“Your letter, which I have this morning received, came
when I was just about to reply to that of March 11th. You may judge how my
other correspondents
| Ætat. 58. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 205 |
“Now, my dear Neville, to the other part of your letter,—the uses and the danger of the Church Establishment. I will touch upon one of its uses which happened to be noticed in conversation yesterday with Wordsworth, by the way-side. He mentioned of what advantage the Church of England had been to that great body of Dissenters, among whom the Unitarian heresy has spread; and your country was particularly instanced. A great part of the Presbyterian congregations lapsed with their preachers, as sheep follow the bell-wether; but of those who remained orthodox, the majority found their way into the right fold. They held the doctrines of the Church before in the main, differing from them only in points where our Articles most wisely have left room for difference; and they now found by experience the insufficiency of their own discipline; and the want of such a standard as the Establishment preserves.
“Public property the Church indeed is; most truly and
most sacredly so; and in a manner the very reverse of that in which the
despoilers consider it to be so. It is the only property which is public; which
is set apart and consecrated as a public inheritance, in which any one may
claim his share, who is properly
| 206 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 58. |
“Church property neither is, nor ever has been public property in any other sense than this. The whole was originally private property, so disposed of by individuals in the way which they deemed most beneficial to others, and most for the good of their own souls. How much of superstition may have been mingled with this matters not. Much of this property was wickedly shared among themselves by those persons who forwarded the Reformation as a scheme of spoliation; and in other ways materially impeded its progress. Yet they did nothing so bad as the Whig Ministry are preparing to do; for they, no doubt, mean to give to the Romish clergy what they take from the Irish Protestant Church.
“You should read Townsend’s pamphlet upon Lord Henley’s absurd and mischievous schemes. It is a most able and manly composition; and the name and character of the writer carry weight with them.
“God bless you!
