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    April H 1856. 1 THE LEADER. 349

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    INTERRUPTED REFORMS. When the war commen...

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    Beames On Heliaious Teaching. Wjk Have A...

    hated by large numbers of those who are to be " converted . " Sometimes one sect competing with another provokes a conflict of mutual disparagement . Sometimes those who set themselves above their fellow-creatures exhibit the weaknesses of their nature far more than its power . We have Bishops excited "by theological ire against their own officers , proving to the public how readily an angry Bishop may be made to forget grammar as well as decency We have prelates falling into tlie practice which

    is ridiculed in ladies' -rnaids , of beginning a note in the third person and continuing it in the first . The Bishop of Bangor denounces an active clergyman in his diocese as insolent , and the clergyman tells his Bishop that his monitions are not godly . Mr . Stanley complains that he is oppressed by the Bishop of Wikciiester , because the Bishop required him to keep a curate , since he could not maintain any kind of regularity in his administration , or even read the service so as to be heard . And

    the Bishop of Dub-ham is accused of obstructing the opening of chapels , just as the Bishop of Bango-r . treats the proposal to have two services . on Sunday in certain parts of his diocese as an offence . These are pictures of clergymen taken by themselves ; and while prelates and pastors fall out , the working classes whom they are to instruct stand by and laugh at the teachers . These and other causes have made clergymen the obst motors of religion . For the result , we have evidence that can scarcely be controverted —that of Mr . Beames , preacher and assistant of St . James ' s , Westminster : —

    C We ask whether the artisans - who have been at our schools dining the last ten years seem to have any deeper irrrpression of religion ? Experience and truth cornjjel us to answer , No . Let it be assumed , however , for a moment , tliat church or chapel-going is not an index of the effect of our pi-esent system in teaching religion . Other witnesses to its failure are not Avantiag ,-. It ~ kaa been said by a great authority in the present day , that working- men may be divided into thinkers and drinkers . Making every allowance for tlie epigrammatic turn of the saying , is it so

    very far from the mark ? Is drunkenness less a national vice , less contrary to the spirit of religion than of old ? And what becomes of our thinkers ? . many of tliem retain the religious impressions you would have us believe they imbibed at school ? Are not thousands of them active , determined infidels ? Tea or twelve infidel lecture rooms in London—how many in the provinces w ? c know not—are supported by workiug men , some at tbam holding 1 , 500 persons . Infidel re-views , tracts , magazines , lending libraries , essays , meet you at every turn in the bookshops of our bauk streets *

    It is the very reverse when the teacher is an anti-ieligious missionary . " If Coopjek or Holyoakjb is the lecturer , " says Mr . Be am us , " the lecture-hall is crowded , though a feo is paid at the entrance . How many workingmen would be collected if a preacher of acknowledged eloquence lectured at Exeter-hall ? " When Gumming , or Binney , or M'Neile are announced to lecture , how many working men are drawn into the throng- ? And yet the elements are not wanting which , under other forms , attract them . "

    Mr . Bbamjes explains clearly enough whylit is religious teaching has had the effect of reversing the result intended . It is because the religious teachers have attempted a fraud upon tlio bulk of the people . They have withheld tliat which the people desired—instruction in matters of foot , history , or science—tuition in morals and worldly wisdom , under the protonco that it was necessary to make religious dogma precede tins kind of education . They have thought it better for the country to keep the religious machinery down to the standard of a dumo school , whore an arxciont darao teaches tho unwashed boys at twopence a-hoad A "Plea toy KduciUlomU Iteform . " fly Thomas Ileiuncs , M . A , I ' l-wolier and ABsUtant of Bt . Jamoa'a yoBtmln « ter , nutl AulhOrof tlio " ltookcrloa of London " ' -A pamphlet , iiuMisUfd by Mr . Hid * way .

    per week ; and Mr . Beames depicts the state of the people as deplorable : — The scene of our operations was a secluded village , as the novelist would call it ; in vulgar phrase , a back settlement , long neglected , cut off ou three Bides by the sea , a river and a creek , from the rest of a county . The aristocracy , tenant-farmers ; and the rest of the population , labourers . It was just the place to expel crude ideas raised by reading Theocritus at Oxford , or looking upon Watteau ' s pictures ; just the place to disabuse us of Arcadianism , pastoral

    romance and the like . The people were deplorably ignorant , and though there was no public house in the parish , generally drunkards . * Bastardy was rampant , although the population was under 400 ; in short , the hot-bed atmosphere of a town was alone wanting to pro chice a full maturity of vice ; poverty , sickness , and suffering , were too common . If sechision and ignorance are favourable to simplicity of character , if simplicity means innocence and purity , iu a word good moral condition ; this parish was , at any rate , an exception to tbe rule .

    JVon noster liic sermo—the sermon is that of the preacher and assistant of St . James's , Westminster . Mr . Beames holds that perhaps if boys are endowed with secular knowledge , if their reason is cultivated , they may be the better able to comprehend arguments , for or against religion , and better able to take in religious ideas . It is an opinion that does no dishonour to religion , or to the arguments in favour of it j our readers can say whether it has not from the first number of this journal been the opinion of the Leader .

