DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 AND 
 
 DISENDOWMENT.
 
 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 AND 
 
 DISENDOWMENT, 
 
 WHAT ARE THEY? 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD A. FREEMAN, D.C.L., LL.D. 
 
 LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 
 REPRINTED WITH ADDITIONS 
 FROM THE PALL MALL GAZETTE. 
 
 "Ereorf <r0t Sevvbriis v6fwt. HEROD, vn. 104. 
 
 Uonfcon : 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1874. 
 
 [All Rights reserved.}
 
 (JTamftrtBge: 
 
 FRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
 
 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 AND 
 
 DISENDOWMENT. 
 
 I. 
 
 WE have lately heard with one ear that the 
 disendowment of the Irish Church has as yet 
 brought no funds to the purposes to which its 
 surplus revenues are to be applied, and we have 
 lately heard with the other ear that the cry for the 
 disestablishment and disendowment of the English 
 Church is again rising as loudly as ever. This 
 then is not a bad time to stop and ask what the 
 words "disestablishment" and "disendowment" 
 really mean. And this question involves the 
 earlier one, What is the "establishment" and 
 the "endowment" of which "disestablishment" 
 and " disendowment " are the opposite ? The 
 answer to these questions involves an examination 
 F. i 
 
 2017255
 
 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 of one or two common confusions by which the 
 subject is often clouded over. 
 
 First of all, there is a lurking unwillingness in 
 the disputants on both sides, as indeed there is 
 in most speakers on all subjects, to acknowledge 
 the simple principle that, in every political com- 
 munity, the supreme power of the State, wherever 
 that supreme power may be placed, may do what- 
 ever it thinks good. We say this, of course, 
 with the necessary limitations, both physical and 
 moral. A law may be, as we hold, unjust ; this 
 means that, if we were members of the assembly 
 in which that law was passed, we should vote 
 against it. Or, at the outside, it means that we 
 should deem it our duty to resist the law in 
 obedience to some supposed higher law. This is 
 all ; a man may suffer what he thinks a wrong at 
 the hands of the supreme power ; but that wrong 
 is something wholly different from a wrong done 
 by a private person. The difference is not merely 
 that redress may be had in the case of a wrong 
 done by a private person, while it cannot in the
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 
 
 case of a wrong or alleged wrong done by the 
 supreme power. For it may happen that a private 
 man may by some act, as for instance by what 
 we think an unjust will, do us what we hold to 
 be a wrong, but for which there is no redress. All 
 acts of the supreme power come under this last 
 head. However much we may disapprove of 
 them and suffer from them, they answer, at the 
 worst, not to the act of the burglar or the forger, 
 but to the act of the father who bequeaths 
 something which he has a right to bequeath, but 
 bequeaths it in a way which some of his children 
 think unjust. Every act of the supreme power is 
 in its own nature lawful. The form of the supreme 
 power differs in different countries. In England it 
 is King, Lords, and Commons acting together. In 
 England then the act of the supreme power must 
 take the form of an Act of Parliament. An Act 
 of Parliament may be unjust, but it is unjust in 
 the same sense as the unjust will of the father, 
 not in the same sense as the act of the burglar 
 or forger, which is unlawful as well as unjust. 
 
 I 2
 
 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 An Act of Parliament may be unjust, but it 
 cannot be unlawful. We mean, for instance to 
 take the extremest case of all that the most 
 unjust bill of attainder passed by a Tudor Parlia- 
 ment, though it was a crime in every member 
 who voted for it and in the King who gave his 
 assent to it, was a perfect justification for the 
 Sheriff, the executioner, and any one else who 
 acted ministerially in carrying it out. In this 
 sense the State may do anything and deal with 
 anything ; and, as it may deal with anything, so it 
 may deal with Churches and with all that belongs 
 to them. Disestablishment and disendowment 
 are therefore acts which may be either just or 
 unjust. If they cannot be shown to be for the 
 qommon good of the nation, they are unjust acts ; 
 but they are acts which, if done by the supreme 
 power, are perfectly lawful. They are acts which 
 it is open to King, Lords, and Commons to do, 
 whenever they think good. 
 
 It is necessary to lay down this principle, 
 truism as it may sound, because it is practically
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 
 
 set aside by the disputants on both sides, when- 
 ever the question of disestablishment and disen- 
 dowment is argued. The one true principle is that 
 the State, meaning by the State, King, Lords, and 
 Commons, has the same right to deal with the 
 Church which it has to deal with anything else. 
 This principle is openly denied by those who raise 
 the cry of " sacrilege " and the like, and who 
 say in effect that the Church and all that belongs 
 to it is something too sacred for the State to 
 meddle with at all. But the principle is also less 
 openly set aside by those disputants on the other 
 side who rest the right of the State to meddle 
 with Church property and the like, not on the 
 general right of the State to do anything, but 
 on some supposed special right to deal with 
 Church property which it has not in regard to 
 other property. One side says that the State 
 may meddle with Church property, because it is 
 "national property;" the other side says that the 
 State may not meddle with Church property, be- 
 cause it is something too sacred to be meddled
 
 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 with. Yet it is perfectly certain, on the one hand, 
 that Church property is not national property in 
 the sense which the disputants mean, and it is 
 equally certain, on the other hand, that no power 
 can so tie up or dedicate anything as to bar the 
 right of the supreme power to deal with it. Both 
 these misconceptions on opposite sides must be 
 got rid of before the question can be fairly argued. 
 The true way of looking at the matter is simply 
 this. The State has the same power to deal with 
 Church property which it has to deal with any other 
 property, neither more nor less. Whenever the 
 State deems that the rights either of individuals 
 or of corporations ought to give way to the general 
 interest of the whole community, it has a right 
 to decree that they shall give way to it. We talk 
 of the sacredness of private property ; and against 
 everything else it is sacred ; but against an Act of 
 Parliament it has no sacredness at all. Every day 
 we see private property confiscated for railways 
 or public improvements of any kind. We use the 
 word " confiscated " in its proper sense, not in the
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 
 
 sense in which it has been often used by Mr Dis- 
 raeli and others when they wished to put a measure 
 in a bad light by giving it what they thought an ugly 
 name. The word "confiscation" has come to have 
 an ugly sound, because it is in no case a pleasant 
 process, and because in vulgar use the word has got 
 a wrong meaning. " Confiscation " is vulgarly used 
 to mean "robbery." A man has been known to com- 
 plain that another man has "confiscated his hat." 
 Then of course, when a word has once got this kind 
 of meaning, it tells, in Parliament or elsewhere, to 
 say that a certain measure is a "measure of confis- 
 cation." But the word has a meaning of its own, a 
 meaning which is wanted in this discussion, and, for 
 the present purpose, it must be recovered from Mr 
 Disraeli's abuse of it to be used in its proper mean- 
 ing. Confiscation is an act of the State and of the 
 State only. It is the taking of property by the 
 State. It is a perfectly colourless word, which does 
 not rule whether such taking be just or unjust. 
 When a magistrate inflicts a fine, he does an act of 
 confiscation. So, when a man's land is taken from
 
 8 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 him by Act of Parliament because it is wanted for 
 a railway, his land is confiscated. To be sure, 
 he gets compensation ; but the land may be taken 
 from him quite against his will, and the compen- 
 sation may be one which he thinks quite inade- 
 quate. It is plain that the power which takes 
 away the land and gives compensation might also, 
 if it chose, take away the land without giving any 
 compensation. The land is equally taken, equally 
 confiscated, in either case. It is simply a feeling 
 of natural justice which orders that, when it is 
 taken, the owner shall have something given to 
 him instead. An Act of Parliament which should 
 take away a man's land without compensation 
 would be unjust ; that is to say, every well-disposed 
 member would vote against it. But it would be 
 lawful ; that is to say, no blame would attach to 
 those who carried it out and acted upon it. 
 
 The one sound principle then is that the State 
 may, when it sees good reason for doing so, take or 
 confiscate any property of any kind. From this 
 rule property given to ecclesiastical purposes can
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 
 
 claim no exemption. It is liable, on just and 
 sufficient cause, to be taken and applied to some 
 other purpose, and of such just and sufficient cause 
 the State itself is the only judge. The power of 
 the State to deal with Church property is nothing 
 special with regard to that kind of property ; it 
 is simply one branch of its right to deal with pro- 
 perty of every kind. But it will be asked, Is there 
 not a wide difference between private property and 
 corporate property? Has not the State a right 
 to deal with corporate property which it has not 
 to deal with private property ? In strictness there 
 is no difference as to the right itself, but there is 
 a difference of great importance as to the exercise 
 of that right. That is to say, the cases in which 
 it is just and expedient to meddle with private 
 property come much more seldom than the cases 
 in which it is just and expedient to meddle with 
 corporate property. In a settled state of things, 
 the State is hardly ever called on to meddle with 
 private property, except either at the request of 
 those concerned or in certain well-understood cases,
 
 IO DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 like taking land for a railway. The cases where 
 it is just and expedient to meddle with corporate 
 property, temporal or ecclesiastical, come much 
 oftener. But the inherent right is the same in both 
 cases, and of the justice and expediency of the 
 act in either case the State itself is the only 
 judge. And when we talk of the wide difference 
 between private property and corporate property, it 
 is well to remember that, if a corporation, sole or 
 aggregate, is an artificial creation of the law, the 
 tying up of property in tail, or indeed any control 
 exercised by a man over his goods after he is dead, 
 is an artificial creation of the law just as much. 
 
