aud minimum income for the real incumbent will be fixed. But 

 no amending Act can be retrospective in its operation. In the 

 case of pensions settled before the impending amendment, the 

 real incumbent might be paid the difference between the sum 

 which he pays for the fixed pension and that which he would 

 pay under the sliding scale. 3. The abandonment or the 

 mortgage of life insurances is the most lamentable result of 

 agricultural depression. A clergyman becomes unable from 

 diminution of professional income to keei3 up his insurances ; 

 the society might on the security of his policy give that 

 temporary aid which often is all that is required ; or, if from 

 the same cause he was forced to drop the policy, and the case 

 were one of genuine distress, the society might deal more 

 leniently with the vendor than any public company which has 

 to consider the interests of its shareholders. I need not 

 indicate the many forms such leniency might assume. 



What sum of money would be required for this task ? In the 

 diocese of Peterborough alone upwards of 50,000J. of private 

 capital has been sunk in the improvement of glebe, and an 

 equal amount has been raised for the same jiurposes by charges 

 from Land Improvement Companies. Of this latter sum a 

 considerable portion has been now paid off. It is probable that 

 150,000Z. would go a long way towards redeeming all the land 

 improvement charges throughout the country. It is to be 

 remembered that great mineral wealth in the shape of iron- 

 stone is to be found under the glebes in Northants ; in some 

 instances this source of wealth is untouched owing to a 

 dead-lock between the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and the 

 patrons. If legislation facilitated the development of the 

 minerals under glebe-lands throughout the county, a sum 

 could be raised which, supplemented by i^rivate subscriptions, 

 and applied as I have indicated, would confer an inestimable 

 boon on the distressed clergy. The work of redeeming land 

 charges might be effected piecemeal : it might be commenced 

 even with 1,000L If once the society were launched it would 

 float of itself, and, as a Clerical Land Improvement Company, 

 would prove an invaluable means of removing the stigma of bad 

 farming which not unfairly lies on glebe-lands. With its aid 

 glebes would become more lettable and more salable. 



January 28, 1887. R. E. Prothero. 



