CHURCH TEMPORALITIES (IRELAND).

HC Deb 11 June 1844 vol 75 cc534-85

Mr. Ward

said—Sir, nobody can feel more strongly than I do both the difficulties and responsibility that attach to any attempt made under the present circumstances of England and Ireland to re-open the question which I am about to bring under the consideration of the House this evening; and strong as my opinions unquestionably are respecting it —deep as is my conviction that delay in dealing with it will only aggravate the mischiefs of past procrastination—yet, Sir, I should have shrunk from the task of endeavouring again to engage the attention of this House to a subject so largely and so ably discussed at the beginning of the present Session, if I had seen anything like a hope, however distant and however faint, that Her Majesty's Ministers were prepared to recognise the principle on which the settlement of this question must ultimately depend. Sir, I have never been extravagant enough in my ideas to suppose that this is a question which can be settled, or even materially advanced, by any individual efforts. The same unhappy feelings, the same stubborn prejudices, that have plunged us for 300 years into a course of vicious legislation, still retain a certain hold, at all events, on the public mind, though I believe it to be much weakened; and whenever the time shall come for dealing practically with this question, it will require the best efforts of the best men on both sides of the House to remove the obstacles that still obstruct our path. There must be much forbearance, there must be many mutual concessions. Men on all sides must follow the advice of Bishop Watson, in the debate upon the Union, and learn to give up small things in order to secure great things, tranquillity, concord, peace. I have said thus much, that the House may not imagine, that I conceive the question to be one free from difficulties. I admit it to be difficult, I admit it to be complicated, but I say that is no reason why it should not be entertained. The Catholic question was difficult, but the Catholic question was carried; and the more difficult, the more complicated this question is, the more indispensable does it become that the House should entertain it, and entertain it promptly, before it is forced upon it by events over which it can have no control;—that it should try to fathom the difficulty, to unravel the complication, in order to place, if possible, the Irish Church on a footing more suited to its own professed objects, and more conducive to the great interests which it was intended to cement. With these feelings, if I had seen anything like a progressive policy on the part of Ministers—anything like an honest determination or desire to grapple with that which is their real difficulty in the Government of this country (and they know it well)—to regard Catholic Emancipation as Mr. Pitt would have regarded it, as the first of a great series of mea- sures for the amelioration of Ireland, framed in a large and comprehensive spirit, and carried out with a vigorous hand—I say, that such a policy as that would have had no warmer supporter in this House than myself. I adopt, upon this point, not merely the feelings, but the words of an hon. Friend of mine, whom I am sorry not now to see in his place, for I have very often the pleasure of concurring in opinion with him, although we sit on different sides of the House. I mean the hon. Member for Wakefield, who said, in a recent debate, that "He wished to hear his right hon. Friend at the head of the Government announcing his intention of altering the anomalous position of the Protestant Church in Ireland, whilst maintaining it in those principles on which alone a Church Establishment could be maintained in any country for the purposes of religion, and the spiritual instruction of the people; but altogether giving up the idea that it was to be looked upon as a Protestant stronghold in that country." Sir, I adopt these sentiments altogether; but I ask any Gentleman on either side of the House, whether in the fondest credulity of party prepossession, he can point out to me any word or act since this time last year that would warrant him in entertaining the belief that such are the sentiments of Her Majesty's Government? Has there been any good legislation for Ireland? Is there any prospect of good legislation? Have Ministers announced any great change in their policy? Can any change be reasonably anticipated? Has any one thing been said or done calculated to allay admitted discontent, to remove just causes of excitement, and to bring back the alienated feelings of the people of Ireland to this country and to this House? No! There has been no good legislation, there is no rational ground for hope. The only Government measure announced is the Registration Bill; and until the right hon. Baronet, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, declared to-night, that if the business before the House would admit of it, he had some intention of proceeding with it on the 1st of July, I really believed that it had been received with such a universality of condemnation, that we should not have heard of it again. There was another Bill—a very useful Bill—to which the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government alluded at the beginning of the Session—viz., a Bill to facilitate Endowments for the Catholic Clergy. I do not know whether that is in the list of measures which we may hope to see introduced by Government during the present Session, but up to the present time, at all events, there has been no legislation for Ireland since this time twelvemonth; and if from works we go to words, if, giving up the past policy of Government in Ireland as indefensible, we look to their own declarations as the criterion of their future conduct, I say distinctly, that never was there a time when there was so little good to expect and so much bad to anticipate. The Government have placed themselves in a strange position. They have not only taken up a position which is in itself untenable, but they have pledged themselves to die in the last ditch. We have had a series of declarations, within the last twelve months, coming from almost every Member of the Government, offensive to Ireland, discouraging to those who wish well to her, without reference to party objects here, and destroying all hope of future good from men who have begun by tying their own hands on the most important points that can possibly come before them in connection with Irish affairs. The noble Lord, the Secretary for Ireland, commenced these declarations upon this very question to which I have now the honour to call your attention, while it was under discussion towards the close of last Session. In his speech upon that occasion the noble Lord said, "He could see no difference between a Protestant Establishment and a Protestant Sovereign." "The Union was a distinct compact for the preservation of the Protestant Church." And in 1829, when Catholic Emancipation was carried, "there was an implied agreement, which it would be a gross breach of faith in the Government that carried that measure to depart from." This was the first declaration made by the Government in that House as to their intentions towards Ireland. He then came to another which had been made during the present Session. He knew not whether he was strictly in order in referring to speeches made in that House during the present Session; but as the rules of the House could always be evaded by a periphrasis, it would perhaps be more convenient to allow him to allude directly to those passages in a former debate which were necessary to his argu- ment. He would, therefore, refer to the speech of an hon. Gentleman, whose opinion he should at all times consider to be of some weight on Irish affairs, but whose views derived additional weight by his recent appointment as Secretary to the Treasury, and he found that that hon. Gentleman (Mr. J. Young) had declared "the Church to be the line of separation between parties in this country." "No Conservative Statesman could, without dishonour to himself and ruin to his party, make any other declaration than that he was determined to maintain inviolate and intact the dignity and possessions of the Established Church." Then came the declaration of the right hon. Baronet, the Home Secretary (Sit J. Graham), who, speaking of Ireland as "the fatal field which had separated him from all his former friends, and on which he could not hope to meet them again except as opponents;" said, in his answer to the wise suggestions of the noble Lord, the Member for London, in the strongest and boldest manner:— I reject all these nostrums—they are all incompatible with that preference winch the Protestant State of England, as a fundamental principle, has decided on giving in favour of the Protestant Church Establishment." "I stand upon the choice made by this country at the Reformation, confirmed at the Revolution, sealed by the Act of Settlement, and ratified by the Act of Union. I hold that preference to be amongst the firmest foundations of our liberties. I believe it to have been the work of the greatest Statesmen; and I do not believe that it will be overthrown by any Repeal Association, or any body of conspirators, such as we have succeeded in convicting. The right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government, had the merit of having considerably modified these declarations. The right hon. Baronet, it was true, declared that the Act of Union was one compact, and the Emancipation Act another, both being intended "to give an assurance to the Protestants of Ireland and of England that the existence of the Established Church should not be endangered;" but he added " If we are now convinced that the social amelioration of Ireland requires an alteration of this law—a departure from that compact—are our legislative functions so bound up, that we must maintain the compact in defiance of our convictions? I, for one, am not prepared to contend for that doctrine." Still he came to the same conclusion as his Col- leagues; for he said: "I bring reason, and conviction, in aid of compact, and authority; and I come to the conclusion that the best coarse, and the course which I, for one, as far as my humble powers can be exerted, shall pursue, is—to maintain in its integrity the Protestant Church." These were declarations from which he, for one, could draw but little hope for the future fate of Ireland; for, so long as they were acted up to, there was no probability of bringing the question which agitated that country, to a satisfactory conclusion. But, as if to prove that there was no disunion in the Cabinet upon the subject of Ireland at least, they had had a still stronger, and more singular declaration made in another place, to which he could not allude more directly than by saying, it was a place, the proceedings in which they were duly informed of by certain organs, which made it their business to report all that took place there, although nothing at all could be known about it in the House of Commons. He referred to a declaration recently made by the Duke of Wellington, on the presentation of a petition from Glasgow, by Lord Fitzwilliam, praying the House of Lords to take the position of the Protestant Church in Ireland into their consideration, as being the ground of all the differences, and discontent, which existed in that country. On that occasion the noble Duke said—"The noble Lord says, something or other must be done. He does not state what it is to be; but it is, at all events, to involve the repeal of those laws, upon which the Reformation in this country has been founded."—"The Protestant Church has subsisted in Ireland for 300 years. It was maintained there during a century of contests, rebellions, and massacres. It was part of the compact made with the Parliament of Ireland at the time of the Union. It is the foundation upon which the Union rests; and you cannot depart from it, without being guilty of a breach of faith, worse than those referred to in other countries, worse than those pecuniary breaches of faith which have been alluded to on other occasions." Now, this vehemence of protestation was, in his (Mr. Ward's) humble judgment, not merely useless, but most impolitic. It irritated, but did not convince. It settled nothing, and could settle nothing, for no speech made in Parliament could reconcile the Irish people to a system which was indefensible, because opposed to their natural rights. Besides which, they had had too many of such declarations. The Duke Wellington was not the first Duke who had spoken upon such subjects. He (Mr. Ward) could well remember a memorable occasion when a Royal Duke had taken an equally prominent part against the concession of Catholic rights—for they had to deal with the same question now, as before the Emancipation Act, though in a somewhat different shape. He well remembered that most memorable speech of the Duke York's, which had done more, in the short space of twenty lines, to alienate, and exasperate, the people of Ireland than all the treachery of Limerick, or the sufferings of the Penal Laws. He recollected that speech well, flaunting in golden letters in every orthodox bookseller's shop, and cried up as the paragon of earthly wisdom by the men, who hoped to rivet their own hold upon power by pandering to the prejudices of Protestant mobs, and Protestant heirs to the Throne. Nothing could be more solemn than the declaration of the noble Duke. He said, "Concession to Catholics would be a total change in the fundamental principle of the Constitution—a blow striking at the very root of it."—" Nobody was more inclined to toleration than his late Majesty; but there was a great difference between toleration, participation, and emancipation." "The Coronation Oath stood in the way of it, from the obligations of which the King could neither release himself by any act of his own, nor be released by any act of the Legislature." "He had imbibed these principles in his earliest youth, and subscribed to their justice, after the most serious consideration, when he attained more mature years; and these were the principles to which he would adhere, and which he would maintain, and act up to, to the latest moment of his existence, so help him God!" Had that declaration arrested the course of events? Had it stopped Catholic Emancipation? On the contrary, Catholic Emancipation was carried only four years afterwards, by that very Duke of Wellington, who now invoked the Duke of York's principles against his own,—that is, against the proper working out of those principles upon which he himself acted in 1829. The only effect of that declaration was to delay a great, wise, and comprehensive measure until it lost half its utility, and all its grace. But, happily, there was a sort of fatality that appeared to attend the declarations of the Duke of Wellington. His strongest declarations were usually followed by the largest concessions; and viewing the matter in that light, he looked upon the recent speech of the noble Duke with some satisfaction. He remembered that but twelve months before the passing of the Reform Bill, the British Constitution was declared to be the most perfect ever devised by human wisdom; and Lord Ellenborough's recall was pronounced the grossest act of indiscretion on record, just three weeks before the dinner to his successor, at which the noble Duke was present. There was no want of moral courage in the noble Duke when right, but he sometimes did in the Cabinet, what he never did in the field, he took up a bad position. He had a right, therefore, to hope that the same results would follow the noble Duke's declarations in regard to the Irish Church, as had followed them upon the other questions to which he had referred. But he had a better reason still for doubting whether this declaration ought to produce any effect on the country; for it was on record that both the noble Duke, and the right hon. Baronet (Sir R. Peel), had seen the inevitable consequence of their own measure of 1829 before they carried it. Not only had they foreseen it, but they predicted it,—they painted it to the country in the strongest colours, as a reason for not doing what they afterwards did. How, then, could they complain of the fulfilment of their own prophecies? He (Mr. Ward) had quoted a speech of the right hon. Baronet, in the debates upon the Arms Bill, which the right hon. Baronet ought not to have forgotten, for it made an extraordinary impression on the country when it was delivered. He was reading, the other day, the letters of Lord Dudley to the Bishop of Llandaff, and he found it thus described by that noble Lord in his diary:—"We had an excellent Anti-Catholic speech from Peel last night—really quite capital. He said all that could be said on that side, and said it in the best possible way." And what was the most prominent argument in this much-praised speech? He would not again read the whole passage, but the gist of it was, that if the Catholics were constituted like other men—if they had organs, senses, affections, passions, like ourselves—they must aspire to the re-establishment of their own Church in the place of our 'intrusive Church,' in all its ancient splendour? Is it not natural, said the right hon. Baronet, that they should do so? If I argue even from my own feelings — if I place myself in their situation — I answer that it is. And then he illustrated this by the case of Scotland, and said, that it was not until "Scotland with her Presbyterian Church, was united to England with her Episcopal Church, that all jealousies were buried in oblivion, and the political Union was complete." He found, too, that the Duke of Wellington two years later, had said (March 1819), "that if Roman Catholics were admitted to political power no doubt could be entertained, but that their first exertions would be directed towards restoring their religion to its original supremacy." Now, he maintained that there was no wish for supremacy upon the part of the Roman Catholics. All that they asked was equality with the Protestants; and how could the right hon. Baronet and the noble Duke hope to satisfy Ireland, without doing that for her, which they predicted it would be absolutely impossible to withhold, if Catholic Emancipation were granted? He would deal later with some of the other arguments to which he had referred; but first he must show the House what it was, that they were really disputing about. Fortunately, he could. do this without wearying the House with statistical details. The relative proportions of the population in Ireland were admitted; and even upon the delicate point of revenue, there was no longer any material difference; for his noble Friend (Lord Eliot) with a frankness that did him the greatest honour, and for which he begged to express his own obligations, had brought over Mr. Erck, the Ecclesiastical Commissioner, and directed him to give him (Mr. Ward) access to all the documents in his possession, for the express purpose of avoiding the differences, that had occurred last year in their calculations:—

