Lord Teynhamsaid, that he had a petition to present against the Bill for the Composition of Tithes in Ireland, which stood for a third reading on the Orders of that Day. The petition was from Sir William Brabazon of Brabazon-park, in the county of Mayo, a gentleman of considerable consequence in that county, and who, he believed, on this occasion spoke the sentiments of a large portion of the landed gentlemen of Ireland. The petition prayed for the abolition of tithe in Ireland, a prayer in which he fully concurred. Tithe, he observed, must be considered as national property, and, as such, the legislative authority of the nation had a right to apply it for national purposes. Indeed, this principle had been acted upon on more than one occasion. At the Reformation, the tithes were transferred from the Catholics to the Protestants; and, on several occasions, there had been, in England as well as Ireland, a frequent transfer of church property from ecclesiastical to lay uses. As to the Bill before the House, he would admit that his Majesty's Ministers had no other resource but to pass it; but to say that they would settle the tithe question in the attempt to transfer it from the tenants to the landowners, was more, he believed, than any one who knew the state of Ireland would venture to assert. In fact, place tithes where they would, the question had come to this, that if collected at all, it must be by the aid of the King's troops; and if Ministers determined upon that course, he would say, that in a mere pecuniary point of view, the collection would cost three times more than the value of the thing collected. Such an attempt would remind him of the threat made by Louis 14th to the Algerine ambassador, that he would send a fleet and army, and totally destroy Algiers. The ambassador asked how much it would cost his Majesty to carry his threat into execution; and on being answered, that it might be a million of money, he replied, that if his Majesty would agree to pay half that sum, he would undertake that 1337 not a house in the place should be left standing. In the same feeling, he (Lord Teynham) would say, that on the score of expense, it would be much cheaper for Government to pay the tithe than to employ troops to collect it. He knew that the Bill before the House would pass, but let it. It would do no good, and he was sure that, next Session, the Table of the House would be covered with petitions, praying for the total extinction of Tithes in Ireland.
The Bishop of Londonsaid, that the noble Lord had more than once, in the course of his remarks, stated that this Bill would be utterly useless. If that were so, where was the use of the remonstrances that were heard against it?
Lord Teynhamrepeated that he did consider the Bill useless, and that it would be impossible to enforce the collection of tithes in Ireland without the aid of the military power. If the right reverend Prelate were of opinion that an army should be so employed, let him put himself at the head of it, and if he consulted Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he would find where his bones would probably lie in that event.
§ Petition to lie on the Table.