unsatisfactory system was generally admitted by friends of the Church to be a gain, shows how needful it is to introduce something more thorough-going and more effective.

There is, as no doubt all of you know, a society already in existence for dealing with this question. I cannot, I confess, look upon the method adopted by that society as a complete solution. But it seems to me that it goes in the right direction. Stated briefly, the system is this: A clergyman makes certain payments which entitle him to a proportionate return in case of sickness or old age. So far it is only a self-supporting benefit society, worked on business principles. But its operations are supplemented by charitable contributions which are employed to augment the pensions of unbeneficed clergymen. It seems to me that we may learn a good deal from this, that we should aim in constructing our system at the development and completion of that already existing.

It may, perhaps, be well, before going further, to consider what are the needful conditions which a pension system must fulfil. If it is to be optional, it must be adequate; it must, that is to say, offer a sufficient inducement for clergymen to join it. It must be certain. To provide the worn-out servant of the Church with the decencies, and, it may be, the comforts of life; to save a parish from suffering under the ministrations of one who has outgrown his efficiency; these are important objects, but these are not all. By promising a certain provision for old age we shall attract a better stamp of man, and, I venture to think, we shall also manufacture a better stamp of man. Certainty of provision will do more for the Church than opulence of provision. Be it remembered the calling of a clergyman is not like a secular profession, which may be undertaken experimentally and abandoned. It is not a profession like that of the law, where an eager pursuit of personal success partly measured by gain is consistent with zealous devotion to the profession itself. In a clergyman's profession detachment from the craving for immediate reward is a needful condition of real success. This is quite a different thing from absolute indifference to income. On that point let me borrow words spoken by Lord Hatherly and quoted in one of a series of articles in the "Church Quarterly Review," to which I have already acknowledged my debt. "There is," he says, "nothing mercenary in a young man desiring a reasonable remuneration. On the contrary, such a desire might spring from a high and noble feeling, an anxiety to do his Master's work with all his might, and a conviction that he could not do it if he was subject to a load of pecuniary embarrassments, and if his usefulness was impaired by the acceptance of eleemosynary aid." Now I am sure you will all agree that a candidate for holy orders whose views are those sketched by Lord Hatherly will be drawn towards the profession, not by the prospect of rich prizes, but by the prospect of a certain provision. I believe, too, that a system which gave every clergyman such a certainty, only to be forfeited by professional misconduct, would do much to meet the difficulty of which I spoke before, and to obviate the need for a system of special provision for widows and orphans. The man who marries recklessly is the man whose prospects are so bad that nothing can make them worse. Make the position of the young clergyman a secure one, and many an imprudent marriage would be delayed, many an undesirable one averted.

The same class of considerations leads us to what I would call the third necessary condition of success. A pension system must not only be adequate and certain, it should be, if I may use the expression, educational. It will be an added, though an indirect benefit, if in providing for the clergy we teach and encourage them to provide for themselves, and this at once bears on an extremely important point, whether such a system should be made compulsory. Now, no doubt, if every clergyman were compelled by law to set aside a fixed portion of his income, or, I would rather say, if the State took such a portion of his income and set it aside to form a pension fund, two difficulties that I have named, the question of adequacy and the question of certainty, would be quite satisfactorily solved. But such a system would wholly fail of the third condition, that of teaching the clergy to provide for themselves. That, however, is not the only objection. It is a dangerous thing to invite the legislature to effect what would practically be a redistribution of Church endowments. If such redistribution is needed, let it come as a definite measure of reform on its own merits, not by a side wind. Recent experience has shown, too, that it is almost hopeless to look to Parliament for reforms on behalf of the Church which do not make any appeal to popular sentiment. I believe, therefore, that compulsory contribution by the clergy to a pension fund is out of the field of practical politics, and we may, I think, console ourselves with the reflection that, if practicable, it would certainly not be an unmixed gain.

On the other hand, I do not think we can feel any confidence in a system which relies to any large extent on voluntary contributions. I mean, of course, not contributions in the nature of payment by those who propose to benefit by the society, but charitable augmentations.

Such augmentations must necessarily be fluctuating. But as I have already pointed out, more than half the value of a pension system lies in its certainty, and there can be no certainty in an income made up of voluntary and precarious payments. It seems to me that the better application of such contributions would be to enable deserving clergymen belonging to a pension society, who through some special and temporary cause were in arrears with their subscriptions, to retain the benefits of membership.

