.; in Mr. Bright’s return, from 1800–10, &c. It is not, however, apprehended that this circumstance would materially affect the calculation.
{25} Neale estimates the Nonconformists, in the time of Charles II., at a hundred and fifty thousand families, or three quarters of a million persons; in other words, at about a sixth of the population. If the Dissenters had in 1801 only 881,240 sittings, their number of morning attendants would be considerably less than 400,000; and, allowing each attendant to represent three persons, that would give a Dissenting population of about 1,100,000.
{26} The faculty of reasoning correctly in figures is not so ordinary an accomplishment as might have been supposed. Even so intelligent a writer as Mr. Henry Mayhew prints, at page 391 of his “Great World of London,” a table, of which the following is a specimen:—
1842. Can neither Can read read nor only (percent) write (percent). Convicted at assizes 39.79 27.21 and sessions Convicted—summarily 39.90 21.65 Average 39.84 24.43
—the average being found by adding together the two lines and dividing the sum by two. It need hardly, however, be pointed out that the result so arrived at could not be true unless the number of persons in each class was exactly the same. A man who had invested in the Great Western Railway £900 which yielded him two per cent., and £100 in the South Western which paid him six, might say, on Mr. Mayhew’s principle, that he had invested £1000 at 4 per cent; but he would soon find out that he would have to receive only £24 for his yearly dividend instead of £40—£2.8 percent. instead of £4.
{27} Mr. Mann calculates that without in the least interfering with juvenile labour, and without questioning the discretion of parents who kept children between the ages of 3 and 5 and 12 and 15 at home, there ought to have been more than three million children at school in 1851. It would be easy to show that this estimate is based upon nothing better than a series of blunders and bad guesses, but there is a much shorter mode of dealing with it. The children of the middle and upper classes do not remain under professional instructors at home or at school for a longer average period than six years. Now, the total number of children in 1851 between the ages of 4 and 10 was 2,484,866, or 13.8 per cent. of the entire population. The number actually on the school books was 2,200,000, or 12.2 per cent. So that either all the children in the country were at school, but the average time was one-eighth too short; or the average time was of the right length, but the number of scholars was one-eighth too few. The truth, of course, lay somewhere between these two alternatives. Since 1851 considerable progress has no doubt been made; but it unfortunately turns out that the effect of improved machinery is not to improve the general education, but merely to shorten the time allotted to schooling. It is found that if by better modes of tuition a child can be made sooner to acquire what its parents think sufficient for it to know, it is only so much the sooner taken away. It would therefore be vain to expect that the school per centage will ever be much higher than it was in 1851—at least, until the middle classes raise their own standard. Of the children on the schoolbooks in 1851, the per centage of actual daily attendants was 83—91 for the private, and 79 for the public scholar. In America, where the schools are wholly free, the per centage was still less. In Massachusetts, for example, it was only 75. In other words, the attendance in England and Wales in 1851 was 1,826,000 daily. If the 2,200,000 had all been private scholars, it would have been 2,002,000. On the other hand if there had been 2,400,000 free scholars, it would only have been 1,800,000. These figures will speak for themselves.
{33} The number of additional clergy ordained every year is stated to be 300. The number required to maintain the proportion of clergy to population which existed in 1851 would be under 200.