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except as members of the annual "vestry," where they could object to a rate but might be out-voted by a majority of their fellow-parishioners. Althorp had proposed a scheme for the removal of this grievance in 1834, involving a parliamentary grant of L250,000. Setting aside this alternative, as well as that of a special contribution, voluntary or otherwise, from members of the Church, Spring Rice now proposed a solution of his own. It consisted in vesting the property of bishops and chapters in a commission which, by improved management, might raise the necessary sum for church repairs, without impairing the incomes of these ecclesiastical dignitaries. Before the government plan was discussed in the house of commons, Howley, archbishop of Canterbury, entered a strong protest against it in the house of lords on the ground that it would reduce the bishops and chapters from the position of landowners to that of "mere annuitants". Melbourne complained of his protest somewhat angrily as premature, and provoked a vehement reply from Blomfield, bishop of London, who, though a member of the ecclesiastical commission, denounced any such diversion of revenues as "a sacrilegious act of spoliation". In the elaborate debates on the resolutions moved by Spring Rice in the house of commons Peel took his stand partly on financial objections and partly on the injustice of taking away from the Church a fund belonging to it by immemorial usage, and in the main willingly contributed. Amendment after amendment was proposed by members of the opposition, and, though each was defeated, the government resolutions were ultimately carried by so narrow a majority in May that no further action was taken. The conservative reaction, now in visible progress, was typified by the open secession of Burdett from the ranks of the reformers. This sincere but indiscreet radical, who had once enjoyed a popularity similar to that of Wilkes as a political martyr, became estranged from his party when it accepted O'Connell as an auxiliary, if not as an ally. Having failed in procuring the exclusion of the great Irish demagogue from Brooks's club, in 1835, he withdrew his own name. Soon afterwards he became irregular in his parliamentary attendance, and more than lukewarm in his allegiance. Early in 1837 he was, like Stanley and Graham, so much suspected of gravitating towards conservatism, that some of his Westminster constituents publicly called upon him to resi
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