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120
Convocation a suggestion that all the parsonage-houses of England and
Wales should be vested in the Commissioners with a view to solving the
problem of dilapidations, led a learned Bishop, who never made a hasty
statement in his life, to say that the legal business of the Commission was
not carried out with any excessive regard to economy. In the present
case there will be no room for any criticism, except that the Church has
not exacted the uttermost farthing of profit.
Tt seems that a large estate in Walworth of some 22 acres has lately
fallen into the hands of the Commissioners, owing to the expiration of a
lease granted iu 1804 by the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, who are
represented on the Commission by the Dean, sitting ex-officio. The property
stands in one of the most crowded of those South London slums which
have engaged the attention and taxed the studied moderation of Mr.
Charles Booth. It is entirely occupied by narrow streets of small houses
and small shops, which are yet quite large enough for indefinite subdivision.
The covenants of a lease drawn in 1804 have not served to keep
the houses in a condition in the least approaching what the Commissioners
would desire, and it does not need an examination of the photographs they
have had before them to prove that the site must be swept clean of its
present buildings. This settled, the Commissioners had several courses
open to them. They could throw the land upon the market and take any
other steps that would lead to its early conversion into the largest possible
amount of cash or securities. They are trustees, they might say, for the
Church, and the Church in these hard times has a right to all the help she
can get at the Commissioners' hands. This they put aside at once. The
state of the property has already brought no little odium upon the Church,
though in actual fact nothing could be done by the Commission to improve
it till the lease was out. Nothing, however, could have been more fatal to
the prestige of the Church lihan that the present opportunity of illustrating
the responsibilities of property, especially when it is vested in Christian
men, should be omitted in favour of whatever will "pay" best. Besides,
the Commission is after all a public body under Parliamentary supervision,
and it cannot divest itself of the duty of considering the needs of the
people as well as the extension of the Church; nor could anything be
worse than that the Church should be extended in one diocese at the cost
of the demoralization of the people in another.
Therefore, it was resolved to use this Walworth estate in such a way
as to place it at the disposal of the working classes already inhabiting it.
The neighbourhood is full of factories, whose chimneys strike the stars
with electric advertisements of somebody's soap, or biscuits, or jam, or