 This is the true ground on which to justify 
 alienations or rearrangements of ecclesiastical pro- 
 perty by Act of Parliament, or by the supreme 
 power of any country, whatever that supreme power 
 may be. Church property is not " national pro- 
 perty," except in the same sense in which all 
 property is national property. It is not " national 
 property " in the only strict sense of those words. 
 It is not folkland, ager publicus, property of which
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. II 
 
 the nation is not only sovereign but landlord. 
 It ceased to be so whenever it passed into the 
 hands of the ecclesiastical corporations or into 
 the hands of those who founded the ecclesiastical 
 corporations. For here comes in another con- 
 fusion. People talk as if " Church property" was 
 the property of one vast corporation called "the 
 Church." In truth it is simply the property of 
 the several local churches, the ecclesiastical cor- 
 porations, sole and aggregate, bishops, chapters, 
 rectors and vicars, or any other. The Church of 
 England, as a single body, has no property ; 
 the property belongs to the church of Canter- 
 bury, the church of Westminster, the church of 
 Little Peddlington, or any other. This phrase is 
 one of the commonest in old history and records, 
 but it seems now to be misunderstood. The King 
 by his coronation oath binds himself to respect the 
 rights of the "churches" in. his kingdom. That 
 means that he will not unlawfully disturb the pro- 
 perty, the patronage, or any other right lawfully 
 held by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Dean
 
 12 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 and Chapter of Westminster, the Rector of Little 
 Peddlington, or any other ecclesiastical corporation, 
 sole or aggregate. But this phrase has been so 
 misunderstood that, in the debates on the Irish 
 Church, a distinguished lawyer argued that, as the 
 King bound himself to protect, not one " Church," 
 but "churches" in the plural, it meant that he 
 bound himself to protect the rights of the Church 
 of Ireland as well as those of the Church of England. 
 We must fully take in the fact that Church property 
 is not the property of one vast body, but of various 
 local bodies scattered up and down the country. 
 These local bodies, forming corporations sole or 
 aggregate, hold estates which have been acquired 
 at sundry times and in divers manners from the 
 first preaching of Christianity to the English till 
 now. They are held by all manner of tenures, 
 from the oldest to the newest. One ecclesiastical 
 person or body may hold a piece of land granted 
 by King ^Ethelberht ; another may have a stipend 
 from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners which was 
 paid for the first time last quarter-day. The tenure
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 13 
 
 may be any kind of tenure known to the law. 
 But all this does not make the property of these 
 corporations " national property " in the sense in 
 which the Crown lands and the money which 
 comes in from the taxes are national property. 
 Nor, as we have before now seen it put, is the 
 Church "trustee for the nation" surely the oddest 
 notion of cestui que trust to be found anywhere. 
 The ecclesiastical corporations hold their property 
 by the same right as any other holders of property. 
 If some of it was got ages ago by corrupt means, 
 so a great deal of private property has been got 
 by corrupt means. If one king or other powerful 
 man gave lands to a bishopric or a monastery ; 
 another, or very often the same, gave lands to 
 his favourites or his mistresses. We need not 
 ask what was the motive of the first grant in 
 either case, provided the present owner can show 
 a legal title. That legal title is good in both cases 
 against any power except an Act of Parliament. 
 An Act of Parliament may set aside either. The 
 only difference is that the cases in which it is
 
 14 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 right and expedient for Parliament to upset private 
 titles to property are much less common than 
 the cases in which it is right and expedient for 
 Parliament to upset corporate titles. 
 
 In short, if we wish to argue this question on 
 its true ground, we must put out of sight the 
 popular notion that, at some time or other, the 
 State determined to make a general national 
 endowment of religion. And we must also put 
 out of sight the other popular notion that, at some 
 time or other, the State took certain funds from 
 one religious body and gave them to another. 
 Neither of these things ever happened. If there 
 ever was a time when the State determined on a 
 general national establishment of religion, it must 
 have been at the time of the conversion of the 
 English nation to Christianity. But the conversion 
 of England took place gradually, when there was 
 no such thing as an English nation capable of 
 a national act. The land was still cut up into 
 small kingdoms, and Kent had been Christian 
 for some generations at a time when -Sussex still
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 15 
 
 remained heathen. If any act which could be 
 called a systematic establishment and endowment 
 of the Church ever took place anywhere, it cer- 
 tainly took place in each particular kingdom for 
 itself, not in England as a whole. The churches of 
 Canterbury and Rochester undoubtedly held lands 
 while men in Sussex still worshipped Woden. But 
 it would be an abuse of language to apply such 
 words as systematic establishment and endowment 
 to the irregular process by which the ecclesiastical 
 corporations received their possessions. The pro- 
 cess began in the earliest times, and it has gone on 
 ever since. And nothing was done systematically 
 at any time. This king or that earl founded or 
 enriched this or that church in which he felt a 
 special interest ; and from this it naturally followed 
 that one church was much more richly endowed than 
 another. The nearest approach to a regular general 
 endowment is the tithe, and this is not a very near 
 approach. The tithe can hardly be said to have been 
 granted by the State. The state of the case rather 
 is that the Church preached the payment of tithe
 
 1 6 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 as a duty, and that the State gradually came to 
 enforce the duty by legal sanctions. But it is only 
 by the Tithe Commutation &ct that tithe has been 
 put wholly on the same level as other property. 
 As long as tithe could be' recovered by a process in 
 an ecclesiastical court, there was still something of 
 its original nature hanging about it. The theory of 
 the ecclesiastical courts is that they act pro salute 
 anima, for the soul's health of the person brought 
 before the court. The aim of their punishment 
 is the reformation of the offender. In theory the 
 tithe-steal er was brought before the court, not that 
 the defrauded rector might recover his property, 
 but that the man who had sinned by not paying 
 his tithe might be brought to a better frame of 
 mind. So with regard to the church-rate, which 
 was a payment for ecclesiastical purposes, though 
 it was not in any strict sense Church property or 
 property at all. Here too the old process was 
 through the ecclesiastical court, with the same 
 theoretical object, the reformation of the defaulter. 
 In neither case did the State strictly make a grant ;
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 
 
 it rather enforced the decree of the Church by the 
 secular arm. And as to tithe, it should also be 
 remembered that, though the duty of paying tithe 
 was taught very early, yet for a long time the tithe- 
 payer had a good deal of choice as to the particular 
 ecclesiastical body to which he would pay his tithe. 
 Nothing was more common than an arbitrary grant 
 of tithe to this or that religious house. In short, 
 the ecclesiastical endowments of England have 
 grown up, like everything else in England, bit by 
 bit. A number of ecclesiastical corporations have 
 been endowed at all manner of times and in all 
 manner of ways ; but there was no one particular 
 moment when the State of England determined to 
 endow one general religious body called the Church 
 of England. 
 
 And if there was no one particular moment 
 when, as many people fancy, the State endowed 
 the Church by a deliberate act, still less was there 
 any moment when the State, as many people 
 fancy, took the Church property from one religious 
 body and gave it to another. The whole argument 
 F. 2
 
 1 8 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 must assume, because the facts of history compel 
 us to assume, the absolute identity of the Church 
 of England after the Reformation with the Church 
 of England before the Reformation. We are not 
 talking theology; it is quite possible to argue, 
 either from the Roman Catholic or from the Pro- 
 testant side, that the Reformation really made so 
 great a theological change that the religious body 
 which existed after those changes cannot be said to 
 be the same religious body as that which existed 
 before them. With this theological argument, from 
 whichever side it comes, we have nothing whatever 
 to do. Our position is a much humbler one. It is 
 simply that, whether the religious body did or did 
 not so change theologically as no longer to be the 
 same, yet, as a matter of law and history, as a 
 matter of plain fact, there was no taking from 
 one religious body and giving to another. We 
 must remember that there was not in England, 
 as some people seem to think and as there 
 really was in some foreign countries, some one act 
 done at a definite time called the " Reformation."
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 1 9 
 