Last year his estimate of the revenue of the Irish Church was	£552,753
Lord Eliot's	432,023
Difference	£120,730

Both of these estimates were very much under the mark. He believed he might take the

Episcopal revenues as	£151,127
Deans and Prebends	34,481
Minor Canons and Vicars Choral	10,525
	£196,133
Parochial tithes	486,785
Episcopal	9,515
Received by dignitaries	24,460
	£520,660
Deduct 25 per cent. for rent charge	130,165
Remain	£390,495
Add Episcopal revenues (tithes deducted, £33,875)	162,258
	£552,753
Glebes as valued by Ecclesiastical Commissioners	80,000
Minister's Money	10,000
Demised tithes	8,000
Total present income	£650,753

This was the sum upon which all parties were now agreed, as representing the actual income of the Establishment. Out of this income it provided for a population of 750,000 Episcopalians. This was the real number, because, in the original Census, the Wesleyan Methodists had been included, which they ought not to have been, as they maintained 300 Chapels themselves. Taking, then, the number as 750,000 Protestants, they would recollect that in England there were about 14,000,000. In Ireland there were 2,450 parishes, in England there were 10,750. With these 2,450 parishes, there were in Ireland only 1,422 beneficed Clergymen. In Ireland, too, they had two Archbishops and ten Bishops; while in England and Wales there were but two Archbishops and twenty-four Bishops, for ten times the Episcopalian population. In Ireland there was one Bishop to every 118 Benefices. In England there was only one Bishop to every 412 Benefices. In the diocese of Lincoln there were 1,259 Benefices, and in that of Norwich 1,033 Benefices—so that two Bishops superintended 2,292 Benefices, while in Ireland there were twelve Bishops to superintend 1,422 Benefices. Now, would not one Archbishop and three Bishops, at the most, be sufficient to superintend 1,422 Benefices? Again, taking the income of the Church at 650,000l., that would show that 18s. or 20s. was the sum paid for the spiritual instruction of each member of the Episcopalian population. But that was not all they had done for the Church. Look at the Education grants—the grants for building churches and glebe-houses. There was 1,000,000l. for the arrears of tithes; 595,000l. for churches; 366,000l. for glebe houses; 1,378,000l. for Education grants—the Charter Schools,—the Society for the Suppression of Vice,—he supposed that meant Catholicism,—and the Kildare-street Society; making a total of 3,310,627l. laid out since the Union. Before and since the Union upwards of 1,000,000l. had been devoted to the Charter Schools alone. These Charter Schools were intended to convert to Protestantism the youth of Ireland. They failed, however, as all such institutions must fail. They failed from the inherent vice of their constitution. They were proselytising schools. The catechism by order of the Church used in them taught Catholic children that their parents were wicked and damnable heretics. Now, what parents would send their children to be so educated—to learn to treat with contempt their religious opinions, and to curse the creed of their forefathers? And what children so brought up, were likely to turn out good subjects, or good Christians? In fact, they knew from the Returns, that hardly one in fifty of the children educated at these schools turned out well in after life. And yet upwards of a million of money had been expended upon this unnatural experiment. But this was only one of the blunders which, in an almost continuous line, from the Reformation, down to the last word in the last debate upon Irish affairs, had disfigured the policy of this country towards Ireland. Upon the last occasion, on which he had brought forward this subject, he had shewn at much length how the vices of Protestant legislation and the misconduct of the Protestant Church had been the great bars to the progress of Protestantism—he had shewn how they had neglected the language, the feelings, and the habits of the people—how they had made no attempt to satisfy their doubts, or remove their scruples—how the King's Supremacy had been made use of to rob the Church of its property at first, and then as an excuse for plundering those who did not conform to it. Some of these facts had been disputed by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Recorder of Dublin, but on referring to the original do- cuments he saw no cause to alter, or modify, his opinion. The 28th of Henry VIII. provided that vacant preferments should be given to those who spoke the English language, "and to none others." And though the 2nd of Elizabeth, cap. 13, modified this absurdity by allowing Latin to be used "as an alternative," though, in the 13th year of her reign, she sent over a fount of Irish types " in the hope that God in his mercy would raise up some to translate the New Testament into their Mother Tongue,—still James I. in 1620, admits, "that the simple natives were kept in darkness for want of ministers who could speak their own language." In 1684, the Convocation again ordained the use of the Irish tongue in the churches; but this remained a dead letter, for so late as 1710, there is a Resolution of the Irish House of Commons, which declares "that it is necessary that a number of ministers duly qualified to instruct the natives of the Kingdom, and perform the offices of religion to them in their own language, be provided, and encouraged by a suitable maintenance." It was clear, therefore, that the Church had provided nothing of the sort up to the year 1710. How could it? It was a Political and not a Missionary Church. It might boast of a few distinguished scholars, and real Churchmen, like Archbishop Usher, and Jeremy Taylor; but its dignitaries were mostly ecclesiastical statesmen,— worldly, jobbing, Prelates—the only rich men in a poor country, the founders of half the Irish aristocracy, by the rapacious use which they made of their advantages. Archbishop Loftus, in the time of Elizabeth was the type of the whole class. He was Archbishop first of Armagh, then of Dublin, Dean of St. Patrick, — a wholesale pluralist, — Lord Chancellor,—one of the Lords Justices, reputedly, — and, as a natural consequence, the ancestor of two noble families, Lord Lisburne, and the Marquess of Ely, for both of which he provided abundantly. Thomas Jones, who was Archbishop of Dublin under James I., was the ancestor of Lord Ranelegh. Michael Boyle Archbishop in 1663, held six parishes as sinecures, on the plea that he could not find fit persons to fill them,—built a palace,— and bequeathed an immense property to his son, who became Viscount Blessington. Charles Agar, Archbishop of Dublin in 1801, left 400,000l. in money, and his son was created Earl of Normanton. There were four Beresfords at once upon the Bench, and but two Irishmen, from the Reformation to the Union, that ever held the See of Dublin; so that the history of the Irish Church during three whole centuries, fully justifies the opinion expressed respecting it by Queen Mary, in her letter to William III., written during his stay in Ireland, in which she says, "I must put you in mind of one thing, believing it to be now the season, which is, that you would take care of the Irish Church. Every body agrees that it is the worst in Christendom." [Hear, henr.] Sir, these things are not forgot ten. Nations have long memories. The Irish Catholics have seen the Church, from the earliest times made the instrument of their own oppression; and thousands amongst them believe to this day that the Loftus family bears as its arms, a cross sprinkled with blood, because the Archbishop of that name, presided as Lord Justice, at the execution of the Catholic Bishop of Cashel. The hon. Member for Shrewsbury had alluded in a former debate to the only lull that had taken place during the period to which he had been adverting, as described in Sir William Brereton's Memoirs. It was under Charles I., about six years before the Great Rebellion, when the only oath required from the Catholic was the Oath of Allegiance, and consequently there were Catholic sheriffs, and magistrates, and Members of Parliament, and juries; and to a certain extent the Catholics did enjoy the privileges of the British Constitution. But the blessing was of short duration; for James I., by the confiscation of Ulster, prepared the way for what our historians called the Catholic Rebellion. That event, however, did not arise out of a community of faith so much as out of a community of oppression. It was the Protestant colonization of the north that led to the rising of 1641, which was a struggle for land and life, not for religion. Yet the idea had been implanted here, that it was all the work of a Papist conspiracy; and the excesses committed when the English settlers were expelled, were exaggerated to a degree that a man who looked into history dispassionately could hardly believe the accounts given of them. All this led the way for that second conquest by Cromwell which placed Ireland, according to Lord Granville, in his speech upon the Union, "at the mercy of a colony of English sectarians, who had sucked in with their mothers' milk a hatred of Popery, and who dealt with Ireland accordingly." And yet those very Sectarians took the Church into their alliance at the Restoration. I read the other day Jeremy Taylor's famous Sermon upon the Consecration of two Archbishops and ten Bishops in Dublin, preached before the very man who had destroyed Episcopacy in England, and beheaded their Sovereign, yet now consented to adopt the Church as a political instrument in Ireland. It was so used both by the Crown and the Parliament. The Crown used it to corrupt the Parliament, as I showed last year, by the correspondence of Primate Boulter and the Marquis of Buckingham;—the Parliament used it as a plea for an Anti-Catholic Crusade, whenever the "Hewers of wood and drawers of water" were becoming too strong for them. It was not the Church however, for which Cromwell's followers cared. Protestantism with them meant the forfeited estates, and the partial resumption of them by James II. and the Parliament of Dublin, led to the Penal Laws and the violation of the Treaty of Limerick. For Catholic humiliation became necessary to Protestant safety. The Penal Laws never had a religious character. Religion was a mere mask. No conversions were made or thought of. The sole object was to keep one sect down, and to exalt the other; and the Irish people was divided by them into two distinct races, Spartans and Helots,—a nation of slaves,—an oligarchy of tyrants! This is the clue to all those mysteries of iniquity, perpetrated by Irish magistrates and Irish Courts of Justice,—those local Popish plots—those judicial murders, by packed juries and perjured informers, like that of Father Sheehy and Edmund Sheehy,— tragedies which nothing but the madness of self-interest can explain, but in all of which unhappily, religion was made the plea, and the Church an actor. Indeed, the clerical magistrates were, in general, the most active, and the least scrupulous, for a Church in danger, like a king in danger, is always a tyrant. It conceives everything to be justifiable, when struggling for its own existence. So it was in 1798. So it is still. Time has modified some of the worst features of the system, but the spirit still continues; and though the Union has mitigated many abuses, it has produced others. It began with promises disgracefully broken, and it ended by making Ireland the battle-field of English politicians. When the struggle whether the promises made to the Catholics by Mr. Pitt should be kept or not, was decided by the No Popery cry in 1807, Ireland was treated with the most insolent apathy. Abuses long admitted to be intolerable were cherished, until the country was driven to the very verge of rebellion. Tithes were not touched till 1822. "The galling blister of the Vestry Cess," as the noble Lord the Secretary for the Colonies had himself called it, was not removed till 1833; and to this hour, the pledge given by both Houses of Parliament in the debate upon the Union was left unredeemed, unless indeed it were maintained, that a Protestant Church supported by a Catholic people, was not "a just cause of complaint," and