In any case it would clearly be best to apply such augmentations towards benefiting the members in their character of contributors, and not of recipients, lightening the burden of payment, rather than augmenting the fund received. On the other hand, it is certain that if the fund only gives back to every clergyman what he has already contributed to it in the form of subscriptions, its resources must be limited. The very condition which is helpful to the clergy in the case of life insurance, their superior vitality, is harmful to them here. Is there no solution to this? I cannot help thinking that a remark in one of those "Church Quarterly" articles which I have mentioned, puts us on the track of one. The writer says, "Many well-provided men would prevent themselves burdening the fund at all." Can we not convert this probability into a certainty? It is surely not in itself desirable that the question of taking or declining a pension should be left to the judgment of the individual. Surely it is well, if we can, to make our system in this respect self-working. This, I think, we can do by adopting what I

would call in general terms the principle of insurance. The essence of that principle is that all make provision against a contingency which can only befall a certain number. All get the benefit of that provision, as all are secured against loss. But this benefit involves no expense to the common fund excepting in the case of those who actually suffer such loss.

Let us assume a society so constituted that every member shall by virtue of his past payments be entitled to a pension if invalided, or upon reaching the age of sixty-five. In the case of superannuation allowances, not of pensions in case of sickness, let the pension be subject to this deduction. Take the whole preferment which the pensioner has enjoyed during his professional career, strike an annual average of his endowments, and in proportion as that annual average has exceeded a certain fixed limit, so deduct from his pension. Suppose (I merely take the figures for illustration's sake) that the limit fixed was £150, and that the pension was £100, we should then get this result. If the average annual income which the pensioner has derived from Church preferment has amounted to or exceeded £250, he will receive no pension; if it falls as low as £150, he will receive a full pension; if he has received £200 a year, he will receive a pension of £50. This deduction should only apply to pensioners superannuated, and not to those invalided. Otherwise, as soon as a subscriber was in receipt of such a professional income as to make it improbable that he would be entitled to a pension, he would be tempted to withdraw from the society. But if the full pension were always granted in cases of ill-health, this inducement to withdraw would at least be lessened. But I shall revert to this part of my subject.

I would further propose, in order to enlighten the charges on the society, without impairing the efficiency of the clergy: Firstly, that any clergyman over sixty-five might enjoy a pension together with a benefice, provided that the benefice did not exceed £150 a year, with a fixed limit of population; secondly, that the benefice and the pension together should not make up more than £200 a year. This would, I think, facilitate exchange on the part of those clergy who might be incapable of the duties of a large, but not of a small living. Before going further, I would point out that I have purposely left an important question unsettled. Either we may have a uniform annual payment with a uniform pension, subject to the above deductions, or we may have, as under the Clergy Pension Institution, varying payments and proportionally varying pensions. Now under the second of these systems there are two methods in which the deduction might be made. It might be an absolute deduction, or a deduction proportionate to the amount of the pension. Let me illustrate again what I mean. Suppose two members, A and B, whose average professional income had been exactly equal, but of whom one had made an annual contribution of £10, the other of £20, A would be entitled to a pension of £100, subject to deduction, B of £200. Suppose the preferment to be such that under the scheme which I just set forth, where, be it remembered, the pension was ex hypothesi 100, the deduction would be £50. Should we deduct £50 from each, or £50 from A, and 100 from B? Each of these would have its advantages; the one would lighten the demands on the society, but might reduce its resources by lessening the number of

subscribers; the other would put an additional strain on the society, but would attract more members.

Now, in considering such a system as I have sketched, two questions arise will the system be adequate, and will it be attractive? In other words, will it give the relief needed, and will it offer enough inducement to make the clergy join it? On the first point I will only say that it at least would do as much as the present system adopted by the Clergy Pension Institution. It is in fact that system lightened by being relieved of certain payments which for the main purpose of the society are superfluous. Its attractiveness is, I admit, a more difficult question. The real crux, it seems to me, comes in here; at a certain point a clergyman's preferment would have reached such an amount that he would no longer be entitled to a pension; he would then have no inducement to remain in the society. I do not see how we can give him that inducement, except by giving him an equivalent. I do not see what is to be gained by giving him such an equivalent. You cannot have your cake and eat it. If an insurance society is to pay for the houses that are burnt, it must do so out of the pockets of those whose houses are not burnt. And we must not blink the fact that under my system those who receive no pension would be pecuniary losers. Still, I contend, we should already have given them their equivalent; we should have given them security. No sensible man thinks the insurance premium for his house thrown away because his house is not burnt down. Moreover, be it observed, I would leave the pension in case of sickness exempt from any deduction; by this means a member could always anticipate his financial position under such a system with certainty.

