CHURCH OF IRELAND.

HC Deb 10 July 1849 vol 107 cc107-74

MR. B. OSBORNE

said, he felt the difficult position in which an independent Member of Parliament was placed who brought a subject of this nature before the House; but, although he regretted that they were deprived of the presence of an hon. Gentleman who had most ably brought the question under discussion on several former occasions, he thought that he (Mr. Osborne) could not be charged with any undue haste or presumption in now calling the attention of the House to this important subject. He had imagined, when the present Ministers came into office, that some one of those old and tried champions of civil and religious liberty—some one of those who formerly, taking this question at the flood, floated on with it to popularity and power—would have taken up the question, and would have endeavoured to effect some permanent settlement. He regretted to say that the tide had ebbed. Whether it was, that when Gentlemen were on the Opposition benches the aspect of Irish grievances seemed more rank and offensive, or that the Irish representatives as a body, were indifferent on the subject, he knew not; but the result was, that the question of the Irish Church, which was formerly the slogan of the present Ministerial Opposition—which was formerly the gathering war-cry of the Whigs—had, for the last few years, been entirely laid aside, and that instrument upon which so many harmonious notes had been struck to call the Whig supporters together, was now, like the fabulous harp of Tara, hanging up, mute, and remained unstrung. It would not, however, be his fault if, on the present occasion, he did not awake the memory of the Ministers and of the country to the position of this question. He thought, that however hon. Gentlemen might differ upon this subject, they would not deny that it was one of the very gravest consideration. He conceived that a system under which the whole ecclesiastical revenues of Ireland were devoted to the spiritual education of one-tenth of the population, that one-tenth being the rich Protestant minority, and under which the ministers of another tenth of the population were supported by the Regium Donum the religion of the great majority being alone ignored, was worthy of the grave and attentive consideration of the House; and he believed that if they had to commence legislation on this subject de novo, they would not be disposed to apply the funds provided by the ancestors of the poor Catholic majority to the exclusive advantage of the rich Protestant minority. The question which he was about to enter upon was of the utmost consequence. Here was the opinion of the Irish Church given by a great Conservative statesman, whose words, he was sure, would be listened to with every respect:— You have an ecclesiastical establishment, which, though the religion of the Prince and most of the first class of landed proprietors, is not the religion of the major part of the people, consequently docs not answer to them any one purpose of a religious establishment. Many a fierce struggle has passed between the parties; the result is you cannot make the people Protestants, and they cannot shako off the Protestant establishment. That was the language of Mr. Burke in 1796; and let him ask hon. Gentlemen who dissented from that view how stood the ease in 1849? It was true they had corrected some flagrant abuses; but the main evil still existed, and was still thriving, so that a statesman whom he thought greater than Burke—certainly a writer quite as eloquent—Mr. Macaulay, whose absence from that House every one must regret, had recorded in his History of England his astonishment that the most absurd ecclesiastical establishment in the civilised world should remain a scandal to this country. He (Mr. Osborne) could not conceive a more effectual mode of disuniting from this country the affections of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, of reminding them that they held a separate religion, that they once had a separate Legislature, and that they were a separate race, than the maintenance of the Protestant Church in its present position in that country. It was true that, if a change in the appropriation of the Irish Church revenues were adopted, hon. Gentlemen opposite might say— —"Fuimus Troës, fuit Ilium, et ingens "Gloria Teucrûrn; but it was equally true that the Irish Roman Catholics could now exclaim— —"Ferus omnia Jupiter Argos "Transtulit. So long as they maintained the Irish Church in its present position, so long would they have an agitation for the repeal of the union. Many hon. Gentlemen would recollect that in July, 1846, his hon. Friend the Member for Finsbury inquired of the noble Lord the First Minister of State, on what principles his Government would be conducted? The noble Lord was very much astonished at such a question; and with some tartness he replied, "upon the opinions he had always professed, and the principles he had always acted on." Well, many thought that answer was more curt than explanatory; others, however, thought that the noble Lord had only to get his feet firm in the stirrups to settle this much-vexed question; and any doubts which he (Mr. Osborne) entertained on that point were dispelled when he saw the construction of the noble Lord's Cabinet. He found that it was composed of Gentlemen who, from 1823 down to 1845, had expressed their belief that the Irish Church was the root of all the discontent in Ireland, and who had supported that opinion by their votes. The noble Lord had now been three years in office, but he had maintained a most remarkable silence on this point. In 1823 the question of the temporalities of the Irish Church was first raised by that pioneer of all modern improvements, the hon. Member for Montrose, who had lived to see those schemes which had been looked upon as the speculations of political empiricism carried out by the leaders of both political parties, and who had pursued the even tenor of his way to the present time. He (Mr. Osborne) felt bound to say, that most of the facts he intended to lay before the House, and which had formerly been submitted to them by Mr. Ward, the present Governor of the Ionian Islands, had been derived from the earlier speeches of the hon. Member for Montrose in 1823 and 1824. In 1823, the hon. Gentleman's Motion on this subject was supported by three Members of the present Cabinet—the noble Lord at the head of the Government, the President of the Board of Control, and Earl Fortescue. The hon. Gentleman continued to bring the subject before the House for several years, and was constantly supported by Members of the present Government, until 1838, when Earl Spencer (then Lord Althorp) brought in a Bill to amend the laws relating to the Irish Church, to abolish vestry cess, and to reduce the number of bishops; but the main principle of that Bill was the Appropriation Clause, which had in an evil hour been abandoned. A most remarkable debate ensued. The right hon. Member for Dungarvan moved an Amendment on the preamble, and made a speech which he thought ought never to be forgotten in that House. They might judge what was the character of the discussion, when he informed them that Dr. Lushington rose in the middle of the debate, and said he had never listened to a debate in which the decency of Parliamentary language, and the courtesy of private life, had been so much outraged. The Appropriation Clause was given up; but in 1834 Mr. Ward conjured up the old shade of appropriation, which broke upon the noble Lord's Cabinet like Banquo's ghost at the feast of Macbeth. That Cabinet, however, was patched up again; and on March 30, 1835, the noble Lord at the head of the Government brought in a Motion on the Irish Church, in the course of which he said^*— There was a solemn compact between the Parliament of the United Kingdom and the people, given by the King, received by the Commons, and approved by the Lords, The state of Ireland has long been, and now is, a source of great embarrassment to every statesman of this country; there is no doubt that the moral as well as physical condition of the people is one of great degradation. The question I have to consider is their moral condition, and how far the Church Establishment in Ireland bears on that condition. You are not to tell us that you cannot listen to the well-founded grievances of Ireland, and are not prepared to do her justice, and yet insist on an adherence to the Legislative Union. That was strong language coming from the First Minister of the day; and accordingly the House passed upon that occasion an Appropriation Clause. In 1843, Mr. Smith O'Brien, who, however the House might blame him for his rashness, would at least be admitted to have been an honest Member of Parliament, brought forward a Motion to in Quire into the causes of Irish discontent; and he found that upon that occasion the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer (who he was sorry to see was not in his place)—the ^* See Hansard (Third Series), Vol. xxvii., pp. 362–63. Chancellor of the Exchequer, then Mr. Wood, and sitting opposite, made use of these words—and he trusted the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade would take them down, in order that he might tell his right hon. Friend what his sentiments had been in 1843. Well, the Chancellor of the Exchequer upon that occasion said ^*— The evils of Ireland are undisputed, and of great magnitude. Amongst the first was the state of the Church. He did not advocate Roman Catholic supremacy, but if he placed himself in the situation of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, he should find little difficulty in coming to similar conclusions which they had arrived at. They might look through all the countries of Europe—they would find in none of them was such an establishment maintained for the benefit of a small minority of the population. It was not for hon. Members on his (the Opposition) side to propose a remedy; it was the duty of the Government, as responsible parties, to originate a remedy for the evils complained of. The sound principle had been laid down—it was for Ministers, not for Members of an Opposition, to propose measures and provide a remedy for the evil. He (Mr. Osborne), however, should go further than the right hon. Gentleman, and should endeavour to propose a remedy, and a remedy, too, to which the right hon. Gentleman had already assented. Well, then the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Ireland got up and made, for him, upon that occasion, a most animated speech, [A laugh.] He did not say that invidiously; but the right hon. Gentleman was highly excited. He said†— Another great grievance of Ireland was the Established Church of the minority. He had heard it said that the Government would not reopen that question. He would ask the conservative and Christian gentlemen of England, if they were in the situation of the Irish, would they submit to it? "Would they not resent it? They would. He appealed to the right hon. Gentleman now as "a conservative and Christian gentleman"—would he resent that injury? He found that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ripon also admitted the propriety of discussion; for he admitted that it was a most important subject, and that it was at the bottom of all their difficulties. Lord Howick, now Earl Grey, the brother-in-law of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said‡— If they meant to have peace in Ireland, they must reform the Established Church—they must deal with the question of the property of the Protestant Church in Ireland. Earl Grey had been very silent upon that question since he had joined the Govern- ^* See Hansard (Third Series), Vol. Ixx, pp. 716–17. † lb. pp. 871–72. ‡ Pp. 886–87. § P. 1008. ment. The noble Lord now at the head of the Government also spoke out upon that subject. He said §— With regard to the Irish Church, I am not now called upon to propose a plan; in my position (as Member of the Opposition) it would not be my place to do so. But any plan I should propose would be to follow the principle of equality with all its consequences. Upon that occasion seven Cabinet Ministers voted for the Motion. He need not allude to all the Lords of the Admiralty and Secretaries for the Treasury; of course they all voted as one man. But he found that in 1844, so afraid was the noble Lord of the question being taken out of his hands by Mr. Smith O'Brien, that he moved for a Committee to inquire into the state of Ireland, and thereupon, again, a most remarkable debate ensued. The noble Lord said— When the Ministers of the Crown, now in office, shrink from the responsibility of maintaining the doctrines which they maintained when in Opposition, and of hazarding the peace of Ireland by a most flagrant violation of Parliamentary faith, I have no confidence to wait for other measures. With regard to the Irish Church, the system which I should be disposed to adopt would be one which should put the Established Church, as regards Roman Catholics and Protestants, on a footing of perfect equality. He thought the House would say that that was pretty strong language; but what would they think of this? He had positively rubbed his eyes when he saw it. Hero was the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department; and it was the last quotation he should make from the speeches of Cabinet Ministers, because it was a climax. The right hon. Gentleman said— It is impossible for any one who knows the feelings of human nature to suppose that the Irish people can look upon the present state of the ecclesiastical system in Ireland without the deepest dissatisfaction. It is not a mere question of money—it is one which concerns the feelings of a people. Though the question be beset with difficulty, I deny it to be a difficulty sufficient to deter a Minister of the Crown from dealing with it. On this subject I certainly entertain very strong feelings. This, I will say, nothing appears to me worse, nothing more hazardous, than for Parliament to declare they will not entertain the question of the Irish Church because it is beset with difficulties. The Union must be maintained, but a complete union never could be effected so long as the Established and Endowed Church of the minority exclusively existed. Now, what did the House think of that? That was in 1844. The whole of the Cabinet voted for that Motion of the noble Lord's, and all the present race of Lords of the Treasury, and people of that class. But in the year 1845, Mr. Ward moved a very remarkable Amendment to the Motion of the right hon. Baronet the Member for Tamworth, on the question of Maynooth, to the effect that all the funds for the sustentation of Maynooth should be taken out of those devoted to ecclesiastical purposes in Ireland. Mr. Ward was in a very large minority upon that occasion, in which he was joined by the noble Lord at the head of the Government, the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Home Department, and the rest of the Government. That was the last occasion on which the question of the Irish Church had been mentioned in that House. Of late the "oracles had been dumb." Coming events were said to cast their shadows before, and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Roscommon gave him an inkling of what was to be expected when he got up the other night, and denied that another hon. Gentleman represented the feelings or wishes of the Roman Catholics of Ireland on the subject of the Irish Church. But the hon. Member for Roscommon had never but on one occasion during his long Parliamentary career of twenty years given but one vote upon the subject of the Irish Church; and yet he would have the House and the people of Ireland believe that he took great interest in this question. The fact was, that the hon. Gentleman took no interest in it at all; and he believed that his name was too intimately connected with certain high dignitaries of the Church to allow him to support what would be to them so suicidal a measure. The hon Gentleman attempted to play the old stale game, and to persuade them that this was not the proper time for the present Motion; but he would answer the hon. Gentleman by an extract from a speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dungarvan, made in 1833. The Master of the Mint, then Mr. Sheil, in reply to a similar objection, said— But it has been urged this is not the proper time. Not the time? When is it to arrive? Before the reformed Parliament it was not the time until Parliament was reformed; here is the reformed Parliament, and the time has not come. When will it? When the Whigs are in opposition? Are we to wait until their official convenience tallies with the rights of Ireland? We shall have to wait long indeed. He really regretted that the hon. Member for Roscommon was not present to hear that answer to his stale pretence that this was not the proper time—a pretence which always had existed, and always would exist, so long as we had subservient Parliaments and an indifferent Government. He hoped whatever course the Government might adopt with regard to this Motion, that they would not, at all events, take the course recently adopted by the right hon. Gentleman, who thought that this was a question of the "deepest moment," and move the previous question. People out of doors were extremely puzzled to make out what that "previous question" meant. If they wanted a title for the present Session, he should say they might christen it the Session of previous questions—for never, in all the annals of Parliament had that Motion been so frequently made. Ignorant, however, as people out of doors might be, those within that House knew very well that the previous question was nothing more than a Parliamentary sleight of hand to cut the acquaintance of old friends who had been useful in opposition, but who might bring discredit on the party when they succeeded to power. He had now given a brief and imperfect sketch of the birth, parentage, and abandonment of the Irish Church question; and if he had attempted its resurrection, he had done so because, in the words of the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Home Department, he did not think it a mere question of money alone, although he would have the financial reformers of England to look about them, and to recollect when the taxgatherers called at their doors, a considerable portion of their money went to sustain the army in Ireland necessary to the support of the Irish Church. He had revived this question because he thought it was an imperial as well as an Irish question, because he felt confident, whatever measures they might pass, however beneficial they might be, however they might deal with the land or the law, that so long as they left the Irish Church as it was at present, so long would Ireland be, not merely the difficulty of the Minister, but the embarrassment of the empire—so long would the noble Lord be justified in going down to that House and telling them, as he had done in 1844, that Ireland was "occupied and not governed"—so long Ireland would be occupied and not governed by whatever Minister presided in this country, and so long would Ireland remain, in the graphic words of the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, in a state of "social decomposition." It was impossible, however, to judge of the present state of Ireland correctly without reference to its past history. He knew there were some enthusiasts who, adopting the views of Archbishop Usher, asserted that Ireland never was really Roman Catholic—that St. Patrick never was a Roman Catholic bishop, but a regular orthodox divine of the