Parish meeting

“ In every rural parish, that is to say, in every parish which is not included within an urban district, there is a parish meeting, which consists of the parochial electors of the parish. As already stated, these are the persons whose names are on the parliamentary and local government registers. If the parish has a population exceeding 300, a parish council must be elected. If it has a population of 100 or upwards, the county council are bound to make an order for the election of a parish council if the parish meeting so resolves. ”

“ How any Parliament can ever have dared to insert such a monstrous section I cannot understand. But there it is. "Free trout-fishing!" Well—there ought to be someone on the Parish Council to defend the rights of property. I shall be the man.
Next Tuesday the Parish Meeting in the Voluntary Schoolroom at 7.30. It cannot fail to be an eventful night.
Room-attics. ["Madame Patti caught cold in a damp artist's room."—Weekly Paper.] ”

“ To the authors of the History of English Law their existence is due to the natural outcome of the responsibility placed upon the people. “If the parishioners are compelled to provide precious books, robes, vessels, etc., they will naturally desire to have their say about the custody of these articles; parsons have been known to sell the church plate.”
In the fifteenth century the churchwardens were chosen annually in a parish meeting at which, no doubt, the rector or vicar would have presided; all adult members of the parish having a voice in the election. ”

“ Art. 55. No citizen can excuse himself from any of the above public duties, under any pretense whatever.
Art. 56. No citizen shall appear at the parish meeting with side or other arms.
Art. 57. The election being verified, the meeting shall immediately be dissolved. Every other act of the said meeting shall be null and void.
Art. 58. The members of the meeting shall proceed to the parish church, where a solemn Te Deum shall be sung. The elector or electors shall be placed between the president, inspectors, and secretary. ”

“ Now every man and woman who has resided in the parish for a twelvemonth has the right not only to vote for the members of the Parish Council but to run as candidate for election to that body. The village parliament discusses all questions which are of public interest to the parish. It is in some respects more democratic even than a New England town meeting, since it gives women a voice, a vote, and opportunity to hold office. ”

“ And whoever attends service in a Meeting-house, when he has the opportunity of going to the Parish Church, does by so doing give his silent approbation to the principle of Dissent, and shows that at least he does not disapprove the opinions of the particular body, to whose Meeting he goes. ”

“ It long ago passed away to give place to the modern hay-scales.
POLITICAL. In the earlier history of this town, politics and religion were closely related. For many years the affairs of the legally established, or Congregational, church were arranged by vote of the town. The intimate relation existing between the church and the town made the meeting-house and town-house at first identical. The earliest town-meeting held in the first meeting-house was on the 2d of March, 1767. Previously, town-meetings had been held at private houses. ”

“ The churches that have entered into this coöperative parish system have special committees, whose purpose is to serve the neighborhood so as to increase the prevalence of the idea that the church is there, not to be served by the people, but to serve them. ”

“ The executive powers, which in the country districts are vested in the fogeds, in the towns are committed to the judges of the courts of first instance. The management of the affairs of the parish is placed in the hands of a council, chosen by the peasants, which deliberates on all matters which concern the parish, such as the making of new roads, the application to the central government for assistance, and the repairing of the parish church. ”

“ To these universal gatherings, which put all France in motion, we must add the local gatherings by which a commune approves or gainsays its municipal officers, makes claims on the department, on the King, or on the Assembly, demands the maintenance of its parish priest, the provisioning of its market, the arrival or dispatch of a military detachment,—and think of all that these meetings, petitions, and nominations presuppose in the way of preparatory committees and preliminary meetings and debates! Every public representation begins with rehearsals in secret session. ”

“ The work is a growth, and is still in the process of development. We are all the while finding something more to do for the people, and larger possibilities of service are opening up before us continually. But it may be said to have passed beyond the experimental stage. Nobody looks upon it any longer as simply an experiment. It is a practical plan in successful operation. The church has come to have a well-defined policy. The people have accepted the idea of the Larger Parish and are coöperating heartily in carrying it out. ”

“ The Parish Councils have become the guardians of public paths; they have begun to provide parish libraries, and the little parish senate educates its constituency and brings its wisdom to bear upon a number of practical questions, such as cottage gardens and fairs. ”

“ It has been the object of the work of the Larger Parish to supply this need of country life. It has provided and promoted frequent opportunities for the people to come together in a social way. The Sunday services established in so many places have not only served as opportunities of worship, but also of neighborly intercourse and of the interchange of friendly greetings. The neighborhood clubs have been a kind of social and literary clearing-house for the community, affording many a pleasant and profitable evening and providing something wholesome to think of and to plan for during the day. ”

“ Their prayers, therefore, are not exactly the same in any two assemblies on the same day, or on any two days in the same assembly. In one parish they are fervent, eloquent, and full of meaning. In the next parish they may be languid or absurd. ”

“ They build on you. You've done more in the little while you've been here than Mr. Langley did in his last fifteen years. We've grown and we're doin' good—doin' it, not talkin' it in prayer meetin'. The parish committee likes you and the poor folks in the society love you. ”

“ In order to promote unity and fellowship throughout the whole parish, occasional meetings designed to bring all the people together are held with very good results. Two or three times during the year all the services in the various points are omitted and the people come together on the beautiful campus on the Benzonia hilltop and spend the day in worship and in social intercourse. ”

