archbishop of Canterbury and the
bishop of London. The letters to Archdeacon Singleton, written when
the Whigs were flirting with the Radicals, show how much good an old
Whig could find in the establishment. This marks the difference
between the true Whig and the Utilitarian. The Whig would not risk the
country for the sake of church; he would keep the clerical power
strictly subordinate to the power of the state, but then, when
considered from the political side, it was part of a government system
providing him with patronage, and to be guarded from the rude assaults
of the Radical reformer. The Utilitarian, though for the moment he was
in alliance with the Whig, regarded the common victory as a step to
something far more sweeping. He objected to intolerance as decidedly
as the Whig, for absolute freedom of opinion was his most cherished
doctrine. He objected still more emphatically to persecution on behalf
of the church, because he entirely repudiated its doctrines. The
objection to spreading true doctrine by force is a strong one, but
hardly so strong as the objection to a forcible spread of false
doctrine. But, besides this, the church represented to the Utilitarian
precisely the very worst specimen of the corruptions of the time. The
Court of Chancery was bad enough, but the whole ecclesiastical system
with its vast prizes,[59] its opportunities for corrupt patronage, its
pluralism and non-residence was an evil on a larger scale. The
Radical, therefore, unlike the Whig, was an internecine enemy of the
whole system. The 'church of England system,' as Bentham calmly
remarks, is 'ripe for dissolution.'[60] I have already noticed his
quaint proposal for giving effect to his views. Mill, in the
_Westminster Review_, denounced the church of England as the worst of
all churches.[61] To the Utilitarian, in short, the removal of the
disqualification of dissenters and Catholics was thus one step to the
consummation which their logic demanded--the absolute disestablishment
and disendowment of the church. Conservatives in general anticipated
the confiscation of church revenues as a necessary result of reform;
and so far as the spirit of reformers was represented by the
Utilitarians and their Radical allies, they had good grounds for the
fear. James Mill's theory is best indicated by a later article
published in the _London Review_ of July 1835. After pointing out that
the church of England retains all the machinery desired for