evangelical school. Be that as it might, however, there could be no doubt that St. Patrick was educated at Rome, that he assumed the name of Patricius, and that he was sent to Ireland by Pope Celestine. No doubt a schism between the Irish Church and Rome did occur as to the computation of Easter, but the Irish Church submitted, and was reconciled to Rome in 1152. The Reformation in Ireland was endeavoured to be forced on the people; but the principal object seemed to be to appropriate the revenues of the Church to other purposes. In that day Cromer, the Archbishop of Armagh, who was himself an Englishman, denounced the proceedings that then took place. The Protestant Dr. Leland, the historian, represents that the greatest injustice was then inflicted on the people in connexion with the Irish Church. It would be acknowledged that the reformers had failed, and that the history of the Church in Ireland had been written in blood; for Elizabeth, though a very good Puseyite in this country, was a persecuting Presbyterian there. In 1635, when Lord Strafford's acts were questioned, that nobleman stated in his apology that they had not been undertaken alone for the increase of revenue, but also most especially for the advantage of Protestantism. In 1635, however, English troops, the army of occupation of that day, were not a very great expense upon this country, because they were maintained by fines levied on Roman Catholics who did not attend the Protestant church—and one of the "graces" that was sought for was to be allowed to absent themselves from the Protestant church without being fined. It was well known that that excellent person, as many thought him, Charles I. pocketed 120,000l. for those "graces," but never kept his pledges. He now came to the policy of Cromwell, which was written in one word, "extirpation "—who gave to the Irish the agreeable alternative of being sent to hell or Counaught. And what was the last speech of William III. to his Parliament, but that he hoped all dissensions would cease, and that there would be no distinction save between Papist and Protestant. That was in the year 1688. He passed over the penal laws, merely observing that they had been denounced by Mr. Burke, and that the only apologist they had ever found was an Irish bishop—Bishop Mant, who said that they were not only for the security of the Protestant, but for the benefit of the Papist. He could not help thinking— Oh fortunati nimium! sua si bona nôrint. Then, in 1723 the Duke of Grafton procured an Act to pass the Irish Parliament of a most disgraceful character. By this Act the Protestant Parliament of Ireland sought to debase every Roman Catholic priest to a level with the unsexed guardians of a Mahometan seraglio. It was sent to England, and Cardinal Fleury remonstrated with Sir R. Walpole upon it, who suppressed the Act. He would challenge the history of any country to produce such an Algerine Act as that—it was known in history as "the Nameless Act." He passed over also the question of the Union; but it was notorious that Union votes were bartered for Irish bishoprics. How stood the case now? After nearly 300 years, that Church, in spite of all the advantages of revenue and political supremacy, stood very much in the same condition as when she was first planted in that country. Had they shaken the faith of the Roman Catholic classes of that country? He denied it altogether. They might revile them as beggers, but they could not taunt them as apostates. They had retained their creed—it had linked itself with their nationality. Through famine, through pestilence, through persecution, spite of all our legislation, Ireland still lay like Lazarus at our gate, covered with sores, while the Established Church, like Dives, was clothed in fine linen, and her clergy fared sumptuously every day. He meant no reflection on the clergy of that Church. He knew them to be excellent and amiable men; but at the same time he altogether condemned the system of which they were the ministers. It would be said perhaps, "You have told us the history of the Irish Church, and you have talked of persecution unheard of, but there is no persecution at the present day—no discontent exists—Irish Members are quite satisfied in this House; why should you make any alterations when the loyalty and contentment of the Roman Catholics is uniform?" But was it uniform? On the 4th May, 1849, he found the Protestant Bishop of Waterford saying, "When last year Her Majesty's loyal subjects in Ireland were called upon to enrol themselves as special constables in defence of order, the Roman Catholics of Waterford, who numbered 32,000, only supplied eighteen special constables, while the Protestants, who were only 5,000, furnished 280." Was it not plain, then, that there must be something at bottom in that country which prevented the Roman Catholic population being attached to our present system? But that was not all. Here was a letter from Sir C. O'Donnell, the commander of the forces on the staff at Waterford, addressed to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Limerick, of a most extraordinary character:— Waterford, March 24, 1849. My Lord—I have perused your address to the Roman Catholic clergy and laity of the diocese of Limerick, recommending a collection in aid of His Holiness the Pope, with feelings of deep interest and sympathy for the position and sufferings of the Holy Father. So far as a Protestant may be permitted. I, to the utmost, acquiesce in the sentiments it embodies; and as a private and humble individual, beg to be allowed to contribute my mite to the fund about to be created for so laudable a purpose. And, my Lord, were it sanctioned by my Queen, I should be happy to raise a legion of Limerick and Tipperary "boys" in the cause of the persecuted Monarch. In such an enterprise, I venture to assert, that of the O'Donnells of the south, a thousand, at least, men who have "the will to do and the soul to dare"—would array themselves under my banner (inscribed as it is with the ancient motto of Christianity and their sept) to defend the sacred chair of St. Peter, and replace the holy, pious, and enlightened Pontiff who has been elected to occupy it.—I have the honour to be, with much consideration and respect, your lordship's most obedient and very humble servant, C. R. O'DONNELL, Colonel on the Staff, Commanding at Waterford. That letter had appeared in the public papers, and had drawn forth an answer from the Rev. Mr. Foley, the curate of Clonmel, whose statement was of an equally extraordinary character. Mr. Foley said— This same Sir Charles O'Donnell did me the honour of calling upon mc to ascertain what number of Protestants in the town were ready to defend in arms their liberties, families, properties, life, and religion; and whether I would lend my aid and humble influence in organising them; that the Government would send arms to the barracks, which they afterwards did; that the Lord Lieutenant was fully aware, as well as himself, that he could only calculate upon the Protestants in any emergency, but still would not wish it to be known that the movement was to be exclusively Protestant. I. of course, told him I could put on no more faces than one, and if it was to be a Protestant organisation I could not consent to conceal the fact, and, moreover, that I had no influence except upon the ground of distinctive Protestantism, and neither would the Protestants of Clonmel array themselves in a motely mass, nor under other impulses than Protestantism. It is true that Sir C. O'Donnell had since denied he had used the name of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. But there was a passage in the Lord Lieutenant's proclamation which almost bore out the account. What did Lord Clarendon say?— Nor is there any reason to believe (and upon this point I have collected information from various persons on whose judgment and local knowledge I could rely), that the recent orderly conduct of the people in the districts where disturbances prevailed, or were threatened, proceeds from any improved feeling as regards either the law or the Executive Government. The total absence of support of the authorities in their endeavours to suppress insurrection, the renewed attempt at rebellion in the vicinity of the town where the leaders of the movement were being brought to justice, and the disregard of proclamations requiring the surrender of arms, are facts which indicate that, however the failure of past attempts at insurrection may have weakened the confidence of the disaffected, the feeling which gave rise to, and encouraged, that movement still remains unchanged, and would again become active upon any occasion that appeared to offer even a distant prospect of success. Here you had a remarkable Protestant minister, very much given to preach controversial sermons, who had a large following of Protestants in that part of the country, and you also had the Lord Lieutenant telling the House that you could not rely upon the Roman Catholics of that country. He would be bound to say, that if those who were intimately connected with Ireland were asked why they could not rely upon them, the answer would be, because you have never done them full justice, and you persist, at all hazards, in maintaining this deformity, the Protestant Church. There was a phrase which they used to hear more frequently formerly than they did at the present moment, namely, "justice to Ireland." He had always been very much puzzled when right hon. Gentlemen used it, to know exactly what they meant. He knew that there was a large and most respectable party in Ireland, and in the House, who meant identity of institutions; he, for one, must say, that he dissented from that doctrine—He considered it not only to be a fallacy, but a misfortune. He considered that the endeavour to put English laws, the result of long commercial prosperity, upon Ireland, was most unfortunate. It appeared to him that Her Majesty's Government had taken for their example that of the great practical economist of antiquity. Procrustes; all their measures were applied without consultation to the feelings of the Irish; because a measure worked well in England, it was immediately taken for granted that it would work well in Ireland. At one time, your legislative Procrustes had endeavoured to stretch Roman Catholic consciences to true Protestant dimensions by the screw of penal laws; at another, to cut short their purses by an English poor-law, constructed in ignorance of the country; and the most extraordinary thing was, that this practice was confined to Ireland alone. Take the case of Scotland—compare Scotland with Ireland. There was no cry of "justice to Scotland." Why? Scotland retained all her native institutions; she had her civil and criminal law; we tried to saddle her with a bench of bishops and a Church, but Scotland refused, and we had not only acknowledged her Church, but given 1,200l. a year to the Episcopal clergy, which money no Scotchman objected to receive, because, as he supposed, it was spent in the country, what was the consequence of our governing Scotland through a sentiment of nationality? The consequence was, that Scotland was a quiet and inexpensive neighbour; that there were at this moment only 2,000 soldiers in Scotland, and Scotland gave no trouble whatever; but she had her own Church, and her own system of law, and if we did hear of a little discontent when the learned Lord Advocate brought forward a Marriage Bill, and which was only carried by five, he would no doubt withdraw it. In Ireland you had got English law, English Church; Ireland had not one native institution except the constabulary. What was the consequence? The rich Protestant Church was a minority. They ignored the existence of any other creed, and gave the regium donum to Presbyterians, and neglected the Catholics; they hardly owned their existence. They had an army of nearly 50,000 men, including the pensioners and police, and they had the native institution, the constabulary. Compare the two systems. Would it not be more economical, more wise, more just, to rule Ireland as you ruled Scotland, through the sentiments of nationality, and through her affection? Lot them ask themselves if the price was worth what they were paying for this system of Protestant ascendancy; because all these votes for the army of occupation, and for the police, out of the Consolidated Fund, were nothing more than the price this country paid for Protestant ascendancy, and he hoped radical reformers would recollect that. He was reminded of a question asked by the Marquess of Lansdowne, whether the Church was for the benefit of Ireland, or Ireland for the benefit of the Church; and he should be obliged to the Secretary of State for the Home Department to give a distinct answer to that question. It was not requisite to discuss the question of church government; he did not mean to enter into the question of the superiority of one system over the other; it would only be necessary for him to make two quotations on this subject as to the objects of a church establishment, and in so doing he would quote the opinions of Lord John Russell. On the 1st of June, 1836, he said— My notion of a church establishment is, that it is not intended for the support of the offspring of the clergy in comfort and opulence, but for the instruction of the people. There was a book lately published by the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, for whom he entertained a high and deep respect—On the Influence of Authority in matters of Opinion. As far as his poor reading went, this was one of the ablest books he had ever read, and he did not think it the less valuable because the following passage occurred in it. Speaking of the Established Church, he said— A Government cannot safely adopt any authority in ecclesiastical matters, or assume the exclusive truth of any one form of Christianity. It must look mainly to the numbers of each religious persuasion, in deciding the question of endowments for religious and educational purposes; and to the religion of parents in establishing the rules for determining the creed in which children incapable of judging for themselves are to be brought up. The most striking and decisive example is the case of the Irish Established Church, a complete system of exclusive endowment, founded on a territorial division of parishes; and yet, though it has existed since the Reformation, and has been assisted by active persecution and penal laws, it has never made any sensible impression on the Presbyterian and the Catholic portions of the community. This was so forcibly expressed that he did not understand how, after writing that book, the hon. Gentleman could possibly avoid voting with him on the present occasion. He had given the opinion of two laymen—here was the opinion of bishops. Bishop Warburton said (vol. iv. p. 287, A.D. 1788)— I request the reader to bear this always in mind, that the true end for which religion is established, is not to provide for the true faith, but for civil utility," &c. Here was the opinion of Charles James, Bishop of London, as to a church establishment. He said— The question whether a church establishment was to be maintained or not, was only to be answered by another: namely, did it impede or did it promote the moral and spiritual improvement of the people? He was quite content to take it on these grounds. Let the House ask itself, did the Irish Church promote or did it impede the spiritual and moral improvement of the people? We should not have to go further than that. The House would recall the division the other night on national education, and only look at the conduct of some of the heads of the Irish Church on account of national education. Because they could not teach the people according to their own view of thinking—because they could not compel Roman Catholic parents to send their children to hear what they called the unmutilated Bible, they objected to any education at all, and, like Oliver Twist, came and asked for more money. When he recollected that a certain bishop denounced the noble Lord's measures, that he called these the Devil's schools, and that they had done everything to hinder the clergy from patronising these schools; he asked, was the condition of this Church such as to impede or promote the spiritual and moral improvement of the people? and he was content to leave the question of spiritual improvement on that issue. There was another thing said on this occasion. It was a fashionable doctrine to say, this Church is a missionary church. He had heard of missionaries who were a different sort of men from the ecclesiastics of the Irish Church; he could do honour to these men, who were generally men of low degree, and little money in their scrip, who gained no gold by preaching the gospel to barbarians. He did not think that this was the act of an Irish bishop. He did not think that their income, let alone their political conduct in denouncing the noble Lord and his Government, gave them, or the House, or the country, much idea of a missionary; and of this he was very sure, that so long as these bishops received these enormous salaries, so long as you had the plurality of bishops in the Irish Church, you would have to maintain a large army to guarantee their succession and the integrity of the Thirty-nine Articles. It had been said that this Church was of an expansive nature. It was curious, in talking of the expansive nature of Protestantism, to see how the Roman Catholics had progressed, and how the Protestants had diminished in that country, under the influencee of the Established Church. He would go as far back as 1672, when Sir W. petty, in his Political Anatomy of Ireland, &c.— Total number of inhabitants in Ireland he set down at 1,100,000. Of this number 800,000 were Roman Catholics, and 150,000 legal Protestants; the residue Nonconformists. Sir W. Petty says, 'One bishop in Ireland is more than thirty in England; to him he would give 2,500l. a year. To 150 ministers he would give 150l. each per annum. Then we came down to the present time. It appeared from a return made to the Irish House of Lords, that the population in 1728 was 1,700,000; 700,000 returned as Protestants. In 1734 the Roman Catholics were two to one to Protestants. In 1824 there was a curious return made on the evidence of Mr. Leslie Foster before the House of Lords by the Protestant clergymen of the number of their flocks. Out of a population of 6,801,827, they gave 1,269,388 Protestants. They took in not only the legal Protestants but the Nonconformists. In 1834 there was another return made, and by that return we find that the legal Protestants had decreased to 752,064, whilst the Roman Catholics had increased to 7,943,940. In 1841, the Protestants were 852,000, and the Roman Catholics remained the same. So that the Roman Catholics, in spite of chartered schools, had increased nearly seven to one. So much for the expansive force of Protestantism. He came now to a very material point; he came now to the return of benefices, which was made in 1837, of the number of Protestants. There was a report of a Commission of Public Instruction in 1837 on Irish benefices, from which it appeared that there were 124 benefices with less than 20 Protestants 99 ditto with between 20 and 50 protestants. 41 without one single Protestant. Here was a most fallacious way of viewing this question in reference to the Church sittings. Gentlemen took up Robinson's Almanac, and saw a certain number of sittings put down, and then said, what a large congregation this church has. The church which he attended was put down as having 100 sittings, when the congregation was only 35.

