from the advantages of the older foundations. Engaged, moreover, in another and a greater struggle, they forbore for a time from pressing home their attack on Oxford and Cambridge.1

Church

rates.

It is as easy to understand the circumstances in which Church rates were first instituted as it is to realise the irritation which their collection ultimately occasioned. So long as the Church of England was the Church of the nation, to which every Englishman was compelled to belong, and whose services he was required to attend, there was no reason why each householder should not be taxed to support its fabric. But from the middle of the eighteenth century Dissent became a power in the land, and Dissenters, forced to provide for the repair of their own chapels out of their own funds, naturally objected to be taxed for a Church with those doctrines they disagreed and in whose ministry they had no interest. Hence arose an increasing agitation for the discontinuance of Church rates. Althorp in 1834, and Spring Rice in 1837, introduced measures for their abolition. Althorp offered, if the Church would surrender the rates, to charge the Land Tax with a grant of £250,000 a year, or about one-half the sum which the rates produced. Spring Rice suggested that the property of the Church should be placed in the hands of commissioners who, by improved administration, would, he thought, be able to provide out of it the sum necessary for the repair of churches.3 Neither proposal proved acceptable to Parliament. The Nonconformists objected to place a heavy charge on the Consolidated Fund for the purpose of strengthening a Church which many of them thought already too strong. The Church objected to applying any surplus which improved administration of its own funds. might produce to the purposes for which Church rates had

1 Ante, vol. iv. p. 18.

? There is an excellent statistical analysis of the progress of Dissent in May's Constitutional History, vol. iii. p. 223. In 1851, one-third of the population of England and Wales was outside the pale of the Church.

3 For Althorp's bill, Hansard, vol. xxii. p. 1012; for Spring Rice's, ibid., vol. xxxvi. p. 1207.

hitherto been applicable. Both measures consequently failed, and the whole question remained unsettled.

Yet the necessity for a settlement was daily becoming more obvious. Outside the walls of Parliament the Dissenters were organised in opposition to the rates, and were prepared to resist the law and to suffer imprisonment rather than pay it.1 In parishes, where Dissent was weak, individual Dissenters had no other remedy. In parishes, where Dissent was strong, the Nonconformists took much bolder courses. In Manchester they succeeded in defeating the proposal to impose a rate. In Braintree they achieved a similar victory; but the The Br inchurchwardens, in defiance of the vestry, collected tree case. the rate. It is perhaps unnecessary to trace the history of the protracted proceedings to which this strange conduct gave rise. It is sufficient to say that the House of Lords ultimately declared the rate illegal, and that other parishes hastened to follow the example of Braintree.3 The Church had hitherto adhered to a Church rate as part of its property, and a little parish in Essex had made it plain that the so-called property only rested on the will of the majority.

Some years were still to pass before Parliament ultimately found a solution of a protracted contest by maintaining the Church rate, but making its payment voluntary. In the interval, the persistency of the struggle proved the increasing power of Dissent and the readiness of the Nonconformists to join in an attack on the Church. Other instances of the growing strength of those outside the Church, and of the desire of Parliament to remove all religious inequalities, might easily be instanced. Two examples will, however, be sufficient. In 1844 Parliament chapels. passed an Act authorising the Unitarians to retain the

Unitarian

1 Captain Flower's case will be found referred to in Hansard, vol. xxxvi. p. 1214; Thorogood's case in ibid., vol xlvii. p. 684.

2 There was a poll of 8000, and the rate was lost by only one vote. On a scrutiny the rate was allowed, but the churchwardens did not venture on collecting it. In 1834 the rate was again rejected by a very large majority.

The Braintree case is given in May's Constitutional History, vol. iii. p. 205. Sir E. May says that 1525 parishes up to 1859 followed the example of Braintree. Ibid., p. 207.

chapels which they held. In the same year it swept away much of the disabling legislation under which the Roman. Catholics still lay.1

The consequences of Liberal legis lation.

Thus religious legislation, in a reformed Parliament, was assuming a novel form. The Legislature was, with the one hand, increasing the efficiency of the Church by the redistribution of its revenues, and, with the other hand, removing the disabilities of Roman Catholics and Nonconformists. The clergy of the Church of England, who have never been distinguished for the liberality of their opinions, saw with marked displeasure that the Legislature was destroying its privileges and appointing commissioners to manage its estates. Their own views approximated much more closely to those of Phillpotts and Inglis than to those of Peel and Russell. They naturally rallied in support of the statesmen whose opinions they shared and in whose policy they concurred.

