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And, in truth, what is it, we might ask, which in all cases prompts the enemy of religion to take so much pains in obtruding his arguments and professions of unbelief upon our notice, but lurking doubts and harassing anxieties on the subject: what does he thus do but expose the workings of his own mind; and shew too clearly that the subject of religion in some shape or other is always struggling in his thoughts? Hobbes, notwithstanding all the illumination which philosophy had shed over his mind, had an unconquerable dread of ghosts. The same is recorded, by Madame Genlis, of a M. Schomberg, a friend of Voltaire, who boasted of being an Atheist, and, as a soldier, had evinced the most indisputable courage. Mr. Shelly, who deliberately wrote aεоç under his name in the Album kept at Chamouni, was nevertheless an involuntary believer in the supernatural and marvellous, and in not a few instances shewed a mind under the most slavish influence of superstition. Buonaparte is well known to have displayed a not less remarkable belief in some unseen power, though his sentiments on religion were, to say the least, not of a nature to allow him to own any dependence on the Supreme Being. Another instance is that of Lord Byron, of whose ideas respecting religion so many strange and inconsistent accounts appear in his memoirs. Yet from his own confession he believed in omens, in lucky and unlucky days, &c. In these and many other instances it would seem that the attempt to stifle the principle of religion only made it appear in a different form; and not being owned and honoured as religion, it took the debased and degraded form of servile superstition, holding its professors under a slavish and humiliating yoke.

Voltaire's nurse, who had attended him through all the horrors of his last illness, being shortly after his death summoned to attend upon another person apparently unlikely to recover, eagerly enquired whether he were a Christian, and refused to attend until she was satisfied on this point. No circumstance ever proved more completely the value and efficacy of the Christian religion. Unless perhaps we should add the instance of the invaluable consolation derived from some devotional books by Capt. Franklin and his companions in their extreme sufferings on their Northern expedition. The account is doubtless familiar to our readers as given in Dr. Richardson's narrative, contained in the account of the expedition. Mr. James has extracted it, p. 382. And surely there never was a narrative written with a more touching simplicity, without the smallest attempt at effect. What sort of comfort, asks our author, would they have experienced under the same circumstances from Volney's or Mirabaud's " 's" System of Nature," or any such manual? We close our remarks by recommending the work before us to the general reader, as an excellent popular defence of truly rational religion.

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CLASS I.

Archbishops and Bishops.

Other

32 HEN. VIII. c. 28. (enabling.) Leases good against succe old Lease expired, surrendered or ended within a year; no within twenty years; nor without impeachment of waste; ne tomable rent reserved; and same remedies to successor as

1 ELIZ. c. 19. (disabling.) No Leases except to the Crown, good, other than for Twenty-one Years or Three Lives, and with accustomed rent.

N. B. The requisites of 32 Hen. must also be observed, except as to concurrent leases.

13 E

18 E

43 ELIZ. c. 9. s. 8. (disabling.) Judgments evasive of prece

1 JAC. I. c. 3. (disabling.) All grants to the Crown

avoided.

Explanatory

4 GEO. II. c. 28. s. 6.

Renewal of chief Leases good wit

5 GEO. 3. c. 17. Leases of Tithes and other incorporeal

39 and 40 GEO. III. c. 41. Lands usually demised togetl

An inspection of the vertical column appropriated to each class, o

allotted to each Statute, traced thro

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MISCELLANEOUS.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE STATUTES REGULATING ECCLE-
SIASTICAL AND ELEEMOSYNARY LEASES.

(Illustrated by an Analytical Chart.)

THE degree to which the subject of Church property has of late excited public attention, justifies the presumption that a concise summary of the legislative enactments, regulating the power possessed by ecclesiastical, collegiate, and other eleemosynary corporations, of letting and disposing of their landed possessions, may not be wholly useless or uninteresting. The varied nature and extent of these enactments render the tabular form peculiarly applicable to their illustration; and the annexed chart or diagram, in connexion with the following explanatory observations, will, it is hoped, elucidate this otherwise obscure and intricate subject.

It would be foreign to the design of these pages to enter into a detail of the origin and nature of corporate bodies, or the means by which they have accumulated those extensive possessions which form so considerable a proportion of the landed property of the kingdom at the present day. In order, however, to define with clearness the limits of the several statutes, as well as to facilitate the general elucidation of the subject, it will be proper to present the reader, in the first instance, with a concise view of the several classes into which corporations are distributable.