Number of churches in diocese of Emly	12
Ditto of sittings	1,290
Rathroonan, diocese of Lismore, 100 sittings.
No Protestants.

Donoughmore diocese of Lismore,100 sittings,

No Protestants.

Outragh, diocese of Lismore, 100 sittings,

No Protestants.

And he got a letter this morning, in which there was mention of a parish in the county of Waterford which had not one Protestant. In this parish, in which there was no church and no resident clergyman, still the vicarial and rectorial tithes must he paid. The rector had sold his tithes, and they were now paid, the letter said, "which I am very glad of to a very fine girl." In one parish there was a church, and only one Protestant family; and he understood that the late rector, when he went by chance to preach there, the family being at church, found a goose hatching eggs in the pulpit. This appeared ridiculous, but he made bold to say that in the great majority of benefices in the south of Ireland, for all the good they did to the spiritual education of the people, you might just as well have geese hatching in all the pulpits. He came now to the diocese of Ossory, and Ossory was a remarkable diocese, because you would expect to find more Protestants there, the great bulk of the property being held exclusively by Protestant proprietors. He referred to a pamphlet entitled On the Church of Borne in Ireland in Relation to the State, published by a gentleman well known in the law, Mr. Serjeant Shoe, and he recommended it to the perusal of the Government and the Church of Rome in Ireland, and he states that in Callan, in the diocese of Ossory, there was church room for 256, the income was 2,197l. 15s. 7d., and the congregation 87—out of a population of 14,647, and the parish church was in an almost ruinous condition. On the other hand, under the voluntary system, the Catholics had raised a handsome structure for the celebration of Divine worship, at a cost of 3,400l., in which large congregations assembled at the nine and eleven o'clock masses on Sunday morning; there was also a largo Augustinian friary in which there were masses at nine, half-past nine, and eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, at each of which there were large congregations. Now that was not an unfair statement of the state of Protestantism in the south of Ireland. During the progress of the late trials at Clonmel, whilst the Roman Catholic chapels were full, the congregation in the Protestant church was eighty-seven, besides ten soldiers belonging to a regiment in the town. He should very likely be told that the Protestant Church was expanding, that the Irish Society was making great progress. They were taking advantage of the famine to convert the people. Two Members of the Government belonged to the Irish Society, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, and a Lord of the Admiralty. Let us see what the Irish Society were about. The other day they had a meeting in Dublin, and the gentleman who had said they could only depend on Protestants in case of an emergency, moved a resolution and said in his speech that they should convert the people, who could not resist 820 Irish teachers "planted in every field and hamlet, rooted in the soil, poking their heads into every hole." This was the way they went about Ireland, poking into every hole, and speaking irreverently of what the Roman Catholics looked upon with veneration. He came now to the last and most important point in this case—the revenues of the Church. The Established Church of Ireland had the cure of 852,000 souls, and for that duty the State provided two archbishops, 10 bishops, and 2,207 clergy. One of the archbishops had 12,067l., the other 7,786l. per annum. Clogher, 10,000l.; Derry, 8,000l.; the clergy, amongst them, 680,838l. He did not reckon palaces, parks, or glebe houses; but he would remind the House that there was a vast quantity of land belonging to the Church in Ireland, amounting to not less than 669,247 acres, which with the land attached to benefices, 91,237 acres, made a total of 760,484 acres. Now, taking the land at an average value of 1l. per acre—and they might depend upon it the Church lands were not the worst—the amount would be over 800,000l. to be added to the revenues he had already stated. He looked upon Dublin University as being one of the engines of the Church, and found there had been no less than 3,381,600l. advanced since the Union for the support of the Protestant Church. Was this state of things to be allowed to continue? If hon. Members wished well to Ireland, would they rest satisfied? It was said that it was a delusion to call it a wealthy Church, because, if the money was divided amongst the 2,200 clergy it would only give them 2,00l. a-year each. But this the clergy would never get, and there was not the most remote idea of giving it to them. Would it not be better to reduce the number of clergymen to the real wants of the Establishment? What was the case in France and Scotland? There were— Thirty million Roman Catholics in France. Revenues—1,500,000l; more than one-third of this required in Ireland for less than a million Protestants; the Protestant Church of France has 150,000l. per annum. Take the revenues of the Scotch Church:—In the time of Adam Smith the Presbyterian Church had 58,000l. per annum. The Scotch Church at present had about 200,000l. In Ireland, 800,000 Protestants; 1,643 benefices with staff; 2,207 ministers; 7,000,000 Roman Catholics; 2,351 priests. The State provision for 800,000 Protestants amounted to 680,000l. per annum; ditto for 7,000,000 Catholics, nil. Was this a state of things which a Government, and, above all, a Whig Government, should suffer to continue year after year in Ireland? Did it not justify the explanation given by the present Earl of Carlisle, who said it was a church without flocks, a clergy without congregations, the worst gain of the sinecurist kept up with the worst principle of the bigot? There was a great difference between a good Protestant in England and a good Protestant in Ireland. The good Protestant in England conducted himself in a different manner; the good Protestant in Ireland was the one who prayed that the Catholic might go to a hotter region than he was in at present. In the time of the Tudors and of Queen Elizabeth, massacre and spoliation was called planting religion and civilisation. In 1695, Lord Stafford called being a Protestant the taking Roman Catholic property. A good Protestant, under the Commonwealth, was a different character; he practised the horrors of the Old Testament, and totally forgot the mild doctrines of the New. After 1688, your good Protestant added another article to the Thirty-nine Articles, and that article was, "the glorious, pious, and immortal memory," and so it had gone on from the time of Elizabeth to the present day. The descendants of Cromwell's drummers, and William III.'s troopers, all joined together in repudiating the Popish doctrines, and loving Popish property. This was a sample of your good Protestants, especially in the south of Ireland. He knew that on coming to any question of the property of the Church of Ireland, he should be told that it was sacred. That had been the cry on all occasions; it was said it was sacrilege. That cry was set up at the Reformation, with much better pretext than it would be now. Men confounded spiritual convictions with worldly interests; but he was prepared to maintain there was no analogy between corporate and private property. There had been very strong opinions expressed on this subject by men very well qualified to judge. Lord Brougham said— There was no sort of analogy between church property and private property; the Church received its property for the performance of certain services, private property held it unconditionally. As well might the pay of the Army as the property of the Church be called inviolable, or private property. The noble and learned Lord could not have changed his opinion; but whatever might be his opinion now, he was perfectly borne out by Sir Tames Macintosh, who laid it down that no Minister had ever attempted to say that there was an analogy between corporate and private property, He would give a precedent. In 1835, they took the tithe agistment; it was said it was to strengthen the Protestant interest. In 1831, they confiscated 25 per cent of the tithes; in 1833, they abolished vestry cess, and ten bishoprics. Before the rebellion in Canada, there were certain lands appropriated for the sustainment of the Protestant faith. After the rebellion—and he regretted to say that we never did any of those things till blood had been shed—an Act was passed in that House, by which these clergy reserves were taken away, and at the present day these clergy reserves, which were meant for the Protestant Church, were given for the sustainment and payment of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada. And who consented to that? The right hon. Members for Ripon and Tamworth, and the Bishop of London. The bishops all consented to the passing of that Bill, except the Bishop of Exeter, who looked upon it as a sacrilege. Why not apply a similar principle to Ireland? One objection he expected to hear urged against interference with the temporalities of the Irish Church was, that such interference would be a violation of the fifth article of the Union. Some hon. Members would contend that they were bound by that article. Now, he said that, independently of the obligation of that article, it would be; bad policy to make any article of the Union a reason for refusing the Irish people any just concession. Nothing could be contrived more effectual as an inducement to agitate for repeal. But in that fifth article there was no mention of the temporalities of the Irish Church. It provided, "That the two Churches were to be united in government, discipline, and faith." Not one word was said about the temporalities of the Church; but, even if there were, it might be altered, as had already been done in the case of the fourth article. No man with a shadow of common sense would see a ground of objection in the fifth article. On this point he would quote the observations of the right hon. Member for Tamworth, made in 1844, who said— It may be asked, are compact and authority to be conclusive and decisive on this subject? If we are convinced that the social welfare of Ireland requires an alteration of the law, and a departure from the compact, are our legislative functions to be so bound up that the compact must be maintained in spite of our conviction? I, for one, am not prepared to contend for such a proposition. He thought that after such an opinion from so great an authority as the right hon. Baronet the Member for Tamworth, no man of common sense would attempt to defend the Irish Church upon the fifth article of Union. One other objection he expected to hear to his Motion, and that was, that the Church should not be robbed of its possessions because it was the exclusive possessor of religious truth. He must say, with respect to that argument, that it was nothing more nor less than what the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire had termed an organised hypocrisy. If it were anything else, why had it not been acted upon in Canada, in Malta, in Hindostan, and in the vast territories which we had recently added to our empire? He broadly asserted that the State had no right to set itself up as the judge of religious faith. When Gentlemen talked of Protestant principle, he asked them if they knew what it meant? If it meant persecution, then he was no Protestant; but there was a right Protestant principle to which he adhered, and which had been consecrated at the Reformation, and that was the right of private judgment. In asking the House to go into Committee to consider the temporalities of the Church of Ireland, he had no intention of abolishing the Irish Church. He was convinced that every useful reform must be founded in mutual forbearance. He did not wish to interfere with vested rights, but was anxious to have the congregational plan adopted if practicable, as being much more expedient than the present territorial system. He found that in the diocese of Chester one bishop, until lately, presided over 1,500,000 souls, while in Ireland there were ten bishops to 800,000. That was to say, that in Ireland there was one bishop to each 118 benefices, and in England one to 410. Gentlemen were in the habit of crying out, "More bishops:" his cry was "More working clergy." He should propose, if they went into Committee, to reduce the Church of Ireland to one archbishop, at 4,000l. a year, and the ten bishops to five, at 2,000l. each. Many, he knew, would object to this; but he looked upon it as a matter of compromise. He believed that such a plan would meet the approval of Parliament. The noble Lord the First Minister of the Crown had already given in his adhesion to the congregational system. The noble Lord, in February, 1844, said— I concur in the plan propounded, as it is said, by Dr. Whatey, the Archbishop of Dublin, for making it a church of congregations, not parishes, as under the present system. I think the Protestant Church ought to be fully provided for, but I do not believe that anything like the amount at present allotted to it is necessary for the purpose. If you compare the amount allotted to the Irish Church with that of Scotland, and in most continental countries, you will say it is not necessary. It might be said that this was not a proper time for entertaining the question. If it were not, when would be the proper time? In Committee he should propose the following resolution:— That it is the opinion of this Committee that any surplus that may remain, after fully providing for the spiritual instruction of the Protestants of Ireland should be applied locally to the education of all classes. He had now, at some length, introduced this Motion. He trusted that the House would not think at unnecessary length; but before he sat down he must warn the Government that they need not look upon the present state of Ireland as one affording any real grounds of satisfaction. They had heard of large and comprehensive measures for that country; but all Ministers had done upon succeeding to office was to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and to pass an amended poor-law, following in their amendment the plan of an eminent pathologist, who attempted to feed a starving dog with the produce of its own tail. When the poor-law failed, they passed a rate in aid. The Government had lately had a bloodless triumph, and had paralysed agitation for the present, but they must not think that in doing so they had extinguished the feelings or sympathies of a nation. He warned them not to mistake the silence of famine and despair for the tranquillity of happiness and content. If he were allied to the Government, or had weight with them, he would not urge that this was not the proper time, but would advise them to seize the opportunity that Providence presented, and boldly to put this question which was at the root of all the heartburning and discontent which had too long prevailed in Ireland, on the footing which their former professions and the history of their party justified the people in expecting from them.

MR. REYNOLDS

seconded the Motion. Motion made, and Question proposed— That this House will resolve itself into a Committee of the whole House, to consider the present state of the Temporalities of the Church of Ireland.