1 The first of these measures rose out of a decision of the House of Lords in 1844 on Lady Hewley's charity estate. Lady Hewley, by deeds executed early in the eighteenth century, had left certain property in trust for the provi. sion of "godly preachers for the time being of Christ's Holy Gospel." At the time at which these deeds were executed, and indeed for upwards of a hundred years afterwards, Unitarians enjoyed no rights under the Toleration Act. But Lady Hewley's estates gradually passed into the hands of trustees the majority of whom were Unitarians, and the rents were applied for the benefit of 237 Unitarian chapels. The House of Lords held in 1844 that, as Lady Hewley had herself been a Trinitarian, and as no Unitarians were tolerated for a century after her deed was executed, the estates must pass to Protestant Dissenters, believers in the doctrine of the Trinity. Paterson's Liberty of the Press, &c., p. 530; cf. May's Constitutional History, vol. iii. p. 199. This decision created consternation among the Unitarians, who had enjoyed the advantages of the Hewley trust for sixty or seventy years. And, on Lyndhurst's initiation, a bill was passed, providing that, "where the founder had not expressly defined the doctrine or form of worship to be observed, the usage of twenty-five years should give trustees a right to the endowment." Ibid., vol. iii. p. 2co; 7 & 8 Vict., c. 45. The other measure referred to in the text, 7 & 8 Vict., c. 102, swept away a mass of legislation chiefly affecting the Roman Catholics. These statutes were for the most part obsolete, but the Roman Catholics naturally complained of their existence on the Statute Book. Two years afterwards, in 1846, Parliament further purged the Statute Book of other legislation of the same character, 9 & 10 Vict., c. 59. But this did not settle the matter, and Anstey proposed further legislation in 1850. Hansard, vol. cviii. p. 530, and in 1851, vol. cxiv. p. 362. The measure was lost in that year in consequence of the agitation on the Ecclesiastical Titles Act. Ibid., p. 363.

Thus the policy of moderate men in the Legislature was stimulating the reaction already prepared by extreme men in the Church. Its guidance was sure to fall to zealous clergy, who, however much they might be occupied with the attack on the Establishment, could not venture to ignore The con

between free

thought and

religion.

the simultaneous assault which science and rational- troversy ism were making upon religion. A generation before, Paley and Watson had endeavoured to meet criticism by argument. Throughout the eighteenth century, indeed, almost every publication which had suggested doubt had attracted an orthodox reply. But experience showed that no arguments could resolve doubts. Only one course was open to the divine. He could still borrow a policy from the earlier Church, and enthrone faith above reason. Doubts which could not be removed by argument could be extinguished by authority.

In the second decade of the present century, a small body of remarkable men were collected in Oriel College, Oxford. Copleston was provost of the college, but Copleston Oriel was under the influence of one stronger and abler College. than himself, Whately. In the same period, Arnold passed his career at Corpus as an undergraduate. At Corpus he was the friend of Keble and of Coleridge, the nephew of the poet. Arnold and Keble subsequently became fellows of Oriel; and Oriel was also joined by Hampden, by Newman, by Pusey, and by Richard Hurrell Froude.

The two men who gave tone and colour to the religion of the college were Whately and Arnold. Whately was essentially a logician, always anxious to establish logical grounds for his creed. Impatient of contradiction in discussion,1 he was in practice tolerant of difference; 2 and, though he dissented. 1 Mozley's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 29.

2 He once complained that children were taught persecution in the nursery"Old Daddy Longlegs won't say his prayers,

Take him by the left leg and throw him downstairs."

-Life of Whately, vol. i. p. 55. Cf. Stanley's statement, that when he came to the prayer that we might be hurt by no persecution, he always added internally a prayer "that we may not be persecutors." Stanley's Christian Institutions, p. 239.

widely from the Evangelical school of divines, many of his warmest friends were members of that body. Arnold was in theory more tolerant than Whately, but in practice his tolerance was confined within very narrow limits. He had, in early life, passed through so many doubts, that he was naturally inclined to sympathise with the doubts of other people.1 But perfect toleration is a rare quality, and Arnold, though he was ready enough to receive those whose doubts bore some resemblance to his own on equal terms with himself, had no claim to the broader tolerance which places men of every religion and of every sect on the same level. To the end of his life, he could hardly speak of the leaders of the great Church movement of his time in terms of patience; he was stoutly opposed to the concessions which an age, in some respects more liberal than himself, decided on making to the Jew.

These two men, Arnold and Whately, gave the tone to religious thought at Oriel, at the time when Oriel was influencing religious thought at Oxford. Contemporary, indeed, with them, Keble, a man of more refined intellect than either, drew reverence from all men by the simplicity of his life and the sweetness of his manners. But Keble's influence was different from that of Arnold and Whately. His nature fitted him to dwell in retirement, and nurture in privacy the thoughts which made him the sweet singer of his Church. Their nature impelled them into affairs and made them the leaders of

men.

man.

While the religious world at Oxford was uncer this influence, John Henry Newman became an undergraduate. Those Mr. New who differ widely from Newman on matters of opinion will bear their testimony to the graceful purity of his religious mind. He naturally fell under the influence of Whately, from whom he received kindnesses which affected his career; and in 1825, when Whately became principal of Alban Hall, Newman became his vice-prin1 It was said of Arnold, "One had better have Arnold's doubts than most men's certainties." Stanley's Arnold, vol. i. p. 22.