In one English village which I visited the living was worth seven hundred pounds, with the use of a fine mansion; as the incumbent had a large family, he lived there.  In another place the living was worth a thousand pounds, and the incumbent hired a curate, himself appearing twice a year, on Christmas day and on the King’s birth-day, to preach a sermon; the rest of the time he spent in Paris.  It is worth noting that in 1808 a law was proposed compelling absentee pluralists—­that is, clergymen holding more than one “living”—­to furnish curates to do their work; it might be interesting to note that this law met with strenuous clerical opposition, the house of Bishops voting against it without a division.  Thus we may understand the sharp saying of Karl Marx, that the English clergy would rather part with thirty-eight of their thirty-nine articles than with one thirty-ninth of their income.

There is always a plentiful supply of curates in England.  They are the sons of the less influential ruling families, and of the clergy; they have been trained at Oxford or Cambridge, and possess the one essential qualification, that they are gentlemen.  Their average price is two hundred and fifty pounds a year; their function was made clear to me when I attended my first English tea-party.  There was a wicker table, perhaps a foot and a half square, having three shelves, one below the other—­on the top layer the plates and napkins, on the next the muffins, and on the lowest the cake.  Said the hostess, “Will you pass the curate, please?” I looked puzzled, and she pointed.  “We call that the curate, because it does the work of a curate.”

#Graft in Tail#

As one of America’s head muck-rakers, I found that I was popular with the British ruling classes; they found my books useful in their campaigns against democracy, and they were surprised and disconcerted when they found I did not agree with their interpretation of my writings.  I had told of corruption in American politics; surely I must know that in England they had no such evils!  I explained that they did not have to; their graft, to use their own legal phrase, was “in tail”; the grafters had, as a matter of divine right, the things which in America they had to buy.  In America, for instance, we had a Senate, a “Millionaire’s Club”, for admission to which the members paid in cash; but in England the same men came to the same position as their birth-right.  Political corruption is not an end in itself, it is merely a means to exploitation; and of exploitation England has even more than America.  When I explained this, my popularity with the British ruling classes vanished quickly.