MR. MOORE

said, on taking his seat in that House, he had bound himself by a solemn oath to do nothing to subvert the Church of these realms as by law established, and that he had been frequently reminded in the Session that in the opinion of many that oath imposed upon Roman Catholic Members a different obligation from that imposed upon Protestant representatives in the consideration of Church subjects. Now, a legal oath could, in no circumstances, amount to more than a simple recognition of that which, in the mind of the imposer, was an existing truth—an existing obligation. In a court of law, for example, the oath of a witness that he would tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, amounted to nothing more than a solemn recognition of the existing law of God, that we ought not to bear false witness against our neighbour. In no circumstances whatever did the law recognise a promise to do that which was in itself wrong. It was true that the law, by an oath, imposed an additional obligation and great additional responsibility; but it was not within its scope or power to make right wrong, or to make that criminal in an individual which it held to be innocent in itself. Therefore, the law could not impose upon him any further restraints than were held to be of moral obligation by every conscientious and right-thinking individual. No doubt there might be Roman Catholics who, on account of their oath, entertained objections to interfere with the Protestant Established Church; but he, who looked upon the Established Church as a matter of civil policy, saw nothing in the oath he took to place him in a different position from other Members of that House. He admitted that the Church of Ireland, the abuses of which he assailed, was a part of the Church of this realm as by law established, and it was in that character he assailed it. It was a perversion of terms to call it the Church of Ireland. It was the English Church in Ireland. It was the representative of English power, was created for English purposes, and maintained and fostered by crimes and abuses that were its disgrace as an establishment. It was a part of the Church of England that was diseased and rotten—a festering limb so corrupt and putrescent, that it stank in the nostrils, of the entire community. And would it be said, because he wished to cut off a diseased and rotten limb, that he was asking to injure the health of the other parts of the body? Having said thus much as to the obligations which lay on him in consequence of the oath he had taken, he would shortly refer to the subject now before the House. He had carefully read all the speeches that had been delivered on this subject by the most distinguished individuals in that and the other House during late years in favour of the Irish Church; but he had never heard or read one in which it was attempted to defend that Church on its merits, or to maintain that it had fulfilled the great purposes for which it was established. They had pleaded in its favour the Statute of Limitations; but not one had said that it had ever effected the object for which it was kept up—the spiritual welfare of the people. The favourite argument used was that the State had no right to interfere with the temporalities of the Irish Church. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ripon, in 1835, said those temporalities ought to be kept sacred for the maintenance of the Protestant religion, and that the Legislature had no right to appropriate them to other than their original purposes; and the right hon. Gentleman stated that, with a few slight qualifications, he concurred in the general views expressed by Hallam. The hon. Member for the University of Oxford declared that he entertained similar opinions. But, in opposition to these sentiments, they had the opinion of a statesman who was perhaps the highest human authority on such a subject—he meant Mr. Burke, who held, that it was in the essence of every trust to be considered accountable; and he said, there must be certain conditions to justify Parliamentary interference with such property. The object, he said, must be a good one; the abuse most be a great one; it must be habitual, and not accidental; and, lastly, it must be incurable. Now, all these conditions would be found existing in the present case. Their object was to pacify and tranquillise Ireland, and to secure the prosperity of their fellow-subjects in that country, instead of having them as discontented and dangerous neighbours. They were asked to consider this as a question not merely of humanity, but of safety; not as a question of justice, but of self-interest; not as a question of honour and character, but really as a question of empire. The hon. Gentleman here dwelt at some length upon the numerous evils that had flowed from the Irish Church, describing the abuses as greater in point of duration and iniquity than any that had ever disgraced the annals of a Christian country. The records of the Spanish Inquisition might furnish more striking circumstances of atrocity; but they would fill but a few pages of that blood-stained volume which history had sent down of the wrongs committed in Ireland. The Church of Ireland was an act of fraud in its operation, and its establishment was an act of national oppression. If one day's undisputed possession was necessary to constitute a title by prescription, then the records of this country would attest that from the first day of its foundation that prescription was never acknowledged or acquiesced in by the people. But even if the title of that Church were as clear as it was vicious and unfair, and even if its history were as free from blame as it was buried under the memory of the outrages with which its progress was associated, still it had not accomplished the end for which it was originally designed. The Act of Elizabeth and of the first reformers was founded on a great and comprehensive system of policy, having for its object the complete extermination of Popery in Ireland, and the bringing of the inhabitants of both countries, England, and Ireland, within the pale of the same religious communion. In that spirit the church militant was established in Ireland. This was the view which Mr. Hallam took of the subject. That able writer observed that the ecclesiastical polity of a nation must take its origin from the choice of the people, and not of the Government; and that it should exist with the people and for the people. This truth was so manifest to the Government of Elizabeth, that she never contemplated the separation of a great majority of the nation from the ordinances of the established religion. It was presumed that the Church and the Commonwealth were two denominations of the same society. Such were the real ends for which the Church of Ireland was founded by the first reformers. It was not to be a source of wealth to the few, but to be a benefit and a blessing to the many; it was not to be the patrimony of a small sect, but it was intended to accomplish the conversion of a whole people, and not to separate the country into hostile factions, and perpetuate disorder, disunion, and disaffection in a community through successive generations. These being the intentions of the first reformers, he would ask whether they had been carried out? Had their endeavours succeeded? What was the state of the Protestant Church in Ireland? What had been the advancement of those Protestant doctrines for the propagation of which such vast sums had been expended, and in the defence of which successive generations had been degraded and oppressed? Although the revenues of the Irish Church were derived from funds originally established by Catholics for Catholic purposes, not one farthing was now applied to the religious uses of the great mass of the Irish people. But, setting the claims of that people aside, and considering those revenues to be solely for the maintenance of the Protestant Church, it appeared that on comparing the aggregate amount of the congregations in Ireland with those of England and of Scotland, the funds appropriated to the Irish Church were three times as great as those appropriated to the Church of England, and nine times as great as those appropriated to the Church of Scotland. The hon. Member then proceeded to point out the proportion which the Roman Catholics bore to the Protestants in Ireland. In Ulster there were 518,000 Protestants, and 1,955,123 Catholics; in Leinster there were 178,000 Protestants, and 1,064,681 Catholics; in Munster there were 112,000 Protestants, and 2,312,000 Catholics; and in Connaught there were only 45,000 Protestants, and 1,188,568 Catholics. But even this statement would fail to convey to the mind an idea of the enormity of the grievance of which the Catholics had to complain. He himself paid tithes in eight parishes. In the whole of those eight parishes there was not one church, one glebe, or one resident clergyman! He did not believe that he had one Protestant tenant in any of those eight parishes; he was not aware that there was a Protestant at all in any of them, and he did not believe that divine service according to the Church ritual had ever been celebrated in any one of those eight parishes since the Reformation. These cases were by no means uncommon; and yet a right hon. Gentleman of great eminence, the Recorder of Dublin, had, on a former occasion, said in that House that he did not think that such a sum as the revenue of the Irish Church realised should be grudged to support twelve resident noblemen and 2,000 educated gentleman scattered about the country. Was it possible to conceive a greater perversity of intellect, or a more obtuse dulness of apprehension, than for-any man to speak thus on such a subject? And yet there were many who could see nothing extraordinary in that passage, for it was only a very candid avowal of an existing act—that property set aside for the holiest of purposes—that the patrimony of the poor—was in truth appropriated for maintaining twelve resident noblemen and 2,000 educated gentlemen scattered about the country. Admitting (what he utterly denied) that these funds were originally intended for the purpose of establishing the Protestant religion, still that purpose had not been accomplished. It had failed as it ought to do, and yet the advocates of the Church had the audacity to sot up a claim to these large endowments as if they had succeeded. It was because the Church had not succeeded that it was greatly endowed. If it had accomplished its purpose it would have been the poorest Church in the world instead of being the richest. The more the Protestant Church in Ireland diminished, the richer would be the ministers of that Church. With regard to the two other conditions described by Mr. Burke, namely, that the abuse should be habitual and not accidental, he (Mr. Moore) need scarcely say, if the present state of the Church of Ireland were an abuse of the original purpose of its institution, that the abuse was habitual and not accidental, and that it was incurable as it now stood constituted. He would now present to the House the claims of five-sixths of the people of Ireland to the right of receiving religious instruction in life, and religious consolation in death. At present, the pastors of that vast body of people derived their scanty subsistence from the contributions of starving men—were, in fact, dependent for their bread upon the caprice and the passions of an ignorant and impetuous people. He maintained that, in every country, the prevailing religion of the people should be the religion of the State, and should be supported at the public charge. He did not call upon the House to accept this doctrine upon his authority, but would give them the opinions of eminent writers on the subject. [The hon. Member hero quoted the opinions of Dr. Paley, Bishop Warburton, and Dr. Arnold, to the effect that the State ought to adopt the religion of the majority of the people.] The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford had been obliged to avow the same principle; but he endeavoured to escape from the application of it to Ireland, by saying that the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland had placed the Roman Catholic population in a minority, as regarded the empire at large, and that, so long as the Act of Union remained un-repealed, and this numerical inferiority continued, he should oppose the establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in Ireland. This might have been good logic five centuries ago, but it was liable to strong objection in the present day. According to this theory, the title of the Protestant Church in Ireland dated only from the Act of Union, and every law passed in its support previous to that period was a direct act of tyranny on the part of the Legislature. According to this theory, if India, in process of time, should become an integral portion of the empire (which it almost was already), it would be a matter for grave consideration whether the Archbishop of Canterbury should not become a Mahometan or a Brahmin, and whether the House of Commons should not offer up prayers to Vishnu, because a majority of the empire was of that religion. But Bishop Warburton had laid it down that the majority of the people of England should determine the religion of England, and that the majority of the people of Scotland should determine the religion of Scotland; and, consequently, unless reason and right became folly and wrong by crossing the Channel, the majority of the people of Ireland ought to determine the religion of Ireland. But, strange to say, he found the right hon. Gentleman in the very same speech in which he opposed the application of this principle to Ireland, objecting to the appropriation of any part of the revenues of the Irish Church, on account of the dread he entertained lest any portion of the Irish people should be dependent upon the voluntary principle for their religious instruction. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ripon also stated that the voluntary system was one of the greatest curses which could fall upon the working population of Ireland, and that he should be sorry to see it established in that country. But the fact was, that in the case of the great hulk of the people the voluntary system was in operation in Ireland already. The evils of that system had been described with great force and clearness by Dr. Paley. Was there any one acquainted with Ireland to whose mind this passage did not at once suggest the existing relation of the Irish people and the Irish clergy? He appealed to the House, too, whether every dishonourable suspicion, every gross insinuation, every scurrilous sneer that was from timo to time directed against the Irish Roman Catholic clergy, did not hear with irresistible force against the voluntary system? In a letter which appeared in the Times in 1847, it was stated that the Irish Roman Catholic priest had a direct interest in encouraging imprudent marriages and an increase of population, in order that he might finger more fees. And why was this? Because of the unnatural law which handed over the whole revenues of the Church to the clergy of a mere handful of the population, while it consigned the real pastors of the people to depend for their bread upon the alms of the beggar and the liberality of the poor. Taking a more wise and sound view of the relation which ought to exist between the clergy and the people, Dr. Stock, an Irish bishop, almost fifty years ago, showed that in every popular commotion the Romish priest had been—and, until a better system was adopted, always would be—found in the ranks of sedition, and in opposition to Government; and for this reason, that the Irish peasant loved revolution, because he felt the weight of poverty, and the priest was obliged to follow the popular wave lest he be left on the beach to perish. This was, in some degree, a narrow and shortsighted view of the question, because the priest from his position did not so much follow the popular wave as formed a part of it. The description of the voluntary system by Dr. Paley, conveyed a faint and feeble picture of the degraded and false position in which the Roman Catholic priest in Ireland was placed by the relation in which he stood to those whom it was his duty to instruct, advise, and reprove. As one illustration of this degraded position, he mentioned the case of a Roman Catholic clergyman who, during the recent famine, handed to a Protestant minister who sat in the Committee with him a list of his parishioners who had made application for relief, but who did not need it, saying, "You are independent of these, and can resist their applications. I am dependent upon them, and I care not." As a further illustration of this position, he would quote a passage from a speech delivered by Mr. Lambert, in the House of Commons, in 1834, on the subject of repeal, in which he said that to such an extent had the agitation upon that question been carried, that— The venerable and most respected Roman Catholic Bishop of Waterford had been assailed and pelted with stones. Another bishop had been protected solely by the interference of the sheriff, and this merely because he differed from the crowd on the subject of repeal. The Catholic Bishop of Kinshilla shared a similar fate, and the clergy in general were treated in the same way whenever they refused to lend themselves to the delusions of the people on the subject of repeal. He did not quote this with the view of showing that they were not sincere in their agitation, but to show that members of that body who conscientiously objected to agitation, might be forced into it by the passions, caprices, and will of their flocks, upon whom they were dependent. A noble Lord, in another place, while he commended the zeal of the Roman Catholic clergy in discharge of their duties, had complained that they did not display the same amount of zeal in support of the law. But when noble Lords and hon. Members spoke thus, did not their consciences whisper a word of warning to them? Did it never occur to them to ask themselves if those men were not friendly to the Government, had the Government been friendly to them? and which owed the other the earliest and deepest debt of retribution? How did it happen that the Government distrusted the oaths of Roman Catholics in political cases, while they did not distrust them upon others? It was because they knew that religious heart burnings and religious jealousies were at the bottom of Irish political disturbances. It was quite true that the Roman Catholics of Ireland as a body were disaffected towards the Government. They had a right to be disaffected, and ought to be so. The Church Establishment of Ireland not only lay at the root of every social evil in Ireland, but it kept alive bitter memories which every lover of his country would wish to see obliterated. The noble Lord at the head of the Government, in 1835, said—" You cannot refuse to redress this great legislative wrong, and yet resist the repeal of the Union." "I shall resist the repeal of the Union," said the noble Lord in 1848, "and leave this great legislative wrong as it stands." By the confession of the First Minister of the Crown they had no right to hold the government of Ireland; and, in point of fact, no constitutional Government did exist in that country—which they held by the sword alone—and why? Because they had declared a legislative war against the religion of the whole people, and because though they no longer dared wage open war with the Roman Catholics as enemies, they had not the heart and manliness to treat with them as friends. The fact was, that hon. Members came forward to vote against their own consciences in this matter in deference to the prejudices and bigotry of their constituents. Conduct such as that was unworthy of the legislators of the greatest empire under the sun. If they but once resolved to consider the question without fear, favour, or prejudice, but solely as honour and conscience dictated, he was persuaded they would lay the foundation of a new social system in Ireland, and consolidate the institutions of the empire at large; that they would establish peace between Church and State, which—let statute-books say what they liked—had been at war for centuries, and in the end produce such a union between the two countries as every honest Englishman must desire to see, but such as never yet had existed.

