There are, therefore, no official defenders of the practice, and for disinterested friends of the Church the task has long proved itself too hard. When we have said that the practice does not work all the mischief it ought to work, we have made the only defence any human being with a conscience can suggest. That a trust should be entrusted to a man for money may be defensible — though we begin to doubt it — and in a country where men inherit legislative and judicial power, and are vested with secular patronge, as in the case of lord-lieutenants, solely because they are rich, it is certainly not without precedent, but that he should sell the patronage so trusted to him is even in England indefensible. The secular patron who does so is disgraced, — the very suspicion of it unseated a chancellor — and when the appointment sold is a cure of souls, every instinct of Christians, however careless they may be of the precepts of Christianity, is revolted. Whatever mode of distributing patronage is right, it cannot be right to select a pastor for a sum down, to put up a cure to the highest bidder, or to make a pecuniary profit out of one of the highest imaginable trusts. A judge might almost as well sell decisions by auction, or a clergyman limit the communion to those who can outbid other applicants for his ministrations. The private patron, even though he purchased his right, is from the moment he purchases it a trustee, and has no more right to use his trust to make money than a minister has to recommend officers for promotion because they have sent him cheques.
It is, however, waste of time to denounce a practice which the law forbids, which the Church denounces, and which no Tory, even in this Parliament, can be found to defend, and it is more profitable to inquire in what direction a remedy can be found. It would be very difficult to strengthen the law, without a more radical change than the country is as yet prepared to accept. Suppose, for example, we prohibit the sale of "next presentations" altogether, by a penal statute, if you like, and still while the sale of advowsons is allowed nothing will have been accomplished. The keen-witted lawyers who deal in such wares will only purchase the advowson subject to an obligation, to resell when the next presentation has fallen in, and will be worse patrons than the young clergymen whose fathers or friends now pay down the money in order to ensure to them a profession and maintenance for life. The law as it is, only renders evasion more elaborate and perjury deeper, and a penal statute would only, we greatly fear, still further corrupt men's consciences, and give a further advantage to a still more unscrupulous class of candidates for benefices. The remedy must, we believe, be sought in a measure making purchase impossible or improbable, too great a risk, too insecure a chance for anybody with money at command to risk it in such a lottery. And we are inclined to suspect, with Mr. Hibbert, a stout Churchman, that the only measure which will secure this is one making lay patronage more complete, by giving some kind of veto to the parish council, the ratepayers, or the congregation. We would not give an absolute veto. That might be to transfer all advowsons to the parish, and establish a system of popular elections which works exceedingly ill, which deprives clergymen, as in America it deprives judges, of their independence; and which, in the existing condition of English opinion, would be fatal to variety and comprehensiveness within the Church itself. No one would be elected except a pronounced Low-Churchman. But we think the congregation, or the ratepayers, or the communicants — we are purposely avoiding for the moment that vexed question — might fairly be allowed to exercise their veto once or more, with a distinct understanding that they would exercise it and ought to exercise it, if they suspected that money had passed. The effect of that would instantly be the prohibition of purchase by the candidate himself, his agents, or his friends. The chance of being elected, or of defeating all the inquiries of all parishioners, would be too small a temptation on which to risk any considerable sum of money. The candidate would be questioned, too, closely questioned, and a lie under such circumstances — a lie from the pulpit, a lie sure to be found out, a lie made to men among whom he is to live all his life — is, to say the least, excessively improbable. It would not be accepted as a conventional lie, as unfortunately some of the declarations now made are, but as a deliberate breach of faith, intended to cheat a parish out of its veto, and it would never be forgiven. At the same time, this veto would not deprive the ordinary patron, except in the most exceptional instances, of the power he values, the right of vetoing an appointment personally unacceptable to himself. He could not indeed put in an unworthy relative merely because he chose, but he could put in any relative not unpopular