 Under the name of the Reformation we jumble 
 together a great number of changes spread over 
 many years. In popular language the Reformation 
 sometimes means the throwing off of the authority 
 of the Pope, sometimes the suppression of the 
 monasteries, sometimes the actual religious changes, 
 the putting forth of the English Prayer-Book and 
 the Articles of Religion. Here are three sets of 
 changes, all of which are undoubtedly connected as 
 results of a general spirit of change; but, as a mat- 
 ter of fact, they were acts done by different people 
 at different times, and those who, at any stage, 
 wrought one change had no thought that the others 
 would follow. The final result might be that theo- 
 logical continuity was broken, but no act was done 
 by which legal and historical continuity was broken. 
 Any lawyer must know that, though Pole succeeded 
 Cranmer and Parker succeeded Pole, yet nothing 
 was done to break the uninterrupted succession of 
 the Archbishopric of Canterbury as a corporation 
 sole in the eye of the law. This is all that we 
 mean ; in the sixteenth century, as at several other 
 
 23
 
 2O DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 times before and since, laws were made to which 
 the holders of ecclesiastical benefices had to conform 
 under pain of losing those benefices. As a matter 
 of fact, the great mass of their holders did con- 
 form through all changes. There was much less 
 than people commonly think even of taking from 
 one person and giving to another; and the general 
 taking from one religious body and giving to 
 another, which many people fancy took place under 
 Henry the Eighth or Elizabeth, simply never hap- 
 pened at all. In this last statement we wish to be 
 thoroughly well understood. We are not wishing 
 in any way to undervalue the greatness either of 
 the direct theological change or of the indirect 
 changes of all kinds which followed on the long 
 series of events known as the English Reformation. 
 In a general view of history those changes cannot 
 be rated too highly. They were changes far greater 
 than those who made them dreamed of. But we 
 are dealing with a dry matter of fact and of law. 
 There was no one particular moment, called the 
 Reformation, at which the State of England deter-
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 21 
 
 mined to take property from one Church or set 
 of people and to give it to another. As there was 
 no systematic endowment in the sixth or seventh 
 century, still less was there any systematic disen- 
 dowment and re-endowment in the sixteenth. 
 
 Disendowment then simply means taking away 
 or confiscating the property of ecclesiastical corpo- 
 rations by that authority which alone has the right 
 to confiscate any prope'rty, the supreme authority 
 of Parliament. This right of disendowment as of 
 doing anything is inherent in the supreme power. 
 In our own country it has been exercised over and 
 over again in all ages, but most notably and on 
 the greatest scale in the reigns of Edward the 
 Second, Henry the Fifth, Henry the Eighth, 
 Edward the Sixth, Elizabeth, and Victoria. And 
 it is only out of deference to possible prejudices 
 that we do not add the Long Parliament to our list. 
 For though, under the Long Parliament, the bishops 
 and chapters were suppressed, and their lands were 
 confiscated, yet the continuity of the parochial 
 incumbents was not broken; their property was not
 
 22 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 confiscated, nor were the rights of patrons taken 
 away. In this way the temporary suppression of 
 bishops and chapters in the seventeenth century 
 is analogous to the great suppression of monasteries 
 under Henry the Eighth, and to the suppression 
 of colleges and chantries under Edward the Sixth. 
 In all these cases some ecclesiastical corporations, 
 sometimes a whole class of ecclesiastical corpora- 
 tions, sometimes, as in the last case of all, all the 
 ecclesiastical corporations within one part of the 
 kingdom, were suppressed, and their property was 
 applied as the supreme power thought good. The 
 suppressions under Henry the Fifth and under 
 Victoria, the suppression of the alien priories and 
 that of all ecclesiastical corporations in Ireland, 
 stand out among all the others for the purity of 
 motive which led to the confiscation and for the 
 wise purposes to which the confiscated property 
 was applied. But the legal process is the same in 
 all. We may think that under Henry the Fifth 
 and under Victoria the confiscated property was 
 well applied, and that under Henry the Eighth
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 2 3 
 
 it was badly applied ; but that is not to the pur- 
 pose ; the right is the same in either case. In all 
 these cases alike the supreme power has freely 
 exercised a right which is inherent in it as the 
 supreme power, the right to deal with ecclesiastical 
 property as it may deal with anything else. Ours 
 is a land of precedent, and here are precedents 
 enough. 
 
 Disendowment then simply means the confisca- 
 tion of the property of ecclesiastical corporations. 
 The present cry is to do to all ecclesiastical corpo- 
 rations of all kinds throughout the country what at 
 earlier times was done to ecclesiastical corporations 
 of particular kinds throughout the country, what in 
 our own day has been done, or rather is now doing, to 
 all ecclesiastical corporations of all kinds throughout 
 one part of the country. The power of Parliament 
 to do so is as clear in the one case as in the other. 
 The only question is whether as good grounds for 
 exercising that power can be shown in the present 
 case as could be shown in the other cases. Are 
 there as good reasons for disendowing the Church
 
 24 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 of England that is, for confiscating the property 
 of all the ecclesiastical corporations in England 
 as there were for confiscating the property of the 
 alien priories under Henry the Fifth, or for the pro^ 
 cess which is now going on of confiscating the pro- 
 perty of all the ecclesiastical corporations in Ireland ? 
 The supporters and the enemies of disendowment 
 must be content to meet on this simple issue. The 
 question must not be confused by talk about 
 "national property" on the one hand, or about 
 " sacrilege" on the other. It is simply a question 
 whether a great and violent change, but a change 
 which the supreme power has a perfect right to 
 make, is or is not called for in the general interest 
 of the country. 
 
 The question of disendowment is compa'ratively 
 simple. It means taking away, as endowment 
 means giving. All that is wanted is clearly to 
 understand the nature of the thing which has been 
 given, and which it is proposed to take away. 
 What is meant by disestablishment is a much 
 harder question, because what is meant by esta-
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 2$ 
 
 blishment is a much harder question. It seems 
 however that there may be disestablishment 
 without disendowment, while no one has pro- 
 posed to have disendowment without disesta- 
 blishment. What establishment and disesta- 
 blishment really are we must now go on to 
 examine.
 
 II. 
 
 WHAT is an Established Church ? The popu- 
 lar notion seems to be that there was some time 
 when two distinct bodies, called the State and the 
 Church, made a kind of bargain together. Some- 
 times people seem even to think that at this time, 
 whenever it was, the State picked out one par- 
 ticular religious body to make the bargain with, 
 when it might conceivably have chosen some other 
 religious body for the purpose. The State is 
 looked on, on the one hand, as being deeply con- 
 vinced of the importance of religion to the national 
 welfare, deeply convinced of its own duty to pro- 
 mote the religious instruction of the people, and 
 to provide means for the public exercise of some 
 kind of religious worship. At the same time it 
 is looked on as feeling that it would not exactly
 
 DISESTABLISHMENT AND DISENDOWMENT. 2/ 
 
 do to leave the ministers of religion to do in all 
 things just as they may think good. Filled with 
 these sentiments, the State makes its bargain 
 wi.th the Church, by which bargain the Church 
 receives a special protection, and a large measure 
 of patronage from the State, while, on the other 
 hand, it has to submit to a large measure of State 
 control from which, if it refused the terms, it might 
 remain free. The State accordingly proceeds to 
 "establish" the Church, to make it in a special way 
 the Church of the nation, while, alongside of the 
 Church so " established," all other religious bodies 
 hold a less dignified and favoured position. Those 
 other religious bodies may hold very different po- 
 sitions in different times and places. They may 
 perhaps be persecuted, perhaps merely tolerated, 
 perhaps fully protected ; but in no case do they hold 
 the same close connexion with the nation and its 
 government which is held by the religious body 
 which is selected for establishment. The Church 
 undertakes to supply religious instruction and the 
 forms of religious worship for the nation. The
 
 28 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 State enables the Church to do so by means of en- 
 dowments and special privileges. The ministers of 
 the Established Church hold a definite legal posi- 
 tion which does not belong to the ministers of 
 other religious bodies. In return for these favours 
 the Church gives up a certain portion of its natural 
 freedom. All the relations between the two bodies 
 go on the principle that each measure of favour 
 should be purchased by a certain measure of sub- 
 mission to State control. The State exercises a 
 power of legislating for the Established Church in 
 a way in which it does not think of legislating for 
 other religious bodies. Other religious bodies can 
 settle their own forms and discipline as they please ; 
 they can legislate as they will for their own mem- 
 bers their own members having of course the 
 remedy in their own hands by withdrawing from 
 any religious body whose internal legislature they 
 dislike. But the ecclesiastical assembly of the Es- 
 tablished Church cannot even enter on any business 
 without a licence from the Crown ; its decrees are 
 not binding on the clergy themselves till they have
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 29 
 
 received the royal assent, nor on the laity till 
 they are further confirmed by Parliament. Mean- 
 while, Parliament can legislate in any ecclesiastical 
 matter; it can alter ecclesiastical ceremonies and 
 ecclesiastical discipline, without consulting the ec- 
 clesiastical assembly at all. But to counterbalance 
 all this, the ecclesiastical order is recognized as an 
 estate of the realm, and certain of its chief minis- 
 ters have official seats in the Legislature, with 
 votes, not only on ecclesiastical matters, but on 
 all matters which come under discussion. To ba- 
 lance back again, these great officers of the Church 
 are, if not directly appointed by the Crown, yet 
 recommended to the ecclesiastical electors in a way 
 which they cannot refuse to obey. In the same 
 spirit, many smaller ecclesiastical offices are in 
 the gift of the Crown and of other lay patrons, 
 by a right which the law distinctly makes a matter 
 of temporal property. So there are ecclesiastical 
 courts, with a jurisdiction known to the law, whose 
 sentences carry with them temporal consequences 
 and are enforced by the temporal power. But, on
 
