supporting
priests and preventing the growth of intellect and morality, he
proceeds to ask what the clergy do for their money. They read prayers,
which is a palpable absurdity; they preach sermons to spread
superstitious notions of the Supreme Being, and perform
ceremonies--baptism, and so forth--which are obviously silly. The
church is a mere state machine worked in subservience to the sinister
interest of the governing classes. The way to reform it would be to
equalise the pay: let the clergy be appointed by a 'Minister of Public
Instruction' or the county authorities; abolish the articles, and
constitute a church 'without dogmas or ceremonies'; and employ the
clergy to give lectures on ethics, botany, political economy, and so
forth, besides holding Sunday meetings, dances (decent dances are to
be specially invented for the purpose), and social meals, which would
be a revival of the 'agapai' of the early Christians. For this
purpose, however, it might be necessary to substitute tea and coffee
for wine. In other words, the church is to be made into a popular
London University. The plan illustrates the incapacity of an isolated
clique to understand the real tone of public opinion. I need not
pronounce upon Mill's scheme, which seems to have some sense in it,
but one would like to know whether Newman read his article.

V. SINISTER INTERESTS

In questions of foreign policy, of law reform, of political economy,
and of religious tests, the Utilitarians thus saw the gradual
approximation to their most characteristic views on the part of the
Whigs, and a strong infiltration of the same views among the less
obstructive Tories. They held the logical creed, to which others were
slowly approximating, either from the force of argument or from the
great social changes which were bringing new classes into political
power. The movement for parliamentary reform which for a time
overshadowed all other questions might be regarded as a corollary from
the position already won. Briefly, it was clear that a new social
stratum was exercising a vast influence; the doctrines popular with it
had to be more or less accepted; and the only problem worth
consideration by practical men was whether or not such a change should
be made in the political machinery as would enable the influence to be
exercised by direct and constitutional means. To the purely
obstructive Tory parliamentary reform was a step to the general
cataclysm. The proprietor o