Establishment is utterly unknown to the law. It would be as correct to speak of a Yorkshire Church, as of an Irish Church. No one pretends that a Catholic is precluded by his oath from voting for the consolidation, the division or the creation of English Sees, or that he is obliged to speculate upon the remote tendency of any measure of Church discipline that is submitted to Parliament. The Pope did not conceive that he subverted the French Church, when he consented to a re-arrangement of its ancient divisions, although it involved the suppression of numerous sees, and extinguished the rights of venerable bishops. If the present Irish Dioceses were by act of Parliament reduced to one, and that one annexed to the Diocese of Sodor and Man, with or without an augmentation of salary to the Bishop of that place, and suppose the Church Property applied in any manner the nation might think fit; so long as the style and title of the United Church should be acknowledged by law, and its discipline maintained, there would in no sense be a subversion of the Establishment. There has already been a Duke of Ireland, (Robert De Vere,) and why not a Bishop of Ireland? The Irish Protestants in communion with the Establishment, are not half as numerous as the Protestants in the Diocese of London, and no one could be heard to say that such a change, however he might deprecate it, would amount to a subversion of the Imperial Establishment.

As to the question of any disturbance or weakness in the Establishment resulting from interference with what is called Church property, Sergeant Shee would seem to insinuate that the disturbance and weakness would be all upon our own side. He says we should be inundated with unpaid proselytizers of a zeal more intemperate because more genuine than that of the common barrators we have to deal with now. We are once more at a loss for the learned gentleman's premises. We do not know that the Presbyterians, Methodists, Unitarians_or Quakers are more successful even in temporary corruption than the people of the Establishment; they certainly are not so prominent. Indeed if we were to push Sergeant Shee's reasoning to its legitimate conclusion by taking for granted that the agents of proselytism are indolent in proportion to their affluence, we should subscribe to pay them still more largely, as degenerate and falling states have purchased the forbearance of invaders. But for our own part, as we have already said, we desire anything rather than the subversion of the English Establishment regarded as something distinct from that of Ireland, nor even

in the case of Ireland have we any desire to push things to an extremity. Some of our cotemporaries have considered us as speculative, but it certainly is our wish to be as practical as possible. Unlike our English friends, the voluntaries, we apply the voluntary principle, but we have not the faintest desire to analyze it or force it upon others. We make no appeal to Scripture. That would be speculative. In America, abolitionists and slave-holders and slave-breeders quiet their consciences with Scripture. If Catholics in this country object to a state endowment for themselves, that is a matter of policy, and they have no right to force their reluctance upon others; but they have a distinct right to their proper liberties, to a legal standing for their clergy, and to any adjustment of the burthens of the State which they can constitutionally enforce. If the State think proper to indulge in the luxury of a Church Establishment, it is an imperial concern, and the expenses should be borne by the Empire. It will not not do for England to say, I support my branch of the Establishment, let Ireland support hers. Our answer is, you like your Establishment, it is your fancy, your taste, your weakness, your doll, anything you please, but we in Ireland don't want it, we don't like it, it don't serve us, it don't amuse us.

So far as Ireland is represented, whether by electors or non-electors, she repudiates an establishment for herself; but she might perhaps say, I have to some extent lost my individuality in the Empire; and the Establishment is one of the disadvantages attached to the countervailing advantages of the British connexion. The Established Church being a purely imperial institution, there is no reason why Ireland should be burthened with the exclusive support of a branch. of it, and that upon a scale of the most wanton extravagance, any more than that she should pay out of her provincial purse, the regiments of the royal army that may be stationed in Ireland. We have no desire to impose our scruples or our policy upon the Protestant clergy. If they prefer state-payment let them have their preference, but let their payment be from imperial funds and upon a rational scale. We think that a plan could be suggested, which, without diminishing the funds of the Protestant church notably or almost at all, and without throwing much additional burthen upon the State, might be made to satisfy the reasonable requirements of all parties, and that without waiting for the voidance of benefices, an absolute and