 30 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 the other hand, every ecclesiastical sentence is 
 liable to an appeal to a court which is nominated 
 by the Crown, and which may consist wholly of 
 laymen. Every minister of the Church, as such, 
 has certain privileges, certain exemptions, balanced 
 in the same proportion by certain disabilities. 
 Lastly, the Sovereign himself must be in commu- 
 nion with the Established Church, and he is, in 
 theory at least, admitted to the royal office with 
 ecclesiastical ceremonies. On the other hand, he 
 is Supreme Governor of the Church, supreme in 
 all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, and clothed 
 moreover, in popular belief, with a kind of per- 
 sonal authority in ecclesiastical matters which a 
 lawyer would not find it easy to define. 
 
 Now all this by no means unfairly expresses 
 the actual relations between Church and State in 
 England, that is to say, it by no means unfairly 
 expresses the actual state of English law as to 
 ecclesiastical matters. But, as it has just been 
 put, as it commonly is put, the statement involves 
 the delusion that there are two distinct bodies
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 31 
 
 called Church and State, which are capable of 
 bargaining with one another. But the State must 
 mean the nation ; the Church must mean either 
 the whole nation, where the nation is of one mind 
 in religious matters, or else part of the nation, 
 where there are several religious bodies in the 
 same nation. The common way of talking about 
 Church and State comes from days when people 
 fancied that the Government of a nation was the 
 nation itself, and that the clergy or other ministers 
 of a Church were the Church itself. A king with 
 his council or cabinet might bargain, and some- 
 times has bargained, with a pope, a convocation, 
 a bench of bishops ; but a nation and a Church 
 in the true meaning of the word Church, taking 
 in all the members of the religious body and 
 not only its office-bearers cannot bargain with 
 one another. We must always bear in mind that 
 the clergy are not the Church, an error which is 
 to some extent fostered by some unavoidable 
 ways of speaking. "Church property," for in- 
 stance, that is, property given for ecclesiastical
 
 32 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 purposes, will be mainly though not wholly 
 the property of the clergy as the office-bearers 
 of the Church. " Church discipline" too will have 
 mainly to deal with the acts of the clergy. But 
 in the whole dispute it must be borne in mind 
 that the clergy are no more the Church than the 
 government is the nation, or than the officers of 
 an army are the army itself. 
 
 It will be well then to get rid of the notion of 
 two distinct bodies, Church and State, capable of 
 bargaining with each other. It will be well for 
 the words "relations of Church and State" to 
 substitute some such words as "legislation on 
 ecclesiastical matters." And here we have first 
 of all to get rid of the notion that there was some 
 one great act of legislation which settled such 
 matters once for all. We have in short to get 
 rid of the notion that there was some time or other 
 when the Church was " established" by a delibe- 
 rate and formal act. There have been times and 
 places when a Church really has been established 
 by an act of this kind. The re-establishment of
 
 AND D1SENDOWMENT. 33 
 
 Christianity in France is a case in point. Then the 
 civil power did deliberately establish a form of 
 worship ; and the establishment took the form 
 of an agreement, a concordat, between the supreme 
 power of the French nation and the head of that 
 religious body of which a branch was to be re- 
 established in France. Here then there was some- 
 thing which may not unfairly be called a bargain 
 between Church and State. But nothing of this 
 kind ever took place in England. There was no 
 moment when the nation or its rulers made up 
 their minds that it would be a good thing to set 
 up an Established Church, any more than there 
 was a moment when they made up their minds 
 that it would be a good thing to set up a govern- 
 ment by King, Lords, and Commons. There are 
 only two dates in our history when anything of 
 the kind can be conceived to have happened. It 
 must have happened either at the first preaching 
 of Christianity or else at the Reformation. For 
 the time when something more like it really did 
 happen than happened at either of those times is 
 F- 3
 
 34 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 not likely to come into people's heads. The time 
 in our history when there was the nearest ap- 
 proach to such an act was at the Restoration of 
 Charles the Second. Charles the Second and his 
 Parliament did something which was more like 
 "establishing" a Church than anything that any 
 one had done before them. They did establish an 
 ecclesiastical system by a single deliberate act. 
 But the form which that act took, the revival of 
 something old, something which was held to have 
 been illegally abolished, gives the act a different 
 character. It differs from the concordat in France, 
 because, though the latter was in a sense the re- 
 establishment of an old Church, yet the form in 
 which it was re-established was so different in all 
 its temporal accidents from what it had been be- 
 fore its fall that its restoration may be looked on 
 politically as the establishment of something new. 
 But in Charles the Second's time the legal doc- 
 trine was that the Church came back, just as the 
 King came back, not by a new right but by an old 
 one, just as if the laws had for a while been sleep-
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 35 
 
 ing. And, after all, what had to be restored or 
 reestablished in Charles the Second.'s time was 
 only the hierarchy, the Bishops, Chapters, and so 
 forth. As we have already pointed out, the parish 
 ministers, with their endowments and legal position, 
 had gone on, and the actual incumbents at the 
 return of Charles had the option of keeping their 
 benefices by conforming to the new or restored laws. 
 The act of Charles the Second therefore, 
 though it came more nearly to a deliberate act of 
 " establishment" than anything else in our history, 
 was not really a deliberate act of establishing a 
 Church in the sense in which such an act is gene- 
 rally conceived. And it is quite certain that, when 
 people talk of the Church as being "established" 
 by an act of the State, when they talk of a 
 bargain between Church and State, they do not 
 conceive the event as happening in the time of 
 Charles the Second. And if the popular mind does 
 not look for the act of establishment so late as the 
 time of Charles the Second, still less does it go 
 back for it to a time so early as the first preaching 
 
 32
 
 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 of Christianity in England. The popular notion 
 clearly is that the Church was "established" at the 
 Reformation. People seem to think that Henry 
 the Eighth or Edward the Sixth or Elizabeth, 
 having perhaps already "disestablished" an older 
 Church, went on next of set purpose to "establish" 
 a new one. They chose, it seems to be commonly 
 thought, that form of religion which they thought 
 best ; they established it, endowed it, clothed it with 
 certain privileges, and, by way of balance, subjected 
 it to a strict control on the part of the State. When 
 they might have established the Roman Catholic 
 Church, or the Lutheran Church of Germany, or 
 the Calvinist Church of Geneva, they devised, as be- 
 came the Sovereigns of an island realm, something 
 different from the Churches of all other countries, 
 and called into being the Church of England. 
 
 Now we must here again draw the same dis- 
 tinction which we drew at an earlier stage. We 
 have nothing to do with theology, but only with 
 history and law. Both strong Roman Catholics 
 and strong Protestants might be willing, from
 
 AND DISENDOIVMENT. 37 
 
 their several theological positions, to accept the 
 account which we have just given as no unfair 
 description of the general results of the changes 
 of the sixteenth century. But, as a matter of 
 history and as a matter of law, nothing of the 
 kind ever happened. As a matter of law and 
 history, however it may be as a matter of theo- 
 logy, the Church of England after the Reforma- 
 tion is the same body as the Church of England 
 before the Reformation. The Roman Catholic 
 may argue that, though there was no outward 
 breach of continuity, though the old ecclesiastical 
 corporations retained their legal rights, though 
 bishops and priests and everything went on, yet 
 the bishops and priests were no bishops and priests, 
 the sacraments which they administered were no 
 sacraments, because they had parted from that 
 centre of unity which alone can give their acts any 
 spiritual force. On the other hand, strong Pro- 
 testants, who look on the essence of a Church as 
 consisting rather in the profession of certain doc- 
 trines and the like than in any legal and historical
 
 38 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 succession, may say that everything was so tho- 
 roughly changed in the sixteenth century that 
 what was done was really to destroy an old 
 Church and set up a new one. These are alike 
 purely theological views of the case with which 
 we have nothing to do. We keep to the legal and 
 historical succession, and we cannot, for our pur- 
 pose, listen to purely theological arguments on 
 either side. 
 
