immediate measures for the purpose of putting the foregoing resolutions into effect.

"These resolutions, if adopted, as I trust they will be, by the House, will have the effect of making an important improvement,—or, I should say more properly, extension of our ecclesiastical establishment; and of setting to work a machinery which will bring religion to the door of the poorest man in the land, and render our Establishment, what it has long been only in theory, a National Church.

"The importance of such a work will be viewed differently by different persons, accordingly as they value or think lightly of the religion of the Church. I confess, that to myself it appears to be a legislative measure, which has been equalled by none since the time of the Reformation, whether in regard to the urgency of its necessity, or the wide influence it may have on the character and destinies of the nation.

"It may be, to some, a matter of surprise that a private individual, like myself, should have been induced to put himself forward on such an occasion. None can feel more than he who now addresses you the apparent incongruity of the situation in which he stands. Private churchmen have not been accustomed to take

upon themselves the initiation of changes and improvements in the National Establishment,deeming it the province of their rulers in church and state to attend to these matters. But, as it has turned out, their inactivity has been unfortunate, and their reliance misplaced. Men in office, both lay and clerical, have learned to depend so much on the impulse of public opinion, that they have been slow to take the initiative even in necessary improvements, unless those improvements have been forced upon them by the pressure from without. But, in this one question, it so happens, that there can never be a pressure from without,-never at least from those who are most aggrieved by the neglect of their interests; because the fact is now admitted, which heretofore has escaped observation, that those who most need religious instruction, are the last to ask for it; those who are starving in the most hopeless famine of spiritual food, are the last to cry out for the supply of their necessities.

"The consequence of this insensibility of the people with regard to their most pressing wants, and the neglect of successive governments to inquire into them, is, that we now find ourselves, in the nineteenth century, with an enormously

Establishment

increased population, and an scarcely larger than we had in the sixteenth. In fact, we have but half an Establishment; our ship is but half manned, our soil but half in tillage. With all the envy and jealousy heaped upon us, which our exclusive position naturally engenders, (Hear, hear! from the Radicals)—a position which I am prepared to prove that the Church of England ought to occupy, and by God's blessing long, I trust, will occupy,—we are at the same time upbraided with the charge, false indeed though plausible, that, in spite of an enormous amount of means, we are neglecting our duty, and suffering the people to perish for lack of knowledge. Fortunately for the Church, the report of her enormous wealth has been found, by official inquiries, to be most erroneous; but the same documents, while vindicating her from the charge of culpable neglect, have only served to prove her poverty and insufficiency.

"I wish that honourable Members would seriously turn their attention to the facts contained in the report of the Church Commissioners; which, to our shame be it spoken, has now been several years before the House. It is only by so doing that they can obtain any just idea of

the utter inadequacy of the present number of clergy, in most of our populous districts, to afford religious instruction and consolation to the thousands and tens of thousands, who are nominally within their parishes. Experience has proved that the utmost amount of population, over which one clergymen can exercise a due degree of influence and personal superintendence, is about three thousand in a closely peopled district, and two thousand where the inhabitants are scattered; whereas, if we look to the official documents, we shall see at once that there are a vast number of districts in which the proportion of population to the parochial ministry, and to the means of church accommodation, is threefold or tenfold what it should be. Take our three largest towns, Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool,-the proportion of the means of religious instruction to the population

But these are far from being the worst cases, for in the less considerable towns the disproportion is even more apparent. The following

In

These instances are taken only from one diocese: a similar list might be extracted from the report of the dioceses of York and Durham. In the diocese in which we are now assembled the disproportion is even more deplorable. a word, the general destitution is undeniable; and to shut our eyes against it would prove only an utter insensibility to our most urgent duties, or a blind and worldly fanaticism, absorbing all our thoughts and energies in the petty hostility

1 In some of these places churches have been built since the report was made; but far from sufficient to supply their wants, if they have even kept pace with the increasing population.