1832.] Tithe versus Rent. 207 



religion in his heart, provided he do not, in consequence, interfere with 

 the interests and tastes of his neighbours. But I make a charge against 

 the religiously disposed laymen of England, that they never have yet, 

 as a body, approached the subject of religion like rational, serious men ; 

 that they have hitherto prostrated their intelligence at the petticoats of 

 religious ladies, and the cassocks of presumed spiritual pastors and 

 masters. I assert that there has been, up to the present moment, no 

 national demand, from the masculine intelligence of the country, for a 

 system of masculine and practical religion. 



I assert that the parochial parsons would not have been able, by their 

 own unassisted efforts, to create such a demand in general society ; that 

 the good parsons are the sort of wishy-washy old ladies they usually 

 are, the mere bugbears to frighten boys and girls into decorum, because 

 they could not keep their characters unimpeached without being so ; 

 because the absurd control over them, vested in the wig and apron of a 

 diocesan, backed by constitutional prescriptions, has hitherto made it im- 

 possible for a manly parson to procreate a masculine system of religious 

 instruction beyond the precincts of his own premises. It is not owing, 

 then, to any inherent fault of parsons themselves, much less to the mode 

 of property by which they are maintained, that they are priggish, quiz- 

 zical nondescripts, neither man nor woman. From one set of the men 

 of England, those, namely, who are too manly, too much engaged in 

 more important matters to pay any attention to religion, the parsons have 

 been, and, of course, always must be, estranged. The other set, the well- 

 meaning, religiously-disposed men, have conspired with the good women 

 of the country to make the parsons fools ; to make them believe, for 

 instance, that, because they are called in old books Stewards of God's 

 Mysteries, they really know more about mysteries than other men ; that 

 they are the only men who can read and understand the plain words and 

 sentences of the Bible; that, by virtue of apostolical ordination, they know 

 more about the Bible than equally sensible and well educated laymen 

 who attend to the subject. The gross, voluntary flattery of these good 

 laymen and these good ladies, joined with the approval and patronage 

 of civil and ecclesiastical authorities, and the aristocratic landowners 

 (the sly landowners, who find their account in the moral emasculation 

 of the parson, to whom it answers, more than to any other set of men, 

 that the parson should be a spiritless, mistaken creature), all these cir- 

 cumstances combined have made the parson the nondescript he is when 

 he is a good parson have fretted many a parson of sense, and spirit, 

 and sound religious principle, into such a contempt for the peculiar 

 duties required of him, as to make him sick of the profession, as it is 

 politely termed ; and thus gain him, amongst the self-constituted and 

 satisfied religionists, the character of a bad parson. 



The writer has a friend, a retired medical practitioner, of a very 

 radical cast of opinion, but withal manly and candid, and inclined to 

 give the devil his due. This old gentleman, having kept an observant 

 eye upon society during a long experience, assures the writer that he 

 has not known more than two or three downright bad subjects amongst 

 parsons ; that he never knew a parish in which the parson (though not 

 the wisest man in it by a good many) did not set the best moral example of 

 any gentleman in it ; that he never knew a parson who was not grossly 

 cheated out of his dues, besides being expected to set a liberal example 

 in alms-giving, to the exoneration from that duty of those who were de- 

 frauding him. 