SIR G. GREY

Sir, I wish at once to relieve the apprehensions which seem to be entertained by the hon. and gallant Member for Middlesex, that I would, on the part of Her Majesty's Government, meet his Motion by moving the previous question. Looking not only to the inconvenience arising from the time at which he asks the House to go into Committee, but to the practical effects of the object which the hon. and gallant Gentleman has in view in the plan which he proposes, I must say that I am not prepared to go into the consideration of that plan at present, and I have therefore no objection to state at once to the hon. and gallant Gentleman that I will vote against his Motion. The hon. and gallant Gentleman warned the Government that they were not to congratulate themselves on the condition of Ireland, and that the condition of that country is not one for deep and unmingled satisfaction. I deeply regret feeling obliged to state that I concur with the hon. and gal- lant Gentleman in this view, and that the condition of Ireland at the present moment is one which I consider it impossible to contemplate without pain and regret; but I must say that I do not see, in the Motion of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, brought forward under present circumstances, any means for effecting the slightest alleviation of those social evils under which that country is suffering, and to the remedying of which we ought, as far as we possibly can, to direct our attention. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Mayo also states that he supports this Motion, though I must say that I heard very little in his speech in support of it, or approving of the plan which the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Middlesex has submitted to the House. The hon. Member for Mayo supports the Motion, as I understand him, because he thinks it is calculated to remove domestic disagreement, and to alleviate political disaffection in Ireland; but, for ray part, I must say that I cannot see in this Motion anything except a tendency to create domestic disagreement, and to extend political disaffection. I believe that less of disaffection, or political feeling, exists at this moment in Ireland than at any former period, and that our efforts ought therefore to be directed rather to the social improvement of the country. The hon. and gallant Gentleman, the Member for Middlesex occupied the time of the House during a considerable part of his speech in quoting speeches delivered at different periods by different Members of the House and of the Government, He did me the honour to quote—but I must say rather erroneously—some words that I had used in 1844 while sitting on the opposite side of the House. He said that an ominous silence had been preserved from that time to the present by the Members of the Government; and that since the Motion of my noble Friend at that time to the present moment, not a word had been heard on the subject from this side of the House. The hon. and gallant Gentleman complained of the want of memory that seemed to prevail among the Members of the present Government with regard to this question; but I must complain of something like a want of memory on his own part, as after the care which he has evidently devoted to the pages of Hansard, he could scarcely have overlooked the discussion in 1845 on the measure introduced by the right hon. Baronet then at the head of the Government with regard to the College of Maynooth. [Mr. B. OSBORNE: I mentioned it.] If he had taken the trouble of referring to the speech which I made on that occasion, he would have seen that I then repeated the opinions that I had before expressed on this subject: but as it happens that these opinions are not in accordance with those which the hon. and gallant Gentleman now wishes to express, he has not looked into them as fully as he might otherwise have done. Otherwise, he would have seen that the opinions which I have uniformly expressed on this subject, are the same as those which I now maintain. He would have seen that I have been at all times against the policy of establishing in any country an Established Church exclusively endowed, such Church being the Church of a minority of the people. But I ask, is there anything in the scheme of the hon. and gallant Gentleman that at all approaches to a remedy for that state of things as applied to Ireland? What does the hon. and gallant Gentleman propose? He proposes to follow the example of one who, it is no disrespect to the hon. and gallant Gentleman to say, was a more distinguished Member of this House even than himself. In 1834, Lord Stanley brought forward a measure for reducing the number of bishops in the Established Church in Ireland from twenty to ten; and the hon. and gallant Gentleman now proposes to follow that example by reducing the number to five. But does the hon. and gallant Member propose to endow the Roman Catholic Church? Does he propose to treat this as a question of money and not as one of feeling; and does he call such an arrangement as he proposes a perpetual settlement of the question. The hon. and gallant Gentleman must recollect that this question was also discussed at the close of the year 1848, and that he does himself an injustice in not mentioning that he then brought forward a plan for the settlement of it. The hon. and gallant Gentleman might have added that I then stated, in reply to him, the same views which I now entertain on the subject. But the hon. and gallant Gentleman has not brought forward identically the same plan now which he then submitted to the House. It is, to be sure, substantially the same plan; but I should be glad to know whether he does not now withhold a part of his project. The hon. and gallant Gentleman stated last year that the plan which he proposed was intended to be but a temporary experiment, and that his object was the ultimate abolition of the Church of Ireland; that he was willing to take what he then asked for as an instalment, but no more. Now, I should wish to know, is the hon. and gallant Gentleman in the confidence of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and is he prepared to state that the scheme which he now proposes will be received with satisfaction by them as a final settlement of the question, and that it will remove all cause of disagreement from among the people of Ireland? I am unwilling to trouble the House with any extracts from former speeches of mine, but I wish to read one extract from the speech delivered by me in reply to the hon. and gallant Gentleman on the 29th of July last. I stated on that occasion that— I am not prepared to deny, but affirm, that the existence of an exclusive Protestant Church in Ireland—the Protestant Episcopalians being a small minority only of the population—is an anomaly unjustifiable in its origin, and indefensible now. I know no other country in Europe in which the same experiment has been made—in which the same attempt has been carried out; and I am quite prepared to say that the wisdom and policy of the attempt in Ireland must be condemned by its results."^* And here I must say that I agree much more nearly with the hon. Member for Mayo, than with the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Middlesex. If I understand the hon. Member right, and I attended very carefully to his speech, he did not appear to me to support the scheme of the hon. and gallant Gentleman at all. If I did not misunderstand the hon. Gentleman, I think he wished to show the impolicy and the inexpediency of having the clergy of the great majority of the people unendowed, and dependent on the voluntary offerings of their flocks; and, alluding to this subject, I said, in continuation of the extract which I have just read— I think it an unfortunate circumstance, materially affecting the peace of Ireland, and the efficacy of the Government, that the Roman Catholic clergy are dependent on those sources for their subsistence to which the hon. and gallant Member for Middlesex has referred. After alluding to the qualification which, I maintained, the hon. and gallant Member ought to have introduced in his statement of the views of my noble Friend, I referred to what had fallen from the hon. Member for Limerick, and said— I very much agree with the hon. Member for Limerick in believing that the time would ^* Hansard (Third Series), Vol. C, pp. 993–93. come—and I care not under what Ministry—when public opinion in this country, having altered through long experience, would enable a well-matured and well-considered plan to be brought forward, and procure for it the sanction of Parliament. I hope the hon. Member is not too sanguine in the expectation that that time is not far distant. I, for one, shall hail its arrival, and, whether in office or out of office, no one will be more ready than myself to concur in any practical plan for the accomplishment of what I believe would be a great benefit to Ireland. I will not trouble the House with any further extracts from what I said on that occasion, though I might quote much more of a similar tendency; but I think I have read enough to clear myself from the charge of having maintained an ominous silence on this question since 1844. Coupling what I have here referred to with my speech in 1844—though I must complain that the hon. and gallant Gentlemen has left out the very pith of my observations on that occasion—I think it is clear that I have all through maintained the same opinion against an Established Church exclusively endowed, being the Church of the minority of the people. That was also the language which I maintained on the discussion of the Maynooth Bill in 1845—a Bill to which I gave my cordial support. I said that I hailed that Bill as being the first recognition of a very important principle—namely, the recognition of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, and still more that I regarded it as a first step towards the abandonment of what was to be regarded as a stigma on the Irish people—the exclusive maintenance in a Catholic country of a Protestant Church, and the total disregard of the opinions of the great majority of the people on such a subject. I added that I was not for agitating this question without any hope of the adoption of a practical measure on the subject, and that I thought the Government ought not to be urged to bring forward a measure on the subject until they could entertain reasonable grounds of success. Since that time, the subject has received the earnest attention of the Government, and it has been their desire that it should be satisfactorily settled. But when the hon. Member for Mayo speaks of the prejudices of the people of this country being the only obstacle to the satisfactory settlement of the question, and says that the great majority of the Members coming here are influenced in voting against that settlement from a fear of the prejudices of their constituents, I must say that there are other great and conclusive barriers to this endow- ment of the Roman Catholic clergy to which he has not alluded, one of which is the avowed, the repeatedly avowed, resolution and expression of opinion on the part of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and clergy of Ireland, never to consent to any scheme by which their Church would be endowed and connected with the State. When we had the great body of the Roman Catholics of Ireland petitioning Parliament to admit them to the privileges of the constitution, the case was very different. Here we have the great majority of the people of this country and of Scotland—I believe under a mistaken opinion—opposed to the endowment of the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland, while at the same time we have the great body of the hierarchy and clergy, and I believe of the laity also, of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, united in resisting any such proposition. I ask, thou, whether it is not plain, whatever the opinions of the Members of the Government may be upon the question, that acceding to the proposition of the hon. and gallant Member on this occasion, would have the effect of giving rise to much acrimonious debate, and would be the source of great animosity and opposition throughout the country, while in the end the measure, even if it could be carried, would be rejected, instead of being accepted as a boon by those for whose benefit it would be intended? On the other hand, I am not prepared now, any more than I was last year, to go into a Committee with the hon. and gallant Gentleman with a view to cripple the Church of Ireland in the first instance, by a measure intended only as an instalment towards its destruction, though the hon. and gallant Gentleman has not now avowed that part of his plan. I do not know that it is necessary for me to go into the objections which the hon. and gallant Member has anticipated. With regard to the first of these objections—that referring to the nature of church property—I am not prepared to agree to what the hon. and gallant Gentleman quoted as the opinion of Lord Brougham at some former period, that the property of the Church and the pay of the Army stood precisely in the same position. [Mr. B. OSBORNE: Sir James Mackintosh said the same thing.] I do not know whether Lord Brougham or Sir James Mackintosh said so or not. I cannot agree to such a position thus broadly stated, although I admit the right of Parliament to make alterations with regard to the distribution of church property, which it would not do in respect to private property. With regard to the question said to have been asked by the Marquess of Lansdowne, I have only to say that the Church is made for the people, and that its only object should be the promotion of the true interests of the people; and I think that a Church which fails in effecting that object, fails in the purpose for which it was established. Another objection, that with regard to the operation of the 5th Article of the Act of Union, is, I think, not entitled to much weight, as I consider that article no more a bar to dealing with the question now, than it was when Lord Stanley brought forward his measures. But the hon. and gallant Gentleman said, and I think truly, that if we were beginning de novo, nobody would be for establishing such a Church Establishment as that now existing in Ireland. But I must again remind the hon. and gallant Gentleman and the House, of the difference between dealing with a Church which has been established for near 300 years, and a new arrangement. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Mayo said, that the history of the Church of Ireland has been written in characters of blood. I think, however, that the hon. Gentleman will regret having referred to acts of past times, which nobody could be now found to sanction. We are now dealing with the Church as it is, and not as it was in bygone years; and I cannot but regret that the hon. Gentleman, in referring to the characteristics of the Church of Ireland, should not have borne testimony, as no doubt he could do, to the indefatigable exertions of the Protestant clergy of Ireland, in union with their brethren in this country, in affording relief to the suffering poor of their neighbourhood irrespective of creed or party. Sir, the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Middlesex, in an episode relating to the Irish Society, the taste of which I must leave to the judgment of the House, reminded me that by virtue of a former subscription I was still a member of the Irish Society. If that be so, I can only say that I see no reason to regret it. The Irish Society is in no way to be considered as a part of the Irish Established Church. It is not the Church. It is a private society, consisting of a number of voluntary members; and the hon. and gallant Member has no right whatsoever to question its mode of expenditure of its funds for any purposes to which it may think fit to apply them. It was intended to supply, and I think it did supply, a deficiency which existed in the Irish Established Church. Its object was to send out as teachers and readers amongst the people men who could speak the Irish language, and who could thereby spread religious and moral instruction amongst them. That object I believe to be a good one. But if the hon. and gallant Gentleman intends to charge me with having any sympathy with, or giving any assistance to, those who are said to—I don't say that they have done so, but that they are said to—withhold relief from any distressed persons, except upon the condition of such persons leaving the faith in which they were brought up, and to which they are attached, I can only say I utterly repudiate such a charge. And, further, I beg to say that I have no reason to believe that any person belonging to the Irish Society would be guilty of such conduct. The hon. and gallant Gentleman quoted part of a speech made by a rev. gentleman at one of the meetings of the society. If the report of that speech is correct, I can only say I have no sympathy whatever with the sentiments to which he gave expression. The hon. Gentleman also said, that the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had expressed an opinion, in some letter, to the effect that the loyalty of the Irish Catholics was not to be trusted. Sir, I don't believe the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland ever said any such thing. I don't know from what letter the hon. and gallant Gentleman quoted. His information is so exceedingly varied and extensive, that it is very difficult to follow him through all he says. But I do not think any man is more perfectly free from anything like sectarianism or religious party spirit than the present Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. I believe there is a very general sentiment of loyalty and attachment to the Sovereign of these nations prevailing amongst the Roman Catholic population of Ireland. There are, of course, exceptions, as we have lately seen. But there is a prevailing sentiment of loyalty and attachment throughout the great mass of the people, which would not justify us in suspecting any class, as such, of disloyalty. Sir, I do not mean to defend the Irish Established Church from the attacks that have been made upon it, because I see that the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the university of Dublin and his hon. Colleague near him are anxious to do so, and they are better fitted for the task than I am. But I was anxious to state what I believe to be the great and prominent difficulty in the way of a settlement of this question; and until we have some ground for a reasonable hope that we shall be able to submit to Parliament a measure likely to be successful, I do not think that it would be the duty of Government to accede to a proposition which would be likely to lead only to a discussion of an acrimonious nature, and not to any practical result. I, therefore, feel it my duty to oppose the hon. and gallant Gentleman's Motion. But before sitting down, I have one word more to say. The hon. and gallant Gentleman alluded to my noble Friend the First Lord of the Treasury's absence from this debate. My noble Friend's absence is owing to domestic causes. But I can assure the House that it was his intention to be present this evening, and to have stated his views upon the Motion of the hon. Gentleman.

MR. B. B. ROCHE

said, that the right hon. Baronet, while he bad totally abandoned the Church, had not at all succeeded in patching up Whig inconsistency. The right hon. Baronet had, however, raised a question from which he (Mr. Roche) felt bound to dissent. The right hon. Baronet admitted that the Church Establishment in Ireland was a great injustice; but be thought that that injustice could be done away with by planting another Church Establishment alongside the present. Now, instead of that being a countervailing advantage, it was obvious that when au impoverished country complained of the burden of a rich Church Establishment, the way to remedy the grievance was not by giving her two instead of one such establishment. Almost the only answer of the right hon. Baronet to the able and convincing speech of his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Middlesex, was comprised in the old argument that this was not the proper time—that the social state of Ireland was such as to render it inadmissible to deal with this question now, and that it must be postponed until that country was in a more prosperous and comfortable condition. It was, on the contrary, because Ireland had been disturbed, and because her social state demanded improvement, that the Government were now called upon to apply themselves to the removal of the greatest of those grievances which had caused Ireland to be disturbed. Everybody knew that the Church Establishment in Ireland was one of the main foundations on which the repeal agitation had been originated. If Ireland was socially degraded, would they not be likely to improve the social condition of the people by taking from their shoulders a great political oppression? As night followed day, so would social degradation follow upon political slavery. The right hon. Gentleman had completely given up the Irish Church in argument, though not practically, and it was therefore needless to argue against it; and they bad not yet had a single speech from its able defenders on the opposite side of the House calling for a reply. He wished to know from them upon what ground was it that they would defend that Church in Ireland? Was it upon the ground of religious truth? [An Hon. MEMBER: Yes.] An hon. Gentleman said it was. Then they were in that House required to assert religious truth by an Act of Parliament. They had Hindooism in India—they had the Roman Catholic religion endowed at Malta—they had the revenues of the Church of Lower Canada contributing to the support of the Roman Catholic religion—and they had the Presbyterian Church established in Scotland. How then could they say it was to maintain religious truth that they had a Protestant Church established in Ireland? They had established these religions over the empire, because they were the religions of the majority of the people. They had established the Presbyterian religion in Scotland because it was that of the majority, and he, therefore, asked why it was that they insisted on establishing in Ireland the religion of the minority, and of a very small minority? There was published last week. The Book of Common Prayer, printed from the manuscript originally annexed to Stat. 17 and 18 car. II., c. 6 (Ir.), and now preserved in the Rolls Office, Dublin, by Archibald John Stephens, barrister-at-law, under the distinguished patronage of the Ecclesiastical History Society, in which society he found there were three archbishops and forty three bishops; and as showing the literary acquirements required for a bishopric, it was mentioned that one of the right rev. Prelates complained that the Greek language was irksome, as it was written from right to left. Although it was well known that the Irish language was the vernacular tongue, still no arrangement was made for having the bishops or priests acquainted with that language, or the Book of Common Prayer translated into it. It was only within the last fifteen years that a class was established in Trinity College for the study of the Irish language. They had had the Irish people speaking very generally the Irish language. But they had a Church established there for centuries, which, so far from disseminating the Scriptures, or advancing the religion it professed to teach, had caused to be enacted that no Irishman, who did speak the Irish language, should be inducted to a cure until proclamation had been three times made to see if an Englishman could be got. The evident purpose for which the Church had been established was confiscation—the purpose of becoming, as it were, a draw farm for England. He maintained that it had been used for political purposes. Did it elevate the people in the social scale, or tend to make them more moral? It had no such effects; and it was only making hypocrites of the people to induce them to support a Church whose doctrines they believed to be untrue, and whose preaching they declared to be unsound. Ought the Irish Church then to be maintained on political grounds? He was not aware of any one advantage to be gained by doing so. No one would deny that already that Church had greatly disturbed the tranquillity of Ireland. Somebody once said that the Protestants, after the Reformation, went to Ireland with the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other; that they drew the sword, but that they forgot to open the Bible. In fact, the whole system of aggravated outrage in Ireland could be traced to the Church as a political establishment. Captain Rock, the Peep-o'-day-boys, and the many other such illegal bodies, all had their origin in tithes. As long as Popish spade and scythe Shall dig, and cut the Sasenagh tythe, And Popish purses pay the tolls, On Heaven's road for Sasenagh souls; As long as millions shall kneel down, To ask of thousands for their own; While thousands proudly turn away, And to the millions answer 'Nay;' So long the merry reign shall be Of Captain Rock and his family. The wild justice of revenge had shown itself against the tithe proctors, and when they virtually made the landlord the tithe proctor, he was but too often sacrificed in the same way. If, then, the Irish Church was not be maintained on religious nor political grounds, he knew not upon what other ground. But he knew that the great majority of the Irish people had made up their minds that that large Establishment should be, if not altogether abrogated, very much mitigated, and that object he should use his best exertions to attain.

