Two hundred pounds per annum, and the quantity of waste land for which Bishop Porteus and his lessees agreed to give the parish fifteen pounds a-year, is, as we have already seen, all that the liberal bishops of London, for the last century, have provided for the cure of fifty thousand souls, {127b} out of an estate which now yearly brings in thirty thousand pounds; and which, like the population, must increase for many years to come. Such paltry provisions for the cure of souls in Paddington will be a lasting monument of disgrace to all parties concerned in these transactions. To smooth down the unmitigated selfishness developed in the several private Acts of Parliament, which we have examined in a previous part of this Work, it has been said “the system was in fault.” But when it was enacted, that two hundred acres of land which had been claimed by the church might be occupied by human beings, instead of cows and cabbage; “the system” could as easily have provided suitably for the religious education of the contemplated dwellers on this soil, as it did for the increase in the stipend of a single curate; or as it did for the transfer of two-thirds of the estate into the hands of lay lessees; and, when permission was given by another Act, to extend the power of granting building leases to four hundred acres of this estate, we find the rector of the parish, the lord of the manor, the bishop of London—three important personages in one—content with providing out of that estate an increased salary of eighty pounds a-year for a single curate; and with obtaining permission to give, “in case of need or convenience,” land which cost the owners of this estate fifteen pounds a year, I think the most charitable must say, that the inhabitants of this parish are not indebted to “the system” alone, for all the paternal care which their governors have bestowed on them and the cure of their souls. Newcourt tells us Paddington “is exempt from the Archdeacon, and wholly subject to the Bishop of London and his Commissary;” and that the church is a donative of curacy in the gift of the bishops of that see, and is “supplied by a curate by virtue of the bishop’s license, wherein is committed to him the _cura animarum_.”