    April H 1856. 1 The Leader. 349

    April H 1856 . 1 THE LEADER . 349

    Interrupted Reforms. When The War Commen...

    INTERRUPTED REFORMS . When the war commenced , the Ministry asked the Parliament to postpone the consideration of a group of reforms , and Parliament assented , with the general concurrence of the nation . Well , the war is past ; let us once niore consider our grievances . We have been taxed , and we have cheerfully paid the bill . We have had a thousand illustrations of incapacity and administrative abuse , and some practical reforms have been applied to remedy an evil state of things . We . have proved the necessity and the value of innovation , and we must now return , to the point at which the discussion was laidaside , in order to strike with both hands at the public enemy . The burden of a costly war has been laid upon us , and it came at a time when bad harvests , high prices , and unusual poverty aggravated the infliction . The Parliamentary machine worked badly , parties were in confusion , the last geneial election had exposed the facilities for bribery and corruption in the hands of the rich and the hereditary .

    It was then that Lord John Russell ' s supplementary Reform Bill glimmered for a moment in the House of Commons . The finality chief admitted that Great Britain had outgrown the measure of 1832 ; but bis scheme was so narrow , technical , and faltering that it disgusted the liberals , created scarcely any

    sensation among the Tories , fell Hat upon the country , and was withdrawn , with a pledge on the part of Lord John Russell , that he abided by its principle , and would introduce another bill . But it is not his bill that the nation will accept ; unless he revolutionises himself Lord John Russell will speedily bo the Grandfather of Reform .

    Ho said , in 1804 , that ho believed the House of Commons to be oo habituated to doctoral corruption that if the bribery laws had been then for the first time proposed , they would not have boon enacted . That was his confession ; Liberals must not forget it . All the measures introduced to euro tho evil were postponod , except ono , which was so mutilated by Conservative amendments that its oifoct was inappreciable .

    A blaok body of ecclesiastical abuses stood in front of tho Reformers , when they wore warned oif by tho war , " Strong government " was the symbol by which they wore adjured to

    desist . ^ Now , then , rates , ministers' money , the regium donum , the Church Building Act , the disabilities of the Colonial clergy , the law of simony—the prolific source of perjury , evasion , and profanity— the privileges of the ecclesiastical courts , the administration of episcopal and capitular estates , are questions ripe for settlement by measures of amendment or abolition . Bat , without political reform , administrative and ecclesiastical reforms can only be

    patches on a system of selfishness and abuse . The enormous preponderance still enjoyed by a privileged cIjlss , the conflict between minorities and majorities , tlie irregular plan by which one-sixth of the registered electors , and onefortieth of the adult male population , send a majority into the House of Commons j—this it is that must be changed before the nation can be fairly represented , and before the public service can be conducted on public principles . We believe , nevertheless , that no mere Reform .

    Bill will excite such a genuine political enthusiasm as that which forced upon the Peers the Act of 1832 . Events do not repeat themselves . What was done twenty-three years ago was the conquest of a principle . What could be done in the same direction now , unless by a very bold and ample measure , would raise few hopes , and promise few real developments of the Constitution . For this , it must be remembered , is the Lope of the

    English nation ;—that its Constitution will progress , that old forms will disappear when they have lost their value , that new forms will be adopted when they are essential to the glory of the commonwealth . While , by these changes , Great Britain keeps pace with time , she will never grow old , but preserve the force and the fire of youth . Once , however , arrest the process by which , she accommodates herself to the inevitable innovations that

    move society , and the sap will cease to now ; she will become an old-world monarchy , and another state , in the West , will inherit her prosperity . These speculations have a remote range ; but they bear on the work of the hour . When the provisions of the Treaty of Peace have been declared and discussed ; when foreign politics are , for an interval , laid aside , as they will be , unless thejttevolution | is suddenly renewed ; when the armies are recalled : the fleets laid

    up > n ordinary ; political parties divided upon domestic questions j it will be the time for the English nation to ask , whether it is really self-governed , and , if not , what stands in , the way . The answer will be , that we Lave an . imperfect Parliament , that the Registration Courts are full of class and money influence , that bribery and intimidation vitiate the elective system at the hustings , that the opinion of great constituencies is rendered inoperative by the votes of small constituencies , that hueo

    abuses encumber the administrative machine , and that the privileges and honours of government are vested in two or three sets of families in rotation . If the middle classes arc sincere , and if the working classes are at once serious and moderate , it will not be long before those questions are raised with an energy that Parliament cannot resist . Tho war is over ; it was not at random that wo said , months ago , that afterwards would come a reckoning for the maladministration of tho war .

    Instead of listening to tho cra ^ y rhapsodists , who cohyuiecdotoa of impossible infamy ; instead of omploying illiterate spoutcrs in deputations to peers and members of Parliament , whoso affability flatters tho impotence of tho spokesmen , why do not tho intelligent middle and working classes devote themselves to tho olucidations of solid English interests , and to tho process which would extinguish corruption and convert an artificial aristocracy into a real

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), April 12, 1856, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_12041856/page/13/