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For this last object of Mr. Miall's scheme, I have a clear convic. tion that Catholic members, however strong may be their impression of its expediency, ought not to vote so long as a solemn abjuration "of all intention to subvert the Church Establishment," and a solemn promise not to exercise any privilege to which they are, or may become entitled, to disturb or weaken the Protestant Religion," continue to be among the conditions on which they are admitted to seats in Parliament. The faith plighted by those words has been hitherto preserved inviolate. It is free to them, as was done under the guidance of Mr. O'Connell by their predecessors, to assist the Queen's Government, the members of which are bound, as respects the Church of England, by a still more stringent pledge-in correcting the abuses and retrenching the superfluities of the Establishment. It is their duty to take care that those superfluities are not wasted by reason of the inadequacy and unsuitableness of the channels through which they are distributed, upon purposes which have no connection, or only a nominal connection with the propagation of religious truth. But they took upon themselves the office of Legislators, with knowledge that a solemn abjuration of all intention to subvert the Church Establishmeut would be required of them. Having made that abjuration, they are committed by it to a loyal acquiescence in the retention by the Protestant Episcopal Church, of a temporal provision adequate to secure its efficiency, and the maintenance of its Bishops and Clergy in competence and honour. What would be thought in private life of the man who having been suspected by a society into which he was desirous of admittance, of an intention inconsistent with its most cherished interests-and elected on his solemn denial of it, should avail himself of the privileges of a member to promote the intention which he had disclaimed?

If my opinion were less decided than it is, on the meaning of the Catholic Oath, and I deemed the policy recommended by Mr. Miall more hopeful than I believe it to be, I should still think our adoption of it unwise. The Church, by law established in Ireland, is the Church of a community, everywhere considerable in respect of property, rank, intelligence, and the power of avenging a disgrace on the religion of the Irish people. It is strong in the supposed identity of its interests with those of the Church of England. Nothing short of a convulsion, tearing up both establishments by the roots, could accomplish its overthrow. Nor is it by any means clear that its overthrow would benefit our religion. With the exception of the zealots who disturb the dioceses of Dublin, Ferns, Cashel, and Tuam, the "sapping and mining" of religious belief has not been thought a worthy occupation by the prelates and clergy of the Estab lishment. Who shall measure the effects which might be produced upon the half-informed, the irreligious, and the indigent, by the spirit of Proselytism which has of late broken loose, if universally quickened in the breasts of unendowed perverters, without standard, articles, or creed, by the lust of uncertain and indefinite gain?

The Regium donum is but a niggard compensation to the successors of the Scottish Presbyterian Clergymen, who were found at the Restoration in possession of the Churches and tithes of numerous

benefices in the northern province, and in the City of Dublin, and respecting whom it was provided by the Act for the Uniformity of Divine Worship.

"That from and after the 29th day of September, 1667, no person who should then be incumbent, and in possession of any parsonage, vicarage, or benefice, and who not being already in holy orders by Episcopal ordination, should not before the said 29th day of September, be ordained priest or deacon, according to the form of episcopal ordination, should have, hold, or enjoy the said parsonage, vicarage, benefice, with cure, or other ecclesiastical promotion, within the kingdom of Ireland, but should be utterly disabled and ipso facto deprived of the same, and all his ecclesiastical promotion should be void as if he were naturally dead." In the most Protestant province of Ireland our fellow subjects to whose spiritual needs these clergymen minister, are more numerous by 100,000 than those who are members of the Church by law established. They have no Glebes or Glebe houses,-very few of their flocks are the lucky possessors of Church leases or purchasers for a song of Church Perpetuities. Their churches are not built, rebuilt, enlarged, repaired, nor are the graveyards around them planted and fenced, nor are bibles, prayer-books, stoves, candles, surplices, and sacramental elements, provided free of cost, to those who worship in them, by a Government board.-Excluded like their Catholic fellow-subjects from all participation in the ecclesiastical revenues of their country, they are on every ground entitled to be considered in any plan for their more equitable distribution.

