"
Then he reverts to his familiar argument that the abolition of these
ecclesiastical prizes would lower the social character of the clergy as a
body.--
"To get a stall, and to be preceded by men with silver rods, is the
bait which the ambitious squire is perpetually holding out to his
second son.... If such sort of preferments are extinguished, a very
serious evil (as I have often said before) is done to the Church--the
service becomes unpopular, further spoliation is dreaded, the whole
system is considered to be altered and degraded, capital is withdrawn
from the Church, and no one enters into the profession but the sons of
farmers and little tradesmen, who would be footmen if they were not
vicars--or figure on the coach-box if they were not lecturing from the
pulpit.
* * * * *
"If you were to gather a Parliament of Curates on the hottest Sunday
in the year, after all the services, sermons, burials, and baptisms of
the day, were over, and to offer them such increase of salary as would
be produced by the confiscation of the Cathedral property, I am
convinced they would reject the measure, and prefer splendid hope, and
the expectation of good fortune in advanced life, to the trifling
improvement of poverty which such a fund, could afford. Charles James,
of London, was a Curate; the Bishop of Winchester[124] was a Curate;
almost every rose-and-shovel man has been a Curate in his time.
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