The collateral evils which would necessarily result from the scandals we are noticing are obvious.  When the incumbent of a parish was non-resident, and more especially when, as was not unfrequently the case, there was not even a resident curate, it was impossible that the duties of the parish could be properly attended to.  Evidences of this are only too plentiful.  But, instead of quoting dreary details to prove a point which has been generally admitted, it will be sufficient in this place to refer to some passages in the charges of a worthy prelate which throw a curious light upon what such a one could reasonably look for in his clergy in the middle of the eighteenth century.  In his charge to the diocese of Oxford, in 1741, Bishop Secker recommends the duty of catechising; but he feels that his recommendation cannot in many cases be carried out.  ‘I am sensible,’ he adds, ’that some clergymen are unhappily obliged to serve two churches the same afternoon.’  We gather from the same charge a sad idea of the infrequency of the celebration of the Holy Communion.  ‘One thing,’ the Bishop modestly suggests, ’might be done in all your parishes:  a Sacrament might easily be interposed in that long interval between Whitsuntide and Christmas.  If afterwards you can advance from a quarterly Communion to a monthly, I have no doubt you will.’  In the same charge he reminds the clergy that ’our liturgy consists of evening as well as morning prayer, and no inconvenience can arise from attending it, provided persons are within tolerable distance of church.  Few have business at that time of day, and amusement ought never to be preferred on the Lord’s day before religion; not to say that there is room for both.’[659] When it is remembered that the state of things described in the above remarks existed in the great University diocese, which was presumably in advance rather than behind the age, and that, moreover, the clergy were presided over by a man who was thoroughly earnest and conscientious, and yet that he can only hint in the most delicate way at improvements which, as the tone of his exhortation evidently shows, he hardly hoped would be carried out, it may be imagined what was the condition of parishes in less favoured and more remote dioceses.

Another evil, which was greatly aggravated by the multiplication of benefices in a single hand, was clerical poverty.  There was in the last century a far wider gap between the different classes of the clergy than there is at the present day.  While the most eminent or most fortunate among them could take their places on a stand of perfect equality with the highest nobles in the land, the bulk of the country curates and poorer incumbents hardly rose above the rank of the small farmer.  A much larger proportion than now lived and died without the slightest prospect of rising above the position of a stipendiary curate; and the regular stipend of a curate was 30_l._ a year.  When Collins complained of the expense of maintaining