that its removal would not be "a well considered measure of improvement." He admitted that this was once the feeling of the great majority of the people of England. Prejudice, ignorance, the respect for authority, and a great fear of misrepresentation upon religious subjects, had long induced most people to look with considerable apprehension on this question. Ten years ago he had stood almost alone upon the subject. But there had been a great change since—a change as marked, as it had been steadily progressing. Even in that House they had heard strong opinions upon the subject expressed in strong language. The noble Lord the Member for Sunderland bad stated his views very broadly to the country. The noble Lord the Member for London had most unequivocally expressed his concurrence in the principle of equality. All those who had voted with that noble Lord must entertain a feeling that it was necessary that the Irish Church should be dealt with. And they must be pretty sure, too, that in this respect their constituents thought with them. All this showed the progress making in the public mind upon the question. Views which would have been pronounced bold and rash, had they been enunciated some years ago, were now everywhere passing current, and they were approved by many who did not dare to speak their sentiments with equal freedom, because party ties, and a desire to preserve party consistency, hindered many from arriving at this most desirable consummation. He might refer here also, as an additional evidence of this change, to the opinion of the Edinburgh Review—a great party organ—one which was entitled to high consideration—and in this case to none the less, as he might venture to inform them, because the article from which he was about to quote had received the entire concurrence and sanction of the present Archbishop of Dublin. The Edinburgh Review now adopted almost all the views expressed by him (Mr. Ward) last August. It recommended the substitution of the congregational for the parochial system,—a reduction of two-thirds of the Episcopal Establishment,—a large endowment of the Catholic Clergy, which he did not now think practicable,—and the complete regeneration of Maynooth as an educational institution. It ranked the Church, in short, as the first of the "moral evils" of Ireland, and as one of the main causes of its "national evils," by the just discontent which it engendered; — and it summed up the result of its observations with admirable conciseness in the following passage:— No one, whatever be his party, whatever be his religion, has been able while he read the last sentence, to prevent his thoughts from turning to the provision made in Ireland for the religion of the people. That the Episcopal palaces, the Episcopal estates, the Chapter estates, the Parsonages, the Glebes, and the Tithes of the whole country should be given over to one-tenth of its population; that another tenth should receive a regular provision for its Clergy from the Imperial revenue; and that the remaining four-fifths should obtain no public aid in supplying their spiritual wants, except a trifling annual vote for a Seminary; that the endowed minority should be the richest, and the unassisted majority the poorest portion of the community; that the minority should be the intruders into an endowment of which the majority were the ancient founders and possessors—all this some may think an injury, others an insult, and others, among whom we find ourselves, may think it an insult and injury combined; some may suppose that it is the unhappy but necessary link by which Great Britain and Ireland are united; others that it is the wedge that is to separate them; some may believe that it is one of the outworks of the Church of England: others that it affords the platform from which that Church can be most easily attacked. But no British Statesman, whether Tory or Whig, Conservative or Radical, however he may think it ought to be dealt with in practice, dares to defend, or even to palliate it in principle. No one ventures to affirm that if the past could be recalled, he would propose such an institution —no one would tamely submit to the imputation of such folly and such injustice—no one, in a word, conceals his regret that our ancestors were guilty of such an absurdity and such a crime. If such are the feelings of bystanders, what must be those of sufferers? If Protestants are filled with shame and remorse, what can be expected from Catholics but indignation and hatred? Were these terms too strong? He really thought that the best proof of the justice of the complaints made against the Church in Ireland was the frankness of the admissions of those who persisted in withholding the remedy. One of the most remarkable speeches made in the debate last year, so prematurely and discreditably closed, was that of the hon. Baronet the Member for the University of Oxford. The hon. Baronet made large admissions —immense admissions. He agreed with him (Mr. Ward) that the neglect of the native language was "the sin of England, and consequently her curse." The hon. Baronet acknowledged that there were gross abuses in Church and State. He gave up Primate Boulter; he thought worse of Primate Stone. He admitted that the King's supremacy had been perverted by almost every Viceroy, up to the Union, for political purposes. With the Cromwellian settlement he said justly that the Church of England had nothing to do, "for it was the triumph of dissent." The Union Bishops he gave up as absolutely indefensible. The only historical point, on which he and the hon. Baronet differed materially was the treaty of Limerick, the guilt of violating which, he said, did not lie with the Church, because Dr. Dopping's doctrine, "that no faith was to be kept with heretics," was repudiated, on the following Sunday, by the Bishop of Meath, and the Doctor's name struck off the list of the Privy Council, a proper punishment for his indiscretion. But if the Parliament practised what Dr. Dopping preached, how were the Catholics the better for it? And it did so. No grosser instance of broken faith was upon record. The Catholics stipulated for all such privileges as the laws of Ireland conceded to them, or as they enjoyed in the days of Charles II., when no oath was required but the oath of allegiance. The Parliament, by a new law, imposed another oath which no Catholic could take without renouncing his religion, and then punished with the Penal Laws all who refused it; and that was what the hon. Baronet defended. But was this the way to reprobate "a scandalous doctrine?" The noble Lord, the Member for Bandon, was equally large in his admissions as to the non-residence of the Clergy, and the not using the revenues of the Church for spiritual purposes, and the entire neglect of the religious instruction of the people. The noble Secretary for Ireland was complimented by the noble Lord upon the able manner in which his (Mr. Ward's) exaggerated statement of the Church revenue had been refuted; but the fact was, that both the noble Lord and himself were completely under the mark, as had been shown that night. But the noble Lord's own statements were not the less valuable, because his compliments were injudicious. There had been built, according to the noble Lord's statement, from the Reformation down to 1726 but 141 glebe-houses in all Ireland. In 1800 only 295; in 1820, 680; being an increase of 473 glebe-houses in twenty years. All this was a complete confirmation of his charges. What was the state of the country for 300 years before these improvements? The hon. Baronet, the Member for Oxford University consoled himself by saying, that although many arrangements made at the Union continued to interfere with the growing improvement, within the last thirty years the change was quite wonderful. There were hardly any non-resident clergy, and all were more earnest, and regular, in the discharge of their duties, so that they were no longer liable to the charges formerly levelled against them. He was sorry to disturb the comfortable tranquillity of the hon. Baronet's conscience. But it did so happen that he got very curious complaints from Ireland. His desk was a receptacle for Irish Church grievances. He had a placard sent him the other day—the genuineness of which could not be disputed, for it was taken from where it had been stuck up on the walls of Kells—it was the announcement of a sale of " the genuine effects of the late venerable Thomas de Lacy, the Archdeacon of Meath," and among the genuine effects," he found " forty thorough-bred horses, and mares, from three, to seven, years old;" " and also these justly celebrated and well-known sires, Sir Edw. and Sir Hugh. Their reputation as hunters and steeple-chasers were such as to render all comment unnecessary." All these were the genuine effects of the Venerable Archdeacon of Meath. Here they are (continued the hon. Member holding up the placard;) here are all their names and designations duly set forth. Besides the thoroughbreds there were "thirteen capital working horses and five Spanish donkeys, three of them in foal." Besides all these he had the announcement of a sale of hounds in Dublin. There were "thirty couples of beagles, the handsomest and of the best blood in Ireland;" and then there were thirteen pair of greyhounds "well-known in Meath." All these were the property of the same reverend gentleman. Now, he thought that this did not savour very much of an apostolical age. He feared that the hon. Baronet, the Member for the University of Oxford, would find that there was yet some small room for improvement. But here he would beg leave to read a letter which he had received from a Catholic clergyman who had sent him over these advertisements, to show the House the feelings which such things could not fail to produce in the minds of the Irish people:—

"Chapel. House, Kells, Ireland, April 18, 1844.

"Respected Sir—Permit me to send you herewith a placard (regarding the late Archdeacon de Lacy's auction), which (placard) has been actually posted up in the public streets of this town, illustrative as it is of the wealth lavished by the State on the unemployed unwanted clergy of a miserable minority of the Irish people. Would I, then, desire for myself, or my Order, a share in the ' State bounty?" So far from it, that I do most solemnly aver that I would prefer the unlimited perpetuation of the present outrageous monopoly of the Protestant Establishment to the contamination, and dependence, that must necessarily result from any connection of the Catholic Church of this Kingdom with the State, such as could possibly obtain the sanction of an English Legislature. Let the Stale, standing as it should, towards the people, 'loco parentis," perform in their regard the functions of a wise and just parent, and conciliate the lasting affections of all by the impartial application to purposes alike useful to all, of those funds, of which the State has at once the dominion, and administration. In a country, such, alas! as Ireland is, there would be no difficulty to discover such purposes; the only difficulty being to select from among many eligible, those, which would be most so. Such is the doctrine, not only of the very obscure and humble writer, but of the entire Irish Catholic Prelates and Priesthood, suc- cessors though they be, and rightful heirs, too, of those who once enjoyed the entire property in question.

"One word more, Sir. The late Archdeacon received from the State compensation for his clerical services fully adequate to the entire receipts of the united Pastors of half this extensive Diocese. Now, I unhesitatingly assert, that obliged as I am, in common with all the Roman Catholic Priests, to sit in a cold damp chapel, without a spark of fire, from ten, to fourteen, hours a-day, during at least eight months of the year, occupied in the solemn, and salutary duty of auricular confession, hearing, and instructing, and consoling, and correcting, the humble penitent, I have thus done more laborious work in one year than the said Archdeacon during his entire life, prolonged as it was.

"Pray, respected Sir, pardon this trespass, and believe me to remain, with unfeigned respect, your very humble servant,

"N. M'EVOY, R. C. Rector.