final change might take place in the course of a single session. The Consolidated Fund taking upon itself the payment of the Established Clergy upon whatever scale a Church reformer might regulate, could recoupe itself out of the sale of Church lands at the full value, and with a parliamentary title-and also by compelling the landholders to redeem the tithe rent charge for a moderate composition as they have at present the option of redeeming their crown and quit rents. The sum so placed to the credit of the Imperial Exchequer would go a large way in diminishing the burthen justly thrown upon imperial resources, while every cause of complaint in Ireland might, by the removal of a few odious, although really inoperative restrictions from the Catholic clergy be totally at an end, without any approach to the subversion of the Establishment, or any state provision for the Catholic clergy. But under no circumstances can this question be allowed to sleep. The Establishment will not obtain easier terms by delay. There are those at work everywhere, Protestant and Catholic, who will not suffer it to stand. In a certain sense they are

not free agents. They obey the bent and the current of the time. It is as much a matter of course for them to level religious inequalities, or to speak modern English, or wear modern costume. Civilization will of its own virtue abolish the present Establishment as effectual as it has abolished judicial astrology. Help who may, resist who will, "every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low."

THE

IRISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No. XXVI.-JULY, 1857.

ART. I.-ODD PHASES IN LITERATURE.

FOURTH PAPER.

Annales Typographica, Norimbergæ. 1793.

From a Dissertation annexed to Morgan's Phanix Britannicus in the quarto edition of 1732, much interesting information may be gathered on the subject of Pamphlets.

The derivation of the word may be found in Minshew's Guide to Tongues, fol. 1627; in the Preface to Icon Libellorum; Skinner's Etym. Ling. Angl. fol. 1671; and Spelman's Glossary.

The term Pamphlet, or little paper book, imports no reproachful character, any more than the word great book; it signifies a pasquil, as little as it does a panegyric of itself; is neither good nor bad, learned nor illiterate, true nor false, serious nor jocular, of its own naked meaning or construction; but it is either of them, according as the subject makes the distinction. Thus we read in Rushworth of scurrilous and abusive pamphlets, ordered to be burned in 1647; whilst the Encomium of Queen Emma is called a Pamphlet, in Holinshed.

Oldy's states:-As for the antiquity of pamphlets, it is not only questionable, whether the Art of Printing should set a bound to it, but even the adoption of the name itself, which yet I take to be more modern than that Art; for I look upon them as the eldest offspring of paper, and to claim the rights of primogeniture even of bound volumes, however they may be shorter-lived, and the younger brother has so much out-grown the elder; inasmuch as arguments do now, and more especially did in the minority of our erudition, not only so much more rarely require a larger compass than pamphlets will comprise; but VOL. VII., NO. xxvi.

19

these being of a more ready and facile, more decent and simple form, suitable to the character of the more artless ages, they seem to have been preferred by our modest ancestry for the communication of their sentiments, before book-writing became a trade and lucre, or vanity let in deluges of digressory learning, to swell up unwieldy folios. Thus I find, not a little to the honor of our subject, no less a person than the renowned King Alfred, collecting his sage precepts and divine sentences, with his own Royal hand, into quaternions of leaves stitched together;' which he would enlarge with additional quaternions, as occasion offered: yet he seemed to keep his collection so much within the limits of a pamphlet size (however bound together at last,) that he called it by the name of his hand-book, because he made it his constant companion, and had it at hand wherever he was.

"It is so difficult to recover even any of our first books or volumes, which were printed by William Caxton, though it is certain he set forth near half a hundred of them in folio, that it were a wonder if his pamphlets should not be quite lost. There are more extant of his successor Wynkin de Worde's printing in this lesser form, whereof, as great rarities, I have seen both in quarto and octavo, though holding no comparison probably with those of his also, which are destroyed.

"The civil wars of Charles I. and the Parliament party produced an innumerable quantity of these paper lanthorns, as a Wit of that time called them, which, while they illuminated the multitude, did not always escape the flames themselves.

"At this time might be mentioned the restless John Lilburn and the endless William Pryune, who wrote in earnest, for both bled in the cause. There are near a hundred pamphlets written by and concerning the first of these authors.-But, the labors of the last being unparalleled, I may here not improperly observe, that, during the forty-two years he was a writer, he published above a hundred and sixty pamphlets, besides several thick bound volumes in quarto and folio, all said to be gathered into about 40 tomes, and extant in Lincoln's Inn Library. I think the printed catalogue of his writings extends not in their whole number beyond one hundred and sixty-eight different pieces; but Anthony Wood to above one hundred and fourscore; who also computes, he must needs have composed at the rate of a sheet every day, from the time that he came to man's estate.