Archbishop of Ireland, Dr. Magee, amount to within 1,000l. of the in his examination before the se- proposed graduated assessment to lect committee of 1825, distinctly be levied under this bill; but it admitted the reasonableness of would be much more inconvenient rating clergymen, according to than the tax substituted for it, intheir incomes, for the support of asmuch as it must be paid by equal parochial schools. With these instalments during the first four sanctions for the principle of a rate years of incumbency, whereas this or tax on the clergy, for purposes impost was spread over the whole conducive to the public interest, in period of incumbency. Another quite as great a degree as to the source of revenue would arise from interests of the church, could a the suspended livings, under the proposal to substitute for the first 117th clause of the bill, in parishes fruits a different tax on clerical where divine service had been inincomes be termed a violation of termitted during three years. The the rights or a spoliation of the number of these had been greatly property of the church? Origin- exaggerated. The returns showed, ally, even the first fruits were that there were only 144 of them. granted not for ecclesiastical but Out of these 144 there were 30 to for temporal objects; and it was which the 117th clause of the bill only in the reign of Queen Anne would not apply, as being lay-imthat they were appropriated to propriations. There were 26 others the augmentation of small livings which were either united with other in England, and to the building parishes, or in which divine serof churches and glebe-houses in vice had been performed within Ireland. The fund clearly arose the time mentioned in the bill. from a tax on the clergy, and the There were 22 others which were new tax was proposed as a sub- sinecure appointments, and to stitution for the first fruits. In which were attached small porEngland, certainly, the valuation tions of land, some of them in of livings could not be increased, other parishes. These, altogether, because it was specially provided made 78, which, deducted from by act of parliament, that there 144, would leave only 66 subject should be no new valuation; but to this clause. There could, he no such provision existed with re- contended, be no injustice in apspect to Ireland, and many high plying the revenues of such parishes opinions held, that the Crown could to the general funds for the objects direct a new valuation. Even stated in the bill. if the Crown did not possess the power of issuing a commission for a new valuation (a point which he did not altogether admit), parliament had an unquestionable right to pass an act for a new valuation of benefices in Ireland, and the clergy would have no reason to complain of such an act as a violation of right or justice. If benefices were so revalued, he believed that the tax of first fruits would The result of the whole was this: The sum required to effect the purposes of the act was calculated at 136,500l. per annumviz., church-cess, 60,000l.; augmentation of small livings, 46,000l.; building churches, 20,000l.; glebehouses, 10,000l. All these were purely ecclesiastical objects. Some additional expense would be incurred by the commission, but he trusted not much; and the amount being uncertain, it had not been Interest of 1,000,000l. of the Tax on those which remained Future reduction of Armagh £40,000 41,800 sale of perpetuities. The rest would only accrue gradually as the tax took place, and as the suppressed sees fell in by the death of the present incumbents. When the whole of the funds destined to these purposes became available, there would be a small sum beyond the charges to be provided for. In the mean time the deficiency might, to a certain degree, be supplied by an advance of money to the commissioners, on the security of the funds which would fall to their disposal. There would, however, he supposed, be enough to meet the more pressing exigences. The Earl of Roden moved, that the bill should be read a second time that day six months. He believed its very principles to tend to the destruction of the Protestant church, and that it would further the purposes of a conspiracy against that church which had long been carrying on in Ireland. It would require something more than either the assertion or the logic of Ministers to convince the moral and 50,780 religious part of the community 4,600 that they were Protestants in prin8,000 ciple and objects-when they proposed a plan of church reform which did not, in any wise improve the discipline of the church, or amend any of its institutions which, from lapse of time, stood in need of amendment, but tended to degrade and destroy it. Ten bishops were to be cut off at once. Now, these bishops were resident gentry in Ireland, watching over the best interests of its population, and spending the produce of their sees on the poor among whom they lived; and he maintained, that in a country like Ireland, where absenteeism was a great evil, it was a most dangerous measure to get 4,160 2,000 4,500 Making in the whole £155,840 Of this, however, there would be immediately available only, from the Bishopric of Waterford . 4,000 . 8,000 £16,160 To this might be added whatever might be realized from the early 1 rid of ten bishops, for no reason whatever save that the Ministers thought their destruction expedient. He particularly objected to the principle of suspending the benefices in which divine service had, for a time, been intermitted. So far from taking a Protestant minister from those benefices in which divine service had not been performed for the last three years, it was the duty of a Protestant government to place Protestant pastors in those parishes where, hitherto, they had not been. So far from giving power to the board to prevent a Protestant minister from being placed in a parish, they ought to give that board power to place a minister in every parishwhere there was but a single Protestant to hear the truth preached. What would have been the case had this measure been passed in 1807? Since the year 1807, in the diocess of Cork and Ross, there had been 16 churches built in parishes where there had been no place of worship, and no divine service performed, for the three preceding years. That was the case in one diocess aloue. It was the duty of a Protestant government to take measures to establish the Protestant faith, and to increase the number of Protestants, not by force or injustice, but by having, in every parish, an individual qualified to preach the truth of the Gospel. It was not a Protestant principle that one religion was as good as another, and no Protestant government ought to act upon such a principle. He contended, that it was an act of tyranny to arm a commission with the power of saying, that in such and such a parish there should not be a resident Protestant minister. The Protestant clergy of Ireland were no more opposed than he was to a sound and salutary system of church reform. He and they were friendly to every reform which would spiritualize that church more and more. With regard to the Irish Protestant clergy, he would say, that they had suffered, aud were, indeed, still suffering, great privations; but that did not deter them from the discharge of their duties on the contrary, they acted as if they had but one object before them, and that object to la-. bour more and more in their master's cause, and to uphold the truth of the Gospel. The bill was a hollow