[p. 96]
|96| years, and e.g. of such a nature that he had once in broad daylight gone through the streets and over the bridge of his town, in most indecent company, in the train of a multitude of jeering street urchins; – still far more scandalous were the man’s own domestic circumstances, likewise attested by witnesses. Such shamelessness of a clergyman of the English Church had done no detriment to him in the possession of his office and in the enjoyment of the revenues of his benefices; the contempt into which the Church falls through such examples, most of all by the fact that, notwithstanding the institution of an episcopal hierarchy, it does not of itself check such depravity and its scandal, contributes its share, like the covetousness of other clergymen in collecting their tithes, towards diminishing also that respect which is demanded by the English public for the right of property of the Church. That such property, through its destination for the religious purpose, has a wholly different character from private property, which the free arbitrary will of the owners has to dispose of, – that this difference grounds a different right, and the enjoyment of this wealth is bound to duties as conditions, and that that purpose in Protestant states grounds an entitlement of the power of the state to watch jointly over the fulfilment of this purpose and of the duties bound up with the revenues, – such principles seem in England still to be wholly foreign and unknown. To remain standing at the abstract point of view of private right in this matter, however, lies too much in the advantage of the class which has the predominant influence in Parliament, is thereby connected with the ministry,
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