The Maynooth Endowment, the relinquishment of which would be the first, and probably the only practical step in the course proposed to us by Mr. Miall, is in the judgment, as I have reason to know, of our most eminent Prelates, indispensable to the adequate supply of a succession of Bishops and Priests for the service of the Catholic Church. Originally granted by a Protestant Irish Parliament, its increase to its present amount was the well-weighed proposal of the ablest statesmen of our times, and sanctioned after long debate by a Legislature, constituted as the Legislature now is. To almost every Irish Protestant institution for charitable objects, Literary and Missionary Societies, Hospitals, Infirmaries, Schools, Colleges, Universities, facilities of endowment by incorporation, had been conceded, to no Catholic Institution, Church, Convent, Hospital, School, College, or University-except Maynooth. Our Catholic foundations had only just been relieved by the Irish Courts of Equity from the pressure of the English law of superstitious uses, when the administration which is now so much blamed for the augmentation of the Maynooth grant, fastened for the first time upon Irish Charitable Institutions the fetters of a Mortmain Act. Shall we play the game of our bitterest enemies, by surrendering the one great advantage which we derive from that policy of restrictions and compensations, of which Sir Robert Peel was the well-intentioned author, but of which, the good to us and to our Church was not un. alloyed with evil to our independent educational establishments and religious institutions of all kinds? The Maynooth endowment is safe

enough,-safe with the English public, safe in the Cabinet, safe in the Commons, safe in the Lords, if the Representatives of the Irish Catholic People, have the courage and disinterestedness which are required for its protection. Whether we succeed in our defence of it or not, the shackles of the Charitable Donations' and Bequests' Act are rivetted upon us for ever. Do then counsel us, you it may be asked, to become accomplices in the wrong which afflicts a majority of the Queen's subjects in a large portion of the Irish benefices-a church supported by the State without a people-a people without a church acknowledged and cherished as a good by the Government under which they live? Far from it. But what I do ask of the Irish People, offering to them at least such earnest of my good faith as the study of a complicated question, perseverance and consistency afford,-is, that cor. recting the fatal habit of hot pursuit, too peremptory dictation, and too quick discouragement which is the real cause of more than half their disappointments; they familiarize the minds of those among their Protestant fellow subjects who are considerate and just, with some Catholic-born scheme of Irish Church Reform, which reconmending itself by its manifest reasonableness to their consciences, may harmonize with that system of publicity and accountability which is the sure protection of all good institutions-be compatible with. and in completion of, previous legislation in our favour-with the independenee secured by that legislation to our Church-with the 21 and 22 George the 3rd., c. 24, by which its Bishops and Clergy were relieved from the merciless laws of the Revolution, declared "entitled to be considered good and loyal subjects "of His Majesty, his Crown, and Government," and to use the emphatic language of Mr. Flood, "embosomed in the body of the State,"-with the Maynooth College Endowment Act, the Easement of Burials' Act; the Catholic Emancipation Act; the Act which secured to pauper and orphan children the religion of their Catholic parents, and with that express condition, on which the immunities, privileges, and exemptions which the more important of those acts contain, were offered and accepted -the continuance of the Church Establishmont as settled by law within the Realm.

It is now twenty years since a Whig Government, backed by large majorities, presented in the person of Lord Morpeth, its Irish Secretary, to the House of Cominons a" Bill for the better regulation of Ecclesiastical Revenues, and the promotion of moral and religious instruction in Ireland." Twenty years!! What a multitude of vested interests in Ecclesiastical superfluities have grown up during their course! Shall the Vice Royalty of Lord Carlisle expire to be remembered only for the profanations and blasphemies of a proselytism which, in the diocese of Ossory at least, in defiance of the remonstrances of the most attached and influential members among the Laymen of the Established Church, has roved under Episcopal patronage and special government protection about our streets and market-places, unawed even by that wholesome fear, which shields in all other civilized countries the religious convictions of the people from insolence and outrage? Shall the trust of the Irish Represen

tation be surrendered, and restored under his influence to the supporters of a liberal Government; and no security obtained for the redress of the great wrong which frustrates the Legislative Union? Well do I remember how the People of our county crowded about the stone in their church-yards on which was placed for signature, the heartfelt expression of their regret at his resignation of the office of Irish Secretary. Shall no attempt be made to awaken the now experienced Statesman to the promises of his mature age, and to the sorrowful disappointment occasioned by his forgetfulness of them? Are the Irish Catholic Constituencies and their Representatives so “lost," as Mr. Miall says, " to all self respect" as to be content with Church matters as they now are?

