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sues her own course, and must have her laws | English Government for the purpose of exstrictly obeyed, however imperfectly existing theories may interpret them to the world.

ART. III.-1. The Present State of the Church of Ireland. By RICHARD WOODWARD, Bishop of Cloyne. Dublin, 1787. 2. The Church Establishment in Ireland, Past and Present. Illustrated exclusively by Protestant authorities. Dublin, 1863.

3. A Charge addressed to the Clergy of Armagh and Clogher. By MARCUSGERVAIS, Archbishop of Armagh. Dublin, 1865.

4. Substance of the Speech made by EARL GREY in the House of Lords, on Friday, 18th March 1866, in moving for a Committee to consider the State of Ireland. London, 1866.

5. The Irish Church Establishment. Speech of Sir JOHN GRAY, delivered in the House of Commons, 11th April 1866. Dublin,

1866.

6. The Case of the Irish Church Establishment in Ireland, considered in a Charge to the Clergy of Killaloe, etc. By WILLIAM FITZGERALD, D.D., Bishop of Killaloe. Dublin, 1866.

7. A Charge, etc. By HAMILTON VERSCHOYLE, D.D., Bishop of Kilmore. Dublin, 1866.

8. A Charge, etc. By WILLIAM HIGGIN, D.D., Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. Dublin, 1866.

BETWEEN the Irish people and the AngloIrish Church a long war has been waged; a war which has lasted ever since the English invasion until the present hour. In that theatre of hostilities where a Christian Church can with perfect propriety strive for mastery, the Anglo-Irish Church has sustained discomfiture, for it has won no triumphs on that glorious battle-ground where the hearts of a nation form the trophy. The Irish people still defy the Church of their invaders, and reject the hierarchy into whose ranks in ancient times Irishmen were, by insulting Statutes, forbidden to enter. Indeed, it can scarcely be pretended that the AngloIrish Establishment ever felt the true spirit of a Church militant towards the mere Irish, nor was it devoted to the spiritual work of winning souls. As Church patronage was one of the most readily available' amongst 'the means of corruption' (to use the language of the Bishop of Killaloe), the bishops were mostly political tools chosen by the

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tending its power. The true weapons of a Church-the saintly men living saint-like lives, the burning words spoken in a language 'understanded of the people,' the sacred offices sacredly administered, these implements of evangelistic warfare were rarely employed for the benefit of Irishmen. But the Anglo-Irish Church was from the very first successful by means of less worthy weapons, in a field less noble than that of missionary enterprise, and in the arena of political strife gained many victories over the Irish people. Its first triumph was over the independence of Ireland, which was bartered away for an ecclesiastical establishment. By English aid the Anglo-Irish Church was sustained for more than 300 years, during which, although no doctrinal differences existed, the hierarchy and the nation were to a considerable degree estranged from each other. And when the Anglo-Irish bishops, at the period of the English Reformation, attorned for their temporalities to Henry vin. instead of the Popeand thus unwittingly took a step which in subsequent years was employed as a means for justifying the introduction of a Reformed Episcopate and a second Church, which the Irish clergy and people rejected-then the Anglo-Irish Reformation Church, although that of the very small minority of the people, was enabled, by means of English arms and laws, to obtain triumphant possession of all the ancient national endowments for religion in Ireland which had not been confiscated into lay hands. In point of fact, the Reformed Church in Ireland had no beginning except in the Council Chamber of Elizabeth. It was born and cradled amid despotism and corruption. The Queen commanded her deputy, Sussex, to establish the Reformed religion by Act of Parliament, and Sussex abandoned the Mass, took up the new creed as if it were a new glove, packed a fictitious Parliament, and passed a batch of laws which were thrust, wherever and whenever the English Government had power, down the throats of the Irish. To give their Episcopate a somewhat better pedigree, Irish Church historians have fondly invented a legend, to the effect that the Roman Catholic prelates, who were in office at Queen Mary's death, were, upon Elizabeth's accession, converted by compulsory oaths of supremacy and penal Acts of Parliament to the Reformed faith. But there is no evidence that any of those bishops conformed, with the single exception of Hugh Curwin, the Archbishop of Dublin, who alone of the Irish bishops appears as the advocate of the Reformation, and the Queen's instrument for creat

ing a Reformed hierarchy. Curwin and the Queen, however, had only power to interfere with the temporalities of the Irish sees, and that only in those parts of Ireland where the English Government was strong. The Pope and the Irish papal bishops had, and still have, exclusive power over the spiritualities, which neither sword nor persecution were able to destroy.