He could not deny that these sentiments were perfectly natural. When the hon. Baronet (Sir R. Inglis) argued that the Church in Ireland was not a grievance, and talked to him of the apostolical age, he (Mr. Ward) must take the liberty of telling him, that so long as the clergymen of the immense majority of the Irish people could point to this scandalous anomaly in legislation, which left him to discharge his sacred duties neglected— distrusted—and vilified by a party press, yet risking his life, whenever fever visited his neighbourhood, at the bedside of his humblest parishioner, and passing his days in a chapel unlighted, unwarmed, and too often not half protected from the wind and weather—while he saw the whole provision made by his ancestors for the faith, to which he himself belonged, lavished by the State upon some member of a sinecure Church, who squandered it in the very wantonness of earthly luxury, it was in vain to think of reconciling the people of Ireland to such a system, or of convincing them that there was any legal, or moral obligation, that compelled them to submit to it. He was quite ready to admit that Archdeacon Lacy was an extremely kind, hospitable, liberal-minded man, and very much liked in his neighbourhood. It was of the system he complained, and not of the individual, whom nature intended for a fox-hunting squire, and whom our policy converted into a bad Archdeacon. But was this the system which the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government wished to see perpetuated in Ireland? He thought not, from the tone of his speech on the Dissenters' Chapels Bill—a wise and useful measure, a measure most honourable to the Government—one, to which he gave his cordial support, and which he did not support by his voice, as well as vote only, because from the superfluity of arguments on one side, it was wholly unnecessary. But the right hon. Baronet could not have forgotten his speech on the blessings of religious harmony at Tam-worth. He had drawn the picture of "a happy family" there. An Unitarian chapel in one corner of the cage, and a Roman Catholic in another, with the Established Church, according to the caricature of H. B., as the cat in the middle, keeping the peace between them. The right hon. Baronet should recollect, however, that he was not only the Representative of Tarn-worth, but the Queen's first Minister. Was Tamworth to be the rule, and Ireland the exception? Why not make his Tamworth principles co-extensive with the empire. [Sir R. Peel: "hear, hear."] He understood that cheer. The Established Church met with no opposition from the other religious sects in Tamworth. Why? Because it was the Church of the majority; but let him reverse the rule, and give the funds now properly appropriated to the use of the majority, to the Unitarian, or Catholic Chapel, and Ireland in miniature would be at his park gates within a fortnight. But we were told that there was a bar to any adjustment of this question by the act of Union, and the measure of 1829. He utterly denied the accuracy of such a statement. In 1829 the Catholics were never consulted. It was thought beneath the dignity of the English Government to do so, and the oath and the Act were both framed without their concurrence in any way whatever. If there was any compact at all, it was between the Tory party in this country favourable to Emancipation, and that section which was opposed to it. Such an arrangement could impose no such thing as a national obligation. As to the case of the Union, principally relied on by the Secretary for Ireland, it was infinitely stronger, for not only was there no compact against concession, but a distinct understanding—a distinct compact, he might say—that concession would follow. Every assurance that could bind an honourable mind was given by Mr. Pitt to the Catholics, that, if they consented to the amalgamation of the two Parliaments, the first step of the United Senate would be to grant Emancipation. That Mr. Pitt was sincere, he proved by his resignation, when he was prevented from fulfilling this engagement. He meant the Union to be what it never was, not merely an incorporation of the two Parliaments, but an amalgamation of the two people; a virtual rescinding of the Act of Settlement, by the reconciliation of the House of Hanover with its Catholic subjects. Emancipation and the payment of the Catholic clergy were promised by Lord Cornwallis, and whoever looked at the Union debates would see that it was the general belief that both these concessions might be made safely. In the Address of the English House of Commons it was said that the Union was to be "complete and entire," and to be founded on "equal and liberal principles;" while Lord Grenville, speaking in the House of Lords on the part of the Government, distinctly held out Catholic Emancipation as one of the first, and most beneficial, consequences. "A free admission of the Catholics into the Irish Parliament," he said, " might lead to the subversion of the Constitution. They were too numerous—too powerful. They must be the preponderating influence, if they had any influence at all. But in the Imperial Legislature there could be no fear of any such preponderance. They would merge in the general mass of English and Irish Protestantism. In no other way could the animosities of these rival parties be allayed, or Ireland restored to perfect tranquillity." Lord Minto went farther. He rested, emphatically, the whole case of the Union upon the Emancipation of the Catholics. He assumed that it was only by an united Parliament that they could ever be restored to their political rights, or that laws could be framed for all classes of the King's subjects, in a spirit of equal justice and impartiality. He recommended, therefore, the introduction of an explicit Article into the Act of Union, recognising the claims of the Irish Catholics, and providing for them effectually; and when forced to withdraw this proposal, he used these remarkable words, "If any political peculiarities of the present time should render it impracticable to engross these whole- some provisions in the written treaty itself, he would rather repress his wishes for the immediate accomplishment of this most desirable end, than expose this great transaction to needless and unprofitable hazard by unreasonable pertinacity and impatience, and would be content to leave it to the mature deliberation and impartial judgment of the Imperial Legislature." These declarations were either sincere, or the most atrocious instance of political duplicity that ever disgraced a national compact. He, however, believed them to have been sincere, and that the" peculiarity of the times" was George III.'s madness, which induced his Majesty to part with Mr. Pitt rather than allow him to fulfil his engagements! And what was Mr. Pitt's conduct? He authorized the Marquess of Cornwallis, in 1801, to communicate to the Catholic Bishops the fact, that the Ministers had quitted His Majesty's service, "finding insurmountable obstacles to the bringing forward measures of concession to the Catholic body; but that they might with confidence rely on the support of all those who retired, and of many who remained in office when it could be given with a prospect of success. Mr. Pitt could not concur in a hopeless attempt to force on then, the consideration of the question, but he had retired from His Majesty's service, considering this line of conduct as most likely to contribute to its ultimate success." Yet there were men, up to the present day, who went to dine at Pitt Clubs, and prostitute the name of Pitt by coupling it with Protestant Ascendancy. Lord Feversham, the other day, boasted of his steady adherence to Mr. Pitt's principles, yet gave "Protestant Ascendancy" from the chair, and proclaimed "the legislative independence of Ireland to be indissoluble, while we adhered to that great fundamental principle to which we owed all the blessings enjoyed by the country." Mr. Pitt, at all events, thought there was a greater, and a better, principle—" religious equality." He looked to that, when he spoke of that "vision of peace, and conciliation, which Providence did not permit him to realise. He most firmly believed that nothing else could arrest that torrent of evil passions which had desolated Ireland;" and he said distinctly, in one of his replies to Mr. Sheridan, " I see the case so plainly,'' and I feel it so strongly, that no apparent or probable difficulty, no fear of failure, no apprehension of loss of popularity, shall deter me from making every exertion to accomplish the great work, on which, I am persuaded, depend the internal tranquillity of Ireland, the general interest of the British Empire, and, perhaps, the happiness of a great part of the habitable world." "As to the Church Temporalities, it was notorious that the Fifth Article of the Act of Union, as first drawn, contained the words, 'Saving to the church of Ireland all the rights, privileges, and jurisdictions thereunto belonging;' and that these were altered into ' Doctrine, worship, discipline, and government,'" as they now stood, for reasons stated by Mr. Pitt himself, in his speech on the 21st of April, 1800, when he said, In the Union of a great nation with a less, we must feel that we ought not to be influenced by any selfish policy; that we ought not to be actuated by any narrow views of any partial advantage. We must refute by our own conduct the idea that we have any other object in view than that of promoting the mutual advantage of both kingdoms. We must show that we wish to make the Empire more powerful—and more secure, by making Ireland more free and more happy. These, Sir, are the views,—these are the only views,— with which I could ever have proposed this measure; and it is with these views alone that it can be rendered effectual to its object, and establish mutual harmony, and confidence between the two nations.' Upon the article relating to the continuance of the Church of Ireland, and of England, and of Scotland, he observed, ' I shall only say this upon so interesting a subject, that the prosperity of the Church of Ireland never can be permanent, unless it be a part of the Union to leave, as a guard, power to the United Parliament to make some provision in this respect as a fence, beyond any act of their own that can now be agreed upon. It may be proper to leave to Parliament an opportunity of considering what may be fit to be done for His Majesty's Catholic subjects, without seeking, at present, any rule to govern the Protestant establishment, or making any provision upon that subject. But supposing that he (Mr. Ward) was entirely wrong in his argument respecting the Union,—that Mr. Pitt had never contemplated Emancipation, or the payment of the Catholic Clergy,—that Lord Cornwallis had given no assurances, and contracted no moral obligations, on the part of the Government,—still the present difficulty would remain the same, and he must now ask the right hon. Baronet how he meant to deal with it? The Church was the last remnant of the old system, and the right hon. Baronet clearly foresaw, many years ago, that the question could not be dissevered from Catholic Emancipation. He emancipated the Catholics with this full conviction. He said, that if they "had the passions and feelings of men, they would use their political power to remonstrate against it;"—" that natural right, and historical precedent were with them?" and that the Union with Scotland would never have been completed, but for the concession of equality in religion." How, then, did he now mean to deal with this difficulty? He was too clear-sighted, and too right-minded to be sitting there as a mere puppet, leaving agents to decide whether Ireland should be governed by law, or held by military occupation? Did he mean to give up all hope of conciliating and to fall back on the " No Popery" cry? He had a host of voluntary advisers, of whose counsels he was, perhaps, in happy ignorance, but with which he (Mr. Ward) was more familiar, because he was curious in such matters. There was a Rev. Gentleman often alluded to in that House, and on whom the Secretary for the Colonies had pronounced a glowing eulogium—he meant Mr. N'Neill. He was not now quite so important a person as he was four or five years ago, before the present Government came into power; but he was still a man of considerable local influence, and he exercised it largely in behalf of the two Conservative Members for