THE ARCHBISHOP'S INCOME. IS IT £15,000 A YEAR?

Otago Witness, Issue 2161, 25 July 1895, Page 59

THE ARCHBISHOP'S INCOME. IS IT £15,000 A YEAR?

(From the "Oxford House Chronicle.")

"The man in the street thinks that Benson bags £15,000 a year net, and cries out ' What a shame ! ' " — so wrote a working man to us the other day. Let us face the question, then, Has the archbishop £15,000 a year ? YES, AND NO I Yes ! in the sense that he is entrusted by the church with £15,000 a year to spend in ita service and the service of the nation. No I in the . sense that he puts it into his own pocket. It is a matter of common notoriety that it is vary hard to find a man rich enough to be Archbishop of Canterbury, as not only a very large sum has to be paid down as what we should call at Oxford "caution money" for becoming trustee of all the property at Lambeth — library, museum, picture gallery, &c. — but also the expenses of the office largely overbalance the income. We have it on good authority that the present occupant of the Bee spends more than he receives in the fulfilment of the duties which the office entails. HOW DOES THE BIONEY GO 1 The following facts speak for themselves :— 1. Lambeth is really a great public offica.'Thore is an immense amount of work to be done. There must be a large staff of servants, all fully employed. There must be the possibility to receive and to influence, or be influenced by, the men of the day. The archbishop pays the greater part of the suffragan bishop's stipend, and pays also for two domestic chaplains and a private secretary. All these are absolutely necessary. This amounts to £1120 a year; while printing, postage, Ac, would be about another £300. 2. Lambeth, too, is a national picture gallery, as well as*a museum and an old historic palace. The cost of maintenance and repairs is enormous. This is paid out of the £15,000, and amounts to over £2000 a-year. 3. The archbishop is a judge. Now, no lay judge bears any expense for his court. But the archbishop has to pay all his own expenses when he brings a person before his own court, and if the person condemned is impecunious, he pays his expenses also. 4. Besides this, rates and taxes amount to £1150 a-year. 5. Subscriptions and donations are not less than £2000 a-year. THE THEORY OF THE &UNAOKMENT. The church says to him who is appointed : " All this is yours to administer ■ it is a public trust ; but we have confidence. We know the work that has to be done, and claims that have to be met. We put you in the office, and we give you what we think will enable you to do it, and then we trust you. For we think that your influence and example are most necessary if the church is to hold her own with rich or poor." We might have a cheap archbishop with his hands tied, and let the Ecclesiastical Commissioners pay what we had given in subscriptions in the form of grants. We might have a cheap archbishop who could not keep up Lambeth or its work, and lot the Ecclesiastical Commissioners do this too ; but the question is whether an archbishop living iv a villa at Tooting, and travelling to and fro on a tram, would be so good or useful in the end. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS. After all, then, it comes to this— it is a mere matter of arrangement, like the bishop's income. Relieve the archbishop of his liabilities, and he would be happy to bo relieved of his Income.' If any of us were secretary to a large trust fund, we should probably expect to be paid something for administering it, but we Bhould certainly be surprised if the trust fund woa considered our in<

come, more especially if we were out of pocket by it every year. CHURCH MONEY. Then, again, another thing often left out of sight is that it is church money. It is scarcely, of course, credible to an educated man, but undoubtedly the " man in the street," of whom our correspondent writes, imagines often that he pays it himself, and that it comes out of the taxeß ; he lias probably never thought of looking for the item in the Budget, although, if he gives the matter a moment's serious thought, he must k&ow that all money gran-is and the ways and means of raising and providing them have to be sanctioned by Pmliament. The strictest care is taken, through the annual Appropriation Act and the Committee of Public Accounts, that all supplies granted by Parliament are appropriated exclusively to the particular objects specified by itself ; and it would be a clever man who could discover any clergyman's salary in any parliamentary grant, still l«ss an archbishop's. It is, of course, paid out of church money, which the Ecclesiastical (or Church) Commissioners regulate, but which was accumulatad, not by taxation, but by free gift. Government chaplains are the only clergy paid by the State. THE POOR CURATE THEORY. But what a shame that a poor curate should only have £120 when the archbishop has £15,000 a-year ! Two things may be said as to this : one, that if the archbishop, as we have seen, is receiving a minus quantity, because he is paying out more than he receives, the curate is in a butter financial position; for lie, at any rate, has his £120 to spend as he likes ; but quite apart from that, is it not rather for the poor curate to cry out, and not the "man in the street"? As a matter of fact the outcry doe 3 uot come from the curates ; they are quite content : they have their little grievances — we all have them— but certainly one of their little grievances is not that their archbishop is trusted with £15,000 a-year to spend for the good of the church and nation ; and if they are content, what on earth does it matter to the " man in the street " ? BUT THE FOUfiDER OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH WAS I'OOK. True, "Though Ha was rich, yet for our sakes He b came poor." All honour to His Holy name, and His example should make impossible luxury and osttntation among Christians, and especially Christian ministers; but so far from forbidding the use of money for church purposes, He distinctly lays down the necessity of it in an oftenforgotten passage, where He distinguishes the permanent method of work from the temporary : " When I sent you forth without purse and wallet and shoes, lacked ye anything ? And they said, Nothing. And He said unto them, But noiv, he that hath a purse let him take it, and likewise his wallet."— Luke xxii, 35-31 With such a distinct contrast drawn between the two missions, it is a little difficult to believe in the honesty of those who quote the words to ..he seventy about taking no supplies as forbidding tho use of money resources. A. F. W. I.