Corporations, considered with regard to the number of persons composing them, are distributable into aggregate and sole. Corporations aggregate consist of a plurality of persons united into one society, and are kept up by a perpetual succession of members, so as to continue for ever: such are the Mayor and Commonalty of a City, the Head and Fellows of a College, and the Dean and Chapter of a Cathedral Church. Corporations sole, are such as consist of a single individual and his successors in some particular station or office, who are incorporated by law, in order to give them certain legal capacities and advantages, particularly that of perpetuity, which in their natural person they could not have had. Thus the King is a sole Corporation; so is a Bishop; and also certain Deans and Prebendaries, considered as distinct from their several chapters; and, likewise, all Parsons and Vicars.

Corporations, whether aggregate or sole, may also be divided, in regard to the object of their institution, into ecclesiastical and lay.

*

Ecclesiastical Corporations are such as are founded for the promotion of religion, and the perpetuation of the rights of the Church, and are composed entirely of spiritual persons. These may be either sole,— as bishops, certain deans and prebendaries, (considered as distinct. from their respective chapters); all archdeacons, parsons, and vicars :or aggregate, as deans and chapters; and (while they existed) prior and convent, abbot and monks, and the like. The Clergy were for

--

By stat. 14 Car. II. cap. 4, the Prebend of Shipton, in the Cathedral Church of Sarum, may be held by the King's Professor of Law at Oxford, although a layman.

merly divided into two classes-the regular and the secular: the former class comprising those who lived secundum regulas of some particular religious society or order, and who were also called men of religion, or the religious; such as abbots, priors, monks, &c.: whilst the latter comprehended the parochial clergy and others, who were not subject to the rules of any such society or order, but who ministered in seculo; as Bishops, Deans, Parsons, &c. The Reformation having put an end to the regular clergy in England, this distinction is now obsolete.*

Lay corporations, however, admit of a subdivision which still retains its importance. They are either civil or eleemosynary. The civil are such as are erected for a variety of temporal purposes; such as the King, Mayor and Commonalty,-Bailiff and Burgesses,-the Trading Companies of London and other towns,-Churchwardens,-the College of Physicians, and Company of Surgeons in London,-the Royal Antiquarian Society, and, according to Blackstone, the general corporate bodies of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The eleemosynary sort are such as are constituted for the perpetual distribution of the free alms or bounty of their founders to such objects as those founders may have directed. Of this kind are all hospitals for the maintenance of the poor, sick, and impotent; and all colleges, both in our Universities and out of them: and it is to be observed, that all these eleemosynary corporations are, strictly speaking, lay, and not ecclesiastical, even though composed of ecclesiastical persons, and though they partake in some respects of the nature, privileges, and restrictions of ecclesiastical bodies.

Corporations being thus distributed into ecclesiastical and lay, and the lay again into eleemosynary and civil-the ecclesiastical, constituting one entire branch of the primary division, and the eleemosynary, forming one of the subdivisions of the other branch, are those whose leases form the subject of the accompanying Chart. Civil corporations (the remaining subdivision of lay corporations) still retain, in a great measure, the same unlimited power of alienation as was originally common to all corporate bodies.

With respect to ecclesiastical and eleemosynary corporations, their power of making leases has, in the course of the last three centuries, undergone considerable modification from a series of Acts of Parliament. These statutes are rather numerous, and of various extent of operation; some of them affecting particular bodies and classes of persons, to which others of them have no reference. The result of their combined operation will be best developed by a brief historical sketch or outline, exhibiting, as nearly as may be, in chronological order, the several steps by which the power of ecclesiastical and eleemosynary corporations over their possessions has been gradually reduced from its former ample extent within its present narrow limits.

It may here be premised that the statutes which will thus be brought

The word clergy at present comprehends all persons in holy orders, and in ecclesiastical offices:-viz. archbishops, bishops, deans and chapters, archdeacons, rural deans, rectors or parsons, vicars, and curates: to which list may be added parish clerks, who in former times were frequently, and even now are sometimes, in orders.-See 1st Black. Com. chap. 11.

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