Liverpool. Well! he found that the Rev. Hugh M'Neill, had been addressing the Liverpool Protestant Operative Association, so late as December 1843, and on this question which was headed, "Some instruction in Scriptural politics, or in other words in practical Christianity," he said, The Christian duty in this country has been grievously neglected; nay more, the principles on which it rests have been grossly and extensively violated; so extensively, that every estate in the realm, except the Crown, has lost its Christian character. Hence our troubles, hence our divisions, hence our dangers. I entertain as unfeigned a repugnance to penal statutes as any Liberal politician in the kingdom; but I confess that I am compelled to come to the conclusion that the British Constitution must be destroyed, unless some political disabilities be again imposed upon the Roman Catholics. The grand point is, an encouraged and protected Christ- ian mission! Without this, with its appropriate results, there can be no permanent peace between the two countries. That was one of the right hon. Gentleman's advisers. He did not think the right hon. Gentleman would act upon this advice. Then came another luminary, who wrote a work entitled: "Ireland: its Ecclesiastical estate considered with reference to its political troubles," "By one of the Priesthood." This gentleman whose name is Glover, describes himself as "long a resident in Ireland, and one who, after years of thought upon the subject, believes that the remedy proposed—not here to take higher ground—will not only answer the end designed, but it will, in truth, make all the theories which have been started by others for the amendment of the condition of Ireland, and the improvement of the relationship existing between it and other portions of the Empire, as practical, and practicable, as they are under existing circumstances, vain in the present and illusory in prospect." Mr. Glover then proves "that the agitation in Ireland, though political in its manifestations, has its root in religion." That the key to it is Episcopal rule. That all our difficulties may be traced to the fact, that there is now a two fold Episcopal rule; "one, the Catholic national witness for Christ, the other, the un-Catholic, anti-national witness for Rome;" and that until men can be brought to one mind on the subject of religion, " Ireland must still be a disgrace to itself, to England, to Christianity, to the world." "There are," he says, " two millions on one side, seven millions on the other. This is the great problem. How is it to be solved? By striving to make the seven millions as are the two millions; in other words, to render Ireland rightly religious and loyally contented; to make it, as it ought to, and we trust yet will be, the ornament— instead of the shame—of Christianity." Mr. Glover then affirms that the Catholic Church is a huge phantom, based upon popular credulity and priestly imposture; that it dates only from the 17th century; that the Protestant Clergy, or "priesthood of the national way," are the sole possessors of the due and unbroken order of Episcopal succession, and consequently "the true representatives of the Apostles, of the ancient bishops of Ireland in general, and since that is a point to be insisted upon, of St. Patrick in particular;" and he calls upon the Government to undeceive "the poor dupes of a false and unreal priesthood, authoritatively," by a Royal Proclamation to be published in English, Irish, and Latin, declaring the new religion against which they have been taught to rail, to be in very truth the old faith, not the less old or pure, because preached in the English language. There is hope, it seems, great hope, if the Government will only do its duty in Ireland, by telling the people which is the true Priesthood, for the " Irish Papist is not the same irrational being the English Dissenter is;—"he who chooses his own God, by exercise of his mere will, may, consistently enough, it must be admitted, ordain his own Priest. The Irish believe in a priesthood; in one priesthood, and not in any other, or in the efficacy of the ministrations of any other. They hold a right principle, however wrongly they apply it; for the men whom now they follow, they follow as, and because they think they are, the priesthood of God. Show them that they are not, prove to them that they are not, convince them that they are not—that they are, on the contrary, mocking them, cheating them, robbing them, — robbing them of their money, but, more than all, of their spiritual rights and rites, and the same men who now cling to them with cringing veneration, will be the first to incline to serve them as the Israelites did the priests of Baal." Yet Mr. Glover, a little ashamed, I hope, of this uncharitable suggestion adds— The reader is requested to believe, that he who writes this, loves or desires to love, all men; he pities Dissenters, whether Papal or Protestant, equally; and while he deplores their position, trembling for their deceivers who make gain to their bodies out of the souls of their dupes, he grieves over their error. And as a proof of this, he purposes to open Maynooth College as a sort of Refugium peccatorum, to the dispossessed Catholic clergy. Morally speaking, they are utterly unworthy of all consideration;—but we spare them. And to show them how heartily even we feel towards them as men and fellow-citizens, notwithstanding the evil they have done and yet are doing us, we would smooth the way for them by which honourably to enter the priesthood; that is, by shewing them by reference to the case of the priesthood in 1549, the possibility of honourably conforming, and by promising ordination to such as shall desire it; that so they might, by future good conduct as priests in holy church, make amends to man, while they atone, as best they may to God, for the evils that His church and His people, in the days of their ignorance, have suffered through their misguidance. Sir, I doubt whether the plan of Mr. Glover will appear more practicable to Her Majesty's Ministers, than that of Mr. M'Neill. I doubt, whether the right hon. Baronet, the Home Secretary, will put the slightest faith in the conversion of Ireland by a Royal Proclamation in three languages with his name at the bottom; and I, therefore, again ask the First Lord of the Treasury which he means to do? Will he adopt the suggestion of the noble Lord, the Secretary for the Colonies, and put by law, a more stringent interpretation upon the Catholic Oath? Will he deny to Catholics the right of supporting reforms in the Protestant Church in Ireland, even when proposed and recommended by Protestants? Does he mean to fall back on the Catholic Declarations of 1757, and 1792? Can he forget that they were conditional, and that the conditions on our part, were never granted; In 1757, the Catholic Petition was absolutely scouted; and in 1792, Lord Westmoreland refused to receive the Petition from court, because it expressed a hope that some further relaxation of the penal laws would be conceded, though in the very next year he was compelled by the advice of Mr. Pitt to carry a much larger measure of relief, which the world attributed to the Victories of Dumourier? Did the right hon. Baronet mean then, to adopt the suggestions of Mr. Montgomery Martin—[Sir R. Peel: I don't know what they are."]—a man, by the way, who came over to London to set up a Repeal Newspaper, with a subscription from Mr. O'Connell in his pocket, but who now proposed to punish with banishment and the confiscation of his property every man who avowed himself a Repealer? Or lastly, did the Government rely upon the issue of the State Trials, for the tranquillization of Ireland? Was it satisfied that it had secured peace by its momentary triumph over the "convicted conspirators?" There could not be a more unsafe prop to lean upon. Sir, I have watched closely the state of feeling in Ireland since Mr. O'Connell's confinement, and I see nothing but a deep, sullen, dogged feeling of dislike to England, and distrust of her justice. There is a general belief that if Mr. O'Connell were an Englishman, and had been tried in England, he would have been acquitted: That he is in prison, because he is an Irishman, and was tried in Dublin, I see no signs of discouragement or despondency on the part of the Repealers;—no disposition to ask unworthy favours of the Crown, even in order to obtain the release of a man, whom in spite of some faults— and I do not believe that he has greater faults than any other man would have had, who had taken an equally prominent part in so long apolitical struggle—History will rank as perhaps the most eminent man of his age and country. Sir, such feelings as these, awaken deep resentments and strong sympathies. I have no fear of any immediate outbreak—there will be no violence—no disturbances. The Irish bide their time, but let there be a war in Europe, and unless their present feelings can he changed, the struggle will be not for Repeal, but for Separation! Well, Sir, the sympathies of Ireland are not with us. Are those of Europe? No! Ireland is our Poland, and what we feel for the Poles is felt for the Irish upon the Continent. Look to every organ of public opinion, not merely in Catholic Belgium, or Catholic France, but in Protestant Prussia, or Switzerland, or Saxony, and you will find that those most inclined to wish us well, are most earnest in urging upon us a total change in our Irish policy. The wisest essay on Irish affairs that I ever read was one published lately in the Bibliotbèque Universelle de Génève; and it pronounces the position of England, as regards our Catholic subjects, to be absolutely untenable. In Prussia there is the work of Venedey exciting an absolute horror of our Irish policy. No wonder. They cannot understand our miserable inconsistencies—our broad principles—our pusillanimous practice. They see us enacting ignorance for half a century in the name of a Reformation whose boast it is to have substituted rational conviction for blind belief, in religious matters;—robbing the conquered Catholics by ex post facto laws, of rights, which every German has enjoyed since the Peace of Westphalia? What was the Peace of Westphalia? Why is it never named except with reverence and affection by any German writer? Its territorial arrangements have been scattered to the winds by the decay of old powers and the rise of new, but no time can rob Germany of its one great boon—religious peace founded upon religious equality as citizens. How can they sympathise with England in its exclusive policy, or in supporting exclusion by a code so cruel, that Judge Jebb remarked of it, "you might track Ireland through the Statute-Book like a wounded man through a crowd—by blood!" They see us, at once profuse and niggardly, voting 800,000l. a-year for the emancipated blacks, and haggling here about an annual vote of 8,000l. a-year for the Clergy of seven millions of emancipated Catholics. Risking peace—strength—respect abroad —tranquillity at home—the integrity—aye, the very existence of the Empire—rather than do that which the right hon. Baronet himself twenty-seven years ago, pronounced to be inevitable? How can they respect principles of action at once so puerile, and so iniquitous? The King of Prussia lays the first stone of the Catholic Cathedral at Cologne, amidst the acclamations of his Protestant subjects. The Queen of England cannot admit a distinguished Catholic to her Councils, without Liverpool and Exeter Hall, denouncing her as a Jezabel. I call upon the House to put a stop to these anomalies, as discreditable as they are dangerous. I pledge no man by this vote to a specific plan. I ask simply a pledge that the question of the Irish Church shall at last receive from the Commons of England, in all its bearings upon Irish rights, Irish wrongs, and Irish liberty, a calm and dispassionate investigation. It is the root of Irish discontent—let it become the cradle of Irish tranquillity, the pledge of a reconciliation, which can no longer be deferred without the utmost peril to our existence as an Empire. Sir, we may depend upon it, Ireland will have her rights, but it is still within our power to say whether she shall derive them from our justice, or from our humiliation.—I say, let justice concede what no power can permanently withhold. There is but one way to avert Repeal, and that is, to consummate in time the great act of religious and national emancipation.