 Looking in this way at the events of the six- 
 teenth century, it is certain that no English ruler, 
 no English Parliament, thought of setting up 
 a new Church, but simply of reforming the 
 existing English Church. Nothing was further 
 from the mind of either Henry the Eighth or of 
 Elizabeth than the thought that either of them 
 was doing anything new. Neither of them ever 
 thought for a moment of establishing a new 
 Church or of establishing anything at all. In 
 their own eyes they were not establishing but 
 reforming ; they were neither pulling down nor 
 setting up, but simply putting to rights. They
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 39 
 
 were getting rid of innovations and corruptions ; 
 they were casting off an usurped foreign jurisdiction, 
 and restoring to the Crown its ancient authority 
 over the State ecclesiastical. And, though we 
 may say that practically their labours did come 
 to setting up something new, such was not the 
 legal aspect of what they did. There was no one 
 act called "the Reformation;" the Reformation was 
 the gradual result of a long series of acts. There 
 was no one moment, no one Act of Parliament, 
 when and by which a Church was "established ;" still 
 less was there any Act by which one Church was 
 "disestablished" and another Church "established" 
 in its place. As we said before, nothing happened 
 to disturb the legal continuity of any ecclesiastical 
 corporation, except those which were suppressed 
 altogether. Changes were made in the doctrine 
 and in the discipline of the Church ; some eccle- 
 siastical corporations were abolished, others lost 
 part of their wealth. The power of the Crown and 
 of Parliament in ecclesiastical affairs was more 
 fully recognized than it had been for many ages,
 
 4O DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 though perhaps not more fully than it had been 
 recognized in early times. In all that they did 
 Henry and Elizabeth had no more thought of es- 
 tablishing a new Church than they had of founding 
 a new nation; for in their eyes the Church and 
 the nation were the same thing. 
 
 It is hard now-a-days fully to take this in, 
 because we have so long been used to see many 
 religious bodies in the same nation. We are used 
 every day to see a number of religious bodies, all 
 of whose members have equal civil rights, all of 
 which have their worship protected by law, but 
 one of which is in an especial manner, both for 
 favour and for control, connected with the civil 
 government. We are apt to forget how this state 
 of things came about. As we see at this moment 
 one religious body which is " established," and seve- 
 ral religious bodies which are not "established," 
 there is the strongest temptation to think that that 
 one was, at some time or other, picked out in some 
 special way to be " established." A truer statement 
 of the case is to say that the Established Church is
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 41 
 
 a religious body which once was coextensive with 
 the nation, but which has ceased to be so. The 
 Established Church is "established," not because of 
 any particular act of establishment at any particular 
 time, but because it once was the nation. In early 
 times the Church was simply the nation looked 
 at with reference to religion, just as the army 
 was the nation looked at with reference to warfare. 
 The nation, in its civil, its ecclesiastical, and its 
 military character, might have three sets of leaders ; 
 but the body was the same in all three cases. 
 From the seventh century to the sixteenth this was 
 the aspect of the State and the Church of England. 
 The case was modified indeed through the claims to 
 authority set up by the Popes, and through claims 
 to exemption from ordinary jurisdiction set up by 
 the native clergy. Both these claims gradually 
 crept in, but both were always more or less strongly 
 resisted. At last the reformers of the sixteenth 
 century threw both aside as innovations contrary 
 to ancient English law. In such a state of things 
 as this there could be no question about establish-
 
 42 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 ment or disestablishment. The relations between 
 the civil and ecclesiastical powers were not settled 
 by any one formal enactment ; they simply grew up 
 and shaped themselves according to the circum- 
 stances of one age and another. One age might see 
 some privilege conferred on the clergy, or on some 
 class of the clergy ; another age might see it taken 
 away. The whole thing, in short, like everything 
 else in this country, came of itself. The Church 
 Establishment has just the same history as the 
 House of Commons or as Trial by Jury. It is the 
 creation of the law ; but it is not the creation of 
 any particular law, but of the general course of 
 our law, written and unwritten. Take, for instance, 
 the parliamentary position of the bishops. There 
 was no particular moment when the nation thought 
 that it would be a good thing to have bishops 
 or abbots or other churchmen in the national as- 
 sembly. They were not put there, either that 
 they might represent ecclesiastical interests or 
 give information on ecclesiastical subjects, or be- 
 cause they possessed all the learning of the age,
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 43 
 
 or because they held lands by a feudal tenure. 
 All these are reasons invented afterwards to de- 
 fend or explain a practice of which most cer- 
 tainly none of them was the cause. Those reasons 
 undoubtedly helped to enable the bishops and 
 abbots to keep, along with the earls and barons, 
 the right of personal attendance when other men 
 lost it, but they were not the causes which gave 
 them the right in the first instance. We might 
 perhaps say that reasons of this kind led Charles 
 the Second and his Parliament to restore to the 
 bishops the seats in Parliament which the Long 
 Parliament had taken away from them. But even 
 then it would perhaps be truer to say that the 
 bishops regained their seats, not out of any theory, 
 but simply because they had held them before. 
 Still in this, as in other matters, if we are to seek 
 for any particular moment of establishment, it is 
 at the Restoration that we shall find the thing 
 which looks most like it. 
 
 The Church then was established, or more 
 truly the Church grew up, because it was the
 
 44 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 nation in one of its aspects. The ministers of 
 the Church were national officers for one set 
 of purposes, enjoying the rights and privileges, 
 and subject to the responsibilities, of national 
 officers. The Church was strictly the nation. 
 For many ages, from the time when the last man 
 in Sussex or the Isle of Wight left off worshipping 
 Woden till the time when the doctrines of the Lol- 
 lards began to spread, the question of toleration of 
 different religious bodies in one nation was not a 
 practical question. There were no Dissenters. In- 
 dividual heretics were most rare ; an heretical sect 
 or community was unheard of. For two or three 
 centuries there was a small class in the land who 
 were not within the pale of the Church, but then 
 they were not within the pale of the nation either. 
 The Jew was subject to much irregular oppression, 
 but he could hardly be said to be subject to religious 
 persecution. Because he was no part of the nation, 
 he could not be held to have rebelled against the 
 Church; he was a stranger, both in blood and in 
 religion, and, as a stranger, he was allowed a
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 45 
 
 kind of contemptuous toleration till Edward the 
 First sent him out of the land altogether. The 
 heretic, that is the Christian who dissented from 
 established doctrines, was in a worse case. The 
 same principle which gave the Jew some of the 
 privileges of a stranger made the heretic subject 
 to the punishment of a domestic traitor; only for 
 many ages heretics were so scarce that their treat- 
 ment was hardly a practical question. When they 
 did appear in the form of the Lollards, the im- 
 pulse was to get rid of them, as of any other 
 disturbers of the body politic, and all the more 
 so, as their religious dissent was undoubtedly con- 
 nected with political dissent. But, though the Lol- 
 lards of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were 
 far more numerous than any doubters or deniers of 
 established doctrines in earlier times, they were not 
 numerous enough seriously to affect the identity of 
 the Church and the nation. It was not till the 
 sixteenth century that the consequences of differ- 
 ence in religion between men of the same nation 
 became the great question of the time.
 
 46 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Then at last the fact that men might differ in 
 religion fairly stared men in the face. But even 
 then men still for a long time held that the Church 
 and the nation ought to be one, that dissent in 
 religion was a thing to be put down by law as 
 much as sedition in politics. Toleration, in our 
 sense of the word, was unheard of. It was held 
 to be the duty of the civil power in each state 
 to prescribe its own religion to its subjects. It 
 was of course the duty of every government to 
 prescribe only the true religion ; different govern- 
 ments unluckily differed as to what was the true 
 religion; but they allowed no difference on the 
 part of their subjects. " Cujus regio ejus et religio." 
 In Germany a religious peace meant that the 
 several princes and commonwealths of the Empire 
 might fix the religion of their own dominions. In 
 France it meant that, in particular districts, towns, 
 castles, where the Protestants were strong, they 
 might practise a religion which it was hard to 
 hinder them from practising. It nowhere meant 
 the right of each individual man to follow what
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 47 
 
 religion he chose. In our land, where union was 
 so much closer and law so much stronger than in 
 Germany or France, it was a long time before any 
 party grasped the notion that there might be two 
 religions side by side, each protected by the State, 
 and the members of both of which might alike be 
 orderly members of the commonwealth. Roman, 
 Anglican, Puritan, all alike held it to be their duty, 
 whenever they had the power, to establish their own 
 system by law to the exclusion of all others. And 
 this is beyond doubt the original meaning of the 
 Church being "by law established." It does not 
 mean, as the word is used now, an "Established 
 Church," as opposed to some other religious body 
 which is not " established." This is a sense which 
 grew up later. The Church was "established," as 
 any other of the institutions of the country were 
 established. It was "established," just as govern- 
 ment by King, Lords, and Commons was "esta- 
 blished." It no more came into any man's head that 
 there could be another Church, Popish or Puritan, 
 alongside of the Anglican Church established by
 
 48 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 law, than that there could be another Government, 
 despotic or republican, alongside of the limited 
 monarchy established by law. It was the duty of 
 the magistrate to enforce the law, and it was his 
 duty to enforce the law about ecclesiastical matters 
 as much as to enforce the law about any other kind 
 of matters. If it was his duty to execute justice, 
 it was also his duty to maintain truth. And, in 
 the most zealous times of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, to maintain truth meant to 
 burn Unitarians, to cut up Papists alive, and to 
 clap Baptists and Independents in prison. 
 
