ABSTRACT
The story of Benthamite liberalism is specially instructive; the increasing force of liberalism was long held in check by the survival of old toryism; the authority of liberalism, when it had become the legislative faith of the day, was diminished by the gradually rising current of collectivism. The influence of cross-currents, operating as it does in an indirect and subtle manner, often, escapes notice, and is always somewhat hard to appreciate. In 1832 the passing of the Reform Act seemed to prove that any institution, however venerable, might be called upon to show cause for its existence, and, in default of a popular verdict in its favour, would undergo drastic amendment or revolutionary destruction. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners Act of 1836 in effect enacts that a bishop should pay the surplus revenue of his see to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, but should retain the estates from which his revenue is derived.