Lord Eliot

had stated on a former occasion his reasons for resisting such a Motion as the present; but he considered it his duty to make some remarks on the speech of the hon. Gentleman. The hon. Gentleman's speech was not so explicit as that which he made last Session. He only asked for a Committee, which could lead to no practical results. The hon. Gentleman's whole argument amounted to this, the Protestants bore a small proportion to the population, therefore the Temporalities of the Church should be taken from them. He admitted his premises; he denied his conclusions. He contended it was not a mere question of numbers. No one who had listened to the eloquent and admirable speech of the right hon. Member for Edinburgh upon the Dissenters' Chapels Bill, could have forgotten the exposition which he gave of the importance of prescription. No one who heard it could avoid believing that prescription was of the weight which he attributed to it. It was a principle recognized by the laws of ancient Greece and Rome, and by those of all the most ancient states of the East, as well as by the jurisprudence of modern Europe, and every one must be satisfied this was a principle which ought not to be lightly treated; but with reference to this subject they had other grounds to go upon independently of prescription—they had in support of the Church Establishment the sanction of the Legislature. The hon. Member referred to the Act of Union, and to the Act of 1829; but in his reference to the Act of Union he omitted to refer to the 4th article of the Treaty of Union, in which there was a special provision made for the presence of four Irish Spiritual Peers in the Imperial Parliament. That article of the Treaty which the hon. Member omitted to allude to was of great importance, as showing the light in which the Protestant Church of Ireland was then looked upon. He had also stated that Mr. Pitt had altered certain words in the Act of Union as it was sent from Ireland—that Mr. Pitt had substituted for the words jurisdiction and privileges, which were the original words, the words Government and discipline; but when the hon. Member stated that, he did not succeed in showing that Mr. Pitt entertained any intention of interfering with the Church Establishment. It would be impossible to infer from that substitution of words that there was any intention to interfere with the Established Church in Ireland; and if any argument were required to show that, he might mention that in reference to the Church of Scotland, on a former occasion, the words doctrine and discipline of the Church of Scotland were used, and no one ever said that there was reserved any disposition to alienate the revenues of the Church of Scotland and appropriate them to the Episcopalian Church, or that such an alienation and appropriation would not be a breach of the Act of Union. In order to indicate the view which was taken of the subject of alienating Church property in Ireland at a former period, he should advert shortly to a speech which he had happened to read on that day, which had relation to the subject. In 1811, June 11, Mr. Parnell, in bringing forward his Motion on the subject of Irish tithes, said:— It may, I know, be said, that if the concession which is now sought for is given, the people will not rest satisfied, but go still further, and further, and further, till they have destroyed the Established Church; but if this argument shall be made use of on this occasion, I should be inclined to reply that the Protestant Church of Ireland is fully secured from all such attempts by the Act of Union, not merely by the letter of it, which declares it to be one and the same as the Church of England, but by the very nature and essence of it. This measure was proposed by Mr. Pitt for the avowed purpose of obtaining two great objects, the first the advancement of the power and the security of Great Britain by a union of the two Legislatures; the second, the remedy of the defects of the internal system of Ireland. These defects were, on the one hand, an Establishment of Church and State for the exclusive benefit of one-tenth of the people; and on the other, a people deprived of their constitutional rights through fear of the concession of them being detrimental to the Establishment. To remedy these defects, Mr. Pitt proposed the Union, by which the Establishment was to derive the security by consolidation with the Protestant Establishment of England; and the people were to be placed in a condition which would enable the Legislature to concede to them their constitutional rights, and redress of the grievance of tithes. That was the opinion of Mr. Parnell; that showed the opinion which he held with respect to the objects that Mr. Pitt had in view, and he concurred in that opinion. Indeed he could not remember to have read in all the debates on the Union any indication of an intention either of the Government or of any party in Ireland, to destroy or weaken the Protestant Church in Ireland. The Legislature of Ireland was, at that time, exclusively Protestant, and he was satisfied that no attempt would have been successful in carrying the Union into effect, unless the Legislature were firmly persuaded that the Protestant Church would not be interfered with—unless an assurance had been given that the Church Establish- ment in Ireland would not be touched, the Legislature would not have been at all likely to agree to that measure. With regard to the Act of 1829, there could be no doubt that it was either understood or implied that the Protestant Church of Ireland was not to be touched—that it was not to be weakened or overthrown. It might, indeed, be said, that the Catholics of Ireland had made no such compact, as a condition of the Act of 1829. If there had been no such compact made by the Catholics, he would ask, were not the opinions which had been expressed by the most eminent of the Catholic hierarchy to be admitted as possessing any weight? Was not the testimony of the Catholic Peers and of the Catholic hierarchy before the Committee of 1825 deserving of the greatest weight and attention. Those individuals did not entertain any idea of touching the Protestant Church Establishment; they all, lay and clerical, concurred on that point. All the Liberal Members of that House were of the same opinion; and their concurrence, he might say their unanimity of opinion was relied on by the Parliament and the people of this country, when they agreed to the Act of 1829. He was satisfied that all the exertions which were made in favour of the Catholics would have been unsuccessful, if it had not been for the feeling which such an unanimous opinion produced, that the Irish Protestant Church Establishment should not be interfered with. When the hon. Member for Sheffield introduced this subject on a former occasion, he had, in reply to it, quoted the speeches of several Gentlemen, in order to shew the opinions formerly held with respect to the Established Church in Ireland; and as he had then gone at such length into that portion of the subject, he should not now again refer to those speeches; but there were two important speeches to which he had not directed attention on the last occasion when this question was discussed, and which he should now advert to as shortly as possible. The first of these was the speech of Grattan on March 4th, 1823, on Mr. Hume's Motion with respect to the Irish Church. Mr. Grattan then said— Inquiry was certainly necessary; he should, therefore, support the Resolutions, without agreeing in all the doctrines advanced by the hon. Mover, He should never support any principles of spoliation; but he was of opinion, that the officers of the Church in Ireland, and its revenues, ought to be regulated. By the present system, Ireland had been made a Catholic country; for there were not now more than 400,000 or 500,000 Protestants in Ireland. In 1824, May 6, also upon Mr. Hume's Motion on the same subject, Mr. Plunkett said— The hon. Gentleman who had introduced this Motion had consumed the greater part of the time which he had felt it proper to devote to its support, not in the discussion of the merits of the Protestant Church of Ireland or her clergy, but of those of the Roman Catholic priesthood; and really when the hon. Gentleman coupled the expression of his approbation of that priesthood with the exposition of his plan for pulling down the revenue of the Protestant Church in that country, and of transferring and delivering it into the hands of the Roman Catholic hierarchy (for such was the scope of the proposition), the House would give him leave to say that he deprecated the hon. Gentleman's advocacy of their cause more than he should lament his hostility to it. For himself he had ever been, and to the last hour of his life should continue to be unalterably the advocate of his Roman Catholic brethren; but in doing so, he would ever respect established rights and recognised institutions, and while he vindicated the claims of the Catholics, he should carefully abstain from offering any wrong to the Protestant Clergy—any encroachments on their property—any aggression on their sacred functions. … The hon. Gentleman evidently thought that Parliament were at liberty to deal with the property of the Church exactly in the same way as if it were a tax on any other property of the State, and this opinion he grounded upon a supposition of public necessity. Now, that the property of the Church might not be interfered with, as well as the property of the State, in a case of public necessity he would not assert. But be it observed, that upon the same principle, the private property of every man in the kingdom was equally liable. He knew very well that both the property of the Church, and the properly of individuals must yield to the exigencies of the State—to those the property of the hon. Gentleman himself, as well as of every other Member who heard him, must give way; but he would maintain the property of the Church was as sacred as any other."† These were the opinions of Mr. Plunkett, subsequently Chancellor of Ireland and Lord Plunkett, and they fully bore out the view which he (Lord Eliot) took of the intentions of those who advocated the claims of the Catholics at that period; and having referred to those speeches, he was sure it was scarcely necessary to quote Mr. Canning's speech on the same subject which had been already frequently quoted; neither ^* See Hansard, vol. viii. (New Series) p. 409. † Ibid vol. xi. p. 570, 571. was it necessary for him to refer to the noble Lord opposite (Lord Palmerston) to bear him out in saying that Mr. Canning would not have consented to such a measure as Catholic Emancipation if he were not sure that it would not interfere with the property of the Protestant Church Establishment in Ireland. If there could be any doubts as to the view which had been taken of the subject previously to the Act of 1829, the speeches which he had alluded to would show them; but there was still another speech to which he wished to direct the attention of the House, namely, the speech of Lord Althorp, when an Amendment was made upon his Motion to give an additional Member to the Dublin University. In speaking upon that Amendment, Lord Althorp said;— He did not think that Government could fairly be accused of keeping up the exclusive system in Ireland, by conceding an additional representative to the University of Dublin. He would fairly and candidly confess that he thought that a member should be given to the University, on the ground that it was an exclusively Protestant body, because although it might be very well not to have an exclusively Protestant representation for Ireland, it would be the height of injustice not to guard against the preponderance of an interest at variance with that of this Established Church. He hoped that hon. Members would give their support to the Government in the event of a division, for he thought it very essential to the success of the Bill, that no alteration should be made in it which might have a tendency to injure the establishments of the country."^* That was the language of Lord Althorp, in 1832, only three years after the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act; and from that speech it was quite evident that the noble Lord and his Colleagues could not, with such views, agree to any transfer of the property of the Protestant Church to the Roman Catholics. The hon. Member for Sheffield had during his speech frequently referred to the byegone history of the maladministration of the Government of Ireland, and the appointment of offices in the Church of Ireland of men who, if they were not a disgrace to that Church, had not duly and efficiently discharged their duty. It appeared to him that the objections which the hon. Member made did not cast blame so much upon the system which had been in existence, as upon those by whom the system had been administered. In fact the hon. Member had himself admitted that at the ^* Hansard, Vol. xiii, (third series) p. 607. present day no such complaints existed as those to which he had directed attention as having existed in former days, and that the members of the Church in the present day were an excellent body of men, and very different from those to whom he bad alluded. The hon. Member dwelt at some length upon the case of Archdeacon de Lacy, but he did not think that it was an example of the conduct of the class to which that gentleman belonged. It appeared, however, that Archdeacon de Lacey was a very charitable and beneficent man, although somewhat eccentric in his character; and, in addition to his income from the Church, he had considerable private property. It was true, indeed, he had a larger stock of horses and other animals than clergymen usually possessed; but he had also a large private property, and was a very charitable man to all the poor around him, spending, in fact, a great portion of his income in acts of charity. The hon. Member had misunderstood what he had said on a former occasion with respect to the feeling which Roman Catholics might entertain on the subject of the Act of Settlement guaranteeing that a Protestant Sovereign should occupy the Throne of this country. What he said was, that the Protestant character of the State made it an essential consequence, that so long as the Act of Settlement was in existence, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Regent of the Kingdom, and the guardian of the person of the Sovereign, should be of the Protestant faith; and so long as the Act of Settlement was in existence, that distinction between Catholics and Protestants in that respect must exist; so that if the Roman Catholics believed that the Protestant Church of Ireland was a badge of inferiority, they must also look upon the Act of Settlement as a badge of inferiority. That was all he had said on a former occasion, and he still maintained that the character of the Constitution of this country was essentially Protestant; but although the Act of Settlement might he said to make that distinction, yet he did not suppose that any hon. Member would come forward and propose to repeal the Act of Settlement. There was one view in which the residence of the Protestant clergymen in Ireland must be looked upon as very advantageous. Absenteeism had been very much complained of in Ireland, and under those circumstances the residence of a body of men, eminent as the clergymen of the Church Establishment were for piety, and virtue, and charity to their poorer neighbours, must he looked upon as calculated to do a great deal of good. That charity which the property of the Protestant Church of Ireland allowed them to dispense, was of very great advantage to those around them in want of such assistance, and there were none who received more benefit from it than their poor Roman Catholic neighbours. With regard to the disposition of the property of the Church Establishment in Ireland, the Roman Catholics, and particularly the Roman Catholic clergy, repudiated the idea of their Church obtaining any benefit from the revenues of the Protestant Church Establishment; so that it appeared to him they were desirous merely to take it away from its present purposes, and not to apply it to their own. [Mr. M. O'Connell: And apply it to secular purposes.] So much benefit had been conferred by the residence of clergymen of the Church of England, that he knew instances where regret was expressed by Roman Catholics at the abolition of dignities of the Church Establishment in consequence of the habit of the resident clergy of dispensing hospitality and charity amongst the poor in their neighbourhood. With regard to the proposition of a State provision for the Roman Catholic clergy, whatever might he the opinions as to that, it was not now the time to go into the subject. However he might think that this country as a Protestant State could not establish the Roman Catholic faith as an integral portion of the State, yet he was favourable to the endowment of the Roman Catholic clergy; but it was impossible to entertain that question now, as the Roman Catholics, and particularly the clergy, had absolutely stated that they were opposed to any such endowment. Whether they looked to the rights of the Church Establishment being held now so long—whether they looked upon it as sanctioned by the Legislature—it was evident that many assurances had been given to this country, that in the event of Parliament consenting to Catholic Emancipation, there would be no attempt to interfere with the Church Establishment; and whether they looked at it with regard to public expediency, and to the advantage of having men of education and virtue living in the most remote and secluded districts of Ireland, or to vested rights and to prescription, they would find that to alienate any portion of the revenues of the Protestant Church Establishment, and to apply it to any other than Church purposes, would be unjust and inexpedient. He (Lord Eliot) saw no reason why he should agree to the Motion. If discussion were the object of the hon. Member, he had attained it by bringing the question before the House. It was a proposal which would encourage expectations that Parliament he trusted would not bear out, and he called on the House to express its opinion on the Motion by rejecting the proposition by a large majority.

Mr. Ross

could not believe the Protestant Church could suffer from any alteration with respect to its temporalities in Ireland. He was of opinion that it was indicating a very poor opinion of the Reformed Church, and of her principles, to suppose that she could be injured by any such change. He was a Protestant; he was as much a Protestant as any man in the House who heard him, as far as protesting against what he conceived to be the errors of the great majority of his fellow-countrymen; but he did not hold that his faith depended on the endowments of the Church, and he believed that if all her endowments were swept away, it would not affect the faith or spiritual condition of the Church, for he did not see any necessary connection between her emoluments and her doctrines. It was said that the question of the Church Establishment was one which did not affect the pockets of the Irish people, for the landlords paid the whole amount; hut he did not agree in that statement, for pressure must necessarily come upon the tenants. It had been also said, that the property of the landlords who were of the Protestant Church contributed principally to the support of the Church; and that therefore it could not be a grievance on the Catholics; but that was not the fact, for the Protestant landlords could not make any more special claim than the Catholics to the property which had been granted to the Church. If it were true that the property was possessed by the Church distinctly, what then became of the statement that the Protestant landlords supported the Church, and not the Catholic tenants. But he was prepared to maintain that if the pockets of the people were not at all affected, there were other objections to the present position of the Church Establishment. One objection to the Motion of the hon. Member for Sheffield was, that it had been canvassed again and again, and it had also been said that he had not proposed anything specific by his Motion. Now, to that he would answer, that it appeared to him a more suitable course for the hon. Member to bring forward the Motion, and leave the Government to propose anything specific which they thought proper, with a view to provide a remedy for the existing state of things. There was one great original error in relation to this subject to which he traced all the misfortunes of Ireland—it was an attempt to force upon the people of Ireland a faith which they did not entertain. It had indeed been said by a noble Lord, that the Irish clergy accepted the Reformation; but without arguing that question, he would say, that whether they accepted it or not was of little consequence, so long as the people did not accept it; for the clergy were no more the church than the servants were a family, and the people of Ireland had always stood firm in supporting their own opinions. Governments should always remember, that the less Caesar meddled with the things belonging to God the better. It was high time for the House to turn its serious attention to this subject. It was true that the Irish people would, there was every reason to hope, attend implicitly to the directions they had received to remain tranquil, and abstain from tumult; but the British Legislature would do well not much longer to strain the patience of that people, or they might have reason, when too late, to regret, deeply regret, that they had not attended to the advice given them by the hon. Member for Sheffield.