 If we keep this in mind, we shall better under- 
 stand the conduct of many men in the sixteenth 
 century. We are apt to cry out that men must 
 have been base and hypocritical time-servers, be- 
 cause they conformed to one religious change after 
 another, because they sometimes kept on into the 
 reign of Elizabeth ecclesiastical offices which they 
 had received in the reign of Henry the Eighth. 
 It may be granted that such men had not the spirit 
 of martyrs ; they were not like Taylor and Latimer
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 49 
 
 on the one side, or like the Carthusian monks on 
 the other. Or we may perhaps say that they 
 did not think the points at issue worth going to 
 the stake or the quartering-block about. They 
 might have been ready to go there if, like the 
 early Christians, they had been bidden to worship 
 Jupiter, or if, like Daniel, they had been forbidden 
 to worship any God at all. We are so accustomed 
 to divide men by a hard line into Roman Catholics 
 and Protestants, it seems to us so easy for a man 
 to join himself to any religious body which he 
 approves of, that we hardly understand the wholly 
 different state of feeling in those times. Here and 
 there was a man so zealous on one side or the other 
 that he was ready to defy the law and to become 
 a martyr to his own views of the truth. But 
 the great mass of Englishmen were not in any 
 strict sense either Roman Catholics or Protest- 
 ants ; they were men who were ready to con- 
 form to the law in religious matters, just as they 
 were ready to conform to it in other matters. 
 One man thought that change had gone too far, 
 F. 4
 
 5O DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 another thought that it had not gone far enough, 
 just as a man may in any other matter be called 
 on to obey, and, if he holds any public office, to 
 administer, a law which he would gladly see re- 
 pealed or altered. One man was sorry to exchange 
 the missal and the breviary for the new prayer- 
 book ; another thought that the new prayer-book 
 had not departed nearly far enough from the missal 
 and the breviary. But both alike conformed to 
 the ritual of which they did not exactly approve, 
 just as much as those who thought that the wisdom 
 of King Edward or Queen Elizabeth had hit on 
 exactly the right thing. Each conformed to what 
 was established by law ; each, no doubt, would 
 have been glad to have had something else esta- 
 blished by law ; but for several years neither side 
 thought of departing from what the law ordained. 
 No party thought it possible to have two or three 
 religious systems two or three separate Churches 
 going on side by side. Each wished to model 
 the one Church of the nation according to his own 
 pattern; but for several years no party thought
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 5 I 
 
 it its duty to set up a separate religious com- 
 munion, merely because its own pattern was not 
 exactly followed. Step by step parties split further 
 asunder; men saw how irreconcilable their differ- 
 ences were ; at last they thought it their duty to 
 brave the law and to set up separate religious 
 communions of their own. Those who thought 
 that change had gone too far, and who were 
 willing to brave the law from that side, became 
 " Popish recusants." Those who thought that 
 change had not gone far enough, and who were 
 willing to brave the law from that side, formed 
 the first congregations of Protestant Dissenters. 
 Another change came, and, during the Common- 
 wealth and the Protectorate, those who clave to 
 what had been a few years before by law estab- 
 lished became separatists in their turn. Thus the 
 result of differences in religion became a great 
 and practical question. There were now several 
 religious communions in the land. Step by step, 
 those separate religious communions won for them- 
 selves, first, simple toleration, and then a full 
 
 42
 
 52 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 equality with those who adhered to the national 
 religion. And then for the first time did the word 
 established put on its present meaning. Hitherto the 
 ecclesiastical constitution had been " established " 
 simply in the same sense in which anything else 
 ordained by law was established. Now the word 
 gradually began to have its present technical mean- 
 ing. It began to mean a religious body which 
 stands in a special relation to the State, in dis- 
 tinction from those religious bodies which have 
 gradually made their way through the stages of 
 persecution and simple toleration up to the posi- 
 tion which they now hold. 
 
 Establishment then, as applied to the religious 
 body which once was coextensive with the nation, 
 but which now is so no longer, was no one act 
 done at a particular time from definite motives. 
 The Church establishment has grown up like every- 
 thing else. It has come to be what it is through 
 the circumstances of our history. Like everything 
 else, it is subject to the law. The supreme power, 
 on good cause being shown, may legislate about
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 53 
 
 it in any way, as it has often legislated already. 
 But the supreme power has the right so to do, not 
 because of any particular bargain or agreement 
 or special act of any kind, but simply because, 
 being the supreme power, it has, within the limits 
 which we spoke of before, the right to do anything. 
 Whatever is the exact meaning attached to the 
 word disestablishment, it means some change in 
 the laws relating to ecclesiastical matters. Such 
 changes, greater or smaller, may be made now, 
 as they have often been made before. All that 
 is needed is to make out a good case for such 
 changes. 
 
 We have now perhaps done something to make 
 it clearer what the real nature of the Church 
 Establishment, as we now have it in England, is. 
 If so, we shall be better able to ask more distinctly 
 what is the exact meaning of the proposed dis- 
 establishment.
 
 III. 
 
 BY this time we may perhaps better under- 
 stand what is the real nature of the process known 
 as "disendowment;" what is the real nature of 
 the "connexion between Church and State" in 
 England, the "establishment" of the Church, as 
 it is called. We have throughout been arguing 
 against two classes of adversaries, against those 
 who hold that ecclesiastical property and eccle- 
 siastical matters generally are something too 
 high and holy for the State to deal with, and 
 against those who hold that the State has a 
 special right to deal with ecclesiastical matters 
 more than it has to deal with other matters. 
 Both these opposite notions, it will be seen, 
 start from the same principle. At the bottom 
 of both lies the idea that ecclesiastical property
 
 DISESTABLISHMENT AND DISENDOWMENT. 55 
 
 and ecclesiastical matters of all kinds have some 
 special character about them different from other 
 property and other matters. This is a doctrine 
 which may be theologically true, though men, 
 and those not the least devout of men, have been 
 found to call it in question. But we have nothing 
 to do with its theological truth or falsehood. The 
 temporal legislator cannot enter into such ques- 
 tions. He must look upon ecclesiastical property 
 and everything else that is ecclesiastical with the 
 same eyes with which he looks upon all other 
 things. A proposal to alienate ecclesiastical pro- 
 perty, a proposal to transfer property from one 
 ecclesiastical purpose to another, a proposal in any 
 other way to alter the laws about ecclesiastical 
 matters, must be judged by the legislator from 
 one point of view only. Will it be for the common 
 good of the country to make any change in these 
 matters, or will it be better to leave them as they 
 are? 
 
 We have heard of disestablishment carrying 
 disendowment with it, and we are now seeing the
 
 56 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 process in Ireland. We have also heard of, but 
 we have not seen, a process called disestablishment 
 without disendowment. Let us first see what the 
 results of this last would be. By disestablish- 
 ment must be understood the repeal of all laws 
 which, whether for purposes of privilege or for 
 purposes of control, make any difference between 
 the Established Church that is, the religious 
 body which once was coextensive with the nation 
 and those other religious bodies whose growth 
 has caused it to be no longer coextensive with the 
 nation. 
 