“ The whole of this business was managed with the height of discretion; and the weavers, and spinners, and farming lads, vied with one another who should be first on the list. But that which the most surprised me, was the wonderful sagacity of the committee in naming the gentlemen that should be the officers. I could not have made a better choice myself; for they were the best built, the best bred, and the best natured, in the parish. ”

“ To these councils, elected by the working-classes from themselves, are entrusted the governing of the parish: the lighting, paving, cleaning of the streets, the order and police, and all matters belonging to the daily life of the place. On these councils the squire and the parson may sit, if they are elected; but they have no more power than the others. ”

“ The provision of parish books and of a vestry room or parochial office, parish chest, and the holding or management of parish property not being property relating to affairs of the Church or held for an Ecclesiastical charity, are also in rural parishes transferred to the Parish Council. ”

“ With the District and Parish Councils Act just coming into force, I hoped that new life would rise amongst you, and that you would endeavour to make the most of the opportunities that presented themselves to you, and that by this time you would have been in a much better position. ”

“ Larger Parish is to help the people and to serve them in a religious and social way, not to promote a denomination, to build up a church, to perfect an organization, or to construct or to operate machinery of any kind. But in order to help the people and serve their best interests efficiently, some machinery, some organization, is necessary. ”

“ From the outset the government of the township was vested in the TOWN-MEETING,--an institution which in its present form is said to be peculiar to New England, but which, as we shall see, has close analogies with local self-governing bodies in other ages and countries. Once in each year--usually in the month of March--a meeting is held, at which every adult male residing within the limits of the township is expected to be present, and is at liberty to address the meeting or to vote upon any question that may come up. ”

“ The first thing to be done was to make a survey of the field. I began to think of all the twenty-five hundred people in this Larger Parish as belonging to me. I felt a measure of responsibility for them all. We, as a church and pastor, must do something for them all, and in order to do it, we must know them all. So I started out to visit all the families in this wide territory. ”

“ They were much better occupied, by the promulgation of God’s tidings, than to trouble themselves about those things which have lately become of so much more concern to christian bishops than the conversion of the heathen; and when those earnest and good men were assisted by others whom they had imbued with their religious spirit they lived in one house, in common, on the free-will offerings of a grateful people.—The overseer of the district being their overseer, and his parish, their parish. ”

“ A WEDDING FEE!
Four times a year the minister visited all his country parishioners. It generally took him two or three days to go the rounds in one neighbourhood—a neighbourhood, I may say, extended over several miles. He would leave "town" (there were six hundred inhabitants in the place where he presided over the only steepled meeting-house of his three charges!) early in the morning, and reach the first house where he was to call at about ten o'clock. ”

“ If we do the work that needs to be done in the coming days we shall need a true and unwavering purpose, a clear eye to discern the situation, a calm and correct judgment to fit the method to the work, and above all, the constant leading of the Holy Spirit. The Larger Parish is not a method, or organization, or machine, that one can secure and put in operation and then the work is done. It is a vision—an ideal—that must be a living reality in the soul, and then must be wrought out in actual life in the best way possible. ”

“ In the small country parishes the incumbent was often the only, or almost the only, educated man in the community. His advice had naturally considerable weight in parish affairs, and his pen was often required in the drawing up of official or legal documents, certifications or testimonials, the casting up of parish accounts and the like. ”

“ In the first place, it teaches us that parochial divisions are artificial and comparatively modern. The formula that the parish is the township in its ecclesiastical capacity is (if unconsciously adopted) not historically true. Antiquaries familiar with the Norman period, or with the study of local history, must be acquainted with the ruins or the record of churches or chapels (the same building, I may observe in passing, is sometimes called both ecclesia and capella [20] ) , which formerly gave townships now merged in parishes a separate or quasi-separate ecclesiastical existence. ”

“ Then when these duties are fulfilled the next one is to discover of what manner of men is composed, and what is the record of, the new parish council or local board which may govern the special district ”

“ The Town Meeting, in form, is a group of men and women who are organized to discuss such measures as would be introduced into a real town meeting, a city council or a state legislature, to relieve social ills. The ordinance or bill, as the case may be, is not a mere declaration of a theory, but a definite programme for carrying some theory of betterment into action. ”

“ Whatever the origin, it is certain that long before the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries the parish church had practically come to be the property of the parishioners generally in a very definite manner, and, with certain exceptions, to which reference will presently be made, upon the inhabitants of a parochial district as a corporation lay the duty of repairing and rebuilding the fabric, of beautifying the edifice, of maintaining the services, and of seeing generally to its well-being. ”

“ Not only have the churches, in federal and State conferences, set themselves determinedly to improve the rural parish, but the matter has been the subject of much discussion by educational and sociological societies with encouraging gains. ”

“ Because it permits important social work to be done in addition to purely religious work, as in the church district plan of the Charity Organization Society of Buffalo, by which the destitute in specific districts are cared for by the churches to which these districts are assigned. ”

“ The agricultural labourer voters—and the numerous semi-agricultural voters, not labourers—are more than likely to look at their own parish as well as at the policy of the Foreign Office. Gradually the parish—that is, the village—must become the centre to men who feel at last that they are their own masters. Under some form or other they will take the parish into their own hands, and insist upon their business being managed at home. Some shape of village council must come presently into existence. ”