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man Catholics, the abolition of agistment tithe, the removal of vestry cess and ministers' money, the suppression of bishoprics and benefices under the Church Temporalities Act,-these are all undoubted instances of rights once perfectly legal and statutory, but now withdrawn from parliamentary protection, and reduced to nullity as far as law is concerned.

The successive modifications to which in modern times Church property in Ireland has been subjected, although stigmatized, when enacted, as unjust, sacrilegious, and blasphemous, have notwithstanding been accompanied by a singular improvement in religion, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic. The Anglican Churches,' observed Primate Beresford (at page 22 of his Charge to the Clergy,' 1864), 'have wellnigh trebled in number within the last century, and are yearly multiplying. The ministers of the Church have increased in like proportion. Above all, spiritual life. has grown and has been strengthened within her.' The Roman Catholic places of worship, on the other hand, which formerly were mean cabins or huts without cross or belfrey, and lay in glens or obscure localities, have been replaced, since the pressure of penal legislation was removed, by massive edifices, cross-crowned and flanked by seminaries, or convents, or clergy-houses. The good which the Roman Catholic Church (to use the words of Dean Byrne) has done in strengthening the fabric of society, by enforcing the obligations of moral duty,' is proved by the increased temperance, sobriety, and morality of the Irish. The male por

In spite, however, of the dubious morality of those early transactions, the present legal right of the Anglo-Irish Church to the ecclesiastical property of the nation is of course perfect, and would be so even if that Church could not reckon a hundred members. That property consists chiefly of tithes, the compulsory payment of which was introduced into Ireland in 1172 by Henry II., in opposition to the feelings of the inhabitants, the Celtic mind being, it is said, averse to all except voluntary payments for religion. Queen Elizabeth and her successors, by various legislative enactments, secured the Church revenues to the present possessors, whose legal and parliamentary title is indisputable. There is accordingly no necessity to determine, in relation to the question of tithes, whether the present Established Church or the Roman Catholic be the true successor of the pre-Reformation AngloIrish Church. The one can boast of legal, although somewhat irregular, bishops, of royal and parliamentary sanction, and of the possession of all the churches and of all the ecclesiastical power and property which the State could give it. The other Church can adduce papal bishops, the authority of the Irish chieftains, continuity of doctrine and complete spiritual jurisdiction over the great bulk of the inhabitants. To rights, In a Roman Catholic however, which are merely legal, and have no foundation in eternal justice, Kings, Stat- parish in the county Westmeath, there are frequent Register-Book of Marriages (now before us) for a utes, and Parliaments can give only present proofs of this practice. In this register, which beand temporary, not permanent and immuta-gins in 1737 and ends in 1775, there appears a reguble force. And rights, which originated confessedly in a traitorous compact, which were enforced by despotic power, and have been preserved only by penal legislation, are, from their very nature, peculiarly liable to change. The legal rights of the AngloIrish Church to the ecclesiastical property of Ireland have, accordingly, been oftentimes altered and modified, and have even undergone, both anciently and recently, partial confiscations. The destruction of monasteries, and the secularization of their revenues, the discontinuance of 'book-money'-an oppressive exaction formerly* levied on Ro

The Roman Catholic priests, down to a late period, were obliged to compound with the Protes

tant ministers for their fees.

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lar account between the parson and the priest. Such entries as the following are common :— N.B. -He paid 3s. 9d. for ye parson's fee.' 'I received Mr. Champheney's (the Vicar's) fees.' Cleared out with M'Geunis' (the Vicar's clerk). He swore by ye book oath yt he wd pay Mr. M'Geunis. Someband, at the Roman Catholic marriages, and then times the clerk's wife was present, in lieu of her husit is entered, 'Mr. M'Geunis' wife came with them,' or she became security for ye parson's fees.' The parson's clerk duly entered his receipt for these fees at regular intervals. In 1774 the parson's agent seems to have been a Mr. Ross, for the last entry in that year is as follows:-'13 July 1774, agreed with Mr. Ross to pay £2, 5s. 5p. p. year for marriage dues-paid Mrs. Ross's order, 20 Oct. 1774, 11s. 4., and 13 Jan. 1775, 11s. 44d.' The many vexatious and irritating annoyances, like the foregoing, to which Roman Catholics in Ireland were exposed, would not have been endured a day, unless the armed power of England had been at hand to enforce subjection

tion of them,' said Lord Morpeth in 1841, exhibit at the present moment more sobriety, and the female portion more chastity, and both show more power of endurance under calamity the most trying and aggravating, than could be attributed to the inhabitants of either of the sister countries.' There seems therefore no just cause why proposals for further modifications of Irish Church property should not be entertained in a candid and rational spirit by all who are anxious for the extension of the means of religious instruction and consolation to the whole people.'

