Bishop Barrington of Durham,
for example, took a lead in philanthropic movements; and, if considered
simply as prosperous country-gentlemen, little fault could be found with
them. While, however, every commonplace motive pointed so directly
towards a career of subserviency to the ruling class among the laity, it
could not be expected that they should take a lofty view of their
profession. The Anglican clergy were not like the Irish priesthood, in
close sympathy with the peasantry, or like the Scottish ministers, the
organs of strong convictions spreading through the great mass of the
middle and lower classes. A man of energy, who took his faith seriously,
was, like the Evangelical clergy, out of the road to preferment, or,
like Wesley, might find no room within the church at all. His colleagues
called him an 'enthusiast,' and disliked him as a busybody if not a
fanatic. They were by birth and adoption themselves members of the
ruling class; many of them were the younger sons of squires, and held
their livings in virtue of their birth. Advowsons are the last offices
to retain a proprietary character. The church of that day owed such a
representative as Horne Tooke to the system which enabled his father to
provide for him by buying a living. From the highest to the lowest ranks
of clergy, the church was as Matthew Arnold could still call it, an
'appendage of the barbarians.' The clergy, that is, as a whole, were an
integral but a subsidiary part of the aristocracy or the great landed
interest. Their admirers urged that the system planted a cultivated
gentleman in every parish in the country. Their opponents replied, like
John Sterling, that he was a 'black dragoon with horse meat and man's
meat'--part of the garrison distributed through the country to support
the cause of property and order. In any case the instinctive
prepossessions, the tastes and favourite pursuits of the profession were
essentially those of the class with which it was so intimately
connected. Arthur Young,[20] speaking of the French clergy, observes
that at least they are not poachers and foxhunters, who divide their
time between hunting, drinking, and preaching. You do not in France find
such advertisements as he had heard of in England, 'Wanted a curacy in a
good sporting country, where the duty is light and the neighbourhood
convivial.' The proper exercise for a country clergyman, he rather
quaintly observes, is agriculture. The ideal parson, that i