MR. GEORGE A. HAMILTON

said,^* that although he was unable to express his concurrence in many of the observations of the right hon. Baronet the Secretary for the Home Department, or indeed, in the general tenor of his speech, he felt bound to offer his acknowledgments for the course which the right hon. Gentleman had declared it to be the intention of the Government to take, namely, to meet the Motion before the House by a direct negative. It would be impossible, he (Mr. Hamilton) thought, for Her Majesty's Government to take a more fatal step than by showing any hesitation in reference to this Motion, to give rise to a new agitation of the Church question in Ireland. Although he (Mr. Hamilton) was not, and never should be, afraid to enter upon a discussion of the case of the Church in Ireland, he would not hesitate to acknowledge that he felt regret that the Motion had been brought forward by his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Middlesex at the present time. He was sorry, because he thought it must have come within the observation of every hon. Member, that since the acrimonious discussions which used to take place every Session formerly on the subject of the Church in Ireland had been abandoned, he might say by common consent, there had been a remarkable subsidence of party feeling in Ireland; and he was afraid the renewal of these discussions would have the effect of reviving that party feeling. He would not follow the hon. and gallant Member in the statement he had made of the ancient abuses of the Church in Ireland, further than to say, that if it was the case that the Church in former times had failed to carry out its important objects, as fully as perhaps it might have done, the failure was attributable to those very abuses; and the existence of those abuses was attributable not to the Church itself, but to the fact that it was then used by Government and this country as a political engine, and not as a religious institution: and if Her Majesty's Ministers were liable to the charge of inconsistency as regards this subject which had been made by the hon. Member (Mr. Osborne), it was because in the struggle of parties in this country for power, the Gentlemen who now formed the Government ^*From a printed Pamphlet. had dealt with the question of the Irish Church as a political question, and had used it, when in opposition, for their political objects. The hon. Member for Middlesex had challenged any one to say on what grounds it was that the Church in Ireland could be defended? He (Mr. Hamilton) would answer at once—upon the same grounds upon which the Church in England, or anywhere, is to be defended, namely, as the depository and instrument of religious truth; as a homage on the part of the nation to religion; and as a means of promulgating and extending truth: and he would assert fearlessly that there never was a Church more efficient and active than the Church in Ireland at the present time in discharging those holy functions. This, indeed, was proved by the speech of the hon. Member for Cork county, and the inconsistency of the charges he made against the Church—he found fault with the state of the Church in former times because of its inactivity and inertness; he found fault with it now, because of its activity and zeal, and accused it of encouraging hypocrisy. Regarding the Church as a great instrument for the advancement of religious truth, and resting his defence of it on the high principles and considerations to which he had adverted, he (Mr. Hamilton) was not disposed to enter upon the question of upholding it with reference merely to calculations of much or little as regards its property; but he was no advocate for abuses, and should be always most anxious that any should be corrected which could be shown to exist. He was, therefore, the more desirous to place before the House the actual state and condition of the Church in Ireland at the present time. There was no subject which at all times had led to greater exaggerations than the property and the supposed abuses of the Irish Church. Lord Althorp, in the very speech alluded to that night by the hon. Member for Middlesex, had declared that of all matters which had ever come under his consideration connected with Ireland, the exaggerations respecting the property of the Established Church were the greatest. Many most absurd statements had been made recently on the same subject—and in the present debate his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Middlesex had fallen into an exaggeration little short of that which was so characterised by Lord Althorp in 1833. The hon. Member had stated that the property of the Church amounted to no less a sum than 8,52,000l. a year.

MR. OSBORNE

No; I said 600,000l.

MR. HAMILTON

He had taken down the words of the hon. and gallant Member: he had understood him to state that the income of the clergy was 680,826l., but that the property of the Church in Ireland was altogether 852,000. But however that might be, he was most anxious to put the House in possession of accurate information on the whole subject. With this view, he had taken great pains to ascertain correctly the state and condition of the Church in Ireland at the present moment in every particular, and he could assure the House of the accuracy of the statement which he was about to make. The abuses to which Church Establishments generally were liable, and which were usually made a matter of particular complaint against the Church in Ireland, were pluralities, sinecures, unions of parishes, non-residence on the part of the clergy, and excessive wealth. He would deal with each of these topics in order. With regard to pluralities, it was frequently stated in the House—and, no doubt, many hon. Members supposed—that pluralities existed in Ireland to a great extent, and that there were no means or disposition to correct that evil. But what was the fact? Between the years 1834 and 1843 thirty-four pluralities have been abolished: in the latter year only eighty-one remained in Ireland. Since that period the process of abolition had been continued. No plurality could be created or continued after a vacancy, except through a dispensation granted by the Lord Primate; and he (Mr. Hamilton) was enabled to state, that not a single dispensation had been granted by the Lord Primate since the year 1828. So that, in point of fact, under the administration of that distinguished prelate, the system of pluralities which existed formerly in the Irish Church was in course of abolition. The next subject of complaint was sinecures. But under the Church Temporalities Act, and the 4th and 5th William IV., c. 90, ample provision was made for the correction of this abuse. The Lord Lieutenant in Council, on the recommendation of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, is empowered to suspend all sinecures in the Church. Since the year 1834 he believed that power had been exercised in every instance in which a sinecure had become vacant, and, of course, it follows that sinecures will soon cease to exist. The next defect to which he would advert was unions. He was quite ready to admit that at one period unions existed to a very great extent, and constituted a great abuse. The origin of these unions was to be found in the vote of the Irish House of Commons in the year 1735, by which the tithe of agistment was abolished, and the condition of the clergy so much impoverished that it became necessary to form unions of parishes in order to afford a subsistence to a clergyman. Ireland was then principally under pasture; and as tillage and the growth of corn increased, many of these unions became very considerable in point of income. But this evil, also, was in course of correction. By the Church Temporalities Act, and the 4th and 5th William IV., c. 90, the Lord Lieutenant may dissolve unions and disunite any rectory, vicarage, or tithes, from any archbishop, bishop, dean, archdeacon, or prebend, with the consent of the bishop of the diocese, and form a distinct parish; and by the 106th section of the former Act, the Lord Lieutenant, with the consent of the Privy Council, may even divide parishes, where the value exceeds 800l. a year. The Lord Primate states in his Charge delivered in 1845, that fifty-three unions had been dissolved during the preceding eleven years. But it was not possible that all unions could be dissolved. When hon. Members spoke of unions being a great abuse and grievance, they were not, perhaps, aware of the circumstances which rendered the existence of these unions in some cases unavoidable. In some parishes there was no provision whatever for the cure of souls. The Commissioners of Public Instruction mention, in the year 1834 return, page 74 in their corrected summary, fifty-seven parishes as being without any provision whatever: of course, they must be united to the adjoining parishes. In many other parishes there was an insufficient provision for a clergyman. He would give a few instances by way of illustration.

In the diocese of Armagh there was the parish of Stickillen, the vicarial tithe rent-charge of which was 12l. 10s. It is united to Ardee. Maplestown parish, vicarial rent-charge 6l. 4s. 9d.: united to Charles-town. But it was needless to multiply instances. There were also other circumstances which rendered unions unavoidable. In the city of Cork, one whole parish was occupied by a distillery, another by a sugar-house. The union of St. Patrick's, Wexford, consisted of no fewer than fourteen parishes, which would appear to constitute a great abuse; but when you come to look into it, you will find that one of these parishes—St. Tulloque—is just forty yards square, another 100 yards square, and two others 200 yards each. He only mentioned these facts for the purpose of showing that it was impossible to do away with unions altogether, and that the existence of unions are not necessary proofs of abuses. In corroboration of this, he might again quote from the Primate's Charge in 1845. He states as follows:— A Royal Commission was appointed fifteen years ago, to inquire into the union of parishes, and to report on the fitness and practicability of dissolving them. A majority of the commissioners were laymen of high character and station. The result of their inquiries (which proceeded only as far as the province of Armagh) was, that, in regard to the unions in that portion of Ireland, 110 in number, there were forty-eight which it would be either impracticable, or unadvisable, to sever. Such a statement, coming from such a quarter, ought to lead people to pause before they condemn in a sweeping and indiscriminate manner, the existence of any unions whatever of parishes. The next matter of complaint was non-residence on the part of the clergy. He had not been able to obtain returns from every diocese in Ireland, but he had obtained returns from four of the largest dioceses, comprising 514 benefices, and he would state the results. In Armagh diocese, the number of beneficed clergymen in the year 1819 being eighty-two, the non-residents amounted to fifteen. In the year 1849, when the number of beneficed clergymen had increased to 102, the non-resident clergymen were only five; and two of these five were non-resident on account of illness. In Meath, which was the largest single diocese in Ireland, the number of beneficed clergymen in 1819 being ninety-four, the non-residents amounted to twenty. In 1849, the beneficed clergy having increased to 107, the non-residents are reduced to seven. In Ossory and Ferns, the beneficed clergy in 1819 being 147, the non-residents were forty-five. In 1849, when the beneficed clergy had increased to 184, the non-residents did not exceed nine. In the diocese of Cashel, Lismore, and Water-ford, in 1819, the number of beneficed clergymen being 109, the non-residents were fifty-two. In 1849, the beneficed clergymen having increased to 121, the non-residents were only nine. He believed if he had obtained returns from the remainder of Ireland, they would have shown the same result. The next point to which he should revert was that which had always been the occasion of so much exaggeration in all debates—namely, the wealth of the Irish Church. The property of the Church may be divided into that belonging to the bishoprics, the dignitaries, and the parochial clergy. With regard to the parochial clergy, Mr. Quin, one of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and the best authority on the subject, states, in his evidence before the Committee on Ministers' Money, that the nearest approximation he has been able to make of the income derivable from the different benefices in Ireland, would make the gross amount 453,094l., and the net 369,660l. But the poor-rates struck during the last year amounted to 2s. 9½d. in the pound on the whole landed property of Ireland as an average; and as he (Mr. Hamilton) had recently stated, that poundage in the case of the clergy was deducted upon their gross income, and whether the rate was paid by the occupier or not; the case, therefore, would stand thus:—

Net income as above stilted	£369,660
Deduct poor-rates, 2s. 9½d. in the pound on the gross	63,244
	£306,416
Deduct stipends to stipendiary curates as set forth in return of Commissioners of Inquiry, 1835	56,708
Income of beneficed clergy	£249,708

This he (Mr. Hamilton) believed to be beyond the reality; for the number of curates was now considerably more than in 1835. But assuming it to be correct, and taking the number of benefices to be 1,445, the sum of 249,708l. divided amongst them would give an average for each benefice of 172l. 16s. 2d.; or, dividing the sum of 306,416l. by the total number of the clergy, incumbents, and curates, which was 2,165, the amount of stipend for each would be 141l. 10s. 7d. Supposing, therefore, an equal distribution of the property of the parochial clergy on congregational principles, there would be for each beneficed clergyman 172l. 16s. 2d. a year; or, if shared alike among incumbents and curates, a yearly income of 141l. 10s. 7d. And, taking the statement of the Commissioners of Public Instruction in 1835 as correct (and it is generally admitted to be greatly below the reality), and making no allowance for the increase of population since, there would be 1,445 clergymen to 852,064 members of the Established Church, giving a congregation of nearly 590 persons to each benefice, without taking into account the Presbyterians and other Dissenters who, in many parts of Ireland, attended the Established Churches.

But the hon. Member for Middlesex had said that averages were deceptive, and it might be supposed that, although on the whole the sum he had named might be the average, dividing the annual property of the Church by the number of clergymen, yet that there was a great disproportion in the value of benefices, and that many were extravagantly large. He (Mr. Hamilton) was prepared for that objection; and having made inquiry with regard to the wealthiest benefices in Ireland, he held in his hand a statement of all the particulars of the 20 benefices which are largest in amount, and he would show it to any hon. Member who might desire to see it. He would not trouble the House with the details; but the result is, that the net available income derivable out of the 20 largest benefices in Ireland—and, as he had stated, he held the particulars of each one in his hand, and any hon. Member might examine it—gives an average of a church population of 2,764, and an income of 706l. a year for each, which could not be considered as a very extravagant amount as an average for the largest livings. He would just mention the case of two or three of these benefices. The largest benefice in Ireland, according to the return of the commissioners in 1836, was that of Templemore, the gross income of which is stated to have been at that time 3,224l. The circumstances of Templemore at the present time are as follows: It is a union consisting of three rectories appendant to the deanery of Derry; there is a population of 9,000 members of the Established Church within the benefice, besides a number of Dissenters who attend the churches. In charge of the incumbent there are the cathedral and eight other churches; he has nine curates, fifteen schools, attended daily by more than 1,000 children. The benefice is not liable at present to any ecclesiastical tax, the incumbent having been appointed previous to the passing of the Church Temporalities Act. Deducting curates' salaries, poor-rates, county rates, and other necessary legal charges, the net income is 1,552l. for the incumbent of such a benefice; and when a vacancy shall occur, the union will be dissolved. Now that is the case of the largest living in Ireland. He would take another instance, that of Armagh. This benefice consists of a union of five parishes, contains a church population of 7,766, there are nine churches, and eleven curates, no glebe-house. In 1836, the gross income was 2,187l.; in 1849, the net income, deducting only what may be considered as the legal necessary charges, is little more than 500l. It is held by a distinguished divine, formerly a Fellow of Trinity College. In the next return, which he held in his hand, the benefice in 1836 is stated to have been 2,077l.; there are now in that benefice 7,500 members of the Established Church, three churches, five curates, eleven schools with 1,400 children, and the net income is 703l. These are samples of the large livings about which so much exaggeration had taken place. But it was said there were benefices in Ireland with no congregations, or very small ones; and this likewise was reckoned amongst the abuses of the Church. No doubt a benefice with a small congregation is anomalous and undesirable; but then it should be recollected that this disparity in congregations is incidental to the parochial system as contradistinguished from the congregational system. Those who, like himself, were favourable to the parochial system, must he prepared in some instances for this anomaly, and England was not exempt from it. He (Mr. Hamilton) had a statement in his hand, from which he could show in every diocese in England many parishes with very small congregations, greatly disproportionate to the income of the benefice; and if this circumstance constituted an objection to the Church in Ireland, it applied equally to the Church in England. It appeared from a statement of the Commissioners of Public Instruction, that in the year 1834 there were in Ireland forty-four benefices in which there were then no members of the Established Church; but twenty of these had already lapsed to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and the greater portion of the remainder would lapse as they became vacant. The sum of the net income of the twenty-one which remained was only 1,235l. annually. Several of them had now congregations. Besides these twenty, in which there were no members of the Established Church in 1835, he had taken the eighty benefices in which, according to the same returns, there were the smallest congregations. He held in his hand a list of them, and a statement of the particulars. In many of them the congregations had increased considerably; and the sum of the net income derivable out of these eighty benefices was only 9,049l., giving an average of only 113l. to each; so that it happened, that, with some exceptions, the benefices in Ireland, with small congregations, were also small in emolument. And the summary of the case of the parochial clergy, according to the statement he had made, was as follows: the general average income to each clergyman, supposing the property of the parochial clergy to be equally divided among all the clergy, would be 141l 10s. 7d.; the general average to each beneficed clergyman, supposing it were divided equally between all the beneficed clergy, would be 172l. 16s. 2d.; the average income of the twenty wealthiest benefices, 706l., with a church population of 2,764 to each; and the average income of the 100 benefices which contained the smallest congregations, 102l each. The next point to which he should advert was the incomes and position of the dignitaries and prebendaries of the Established Church. In these he comprised the property of the deans and chapters, of the deans, archdeacons, precentors, chancellors, and prebends. In the first place, he would observe that the Church Temporalities Amendment Act, the 4th and 5th William IV., c. 90, provides for the abolition of all dignities to which no cure of souls is attached. In the next place, he had to state, that, of 139 dignitaries in Ireland, there were but eight who had houses assigned to them as such; they were, in general, parochial clergymen—like the Dean of Derry, whose case he had quoted—and acted as such. And with regard to the prebendaries, some of which in England were so valuable, there were 178 in Ireland; not one of them had a residence in right of his prebend, and 105 never had any income whatever attached to them: those having income and being without cure of souls were in course of abolition. The gross income of the deans, archdeacons, prebends, deans and chapters, was about 23,000l. annually, and the net income not 21,000l. He came now to the bishoprics, which had been peculiarly the subject of exaggeration. It was manifestly intended by the framers of the Church Temporalities Act that the minimum of a bishop's income in Ireland should be 4,000l. a year; for it was provided in the 125th section of that Act, that if at any time the emoluments of a bishopric should fall below that sum, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners should make up the full value of 4,000l. The gross income of the ten Irish bishoprics amounted to 44,523l., and the net to 40,553l.; giving an average of 4,055l. He did not think this could be considered an excessive income, when it is recollected that bishops have to support the position of noblemen, and have peculiar claims upon their generosity and charity. The salary of a Judge is 3,700l. a year, and the judges' registrars are paid from other sources, while the fees of a bi-shop's registrar are reckoned among the bishop's emoluments. In Ireland the bishops hold visitations every year, which, of course, entails a considerable expense; in England the bishops hold visitations only once in every three years. In England the average net income of the bishoprics is 5,930l. With regard to the two Irish archbishoprics, their net income was 15,808/.; so that the total income of the Irish episcopate was 56,361l. He (Mr. Hamilton) had now placed before the House the actual position of the Church in Ireland with reference to its property. As he had already stated, he held in his hand the details upon which these results were founded, and which were open to any hon. Member. He had felt it his duty to lay this information before the House, for the purpose of exposing, and, he hoped, of preventing in future, the gross exaggerations which some hon. Members were in the habit of repeating with regard to the wealth of the Church in Ireland. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Mayo had stated that the Church ought to be abolished, on the grounds that it had not fulfilled the objects for which it had been established; and he had used language respecting it which certainly was calculated to provoke retaliation. But he (Mr. Hamilton) would not allow himself to be provoked into any acrimonious discussion. Without taking any higher ground, he could not help saying, that after the willing sacrifice of life and property made by the clergy during the recent calamity, he could scarcely have imagined that any Gentleman would have expressed a wish to see removed from that country a body of educated and benevolent men, whose residence among the people was productive of so many advantages. But he (Mr. Hamilton) frankly confessed, that whatever might be the social benefits derivable from the continuance of the Established Church in Ireland, it was his belief that that Church was to be supported principally on the ground that it was the duty of the State to recognise and uphold it as an institution for promoting and extending religious truth. And, further, he would not hesitate to declare, that he thought the Church in Ireland was to be maintained as a missionary church. He recollected full well an expression of the noble Lord the Member for Arundel, in that House, in which he (Mr. Hamilton) fully coincided, and which he should not forgot. The noble Lord, in defending the Roman Catholic Church, had stated, with his usual frankness, that he would not give a farthing for a Church which was not aggressive. That was his (Mr. Hamilton's) feeling also. It was the object and business of a Church to promulgate what it believed to be truth, and expose what it believed to be error—of course with the moderation and charity which became Christians; and it was by such collisions that truth would ultimately prevail. He felt persuaded that the destruction of that Church would be a serious calamity to the people of Ireland at large; and he found that the noble Lord at the head of the Government had expressed a similar opinion in the year 1846, immediately after having succeeded to office. The noble Lord then said— I believe that with respect to what some have proposed, namely, the destruction of the Protestant Church in Ireland, there could be no worse or more fatal measure sanctioned by Parliament. I believe that it would be politically injurious, because I believe that many of the most loyal in Ireland—many of those the most attached to the connexion with this country, would be alienated by the destruction of that Church to which they are fondly attached, I believe that, in a religious point of view, it would be the commencement of a religious war—that there would be that which does not at present prevail, the most violent and vehement attack upon the Roman catholic Church, and that the Roman Catholics themselves would be the first to complain of the destruction of the Protestant Church."^* In the sentiments then expressed by the noble Lord, he (Mr. Hamilton) entirely concurred. He believed that the great mass of the Roman Catholic population in Ireland had a strong feeling that the ministers of the Established Church were beneficially employed in maintaining the social system, and in administering the charities of life, and that by their removal an irreparable injury would be inflicted on every class and denomination in that country. He had to apologise for having trespassed so long upon the patience of the House. He would reffain from entering upon any other part ^*Hansard (Third Series), Vol. lxxxiv., p. 102. of the question, and would conclude by expressing his strongest opposition to the Motion of the hon. and gallant Member for Middlesex.