expedient, invented by incompetent politicians to meet the evils which their own misconduct had brought upon the country. He maintained, that this, and nothing else but this, was the object of this most destructive mea sure. The Earl of Wicklow found himself constrained to vote for the second reading, although he hoped that he would not, therefore, be set down as a supporter of Ministers. He conceived that every act of theirs bore upon it the stamp of revolution-the present no less than others; but he would, for that very reason, vote for the present bill, because, if he did not, he might, on a future occasion, like him with the books of the Sibyl, have to pay a higher price for less value. It was impossible to view the peculiarly unfortunate state of Ireland, and deny, that some such measure could no longer be withheld. The question was not what produced that unfortunate state-he firmly believed the government was the chief causebut whether it could be remedied without this or a similar measure. He maintained not. After the emphatic manner in which the at tention of parliament was directed to the Irish church by the King's speech at the opening of the session, and still more after the House of Commons had passed the measure by a very overwhelming majority, it was not possible to avoid consenting to the present bill. Many of its provisions, however, he would wish to see amended. He should prefer, for example, a tax of five per cent all round, on the livings of the clergy to the proposed graduated tax. This five per cent would be equal to a year's income-the first fruits, which the bill went to abolish. Besides, the principle of a graduated tax was a bad precedent: if it was found to answer well with church property, they might depend upon it it would soon be applied to other species of property. He should also very strongly object to any portion of the cess that was about to be abolished finding its way into the hands of the lay proprietors. The amount, to be sure, was small, but the principle was highly important, involving, as it did, the application of church property to other than ecclesiastical purposes. It might appear hard to tax the Catholics for a church to which they did not belong, but as they took their lands with the liability to the tax, he trusted that not a sixpence of it would find its way into lay pockets. The bishop of Durham, the earl of Limerick, the earl of Winchelsea, the marquesses of Londonderry and Westmeath, and the bishop of Rochester, all spoke against the Bill, which, they thought, could have no other effect than to depress the Protestant religion, and to exalt Popery; and had been brought in for no other reason than because Ministers, by their own measures, had forced Ireland almost into a state of barbarism. It might be true that bishoprics had formerly been suppressed, or united with other sees; but that was under circumstances widely different from the present; and the expediency of doing what was now proposed had not been established. To call upon the clergy, again, separate from the rest of the community, to pay for the repairs, &c. of churches, was as unreasonable as it would be to ask the Lord Chancellor and the judges to rebuild Westminster Hall, if it happened to be burned down. It was a bill, moreover, to which his Majesty could not agree without violating his coronation oath. By that oath, said the earl of Winchelsea, the king swore to "maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the gospel, and the Protestant reformed religion established by law," and to " preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm, and to the churches committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them." Could honest man deny, that any a concurrence in which any measure tended to weaken the Protestant religion, was a direct violation of that oath? There was nothing in the second part of the oath to prevent the king, as head of the church (always supposing the con sent and approbation of the bishops and clergy in Convocation assembled to have been previously obtained), from giving his assent to recommended by any measure Parliament, which would conduce to render the church more efficient, or to extend its doctrines more the face of the widely over earth. But not a single instance could be produced, in which the crown of its own sole authority proceeded to revise and re-dis tribute the property of the church upon the recommendation of Parliament. No precedent since the Revolution existed, in which the bishops and clergy were not first consulted. Even the despotic Henry VIII., before he proceeded to the spoliation of the church property, thought it necessary first of all to obtain the consent of the abbots, priors, and bishops. What did the present bill propose to do? To extinguish ten of the Irish bishops. Then, let their lordships look to the 117th clause, and honestly ask themselves the question whether this Bill did not affect the spiritual interests of the established church? It enacted that the commissioners might suspend the appointment of clerks to rectories, &c., where divine worship should have been intermitted for three years. The persecution es tablished by this clause involved not only the loss of property, but the probable loss of human life. It first proposed to extinguish the religious duties, and next to confiscate the property which was apportioned to those duties. There was little hope of securing the church establishment in Ireland, unless the measure then under consideration were thrown out. We might easily learn from past and bitter experience, how fruitless would be the attempt to conciliate that party in Ireland which made it their settled object to run down the Protestant establishment in that country. On the other hand, the marquess of Clanricarde, and the earl of Gosford, in defending the bill, maintained, that the security and prosperity of the Protestant Church in Ireland could be maintained only by the adoption of some such measure as this, the provisions of which would be found to be not only in furtherance of the interests of the established church, but also beneficial to its ministers. The former policy with reference to the church establishment had done nothing, and no argument had been yet advanced to show that such a policy would maintain the establishment on a safe, firm, or secure footing. The people were not to be bribed into religion; but religion ought to be allowed fair play, and the Protestant religion had not now fair play in Ireland. If it had been allowed fair play, it would have succeeded in Ireland. Let their lordships look at the whole of Europe, and, with the exception, perhaps, of Spain and Portugal, it would be found that the Protestant religion had spread immensely, while in Ireland, even amongst the oldest inhabitants, such was not the case. Even in the face of grants being made, and establishments formed, it had most sigually failed. Give the church and its ministers fair play, by divesting the church of its abuses, without diminishing its utility; and, judging from past experience, the established church would make more progress than it had yet done in Ireland. If the ministers of the church were to obtain and enjoy popularity, let them command the respect of the people by the removal of the abuses of that church.-Lord Carbery thought, that ministers alone were to blame for the state into which matters had been brought in Ireland, in consequence of their having failed to do their duty when disturbance first com |