Nor is there anything in the mode in which the present contest about Irish Church property is conducted, which need irritate the friends of religion in general. Sir John Gray, who is a Protestant, leads an attack upon the Temporalities, not the Churchupon endowments, not doctrine. As member for Kilkenny, he seems somewhat appropriately selected for the purpose. That borough contains 1401 Anglicans, 171 Dissenters, and 16,141 Roman Catholics. Three churches in Kilkenny city afford ample church accomodation for the members of the Established Church in that locality, even if all of them, aged over five years, should choose to attend divine worship at the same time. There is a bishop whose net income is £3867, 9s. Cd., and a dean, precentor, chancellor, treasurer, archdeacon, and six prebendaries, whose united revenues amount to £6971, 4s. 5d. The entire diocese of Ossory, to which Kilkenny belongs, contains 8258 Anglicans, 580 Dissenters, and 131,248 Roman Catholics. The value of the benefices (exclusively of the bishopric and of glebe-houses, etc.) is £21,050, 19s. 6d. For the spiritual advantage, accordingly, of each Anglican in Ossory, the State has provided a sum averaging £2, 10s. 10d. per head, without reckoning other sums paid to chaplains of prisons, asylums and work houses. The Roman Catholics, who of course do not receive one farthing of the ancient endowments of their religion, have the bitter consciousness that their own Roman Catholic ancestors founded, in 1178, the very cathedral in which the Anglican bishop has his throne. That bishop, moreover, is one whose views are little calculated to soften the asperity of such bitter recollections. He and his clergy have steadily refused to administer the national funds voted for education, and thus have separated themselves from almost all intercourse with Roman Catholics. Kilkenny borough has, besides, a special grievance of its own. When St. Canice or Irishtown, part of Kilkenny city, was disfranchised at the Union,

the State gave £15,000 compensation, which sum was allocated, not to general purposes nor for the benefit of all creeds, but to the Ecclesiastical Board of First Fruits, in order to swell the funds applicable to the erection of churches and glebe-houses for members of the Established Church!

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Sir John Gray, it must be confessed, has done his 'spiriting' with a gentleness positively surprising in the representative of a borough inheriting such traditions. His motion was simply that the position of the Established Church in Ireland is a just cause of dissatisfaction to the people of that country, and urgently demands the consideration of Parliament." If the people of that country' consists of the 5,105,610 inhabitants who are not members of the Established Church, then the first part of Sir John's motion is a truism, for it is utterly impossible to term 693,357 Anglicans (who form less than twelve per cent. of the entire population) the people of that country." remaining part of Sir John's motion is also a truism, if the deliberate opinions of Ministers of State, expressed during the last forty years, are of any weight. Perhaps it may be useful to call to remembrance a few of those observations. The Marquess of Anglesea was in 1828 appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland by the Duke of Wellington, and subsequently served the same office under Earl Grey, with Lord Plunket as his Chancellor, and Mr. Stanley, now Earl of Derby, as his Chief Secretary. Lord Anglesea thus expressed himself in a letter quoted by Mr. Ward in the House of Commons in 1835-The Establishment, which at all times far exceeded the wants of the Protestant congregations, has hitherto been upheld by the State, mainly on the ground that it served the temporal use of consolidating the connexion between the two countries. But this service it no longer performs. Instead of strengthening the connexion, it weakens it.'* Earl Fortescue, Lord-Lieutenant under Lord Melbourne's administration, from 1839 to 1841, declared in 1844, 'that it was most essential to the peace and contentment of Ireland that some legislative and established provision should be made for the Roman Catholic religion,' and could not find any means by which such a provision could be made, so much in conformity with the ordinary rules of justice

*This, and other quotations which follow it, have been taken from a small but useful book, compiled, it is believed, by Mr. Aubrey De Vere, entitled The Church Establishment in Ireland, Past and Present. Illustrated exclusively by Protestant Authorities, etc, Dublin: G. P. Warren. 1863.