Mr. Shaw

said, the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Ross) had concluded by expressing a hope that did not seem likely to be realised—at all events, during that debate—namely, that the House would devote their attention to the subject of the Church in Ireland. There was evidently a weariness and inattention pervading both sides of the House, prob. ably arising out of the same subject having been so frequently discussed, and the certainty of the rejection of the hon. Member's Motion; but still be would entreat their indulgence for a short time, and he would confine himself principally to facts. The hon. Member for Sheffield had on that night, as on former occasions, led the attack upon the Irish branch of the Established Church. He as the representative of a constituency containing a large portion of the Irish Clergy, did not hesitate, and did not fear to enter the lists with the hon. Gentleman; confident, however, only in the truth and justice of the cause of which he ventured to come forward as the humble defender. The tactics of the hon. Gentleman and the other assailants of the Church had been considerably altered in the last and the present Session, and he was glad of it— The open foe might prove a curse, But the pretended friend was worse. The former professions of regard for the Church's welfare were now laid aside. The mask of friendship was removed. It was no longer a question of degree—a consideration of "the more or the less"—they heard no more of Surplus or Appropriation Clauses. The Reform that had been avowed was boldly put forward as the destruction that had been intended. Things were called by their right names— and the issue tendered to the House and to the country was the simple alternative whether, after a possession of 300 years, the Protestant Church in Ireland was to be subverted, and her property confiscated?—or whether, in the fourth century after the Reformation, the Imperial Parliament was to sever the Reformed Religion from all connexion with the state in Ireland, and to establish the Roman Catholic Church in its stead? The hon. Gentleman had promised to be, and he had been, very plain and candid. The hon. Gentleman had last Session, as that night, advised him not to haggle for terms, or that he would not get so good again. He would be as plain and candid in return, and tell the hon. Gentleman that he did not desire to see the Church a haggler for any terms, but that she should take her stand upon the high ground of truth and right. So far as he might be considered on that occasion as her humble representative, he would not treat with the hon. Member for Sheffield as a negotiator in her behalf. He had heard the hon. Gentleman's terms, and in the name of the Church in Ireland he utterly and indignantly rejected them. He would not follow the hon. Gentleman through his long and elaborate and carefully got up history of the Irish Church from the Reformation to the period when the hon. Gentleman himself was constrained to admit the whole character and conduct of that body had been altered. At the time to which the hon. Gentleman had directed his observations there were, perhaps, no Churches in Christendom—and certainly the Church in England was not one of them—which would not exhibit some circumstances, or the conduct of some of their individual Members which, if raked up for the purpose, would reflect discredit upon the religion they professed. That part of the speech of the hon. Gentleman he considered to furnish the best answer to itself; for if the misconduct and the worldly-mindedness of the heads of the Church were then such as the hon. Gentleman had described, that would sufficiently account for what he had designated its failure in Ireland—without attributing it to the grounds upon which the hon. Gentleman had so anxiously laboured to place it —and he was willing to admit that it was chiefly owing to the mal-administration, mismanagement, and neglect of the Irish Church after the Reformation that what he believed to be the purer and truer faith of the Reformed Church had not won more converts from the Roman Catholic body. The hon. Gentleman said that he had last year questioned the facts of his history—the House having been counted out, he had but little opportunity of doing so—and there was only one remarkable instance in which he recollected he had asked the special leave of the House to allow him to contradict one of the historical facts stated by the hon. Gentleman, viz.—that up to that time no Prayer-book of the Church of England had been printed in the Irish language—whereas, the fact was as he then stated, that in the year 1571 a fount of Irish types having been for the first time introducted into Ireland, by Walsh (Chancellor of St. Patrick's Cathedral, and afterwards Bishop of Ossory), who Obtained from the Government an order that the Prayers of the Church should be printed in that character and language—and a Church set apart in the shire-town of every diocese where they should be read, The Prayer-book was the first book ever printed in Irish—as appeared in Mant's History of the Church of Ireland, vol. 1, p. 293—and the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge had circulated thousands of copies of the Prayer-book, in Irish, within the last twenty-years. Then the hon. Gentleman referred to the case of Archdeacon de Lacy, saying it was a part of the system of the Church which he totally denied; it was a very peculiar exception—an old gentleman having a large private fortune, which he spent according to his own fancy, giving as he believed, the entire of his clerical income to the poor. One of the old gentleman's peculiarities was, to keep an immense number of cows; but the use he made of them was, to supply milk gratuitously to the whole poor of the town of Kells, near which he resided. He would neither defend the Union, which had since been dissolved—nor yet put forward the late Archdeacon as a model for clerical imitation; but this he would say, as, indeed, he understood the hon. Gentleman to admit, that the Archdeacon was a gentleman of the kindest and most liberal disposition, living on his benefice and dispensing bounty to all around him with an unsparing hand— having peculiar means to do so, from having come into possesion of a private fortune, which had since passed to his heir. Then, as to the auction bill, which some neighbouring Roman Catholic clergyman had thought it worth while to send to the hon. Member, and which the hon. Member expected would produce a great effect upon the House—why, no doubt, after the death of the Archdeacon, it was drawn up in the best autioneering style, perhaps by the renowned Mr. Robins, or else, by some Irish ape, who could as well describe the Spanish ass The Roman Catholic priest could have mentioned Members of his own order, at least as fond of greyhounds and hunters —and as regarded the Church, the answer was, the Union was now separated, and there were two incumbents where one had been. The hon. Gentleman himself admitted the great improvement in the Church within the last twenty years. With the permission of the House, he would shortly state the present circumstances and condition of the Irish branch of the Established Church, proving thereby that the improvement was much greater than the hon. Gentleman allowed—that the laws then in force were carrying all friendly reform to its utmost extent—and that great injury and grievous wrong would follow, and imminent danger to the Church and State both in Ireland and that country, if the proposition of the hon. Gentleman was for one moment to be countenanced by them. First, he would say, that whatever hon. Gentlemen on the other side urged on the score of abstract theories and mere points of honour, no reasonable man could contend that the Church in Ireland, under its present circumstances, and the altered state of the law within the last ten years, was a practical grievance to the occupying tenantry or Roman Catholic population in that country. His noble Friend (Lord Eliot) had truly stated that they did not contribute one farthing to its support. For the sake of peace, the Church had consented to pay the Church-rates from its own property; and he might observe, that he had not opposed any part of the Church Temporalties Act, except the suppression of the ten Bishoprics, which he thought had been an injury to the Church and the localities where they had resided, without having benefited or pleased any one. And when the hon. Gentleman compared the number of Irish with the number of English Bishoprics, did the hon. Member or would any Churchman seriously contend, that it would not be a great advantage to the English Church, if it were possible, to increase her Bishoprics, seeing that many of the dioceses were so extensive as to render it impossible, within the compass of human strength, for any one Prelate to afford them adequate episcopal superintendence. The clergy had voluntarily relinquished a fourth of their income in consideration of the landed proprietors, nine-tenths at least of whom were of their own persuasion in religion, assuming the responsibility of the payment of the remainder; and the consequence was, that all the trouble or annoyance or loss, such as they might be, of the collection on the one hand, and the pay mention the other, was transferred from the occupier, generally a Roman Catholic, to the landlord, generally a Protestant, and all pecuniary dealing between the Protestant clergy and the Roman Catholic population entirely put an end to. He fully admitted to the hon. Member for Belfast (Mr. Ross) that it was not out of the landlords' property the landowner paid the clergy. The title of the Church to their own property was paramount. It belonged to the Church by law established in connection with the State, the State having the power, in the nature of a trustee, to control and regulate that property for the benefit of the rightful owner; but the State had no right, even though it should use the might, to alienate any portion of that property to other than ecclesiastical purposes. With regard to the amount of present revenues of the Church in Ireland, he did not materially differ from the hon. Gentleman. His object was perfect accuracy, without either adding to or taking from the real property of the Church. Death and other changes from time to time must make some alteration, according to the moment the return was taken, and the hon. Gentleman had confounded the gross with the net income. He (Mr. Shaw) had allowed the deductions made by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1837—for he considered the present Ecclesiastical Commissioners had cut them down too low against the clergy, and particularly in not allowing poors' rates imposed by an Act of Parliament; and in the light he (Mr. Ward) viewed Church property, that was, for the sake of transferring it to other objects, he clearly must only deal with the net available income. Still it was gratifying to him that upon that fact of figures there was no substantial disagreement between them. To begin, then, with the income of the beneficed clergy. He made their net income 320,350l. 19s. 10d. The entire income of beneficed clergy and their assistant curates taken together, he made 377,050l. 12s. 5d. He had likewise taken an account of the entire future Church property, when every source should have been realised, including the perpetuity purchase money, and that was taking it at the greatest disadvantage to the Church; be allowed, in round numbers, for the permanent reduced Bishoprics, about 60,000l. a-year; the clergy 370,000l. the balance of deans and chapters ultimately remaining at 20,000l., and the ultimate property of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners applicable to the building and repair of the churches, in lieu of the former Church cess, as calculated in 1836 by Mr. Finlaison, at about 100,000l. a-year, making in the entire as the total future church property of every description in round figures, as nearly as possible, 550,000l. a year, that being the entire charge for the care of the churches, things requisite for the celebration of divine service, the maintenance of twelve bishops, and the support of about 2,200 clergymen ministering to the spiritual wants of their own communion; and as the best and almost only resident gentry in the remoter districts of the country, administering to the temporal necessities of the distressed and destitute of all creeds without distinction. The average income of the benefices being about 320,000l. amongst 1400 would be as nearly as could be 225l. to each beneficed clergyman; and the curates included, the income would be about 370,000l. amongst about 2,200 clergymen, leaving them an average income of about 170l. a year. He hardly thought it could be said that this sum was too much for an educated gentleman and his family; and he could show there would be in the end no undue inequality of income. A uniformity of income he would not approve. He believed the hon. Gentleman to have considerably underrated the members of the Established Church. The Commissioners of Public Instruction returned them at 851,064. There was a prejudice against the commission and the inquiry at the time, and many did not make the return. Some of the Wesleyan Methodists considered themselves as belonging to the Church, and such only, he apprehended, had so returned themselves; and from the best sources of information be estimated the members of the Established Church at above 1,000,000, so that the average would be about one clergyman to 500 persons. As regarded the present condition of the Church in Ireland, they heard, indeed, charges brought against the Irish clergy, as rich unionists, plethoric pluralists, bloated sinecurists, non-residents, and so forth. Now, in all these respects he was bold to affirm that the Irish Church would bear a favourable comparison with ,any church in existence. As to unions, he would not weary the House with a detailed enumeration of the various statutes by which they were in progress of dissolution. Suffice it to say that under the Church Temporalities and other Acts, the Lord Lieutenant and Privy Council were empowered not only to separate all Unions, but to deal with every living above 800l. a year, and distribute them as they thought fit. Since the passing of the Act of 1833, fifty-three Unions had been dissolved. In a few years no Unions would remain that it was practicable and desirable to dissolve; but in some cases it was not so. In the city of Cork, for instance, there were parishes under ancient divisions—so small, that one consisted of the ground on which a single sugar-house stood, another of a distillery. There were parishes wholly inappropriate that paid nothing to an incumbent—others, from particular exemptions, scarcely anything: in such instances the bishops were obliged to unite these with parishes paying tithe or now rent-charge. But, while the Church was taunt- ed with such Unions, they were among the poorest and most laborious benefices. As to sinecures, a single one would not remain; fifty had been abolished since August, 1833. All pluralities were abolishing as they became vacant, and the present Primate had not granted a faculty to hold one since 1828; so that they were fast dropping in, and thirty-two had been removed since the Act of 1833—eighty-one only existed in all Ireland. Non-residence, without absolute necessity, he hoped would soon cease to exist, as it was every day becoming less. In the 389 incumbents returned by the Commissioners in 1837 as non-residents, there were included great numbers who could not procure residences on their livings, but resided close to them and performed the duty; others, dignitaries and incumbents, who resided and did duty on other benefices, and these would all drop in. Out of 345 so reported, there remained but 109 now actually nonresidents, and of these the greater number were absent from illness or other unavoidable cause. He had learned this striking fact—that in the diocese of Armagh, the third Report on Ecclesiastical Revenue returned sixteen out of eighty-nine beneficed clergymen non-residents; while there was at present but one out of ninety-eight non-resident, and he resided on another benefice under a very old faculty. In the dioceses of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin, fifty out of 180 had been returned as nonresident, and there were at present but twelve, or rather seven; for, five out of the twelve did duty elsewhere. When he (Mr. Shaw) had spoken of the average income of the Irish clergy, he said that the inequality of income would not, after the Church Temporalities Act had come into full operation, be greater than the necessary gradations of such an establishment required; in corroboration of which he would then remark, that of ten benefices returned by the Commissioners as above 2,000l. a year, he found upon investigating the particulars that they had already been reduced on an average about one-half—that they would be still much reduced on the next avoidance. He knew a living accepted by a fellow of Trinity College which had been rated at 1,800l. a year, now reduced to about 800l. A gentleman of information and great accuracy, who had examined the ten suppressed Bishoprics for the purpose, found that there was but one benefice among them in ecclesi- astical patronage that exceeded 800l. a year. When the Church Temporalities Act had its full force there would not remain one living in Ireland worth 1,500l. a year; and he did not believe there would be ten so high as 1,000l. It was alleged that the Church in Ireland had no support within itself, and was merely kept up by the factitious aid of the State; but so far from the endowments and public revenues of the Church in Ireland being larger than were requisite, private voluntary subscriptions were had recourse to, and freely given in Ireland to meet the wants of the Members of the Church with respect to Church accommodation and additional clergymen. Thus, in the diocese of Armagh, fifteen new churches had been lately built by private subscriptions. In the diocese of Down and Connor, twenty-two churches had been lately built by private subscriptions. In the diocese of Dublin, seventeen churches had, within a few years, been built by private subscriptions; and in every diocese a great number of school-houses were licensed by the Bishops for performing Divine Service, in default of there being churches for the accommodation of the people. It appeared, from a return made by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, in the month of March last, that since August, 1833, there had been in Ireland 181 churches built or rebuilt, fifty-six of which were by private funds, and sixty-five churches charged. The sum contributed by private societies and private individuals for the building and enlarging of churches in Ireland within the last ten years exceeded 95,000l. Also, within the last five years a society had been formed, of which he was a Member of Committee for providing means of support for additional clergymen. Subscriptions amounting to 2,000l. a-year were given to that Additional Curates' Society, by means of which thirty-nine additional clergymen were employed in parishes where the income of the rector was too small to enable him to pay a curate, and the Church population so great or so scattered over an extent of country as to require the services of more ministers than the endowment of the Church can supply; and these additional curates, be it observed, were not chiefly stationed in the north of Ireland, but in the south and west and midland counties. The Primate alone gives about 1,700l. a-year in augmentation of curates' salaries. The num- ber of schools supported by or under the immediate superintendence of the Bishops and Clergy in Ireland was 1837, containing 102,528 scholars, and there were thirteen diocesan classical schools. Such, then, was the Church, so constantly vituperated in that House, described as a nuisance, an ulcerous sore, a very pest to society. It had formerly been the habit to assail the Irish Church under the guise of friendship, affecting to desire her amendment, but now that every improvement which law could make had been effected, that sinecures, pluralities, unions, and non-residence were in rapid progress of annihilation, that the Roman Catholic occupier had been relieved from Church-rates and Tithe, and every practical inconvenience; now, as he had before observed, the insidious profession of regard for the Church's welfare was laid aside, and the hon. Gentleman opposite boldly and undisguisedly cried aloud for her destruction. Me denounced such conduct as unjust and ungenerous, and fraught with the utmost danger in the present slate of Ireland, calculated to inflame that hatred between races and animosity between religions which, by the prudence and good sense of the more moderate of both parties, had happily been much allayed, but which the more violent in that country were labouring to revive, and greatly abetted, he could not but feel, by such motions and speeches as were made in that House. [Cheers.] What the public mind in Ireland wanted was repose—what the people wanted was employment; but in Ireland the deluded peasantry were told that their destitution was allowing to the Legislative Union, and in that House, but with as little foundation, and almost as mischievously, that it was to some point of honour or abstraction connected with a church which did not cost them a shilling—he verily believed seldom a thought—and the abolition of which, if it could be accomplished to-morrow, would not afford them a meal. Truly, when they asked for bread, to make such propositions as the present was giving them a stone. Such a course could not serve the Irish people, nor would it conciliate their agitators. But it might peril the attachment and estrange the affection of those who had ever been the firmest and the fastest friends of British connexion in Ireland. Let the House do what was right and just without reference to consequences; but was it. just or right, or rea- sonable, or to be tolerated, that the Protestants of Ireland were now to be told— yes, it was such motions as these that provoked and forced him (Mr. Shaw) to draw distinctions between Protestants and Roman Catholics that he would gladly avoid. He did not want to raise the cry of "No Popery" in England; it was contrary to all his previous habits and opinions; but if they raised the cry of "No Protestantism" in Ireland, then he would boldly meet it and fearlessly resist it. Yes; then he asked, were the Protestants of Ireland to be expected patiently to bear a proposal for the destruction of their Church? In common with a large body of them, he had always desired the civil equality of his Roman Catholic countrymen; but it was under the fullest persuasion that they would then have been contented, as every generous principle and the solemnest obligations gave promise that they would. He warned that House not to trifle with the feelings of the Irish Protestants; the humbler classes of them were at. that moment exposed to great temptations. The most insidious efforts were making to woo and win them to repeal—and it was not safe to wound their feelings and repudiate their long and faithful attachment. Above all, the clergy of the Established Church in Ireland had the greatest cause to complain. They had for years borne with unexampled patience the severest privations. Their families had pined in want before their eyes: they had not the means to educate their children, or preserve their life insurances. They might be said literally to have carried their lives in their hands, still faithfully and zealously labouring in their high calling—and now, that they had purchased peace at the sacrifice, all of a quarter, many as he knew of half and more than half, of their incomes, were they threatened with the destruction of that Church for which they had suffered so much. But they would still be ready to bear and suffer all things in her cause. He spurned, on their behalf, the offer of respecting their life interests, as a paltry bribe—but it would never tempt them to betray the sacred trust reposed in them, not for their own personal advantage, but, as he sincerely believed, for the best interests of true religion, and the truest happiness of all classes and all creeds in Ireland. He rejoiced that the Motion, which was avowedly for the subversion of the Protestant Church in Ireland—had been met by the manly resistance of Her Majesty's Government. He trusted he would not live to see the day when the Ministers of a British Sovereign would venture to entertain such a measure. Sure he was that the day was as distant as the fall of the greatness and the glory of England, when her people would permit it. He would, of course, give his cordial opposition to the proposal of the hon. Member, in whatever shape he might bring it forward.