I trust, I earnestly hope not. But I should infinitely prefer the apathy which Mr. Miall condemns, to an adoption of the agitation which is now proposed to us. My object in publishing the following pages is to prove to them, and to our Protestant and Presbyterian fellow-subjects, how easy it would be to secure religious contentment, and put down sectarian ascendancy in every parish of Ireland, without subverting the Church Establishment, repealing the laws of the Reformation, or compromising the religious consistency of the State.

The greatest of all the difficulties in the way of Irish Church Re. form, is the doubt, an utterly groundless one, whether anything short of a total deletion of the Protestant Establishment would satisfy the Catholic Church and people. By that doubt multitudes of rightminded men in England, the supporters upon principle of Church Endowments, are deterred from helping us." "Nusquam tuta fides," is their lament when irritated by unmeasured language in and out of parliament, they refer to the Catholic Oath. Naturally reluctant as we also in their places should be, wholly to withdraw a light destined as they fondly hope, in its appointed time, to lead their Roman Catholic fellow countrymen from error unto truth, they are not to be confounded with the selfish few in Ireland, who look upon the sinecures and rich benefices of the Church as means of patronage and provision for their families, to be preserved at all hazards to the loyalty of the people and the peace and safety of the empire. Detesting ecclesiastical abuses as much as we do, they would cheerfully assist in any fair and honest plan for their correction. It is our duty while exposing the enormities of the existing system, to indicate by what means other than the havoc of destruction-they may be removed or mitigated. "Show us," said Sir George Grey, in one of the debates upon the Irish Church, "some well considered plan of Church Reform which we could consistently adopt, and which would be acceptable to your own prelates and people, before you call upon us to enter upon the thankless course of remedying the evils, which we, as well as you, deplore." It is impossible to deny the justice of that answer, or the wisdom of regulating our condnct on this question by it.

That my reasons for what I now suggest for consideration may be apparent to the general reader, I have appended to some of the

sections of my proposed Bill, notes, explanatory of the nature and extent of the modifications which they would effect.

I feel very confident that its provisions will recommend themselves to many sincere members of the Protestant and many sincere members of the Catholic and Presbyterian Churches.

Although, regard being had to the available amount of the Irish Ecclesiastical revenue, it would eventually be sufficiently effective as a measure of justice and reform-there would be nothing sudden, violent, or humbling in its operation. Under it the diminution of income in every Bishoprick and Benefice would be contemporaneous with promotion, increase of rank and of worldly means to a new incumbent. It preserves to the Prelates of the Protestant Church the legal precedence which is the fitting attribute of their connexion with the Ecclesiastical Establishment of the Seat of Empire. It leaves all vested interests and all episcopal and parochial incomes during the lives of those who now enjoy them, untouched It deprives no Protestant congregation of the opportunities of Religious worship or the blessing of pastoral superintendence. It increases the incomes of the incumbents of small livings, and of the working curates. It retains the Church patronage in the hands of those by whom it is now dispensed. On terms undeniably just to all parties, it gets rid of the perpetual pother about the flea-bite of Ministers' Money. It relieves the clergy of the Established Church from the disheartening consciousness that for spiritual service to a small and rich minority they receive the whole of the Ecclesiastical Revenue of their country.

Without departing from the settled policy of the Catholic Church of Ireland, which rejects all connexion by means of pecuniary provision between its clergy and the State, it secures to every parochial minister a suitable residence, and a certain amount of visible inalienable comfort, leaving him still dependent for support on the voluntary offerings of his flock. It preserves to the Catholic Prelates-restored to the legal status for which, after two centuries of outlawry, they had for seventy years acknowledged a debt of gratitude to the House of Brunswick-that entire freedom from control, influence, or interference, which is much better than temporal dignity or State favour, and essential to the independent exercise of their authority and jurisdiction. It relieves the Catholic People from the burthen of maintaining the fabrics of the National Churches, and throws it, as in all other countries, upon, without increasing the burthens of, the land. It secures as much of religious equality in every parish as is consistent with the connexion of the Protestant Church with the State, and the repugnance of the Catholic Church to such a connexion.

I am much mistaken if any person well informed upon the subject with which it deals, can say that is not a just arbitrament between the claims of the three Religions professed in Ireland on the Irish Ecclesiastical Revenues.

It is published in the firm belief that until Protestants and Catholics are convinced of the wisdom of effecting a settlement of the Irish Church question, in a spirit of religious respect for solemn engagements of thrifty appreciation of advantages already gained—and of

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