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and common sense, as the appropriation to its use of a part of those funds which had been originally given for the religions of all denominations.' The Earl of Carlisle, LordLieutenant under Lord Palmerston for nine years, and previously Chief Secretary in Ireland, for six years, said, 'The only intelligible ground on which an established religion could rest, was on its being the opinion of the majority-the opinion of the majority exceeding in number those who profess any other faith.' The chief governors of Ireland who used this language were, it must be remembered, members of the Established Church, and patrons of church-livings both in their private and public capacities. Three Chancellors of England, Brougham, Truro, and Campbell, spoke, more strongly than the three Lords-Lieutenant just quoted, on the same theme. Brougham regarded the grand abuse of the Irish Established Church' as the master evil' and 'the source of perennial discord.' Lord Truro said the Irish Church was at the bottom of all the unhappiness which Ireland suffered.' Lord Campbell (Chancellor of England under Lord Palmerston) 'believed the Protestant Church in Ireland to be one of the most mischievous institutions in existence.' Earl Grey, a Cabinet Minister from 1846 to 1852, asserted that it was not in human nature that the Irish people should feel otherwise than indignant that a large endowment, originally granted for the purposes of the Catholic religion, should be taken away and applied exclusively to the religious instruction of a small fraction, and that the richer fraction of the people.' He also believed 'the Church of Ireland to be the main source of all that misgovernment and oppression under which the Irish for nearly three centuries have suffered.' Sir George Grey, Home Secretary from 1846 to 1852, was of opinion that a complete union between England and Ireland 'never could be effected so long as an established and endowed Church of the minority exclusively existed.' And Lord Lytton, who served in Lord Derby's Cabinet as Colonial Secretary, considered the words 'Irish Church' to be the greatest bull in the language.' 'It was called the Irish Church because it was a Church not for the Irish.' The Protestant Establishment. stood upon the gigantic ruins of the Catholic Church property.' The Church in Ireland costs as much for the police and soldiers as for the clergy themselves.' 'Do we,' asked he, imitate the Saviour or the Impostor, when we carry the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other?'

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Earl Granville, appointed President of

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the Council under Lord Palmerston in 1859, was of opinion that the principle on which the Irish Church was established was erroneous.' Mr. Milner Gibson, President of the Board of Trade under the same Premier, thought that 'so long as the Establishment' remains in Ireland, it must be looked on by the bulk of the population as a badge of conquest and degradation.' Lord Palmerston himself held that the revenues of the Church of Ireland were primarily destined for the religious instruction of the people;' and Earl Russell, the successor of Lord Palmerston in the premiership, believed that so long as the condition of the Irish Church is 'territorial, the contentment of the people never will exist.' This catena of Protestant authorities upon the Irish question, consisting of Lords-Lieutenant of Ireland, Chancellors of England, Secretaries of State, and Prime Ministers, may be fitly closed by the testimony of two Chief Secretaries for Ireland. One, Lord Hatherton (formerly Mr. Littleton), said 'the nature of the Established Church in Ireland was an anomaly without a parallel in the history of the world.' The other, Mr. Chichester Fortescue, in the recent debate on Sir John Gray's motion, declared that he felt dissatisfied as a Protestant, even more than Roman Catholics could have felt dissatisfied, with the position of things to which the first part of that resolution referred,' and also said that a just and permanent settlement' of the question would be one that would most contribute to the social, political, and religious interests of the country.'

The mere mention of the names of the eminent statesmen whose sentiments have been just quoted, ought to be sufficient proof that they did not regard the overthrow of the United Church, either in England or Ireland, to be a necessary consequence of the removal of Irish Church Temporalities. It is pretty evident that they distinguished between the Church and the Establishment, and believed the latter to be a hindrance to religion, and an injury to the State.

