The grievance of having to pay rates on the churchyard may be in one sense a little one. But when it comes to being charged rates upon the premiums you pay upon your insurance policies, some of them--the insurance of his church and other buildings--being compulsory payments, and upon the mortgage of your benefice effected in your predecessor’s time--even the sneerer at a sentimental grievance could hardly call such charges as these not worth making a fuss about. In many a needy country parson’s household the rates make all the difference whether his children can have butter to their bread or not. * * * * * It must be obvious to most people from what has been already said--and much more might be said--that, unless a country parson have some resources outside of any income derivable from his benefice, he must needs be a very poor man. Our people know this better than any one else, and it is often a very anxious question on the appointment of a new incumbent whether he will live in the same style as that which his predecessor maintained. Will he keep a carriage, or only a pony chaise? Will he employ two men in the garden? Will he “put out his washing?”[2] Will his house be a small local market for poultry and butter and eggs? Will he farm the glebe or let it? How many servants will he keep, and will the lady want a girl to train in the kitchen or the nursery from time to time? Such questions as these are sometimes very anxious ones in a remote country village where every pound spent among the inhabitants serves to build up a _margin_ outside the ordinary income of the wage-earners, and which helps the small occupiers to tide over many a temporary embarrassment when money is scarce, and small payments have to be met and cannot any longer be deferred. Let me, before going any further, deal with a question which I have had suggested to me again and again by certain peculiar people with dearly beloved theories of their own. It is often asked, Ought clergymen ever to be rich men? Is not a rich clergyman out of place in a country parsonage? Does not his wealth raise him too far above the level of his people? Does it not make him sit loosely to his duties? Does not the fact of a country parson being known to be a rich man tend _to demoralize_ a parish?