MR. HUME

said, he had been seldom so gratified with any speech on this subject as with the most convincing, satisfactory, and moderate speech of his hon. Friend the Member for Middlesex. Not one of the points noticed by his hon. Friend had been answered, whilst the time of the House had been taken up by the hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin, with matters which he never touched upon, such as sinecures, pluralities, and non-residence on the part of the clergy. Neither had the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary grappled with the points which had been brought forward by his hon. Friend. The hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin said, that the Church of Ireland was not so wealthy as was supposed. But it was not a question of wealth. It was the degradation which must be felt by the Roman Catholics of Ireland, who formed the great majority of the nation, at being called on to contribute to support the church of the minority. It was the placing that stamp of degradation on every Catholic, that proved such a social and moral injury to the whole country. He looked upon the Motion of his hon. Friend in a financial and social point of view, as one of the utmost importance. The right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary admitted that this was an evil and an abuse which did not exist in any other country in Europe; but he says the time had not yet come for doing away with it. This Church of Ireland, which was said to have taken root 300 years ago, had grown very badly; and if it had struck any root at all, he was afraid it would not grow better now than it did 300 years ago. His hon. Friend had shown that, in spite of all the degradation and oppression of the Roman Catholic Church, it had grown eightfold, whilst the Protestant had only increased twofold. Was it not time, then, that this country should have its eyes opened, and know that the Protestant Church, supported as it now was, cost them the maintenance of 50,000 men, besides the evils that arose from a disorganised state of society? Why should they not prevent such a state of things? What, he asked, could be more degrading to men than that they, the majority of the nation, should be forced to pay and support the clergy of a minority whose great object was to preach against the religion of that majority? The right hon. Home Secretary had not grappled with the letters and speeches which had been read by his hon. Friend, which showed—what was so discreditable to the members of any church—that these very persons who were paid by the majority became firebrands against society, and preached antagonism instead of union. Would Scotland be quiet, would she be as prosperous as she now was, if they had succeeded in imposing upon her a church which was not the church of the majority? On the contrary, she would have been the wretched divided country that Ireland now was. They might judge of the effect of a foreign church by its fruits and results in Ireland. When the right hon. Gentleman said that this was not a proper time for the Motion, why did he not fix some period when the proper time for it would arrive, or why did he not give hope of a measure which would relieve Ireland from her present state? The people of England enjoyed their own Church, and the revenues belonging to it. The people of Scotland enjoyed their own Church, and the revenues belonging to it; but in Ireland things were reversed, and the majority were made to support the church of the minority. That was the cause of the discontent which existed in Ireland. It had been said that of late years no complaints were made on this subject. It was the discontent arising from this heavy grievance which had produced in great measure the agitation for repeal, which had so long disturbed the country. He called upon the House to bear in mind how emphatic were the expressions of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tamworth, when, taking leave, as he announced, of power, he proffered his support to his successors in office, on the condition, more especially, of their applying themselves to the removal of the anomaly now in question, for the particular expressions made use of by the right hon. Gentleman could apply to no other subject. It was most natural that the right hon. Gentleman referred the solution of a difficulty which he himself had not been able to cope with, to Gentlemen who for the last forty years had been arraigning the system. There was no question, however, but that this subject must be grappled with; the Anglican Church in Ireland must be removed, for he did not concur with his hon. Friend in admitting a compromise. Twenty-six years ago, indeed, when he himself brought the question before Parliament, he had an idea that a compromise might be practicable; but all his subsequent experience bad taught him that he had been mistaken in this notion. The English Church in Ireland must depend for support upon the members of that Church. And if hon. Gentlemen opposite were as satified as they professed themselves to be that the principles of this Church were the only principles that were entitled to be maintained, there could be no real fear on their part that due support would be withheld by its members. Their eagerness, however, in clinging so fixedly to the revenues of the Anglican Church in Ireland, clearly showed their opinion that without the support of those revenues the Church itself would fall. These revenues were clearly public money, which had been taken by Parliament from one sect and given to another, and which were still, as much as ever, at the disposal of Parliament.

MR. PAGE WOOD

said, he wished briefly to explain the grounds upon which he meant to give his vote on the present question, as well as to offer one or two remarks on the speech which the House had just heard from his hon. Friend the Member for the University of Dublin. Although he was much pleased with no inconsiderable portion of that speech, yet his hon. Friend must permit him to take the liberty of saying that he bad not grappled with the real difficulties of the case. But before he proceeded to establish that proposition, he should say he was deeply convinced that there was much matter for congratulation in the fact that the Irish branch of the Established Church had at last shown some symptoms of awakening—that some life had at length been manifested in a body which had been so long dormant, and which had so deeply failed in its holy mission. But the members of that Church, it was well known, formed only a small portion of the Irish nation; and it was to be remembered that on that evening the House was discussing a great national question, and that it was one relating to a nation that had long been treated with indignity by a minority, which, without meaning anything offensive, might be pronounced a very small minority. To speak then of one or two pluralities being abolished in this Church of the minority, or the like, was a mode of dealing with the subject which he might designate as paltry and inadequate. There was in Ireland a nation of 8,000,000 of souls, and they were that night called on to deal with a Church, the members of which did not number the eighth part of those 8,000,000, and that eighth part, instead of increasing, had of late been rapidly reduced. Those were the statements on one side of the debate, and he would inquire, had they been answered? The question which had that night been brought before thorn, was one with which they must deal. It had been said that the present was not the time for that purpose'; nevertheless the previous question had not been moved, and the proposition of his hon. and gallant Friend had been mot by the Government with a direct negative. It was, perhaps, not the best time for making such a proposition, because he apprehended that the time had long since passed away when it should have been brought forward, He should vote for the Motion; but in agreeing that the House do resolve itself into a Committee for the purpose proposed, he begged it to be understood that he by no means felt himself bound to follow the hon. and gallant Member for Middlesex in working out his details. It appeared to him that every person must agree in considering the question before them to be one of a very serious nature, and one the decision of which could not he much longer delayed. It appeared to him, also, to be a great mistake to suppose that under English rule Ireland had over possessed a national Church; it had originally been, and had continued to be, the Church of the conquerors, and without any hold on the affections of the conquered. That state of things, however, was not a necessary result of conquest. Wales had been conquered by this country; why was there not the same difficulty there as in Ireland? Principally, he thought, because the estates of the natives had not been confiscated. With the exception of a few cases on the marches, the Welsh lands were not handed over to Norman nobles. The English did not force on the people of Wales a condition of society which so lamentably distinguished the inhabitants of the Pale from the native Irish. Peace prevailed in Wales, though Wales had been conquered, because, for the most part, the ancient estates were left in the hands of the original owners, and not divided and parcelled out amongst a body of Norman nobles. There were no separate interests such as distinguished the mere Irish from the English of the Pale. The Church in Ireland was a branch of that Church which he believed to be the purest portion of the Christian Church; but yet, as an establishment, it was an establishment for the English of the Pale, and not for the nation. In the establishment of that Church no more account was taken of the Irish people than we should now take of the aborigines of New Zealand; not so much, perhaps, for they had not in recent arrangements been disregarded; it might rather be said, that no more account was taken of the Irish when Henry VIII. established our Protestant Church in that country, than we took of the American Indians in the provision made for divine worship on the other side of the Atlantic. The Church of the Pale was not the church of the people, and that, after all, was the original grievance. In England the church property, that property which he should not call the property of the State, but that property which had been created by the piety of individuals, and devoted to pious uses, was transferred from persons professing obedience to the Church of Rome to the Reformed Anglican Church, with the full consent of a large majority of the people of England. But in Ireland it had to be dealt with as the property of a Church which had no sympathy with the people. The property of the Church in this country had been legitimately transferred, or rather its holders themselves had reviewed and reformed their principles; but in Ireland the transfer had been illegitimate, and hence the false position in which the Government of England had from the outset been placed in that country. The hon. Member for the University of Dublin had spoken of the Church in Ireland as a missionary church, but that was a different thing from an established church; and, if a missionary church, he would ask how she fulfilled her mission? Those whom she had been appointed to convert, instead of being converted were doubled in their numbers. Bishop Berkeley had put some queries on this subject, which he thought well worthy of notice, one of which was, should any scheme intended for the whole community be limited to a part? The second was, should there be any attempt made to convert a people without the agency of their own language? The third was, did not the Romish Church supply powerful instruments for its purpose in the various ranks of its clergy, from the cardinal to the mendicant; and were not the poorer portion of its clergy amongst its most efficient agents? One great defect of the present system was, that the endowments being confined to the clergy of a small portion of the people, an, aristocratic class had been created in the clergy, who held no communication with the great body of the poor, and who were indeed ignorant of their language. He would now state his views as to the remedy to be adopted, and how far he differed from the scheme suggested by the hon. and gallant Member for Middlesex. That hon. Gentleman desired the total abolition of the Established Church in Ireland. They had already taken ten bishops from that church—a measure which he (Mr. Wood) very much regretted. The hon. Gentleman proposed to remove five more bishops, and had told them that if he could be would abolish the whole Establishment. This, he could not consent to; but he thought, under existing circumstances, a compromise was necessary. He did not entertain quite so magnificent a notion of bishops with regard to temporal emolument as the hon. Member for the university of Dublin. He did not think it necessary that a bishop should have 4,000l. a year. He knew ah admirable bishop of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, the late Bishop of Perth, who had only 70l. a year; and no bishop could be more honoured or respected by all who were under his ecclesiastical superintendence. He did not mean to say, however, that bishops should have no more than 70l. a year. He would say to the Established Church, "Since the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, the Pale is broken down. You never were the church of the nation; you were only the church of the Pale. You and your ministers shall be provided for. You may have your bishops, and you shall be in as favourable a position as the Church of Rome—you shall choose them yourselves; but the State will no longer recognise you as the State Church. You shall have a portion of the endowments you now possess, but a portion of them shall be applied to meet the general spiritual wants of the whole nation." He would certainly not give 4,000l. a year to the bishops. He thought 1,500l. a year each would be ample; but he was willing to go lower than that. On the grounds he had stated, he would support the Motion.