Mr. Redington

said, that when the hon. and learned Gentleman came down to make a speech in apology for the Irish Church, it was somewhat strange that he should attack Gentlemen on the opposite side for constantly bringing before the public the condition of that Church, which according to his own admission, was now merely coming into a better condition than it had been in before. There was not now a single convert more to that Church than when it was first planted, and he was fully prepared to believe that the mal-administration and misgovernment of that Church were quite sufficient to prevent persons from joining it. But there was something still more strange in the manner in which the right hon. and learned Gentleman asked for pity towards that Church, on the ground that there were now actually no more than eighty-one pluralities connected with it. Why, if it were not for these appeals few would have believed that any one could be found bold enough to defend a Church having as many as eighty-one pluralities, while the number of benefices was only 1,400. There was another incredible fact—that there were only 109 clergymen not living on their benefices. There could be no better authority than the Champion of the Church, for the fact that one-fourteenth of the beneficed clergy were absent from their trusts. He could assign one very conclusive reason why there should be so many absentees. He (Mr. Redington) lived in a parish in which there was not a single Protestant, and in the whole union not more than thirty attended the parish church. But was it not monstrous, when the Motion of the hon. Member for Sheffield merely asked of the Commons of England, to whom the appeal had too long been made in vain, to examine into the condition of the Irish Church—that the demand should be resisted on such grounds? His feelings would not permit him to enter upon a declaration of his opinion as to the manner in which this course of proceeding would be received in Ireland. It seemed that the right hon. and learned Gentleman was disposed to adhere to that policy which he had pursued throughout his whole career; and he (Mr. Redington) believed he would pursue it with as little success. He, as a Roman Catholic, whose emancipation the hon. and learned Gentleman had uniformly opposed, stood there an example of the error and inefficacy of past policy. He was surprised to hear the hon. and learned Gentleman say, that the Roman Catholic peasantry of Ireland did not pay the tithe; with all deference to the right hon. Gentleman, he must say the contrary was the fact, and in both instances when alterations were made in the tithe system, the additional amounts of tithe were imposed by the landlords upon the tenants. He must guard himself against the possibility of its being supposed that he advocated this Motion as one which was likely to lead either directly or indirectly to the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church as the State Church of Ireland, or to the payment of the Catholic Clergy by the State. If he stood alone in that House, he should record his vote against such a proposition, and one reason why he should do so was, that he had not seen the payment of the State Church or Clergy tend to the benefit either of the Church or the State. He could not think this Motion would be refused by the Government. It might be reiterated that the Protestant Church in Ireland was guaranteed, and that it must be supported, but it was vain to suppose that that could long exist in Ireland, the resemblance of which was not to be found in any other country on the face of the earth. It was vain to suppose that in a Catholic country, such as Ireland was, the State could continue to give a niggardly allowance of 50,000l. or 60,000l. a year for the imperfect education of the people, and impose a heavy tax upon them for supporting the poor, and, in addition to that, to keep up the monstrous burthen of tithes, and maintain the enormous revenues of the Irish Church. Such a system could not stand. The cause which the hon. Member for Sheffield now brought forward was the cause of justice. It might be resisted now, and in future years; but as sure as there was justice in heaven, such a cause must ultimately prevail.

Debate adjourned.

House adjourned at half-past twelve o'clock.