The real difficulty, I think, would be that those whose position and professional prospects lessened the danger of financial failure in their profession would be tempted to stand aloof. A man would not unnaturally say, "I have a good college career behind me, and good prospects before me; it is an even chance whether I ever become entitled to a pension. Is it fair that I should pay the same premium as a man whose abilities and education make it exceedingly likely that he will die an unbeneficed curate?" For this reason I incline to the view that, reverting to a question on which I touched before, the deduction made in respect to previous income should be fixed and not proportionate. This practically means that the contributor of a large amount would be admitted on better terms than the contributor of a small amount. And this is, I think, equitable. For the large contributor would be just the man who is less liable to become a pensioner, and who, therefore, according to the principles of insurance, ought to be better off, just as a healthy man ought to insure his life on better terms than a delicate one, just as the premium on a building varies with its liability to fire. At the same time I would impose a maximum limit on the amount which might be contributed, and consequently on the amount which might be claimed by any individual. It will no doubt be said that I have given but a crude and somewhat featureless sketch of, a possible system. That is just what I intended to do. I do not even venture to prophesy that the system of insurance which I have advocated will succeed. I do say that I think it worth trying. I think, too, that it can be best tried in somewhat various forms. There are, as I have myself shown, various

points where my scheme branches into alternative paths. I do not see why the relative merit of such alternatives should not be tested by actual experiment. In such a case it is well not to have all our eggs in one basket. A scheme may succeed tried over a small area, and therefore subject to the direct personal supervision of those. interested in it, where it would fail if tried for the first time on a large scale, not from any real flaw in the system, but from its novelty and cumbrousness combined.

DISCUSSION.

The Rev. J. W. HORSLEY, Vicar of Holy Trinity, Woolwich.

I EXTREMELY regret that, owing to causes which we can partly divine and partly cannot divine, the room at the present time should present such a beggarly array of empty benches; but, as a consolation to the gentleman who read the paper, I would remind him that it will appeal to a larger number in the columns of the Guardian, Church Record, and the "Congress Report." So far as I was able to follow the suggestive paper I thought the scheme, as the gentleman himself rather suggested, to be a little impracticable, if not impossible, especially with regard to one point-as to striking an average over the professional incomes of the clergy. If anyone was to pursue the average income through all the intricacies of a curacy here and an incumbency here, and a chaplaincy or something else there, and decide what is the actual income, what are legitimate deductions, and so on, it would be a very complicated matter indeed. But still the paper contains many suggestions which might very well be considered when we read it quietly in a printed form. It is an extremely sad thing to see an old clergyman broken down and out of work; perhaps too old now to be popular and acceptable where a younger man is wanted, or for other reasons he has fallen aside. And all of us have known of miserable cases of clergymen out of work, and to them a pension would come as an alleviation. But I think we have also known a more miserable set of cases—of old clergymen who are not out of work, and whom everybody wishes to be out of work. Their friends devoutly wish that they could find an honourable retirement for them, but it seems at present to be impossible. These old clergymen feel that they must live, and they hang on to the last to the emoluments, while they cannot honestly go on discharging the duties. In the case of a proper pension system, we should enable these men to retire and make room for younger men. But I am afraid with regard to the Clergy Pensions Institution, and the one most prominently before the country, we may fairly say that it proposes to give me, for a payment I cannot afford, at an age I shall probably not reach, a pension which would not be of much good to me when I get it. I am afraid there is a great deal of truth in that view, but no doubt there will be some champions of the institution present who will show how utterly wrong I am. Still the fact remains. Independence and thrift must look, not merely to the time of incapacity from old age, but the time of accident and sickness; and therefore I want to remind you that there is a very practical society which provides for the time being, by a provision against sickness, namely, the Clergy Friendly Society, on the board of which I have the honour to be chairman. It is registered under the act, and is founded on the model of the Forester's society. His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury is our president, and spoke most enthusiastically in favour of the society at the last annual meeting. The trustees are the Bishop of Wakefield, the Dean of Manchester, and Canon Blackley, while the treasurer is Alderman Savory-names which will carry a certain amount of guarantee with them. We found some years ago that there was no clerical benefit society for meeting the case of sickness, and we determined that there should be one, and it was established. We have now passed the critical period-the quinquennial valuation. No doubt some of you clergymen have many working-men's provident societies in your parishes. You desire to promote providence, but you hardly know whether you are doing right or wrong in urging the men to join them. In my own parish there are scores of these clubs offering provision against sickness, and I believe