MR. NAPIER

At this late hour I do not intend to detain the House with any lengthened observations. I am fully satisfied with the able, temperate, and unaffected statement of my hon. Colleague, which is quite sufficient to sustain the case of the Irish branch of the Church, and especially to extinguish the habitual misrepresentation as to the amount of its property. One other misrepresentation I feel it proper to correct; and particularly so, as it has been reiterated by the hon. and learned Member for Oxford (Mr. P. Wood). He makes our Church to be an institution established by Henry VIII., and its property he alleges to have been transferred by Act of Parliament from the Roman Catholic Church, to which, as be suggests, it previously belonged. If this were so, it silences the argument on the part of Roman Catholics, that a Church should not have public endowment. But I deny the statement—I challenge the proof of it. Show me the Act of Parliament: where is it to be found? Produce it if you can. No, the property was given to the Irish Church in very early times, before the Romish faith was acknowledged in Ireland, or England set foot upon the soil. O'Driscoll, a distinguished Roman Catholic historian, gives the following description of the introduction of Romanism into Ireland in the latter part of the twelfth century. He says— There is something very singular in the ecclesiastical history of Ireland. The Chris-tian Church in that country, as founded by St. Patrick and his predecessors, existed for many ages free and unshackled. For above seven hundred years this Church maintained its independence. It had no connexion with England, and differed upon points of importance with Rome. The first work of Henry was to reduce the Church of Ireland to obedience to the Roman pontiff. Accordingly, he procured a council of the Irish clergy to be held at Cashel, in 1172, and the combined influence and intrigues of Henry and the Pope prevailed. This council put an end to the ancient Church of Ireland, and submitted it to the yoke of Rome. That ominous apostacy has been followed by a series of calamities hardly to be equalled in the world. From the days of St. Patrick to the Council of Cashel, was a bright and glorious era for Ireland. From the sitting of that council to our times, the lot of Ireland has been unmixed evil and all her history a tale of woe. Such was the testimony of O'Driscoll, the Roman Catholic historian. I assert that the Established Church is identified with the earliest Church of Ireland, of which it preserves the purity of doctrine and discipline. Have they altered the discipline? Their bishops are the successors of the early bishops of the Church. Whether in doctrine or discipline, I am willing to put the matter to the test. I am ready to try its doctrines by the word of God, and to prove its regular succession. You want to establish the Roman Catholic religion in the place of the present Irish Church. ["No, no!"] You say "no," and why therefore, do you want to interfere with the property of the Church? When pure in doctrine, and before it was subject to Rome, the country prospered. When the doctrine was corrupted, and the authority of Rome allowed, prosperity ceased. But, it is said, the Reformed Church has not been successful. Is it the wish of those who now assail it, to make it more efficient? I doubt their sincerity as religious reformers. I ask the Roman Catholic Members, what do you complain of in reference to the Church? You say you do not want property, but you require toleration. You have the amplest toleration. I am not here about to refer to the solemn pledges given and oaths taken as the condition on which the Emancipation Act was passed, nor do I for the present rely on the maintenance of our Church as a fundamental part of the treaty of Union. I ask the Dissenters, who profess to advocate what they call the voluntary principle, with what consistency can they interfere with the Church to which I belong, when it does not in any respect interfere with any one of their privileges? There is no public grant for the Church; it has its own property, protected by a sacred and prescriptive title and solemn treaty. It derives no aid from the public treasury, though Roman Catholics and Presbyterians do obtain public assistance. In Ireland, at least, there is not any personal charge which any man is compelled to pay to support the united Church. It was candidly admitted by the hon. and gallant Member (Mr. Osborne), that the exertions and conduct of the clergy of our Church bad been most exemplary and useful; I believe there is not to be found a more faithful body of earnest and devoted men. In latter times the Church has been of real value to the country, and its influence may be traced in the localities where it is exercised. Even if you look to the mere wants of the members of its own communion in Ireland, is the property of the Church too large to maintain it, as Protestants desire it should be, in efficient decency? No doubt those who dislike its scriptural faith, and those who despise its apostolic discipline, would give an unfavourable answer: but they are surely not the judges of what in this is right and proper. The Church which upholds the faith of 1,800 years, and I challenges a free appeal to the pure word of God, has a title to be honourably sustained. I admit that, in former times, it lid not perform its great duties in Ireland. But why was this? Its appointments were made subservient to the political convenience of England: and those who had the patronage abused it for unworthy objects. What is the remedy? Give us godly and learned bishops, men who will maintain and encourage God's truth, and edify the people. Let your appointments be made in this spirit; protect the Church in its rights, encourage it in its duties, and use it as the great institute for imparting saving knowledge and true blessing to the people.

MR. PAGE WOOD

explained, He had never stated that there had been an express Act of Parliament for the purpose of establishing the Church of England in Ireland; but it was very certain that various Acts were passed for the purpose of imposing tests, and as the object of those tests was avowedly the exclusion of Roman Catholics from power, place, and emolument, he thought he was justified in saying that there had been legislative enactments for the formation and growth of the Establishment.

MR. M. J. O'CONNELL

said, the question at issue was not what was the old religion of Ireland, or who were the present descendants of the original bishops and clergy. At the time of Henry VIII. the clergy and bishops were not married, and how they could have any lineal descendants at all was a matter which he could not very clearly comprehend. But on that he would not dwell. The question they had to consider was, what was the religion at the present moment of the great masses of the Irish people. What was the religion of the great majority—the poor majority of the Irish people: what was the religion of that majority for whose use established churches had by all been defended? Certainly it was not the Protestant religion. But however desirable reform might be in this matter, he was for respecting the vested rights of the working clergy, yes, and of the laity too of the Protestant Church. But he certainly did think that great reductions might be made. It was hard to know what was the real revenue of the Church. In 1845, during the debate on the Appropriation Clause, the right hon. Baronet the Member for Tamworth had estimated it at 450,000l. a year; but the Earl of St. Germans, then Lord Eliot, quoted some statement of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to show it was only 350,000l. The statement, however, was subsequently admitted to be incorrect. Prom his own calculation, which he had made most carefully, he found that since the alteration in the tithe laws the gross receipts by the Irish Church, on an average of four years, had been 808,000l.; and, making various deductions to which that was subject, he found that the revenue amounted to between 650,000l. and 670,000l. He found from a report that had been made, that the only dioceses which had not been consolidated under the Act of 1831, were Armagh and Clogher. He knew nothing of the Bishop of Clogher, though he had heard a very excellent account of him; but this he had ascertained, that when those places were united, the bishop would have under his superintendence, in a very scattered district, a population of 207,000, being little less than one quarter of the whole Protestant population of the kingdom under the superintendence of one bishop. If the Bishop of Clogher could superintend so large a number, he must say that it appeared to him they had too many bishops, and that some alteration was required. The number of the clergy in parts of the country was certainly too great, and when they were paying out of a trust fund, it was evidently absurd to pay men out of a trust who had no duties to perform. There were not above 200 more Roman Catholic clergy than Protestants, although the disparity in the numbers was so great; and if it should be said that there were friars in orders outside the Roman Catholic Church, then he answered by pointing to the Wesleyan preachers outside the Protestant Church, who were more numerous than the friars. Putting aside what he considered would be a great evil, namely, the giving a kind of triumph of the one religion over the other if such an application of surplus fund was to be made, he thought that if it ever was considered desirable to make any provision for the Roman Catholic Church—which time he hoped was far distant—it ought to be done from other funds. Looking at the Protestant clergy as they at present existed, he considered them not only to be useful country gentlemen, but valuable and sincere Christians, and in all the relations of life deserving of the highest respect; indeed, their conduct towards the poor during the last three years, had raised that respect into admiration. Though he believed that one or two cases had occurred—and more had been unjustly reported—where the relief of the poor had been attended with attempts at proselytism, yet, generally speaking, more disinterested conduct had not been exhibited by any body of men than by the Protestant clergy; and, as such, they had gained the lasting respect of every honest and conscientious man. He had no hostile feeling against the Protestant Church, still, looking at the number of the population as compared with the clergy, he felt bound to give his vote for an inquiry, with a view to its reduction.

MR. REYNOLDS

expressed his regret at the speech of the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, for until that moment he had thought that the hon. Gentleman was for relieving the people of Ireland from the incubus of an Established Church, and was not the more advocate of a tinkering system as regarded its temporalities. He had never heard until that evening that St. Patrick was a Protestant. He was a saint; and it had been said that he was a "gentleman"—and, not only that, it had been said that he "came of do-cent people" but certainly, until that evening, he had never heard that St. Patrick was a Protestant. There was once a very despotic king called Henry VIII., who had a quarrel with the Pope, and he superseded the Pope and made a Pope of himself, and he decided that no Irish bishop nor Irish rector should hold a benefice unless they acknowledged him as head of the church. The clergy repudiated his ecclesiastical authority, and the oaths were taken and the lands possessed by those of the new creed. He would not say a word disrespectful of his Protestant neighbours, but he begged leave to give the character of the Irish bishops, those loyal descendants of the Old Church, by Dean Swift, who said— No blame rested with the Court for these appointments: excellent and moral men had been selected upon every occasion of a vacancy; but it unfortunately has uniformly happened that as these worthy divines crossed Hounslow-heath on their road to Ireland to take possession of their bishoprics, they have been regularly robbed and murdered by highwaymen, who seize upon their robes and croziers, come over to Ireland, and are consecrated in their stead. These were the loyal descendants of St. Patrick. The other Member for the University of Dublin spoke to-night of averages. He was somewhat acquainted with averages, and knew how very unjustly they might be made use of. The hon. Gentleman said that the Church of Ireland was not a rich church, because the entire income would only give an average of 141l. 10s. 7d. per annum to each clergyman. He totally forgot to tell us that some of them had not 50l. a year at present. So when the right hon. Member for Tamworth was endeavouring to give the people of England the benefit of cheap food, he was opposed by people who made average calculations, who said that the aggregate amount of animal food consumed in England gave so much per head to every man, woman, and child in England, when some of the men, women, and children did not get animal food at all. So in the case of the income tax, the receipt was 5½ millions, and it might as well be said that that would give so much per head to every man who resided in England. The following summary of the revenue of the Irish Church was from a Protestant periodical, the Daily Reporter, of May, 1845. There were for archbishops and bishops, 151,127l. 12s. 4d.; deans and chapters, 22,624l. 5s. 6d.; glebe lands, 92,000l.; tithe composition, 531,781l. 14s. 7d.; ministers' money, 10,000l; being an aggregate of 807,533l. 12s. 5d. That was irrespective of the income of 75,000l. a year enjoyed by Trinity College derived from lands and other sources. These poor descendants in due course paid the common debt of nature, and then came the probate. He held in his hand an official document touching the poverty of the Irish bishops. He found the probate duty paid upon the property left by the following bishops, up to July, 1832. The Archbishop of Dublin, 150,000l.; The Archbishop of Tuam, 250,000l.; The Archbishop of Cashel, 400,000l.; The Bishop of Cork, 25,000l.; Dromore, 40,000l.; Limerick, 60,000l.; Clogher, 25,000l.; Raphoe, 25,000l.: Killala, 100,000l.: making a total, with others, of 1,575,000l., upon which probate duty was paid by the descendants of these descendants of St. Patrick. He did not mean to insinuate that any of these venerable persons were substituted for those other venerable persons who were robbed and murdered on Hounslow-heath, but they appeared to have feathered their nest in his country whilst they were permitted to remain there. He had heard to-night the right hon. Secretary for the Home Department make a speech, which, although it pleased the Member for the university of Dublin, did not please him much. He would have preferred him to vote as he had voted before, although he was not quite pleased with this Motion. He wished the bull had been taken by the horns, and he wished the Motion had been shaped in this form—that with respect to the life interests of Protestant bishops and clergy, at their decease the entire property should be appropriated to the use of the people. Speaking as a Roman Catholic, he totally disavowed and condemned the opinions put forth by some gentlemen of his creed, that in seeking to abolish the revenues of the Protestant Church, they were desirous to apply them to the maintenance of their own Church. They believed there ought to be no State religion; they believed that religion was weakened by its priests enjoying the mammon of iniquity. He had heard it said that the Protestant clergy were an excellent substitute for the gentry. He had nothing to say at all condemnatory of the Protestant clergy as private gentlemen; he believed that the exception of an ill-educated man among them was very small, but he was not prepared to sound the trumpet in their favour as to their affording relief to the distressed. He knew in Ireland the members of a creed who had no bishop at all—he meant the Society of Friends, and he believed that the aggregate of their charities during the two years of distress was greater than the aggregate amount of the charities of the clergy of the Established Church. On the 4th July, 1843, Earl Fortescue said, in a speech in the House of Lords, he thought the present state of the Irish Church was a great grievance, as its revenues were utterly disproportioned to the number of its followers, although in that Church there were a great many excellent clergymen. It was sometimes said that clergymen living in remote places were of use to the country. He thought the contrary. He thanked the hon. and gallant Member for Middlesex, not only for the spirit with which he had introduced the subject, but for the plain and argumentative speech which he had delivered; and he begged also to state that the discussion, being carried on with good temper, would do great good in Ireland, and would afford the people a guarantee that they were not to be deprived of their means on the one hand, nor insulted on the other, by elevating any church of the minority over their heads. He thought that ought not to be tolerated in any country.

MAJOR BERESFORD

said, that having heard the statement as to the probate duties paid by Irish archbishops and bishops, he thought it right to state, and he knew it from official documents, that all the statements made respecting the Archbishop of Tuam were as equally destitute of foundation as the present. It was said that the Archbishop of Tuam left property on which probate was paid to the amount of 250,000l. It was not the first time that this statement had been made. When he heard it made, he appealed to his hon. relative and the nearest heir-at-law of the very venerable Prelate, the present Lord Decies, and from him he received the most distinct refutation of the statement, and he also received from the lawyer employed to administer to the property of that prelate, a most distinct refutation of the statement. He declared that the probate duty paid on the late Archbishop of Tuam's property was 40,000l. and not 250,000l. Such premeditated statements were regularly brought forth to impugn the authority of the Church. He believed that the members of the Church of Ireland were worthy of being put in comparison with the members of any Church in the world. He trusted then that the House would believe him when he said that the statement was unfounded in fact, and therefore not fairly to be used in argument in that House.

MR. REYNOLDS

explained that he had not the circumstance as a fact within his own knowledge. He had taken it from a public document, for the accuracy of which he begged to refer the hon. and gallant Member to the Stamp Office.

MR. J. O'CONNELL

did not rise to allude to the subject-matter of debate, but simply to enter two protests. In the first place he protested against the inference that the Irish people were indifferent to the monstrous injustice of the Irish Church Establishment, because they had not for some time petitioned Parliament on the subject. The fact was, that even previous to the famine they had looked upon petitioning as useless, and looked to repeal of the Union as the preliminary step for redress of this, along with other grievances. The other protest he had to make, was against the principle laid down by the hon. Member for Mayo, namely, that it would be wise to endow the Catholic clergy. Speaking from his general knowledge of both priests and people, he could say, that they would rather the Church Establishment remained as it was, than that there should be any State endowment for the Catholic Church.

MR. OSBORNE

Sir, I have no reason to regret the tone which this debate has assumed, or its upshot; but at the same time I cannot help thinking that we are present on a very melancholy occasion. We are present to witness the decease of another Whig principle. We have heard of the birth, parentage, and history of the famous Appropriation Clause, and we are now summoned to attend its obsequies—a melancholy occasion no doubt. The right, hon. Baronet the Secretary for the Homo Department acts as chief mourner, and sings the funeral dirge, and he is followed by all the hon. Gentlemen who from 1832 to 1845 voted in its favour, and who now bring up the cortége as mourners for its fate. The right hon. Gentleman taunted me for inconsistency in not having upon this occasion brought forward a Motion for the abolition of the Church Establishment; but let me remind the right hon. Gentleman that when he was Member for Devonport he voted in favour of the ballot, and that when he became Member for Northumberland he voted against it. Surely, with this fact staring him in the face, the right hon. Gentleman should be the last man in the House to taunt me with "inconsistency." But it is evident the right hon. Gentleman is of infirm mind. I do not blame him for his vote; but I did not expect to be taunted for having offered what I conceived to be a fair compromise, and one likely to obtain the largest possible share of support. The right hon. Gentleman, however, refuses the compromise, and says instead, "If I can see a good practical plan I will adopt it." But where is the "good practical plan?" That is the question. The right hon. Gentleman says, if he could endow the Roman Catholics, he would. But he knows he dare not do it. It is all very well to talk of doing it, but it is a measure, barrenless as the Government are, that they would not attempt to bring-forth. I regret that the right hon. Gentleman the Master of the Mint, and the right hon. Baronet the President of the Board of Control, have not favoured us with their sentiments on this subject, though I perceive them on the Treasury bench. Assuredly they will eat much dirt to-night. They cannot, however, nor can the Administration to which they belong, go on night after night seeing their principles expire one by one. They may for a time lean on a crutch from Tamworth, or recline on a cushion from Montrose, but depend upon it these aids will fail them sooner or later. Weak and enfeebled they may hobble along for a season, halting between two opinions—now supported by hon. Gentlemen opposite, and anon by hon. Gentlemen at this side of the House, but they must ultimately die of political apoplexy. The question of the Irish Church—the grave of so many successive Administrations-must eventually be the grave of Her Majesty's present Ministers.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 103; Noes 170: Majority 67.

The House adjourned at half-past One o'clock.