As, however, it has been frequently asserted, by some who are looked on as representatives of the Anglo-Irish clergy, that the Church itself, both in England and Ireland, is in danger of destruction if Irish Church revenues are interfered with, it may be use ful to review some of the principal statements which in past and present times have been published in defence of the Establishment. In 1786, Dr. Duigenan, a lay Fellow of Dublin University, and who represented the borough of Armagh in the last Irish Parliament issued, under the signature of Theophilus, An Address to the Nobility

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and Gentry of the Church in Ireland as by Law Established,' and argued that 'the abolition or reduction of tithes' was equivalent to 'a translation of property from the clergy of the Established Church to Popish ecclesiastics; and that the payment of tithe in the manner it was then payable by law, was the properest mode of raising a maintenance for the clergy.' He subsequently published, in 1798, in his own name, Au Answer to H. Grattan,' in which he called Edmund Burke 'the apostle of Popery,' and asserted that the public taxes were chiefly paid by the Irish Protestants.' He also said that of the mass of real and personal property' of Ireland, nineteen out of twenty parts were in the hands of Protestants,' and that the whole Church revenues equally divided among the clergy, would not produce to each £150 per annum. About the same period Bishop Woodward of Cloyne stood forward as a champion of the Temporalities, and wrote, in 1787, a pamphlet, entitled The present State of the Church in Ireland,' of which four editions were published within twelve days, and nine within a few months of its first issue. In this work the bishop represented the Protestant interest' as in danger, and warned 'the Protestant proprietor of land that the security of his title depended very much, if not entirely, on the Protestant ascendency.' He then improved the 'poverty plea,' calculated the net income of parishes in fourteen dioceses, deducted the cost of collection, and five per cent. for insolvencies (an item unaccountably omitted by modern valuators,) and reduced the average net income of each clergyman to the sum of £133, 6s. per annum, a sum less,' as his Lordship declared, 'than what a minister in Scotland gets on a average,' or than the average pay of a Gov. ernment chaplain, which was then £114 and lodgings, with liberty to take clerical duty when not in garrison or actual service!' So convinced was this worthy bishop of the low value of livings, that he felt constrained to give his own son, and that within three years of his taking holy orders, three or four of those preferments which appeared to his Lordship so miserable, which, however, in the present day, notwithstanding the depreciation which Church property has, it is said, suffered since Woodward's time, are worth more than a thousand pounds a year! Bishop Woodward did not forget to mention that in England there was one clergyman to every five square miles, but in Ireland only one to every twenty-three square miles. He thus predicted the dreadful effects of any diminution of the temporalities:-'Any reduction of the incomes of the parochial

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clergy must be highly injurious, a considerable one fatal, to the Protestant Established Church. It must, in the first place, perpetuate large unions, it must render small parishes incompetent to support a resident minister of course put a stop to the building of glebe-houses, and not only prevent the erection of new churches, but shut up a considerable number of the old ones. The number of the Protestant clergymen must in the same degree be diminished.' It is consoling to remember that these doleful predictions not only have not been fulfilled, but have been actually falsified by events. According to the present Irish Primate, the number of churches and clergymen has been trebled since 1787. But Bishop Warbur ton, who held the see of Limerick from 1806 to 1820, has probably left the best exposition on record of that defence of the Temporalities which consists in the multiplication of churches and resident clergy.' In a letter,* dated in 1810, he details the improvement then taking place in the Irish branch of the United Church. 'Parliament' (he observes) 'now wisely grants £50,000 per annum for the purposes of building churches and glebe-houses, and for purchasing glebes, so that during the last seven years more has been done in that way than in a century before that period.' 'I have been employed,' continues his Lordship, ' for some weeks past in Kerry, inspecting and constructing some new churches in the most distant and wildest parts along the coast from Kenmare to Dingle. They had never seen a bishop there before, and in some parishes, I am sorry to say, they had never seen a Protestant minister! I have now given them churches and resident clergy, which must have the best consequences, both religious and political.

With respect to Ardfert Cathedral, it was originally a very extensive and magnificent building-totally ruined in the wars of Cromwell; part of it is now fitted up neatly, which serves also for the parish church. The Chapter is complete; I have just revised and rendered it efficient. It consists of a Dean, Archdeacon, Precentor, Chancellor, Treasurer, and Archdeacon of Aghadoe. There is a Minor Canon-all endowed.' When Bishop Warburton speaks of giving' churches and clergy, it suggests the recollection of another Irishman who 'out of his great bounty built a bridge at the expense of the county,' for that prelate †

*See Wakefield's Account of Ireland, Statistical and Political, vol. ii. p. 468. London, 1812.

Warburton was remarkable, even in a most corrupt period, for the way in which he disposed of his church preferments in order to enrich his family.

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