 The argument in favour of such a course would 
 seem to be this : As long as the Church was co- 
 extensive with the nation, it was no more than 
 reasonable that the State should legislate about 
 ecclesiastical matters in the same way that it legis- 
 lates about any other national institution. It was 
 no more than reasonable that the members and 
 ministers of the Church, that is, the nation and 
 its office-bearers in its religious aspect, should 
 enjoy such privileges and be subject to such control
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 57 
 
 as the wisdom of the Legislature might from time 
 to time think fit. But, now that the Church is no 
 longer coextensive with the nation, now that it has 
 ceased to be the nation in its religious aspect, now 
 that it is only one religious body among many, 
 there is, it may be argued, no longer any reason 
 why it should enjoy any privileges which are not 
 enjoyed by other religious bodies, or why it should 
 be subject to any control to which other religious 
 bodies are not subject. To carry out this rule we 
 should have to repeal all laws by which the Esta- 
 blished Church is recognized in a way in which 
 other religious bodies are not recognized. The 
 ecclesiastical coronation of the Sovereign must 
 come to an end ; the ruler of the whole nation 
 must no longer even seem to be admitted to the 
 royal office by the ministers of a religious body 
 which forms only part of the nation. It is certain 
 that, ever since the rule has been laid down that 
 the King has the same authority before his coro- 
 nation as after it, the coronation has become a mere 
 pageant. Still it is by no means an empty pageant,
 
 58 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 and it is a pageant in which, more almost than in 
 any other way, the National Church is publicly 
 recognized on the part of the nation. The obliga- 
 tion on the part of the Sovereign to be in com- 
 munion with what is now the Established Church 
 must be taken away. And, if there is to be real 
 religious equality, the restriction must be fairly 
 taken away all round, and a Popish king must 
 become lawful as well as an Independent or a 
 Baptist king. It would seem also that the eccle- 
 siastical element in the household of the Sovereign 
 ought in consistency to come to an end. The 
 king may doubtless have his chapel and his chap- 
 lains of any persuasion that he pleases, but they 
 must no longer keep about them anything of the 
 character of a public institution. The bishops 
 must of course lose their seats in the House of 
 Lords. Whatever was the way, as a matter of 
 history, in which they came by those seats, those 
 seats are now, as a matter of fact, a privilege be- 
 longing to ministers of one religious body which 
 is not shared by the ministers of any other.
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 59 
 
 Ecclesiastical courts, as courts possessing any 
 coercive jurisdiction, must come to an end, and 
 with them must come to an end the appeal from 
 the ecclesiastical courts to the Privy Council. The 
 disestablished Church would be able to exercise 
 its discipline how it thought good, exactly as any 
 other religious body does, subject to the general 
 law of the land, and to that jurisdiction of the 
 Court of Queen's Bench which is ever and anon 
 called on to settle questions which arise in religious 
 bodies about religious matters, but which the law 
 looks upon only as questions of contract. The 
 Act of Uniformity must of course be repealed. 
 The Convocations of the two provinces must be 
 left as free as the Wesleyan Conference, free to 
 take any shape that they please, free to decree what 
 they please, so long as their decrees do not touch 
 the civil rights of any man. The Crown must no 
 longer have the appointment to the many eccle- 
 siastical offices which are now in its gift, including 
 that control over the election of bishops which 
 is practically the same as a direct appointment.
 
 60 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 Whether all patronage, and especially all lay 
 patronage, ought to cease is a very doubtful point. 
 We -here touch on a dangerous and difficult ques- 
 tion ; we have reached the border-land of dises- 
 tablishment and disendowment. We must think 
 for a moment what patronage is. As a matter of 
 fact, patronage is valued because it practically 
 amounts to a power of bestowing certain temporal 
 possessions on any member of a large class of 
 men, a power which has naturally found its money 
 value. But in theory this power is only an accident 
 of patronage. In his origin the patron was, as his 
 name implies, the advocate, the champion, of the 
 ecclesiastical corporation, sole or aggregate, which 
 is under his patronage. The duties of the patron, 
 which in troubled times were often difficult and 
 dangerous, were rewarded by certain rights, the 
 chief of them being some powers of selection or 
 nomination over the body of which he was patron. 
 In a state of things where law is supreme, the 
 duties of patronage have passed away, but the 
 rights remain. Those rights, in the case of an
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 6 1 
 
 ordinary parish church, are not the direct bestowal 
 of any office, still less the direct bestowal of any 
 property. An advowson is the right of the patron 
 by which, on a vacancy of the living, he may pre- 
 sent a clerk to the bishop. The bishop, if there 
 is no manifest cause to the contrary, is bound to 
 bestow institution to the spiritual office on the 
 clerk so presented, and the clerk so instituted be- 
 comes possessed of the temporal benefice attached 
 to the spiritual office. It is quite impossible that 
 such a right as this could go on in a Church which 
 is . disendowed as well as disestablished ; it is for 
 those who argue that a Church can be disestab- 
 lished without being disendowed, to say whether 
 it can go on in a disestablished but not disendowed 
 Church. But we may almost take it for granted 
 that, in any case of disestablishment, all patronage 
 must come to an end. It would be for the dis- 
 established body to settle in what way its ministers 
 should be appointed. Again, all laws must be 
 repealed which treat the Church or its fabrics as 
 national institutions. There could be no more
 
 62 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 questions about burial bills, about Dissenting 
 churchwardens, and the like. Disestablishment, to 
 be fair, must cut both ways. If it abolishes 
 privilege, it must abolish bondage. If the Estab- 
 lished Church is to become simply a " denomina- 
 tion," it must be as free as any other denomination, 
 as free from the control or interference of any but 
 its own members. And its members would now 
 have to be denned in some way or other, like the 
 members of other religious bodies. The fiction 
 by which every man of the country is held to 
 be a member of the Church of the country, and 
 to have rights as such, a fiction which is a 
 survival from days when the Church and the 
 nation were the same, must of course come to 
 an end. Any privileges, any exemptions, any 
 authority, and, on the other hand, any disabilities, 
 which attach to the ministers or other officers 
 of the now Established Church, and which do 
 not attach to the ministers or other officers of 
 other religious bodies, must be abolished. The 
 rector or vicar must no longer be ex officio chairman
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 63 
 
 of the parish meeting ; the churchwarden must no 
 longer be ex officio overseer; on the other hand, 
 episcopal holy orders must be no longer a bar to a 
 seat in the House of Commons any more than 
 the ministerial office in any non-episcopal religious 
 body. An archangel has before now been an M.P., 
 and a disestablished archbishop must be allowed 
 to be an M.P. also. Lastly, there must be no 
 payments out of public funds, out of taxes or 
 rates, for any religious purpose. There must be no 
 such thing as a chaplain of a ship or of a regi- 
 ment, of a gaol, an asylum, or a workhouse, or 
 of the House of Commons itself. This last pro- 
 vision comes under the head of disestablishment, 
 not of disendowment For an endowment implies 
 a permanent fund, such as corporate or trust pro- 
 perty. The mere voting of salaries cannot be called 
 endowment, and the voting of salaries for religious 
 purposes out of public money of any kind is an 
 act of the same nature as any of the other acts 
 which come under the notion of establishment. 
 These, or something like these, are the changes
 
 64 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 which would have to be made in order to dises- 
 tablish the now established Church, in order at 
 once to deprive it of the State privileges, and to 
 set it free from the State control, which distinguish 
 it from other religious bodies. No doubt many 
 questions of detail may be raised ; some may think 
 that all these changes would not be needful ; others 
 may think that some further changes would be 
 equally needful. All that we wish to do is to 
 point out generally the kind of changes which 
 would seem to be implied in the notion of dises- 
 tablishment. The one essential thing is that dis- 
 establishment should cut both ways; that, while 
 it cuts away every shred of special privilege, it 
 should also cut away every trace of special con- 
 trol. Of course, as we have said over and over 
 again, Parliament may do anything; all that we 
 say is that something like what we have just 
 sketched seems to us to be the reasonable thing 
 for Parliament to do, if disestablishment should 
 ever be determined on. 
 
 Now there are those who argue that there may
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 65 
 
 be disestablishment without disendowment, and in 
 the abstract they are perfectly right. All that 
 we have sketched out might be done without 
 touching a penny of the endowments of the Church. 
 Even if the notion of disestablishment, simply 
 as disestablishment, should be pressed to the ex- 
 tremest point, all that it would demand in the 
 way of confiscation or disendowment would be the 
 surrender of such parts of the property of the 
 Church as have come from direct parliamentary 
 grants. Some churches have been built, some 
 livings have been increased, out of money voted 
 by Parliament. But it would seem a more reason- 
 able view to hold that a parliamentary grant, when 
 once made, is like any other grant, that money 
 voted once for all by Parliament for an eccle- 
 siastical purpose is like money or lands voted by 
 Parliament to a successful general. Both come 
 under the general power of Parliament to do any- 
 thing, but in neither case need any special power 
 of resumption be supposed. Setting these cases 
 aside and they make up a very small part of the 
 F. 5
 
 66 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 actual property of the Church the endowments of 
 the Established Church rest on exactly the 
 same ground as the endowments of Dissenting 
 bodies. People sometimes forget that there are 
 such things as Dissenting endowments. But, 
 though they are not of any very great amount, and 
 though of course they cannot be of any very 
 ancient date, there are such things, and, where 
 they exist, the law protects them. Now the 
 difference between these endowments and the 
 endowments of the Church is simply this, that the 
 endowments of the Church are much greater in 
 extent, and the mass of them are much older in 
 date, than the endowments of Dissenting bodies. 
 All alike are gifts made by different persons at 
 different times, in ways which the law allowed at 
 the time when they were given. All alike are 
 lawful property which the law protects, but with 
 all of which alike the supreme power of the coun- 
 try can at any time deal as it thinks good. The 
 difference that the mass of Church property is 
 held by corporations, sole or aggregate, while Dis-
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 6/ 
 
 senting property is held by trustees, is a mere 
 legal subtlety as to the kind of tenure; the law 
 protects one tenure just as much as the other. 
 Still we have no doubt that many people think 
 that Parliament has some right to touch the lands 
 of the archbishopric of Canterbury while it has 
 not the same right to touch the trust funds of a 
 Dissenting chapel or college. We answer that 
 it has the same right over both. As Parliament 
 may do what it pleases, it may, on just cause 
 being shown, touch one as much as the other. 
 The only difference is that it is far more likely 
 that just cause should be shown in the case of 
 the archbishopric than in the case of the college 
 or chapel. Arguments, we do not say sound, 
 but certainly plausible, arguments which at least 
 deserve an answer, may be brought to show 
 that the general good would be promoted if the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury held a different tem- 
 poral position from what he now holds. One can 
 hardly conceive that the other class of endowments 
 can so affect the general good as to call for the 
 
 52
 
 68 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 special interference of the State. But if such a 
 case should happen, the confiscation or other dis- 
 posal of such trust funds would be an act of ex- 
 actly the same kind as the confiscation or other 
 disposal of the lands of the archbishopric. The 
 State has no right over the one which it has not 
 equally over the other. 
 
