236 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



heart, and are uninfluenced by sectarian rivalry, to protest 

 against any such scheme as in the highest degree 

 disastrous. It may be thought by many that this 

 agitation cannot possibly succeed in gaining its object for 

 a very long time, and that it is useless to discuss now what 

 shall be done at some indefinite and distant future. But 

 this may be altogether a mistake ; gross abuses do not 

 now live long, and when an agitation is started as power- 

 fully and influentially as this one, supported as it 

 will undoubtedly be by the great mass of the operative 

 class, and made a party cry at future elections, the end 

 may not be very far off. We may then find it too late to 

 introduce new ideas, or to persuade the Nonconformist 

 leaders of the movement to give up their special programme, 

 however injurious some portions of that programme may 

 be to the best interests of the country. 



My object in this chapter is, therefore, to urge upon 

 all independent liberal thinkers to lose no time in taking 

 part in this movement, laying down at once certain 

 principles to be adopted as an essential condition of 

 securing their support ; and I propose, further, to show a 

 practicable mode of carrying out these principles so as to 

 produce results in the highest degree beneficial to the 

 whole community. 



The main principle that should guide our action in this 

 matter, I conceive to be, that existing Church Property of 

 every kind is National Property, and that no portion of it 

 must, under any circumstances, be alienated, either for 

 the compensation of supposed or real vested interests, or 

 to the uses of any sectarian body ; and further, that the 

 parish churches and other ecclesiastical buildings must on 

 no account be given up, but be permanently retained, with 

 the Church property, for purposes analogous to those for 

 which they were primarily established the moral and 

 social advancement of the whole community. 



That the property now held by the Established Church 

 is national property, is generally admitted ; and also that 

 the Church, as represented by a body holding particular 

 religious opinions, can have no permanent vested interest 

 in that property, although the individuals of which it is 