 It is therefore perfectly possible in idea to have 
 disestablishment without disendowment. It would 
 be quite possible to deprive the Established 
 Church of all special privileges granted by the 
 State, to relieve it from all special control on the 
 part of the State, but at the same time to leave it, 
 like other religious bodies, in the possession of all 
 its endowments. It would be quite possible to 
 have several religious bodies in the country, all 
 holding exactly the same position in the eye of 
 the law, all protected by the law in the possession 
 of any endowments which they may have, but one 
 of which should have endowments very much 
 greater than any of the others. But what would 
 be the effect of so doing ? It would simply be to
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 69 
 
 set the Church free from State control, and to 
 leave it in possession of all the power and influ- 
 ence derived from property. The zealot for eccle- 
 siastical rights would gladly purchase the vast gain 
 which he would get by such an arrangement at the 
 cost of the very small sacrifice which he would 
 have to make. The bishop would lose his tem- 
 poral rank, but the parish priest would lose no- 
 thing that is worth keeping. The whole ecclesias- 
 tical body would be able to do whatever might be 
 right in its own eyes. The great question would 
 be whether it would seem right in the eyes of the 
 ecclesiastical body to remain one ecclesiastical 
 body. The chances are that there would be 
 schisms without number. In an Established Church 
 the law protects every shade of opinion which does 
 not break the law; and the slowness, costliness, 
 and uncertainty of the law often make it hard to 
 deal even with those who do break it. The history 
 of ecclesiastical synods in all ages shows that they 
 would find out sharper and quicker courses. As 
 it is, setting aside extremes in any direction, it
 
 7O DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 is plain that in the Established Church several 
 very different schools of thought can go on side by 
 side, each working in his own way, each bringing 
 out some special element of good, with a fair 
 amount of harmony among them. One may be 
 quite sure that, -if the Church were" set wholly 
 free from State control, changes would be made 
 in one way or another which would make it far 
 harder than it is now for men of these different 
 schools of thought to work together. Such a state 
 of things would be sure to follow on disestablish- 
 ment in any shape, but it would be ten times 
 worse if there were disestablishment without disen- 
 dowment. For it is only in human nature that 
 men should be in some degree swayed by temporal 
 motives. Disestablishment without disendowment 
 would really come to this, that the temporalities 
 of the Church would be put up to be fought for by 
 contending theological parties. 
 
 Even setting this fear aside, disestablishment 
 without disendowment would seem to be a very 
 dangerous experiment. Most practical men will
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 7 1 
 
 be inclined to think that, if disestablishment is to 
 be, disendowment must follow. Then comes the 
 question whether such disendowment should be 
 total. Many people have a not unnatural shrink- 
 ing from confiscating endowments which have 
 been given very lately, while they have no shrink- 
 ing from confiscating endowments which are of 
 ancient date. But the distinction is one purely 
 of sentiment, not of principle ; and there are other 
 people with whom sentiment would tell more 
 strongly on behalf of the ancient endowment than 
 on behalf of the modern one. Be an endowment 
 ten years old or a hundred or a thousand, its 
 nature is exactly the same. However old or how- 
 ever new it is, it ought not to be touched lightly 
 or rashly ; but, however old or however new it is, 
 the supreme power may touch it, if there be a 
 good reason for so doing. There lies the whole 
 question. Would a change of so great and sweep- 
 ing a kind, a change which would touch so many 
 interests and associations, really be for the public 
 good or not? Would it be for the public good
 
 72 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 that the Established Church of England should 
 be stripped of all privileges which are not shared 
 by other religious bodies, and set free from all 
 control which it had exercised over religious bodies, 
 and withal, that all the ministers of the Church, 
 from the archbishop to the minor canon, should 
 lose probably with the reservation of "vested 
 interests" their corporate property ? Is good 
 ground shown, or is it not shown, for so great 
 a change in the condition of England as this ? 
 
 This question we are not now going to argue ; 
 we are merely trying to make it plain what the 
 question really is. We do indeed assume that, 
 if there be disestablishment, disendowment must 
 follow ; that is all. Otherwise our object through- 
 out has been rather to clear the way for argu- 
 ment than to argue. But one or two cautions 
 must be given. The question is eminently a prac- 
 tical one, and it cannot be dealt with according to 
 mere abstract theories. It is one of those cases 
 in which it is a great argument in favour of an 
 institution that it exists. It is not enough to show
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 73 
 
 that some other system may be theoretically bet- 
 ter, or to point to some country where another 
 system is thought to be in some points more suc- 
 cessful. To tear up by the roots any part of those 
 institutions of an old country which have grown 
 up with /t from the beginning, which have become 
 part of its very being, is in itself an evil. Before 
 such a course is taken it must be shown, not only 
 that the proposed change would be an improve- 
 ment in itself, but that it would be so great an 
 improvement as to counterbalance the evil in- 
 volved in the very process of change. We often 
 act wisely in preserving institutions which we 
 should never think of setting up for the first 
 time in their present state. It does not at all 
 follow that, because it would be undesirable to 
 set up an Established Church in a new colony 
 or in the United States, it would therefore be 
 desirable to pull down the Established Church in 
 England. The case is just the same with this 
 question as with hundreds of other questions of the 
 same kind. A man may think that a republic
 
 74 DISESTABLISHMENT 
 
 is in itself better than a monarchy, but he would 
 not be bound by this ideal preference to try to 
 set up a republic in England. A man may think 
 a monarchy in itself better than a republic, but 
 he would not therefore be bound to try to set 
 up a monarchy in Switzerland or America. In 
 all cases of change, especially in so great a change 
 as this, there is a great deal more to be thought 
 of than merely whether the proposed change 
 would ideally be an improvement. 
 
 Lastly, an argument which six years ago was 
 used one way seems now to be turned about and 
 used the other way. Six years ago the defenders 
 of the Established Church of Ireland argued on its 
 behalf that, if it were disestablished, we ought to 
 disestablish the English Church also. Now we are 
 sometimes told from quite the opposite side that 
 the disestablishment which has happened in Ireland 
 is a precedent which we ought in consistency to 
 follow in England. But in truth consistency has 
 nothing to do with the matter. Many, perhaps 
 most, of those who supported disestablishment
 
 AND DISENDOWMENT. 75 
 
 in Ireland did so, not because they had any theory 
 against Established Churches in general, but be- 
 cause they held that the Established Church in 
 Ireland was a great practical evil. There is no 
 inconsistency in holding that the Established 
 Church in Ireland was such a great practical evil, 
 and yet in holding that the Established Church 
 in England is a great practical good. We are 
 not now going to argue the point ; all that we 
 say is that the circumstances of England and 
 Ireland are so manifestly unlike that there is no 
 inconsistency in holding that an institution which 
 was an evil in the one country may be a good in 
 the other. 
 
 In a word, it is for the advocates of dis- 
 establishment to make out their case. They must 
 show that the Established Church is the cause 
 of evils to the country so great as not only to 
 outweigh any advantages of which it may be 
 the cause, but also to outweigh the evils in- 
 herent in so great a change, a change affecting 
 so many interests and rooting up so many associa-
 
 ? DISESTABLISHMENT AND DISENDOWMENT. 
 
 tions. They are entitled to a fair hearing on 
 this ground, and their adversaries are entitled to a 
 fair hearing equally. All that we ask is that 
 the question may not be clouded over by pre- 
 judices and misconceptions on either side, by 
 talk about " sacrilege " on one side or about 
 " national property " on the other. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE I PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
 
 WORKS 
 
 EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A., D.C.L., LL.D. 
 
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