ton as chancellor of the latter University, any very decisive evidence that the youth of England, the flower of the State-the future Pitts and Chathams, Peels and Cannings, El dons and Lyndhursts, Nelsons and Wellingtons, have degenerated from the spirit of their fathers? Is it in Glasgow that he finds it, where so splendid a manifestation of Conservative feeling was recently evinced, on occasion of the great Western meeting? or in Edinburgh and Leith, where the Conservatives so stoutly gave battle to the Attorney-General and Lord Advocate, and at the great dinner to Mr Learmonth, where such a display of patriotic feeling took place? The truth cannot be disguised. The Church never was stronger in the affections, the gratitude, and the virtues of society generally; and it never at any former period was so deserving of their attachment: but unhappily that particular faction, the ten-pounders, to whom the Reform Bill gave such monstrous and undeserved power, is for the most part adverse to it, because it is in great part either depraved and corrupted, or governed by Dissenting jealousy; and it is in them, and THEM ALONE, that Earl Grey finds" the spirit of the times," and the "pressure from without," to which he ascribes the necessity of commencing the work of spoliation.

But let it not be imagined, that because the Church is strong in the affections of the King and the Nobility -the better, if not the larger part of the House of Commons-the Church, the Law, the Army and Navy-because it is enthusiastically loved in Oxford and Cambridge, by the great est and wisest, the noblest and best of the community-because its blessings are widely felt, and generally admitted by the landed proprietors, the tenantry, the rural labourersbecause all the highly educated classes of society are almost unanimous in its support-that therefore it is safe from attack, and may securely despise the malice of its enemies. The British Constitution is not now swayed by the people, but a part of the people-not by the wise and the learned, but the vain and the ignorant-not the men of property and industry, but the men of intrigue and desperation. This was the result of the Reform Bill, and we must

work with the elements of power as they are now by law established. The Ministers have declared that the pressure from without is too strong for them-that they must yield to the spirit of the age, (i. e. of the ten-pounders,) or perish; and they have issued a Commission to enquire into the situation of the Irish Church, with the avowed design of acting upon the report which may be anticipated from a body so constituted, and commencing the appropriation of what they deem the surplus property of the Establishment, to national purposes. To avoid misconstruction on so momentous a subject, we subjoin the words of the Commission, from the London Gazette, and a few extracts from the speeches of Ministers on the subject, taken, for the sake of impartiality, from the Times newspaper. The Commission are directed to enquire into "the number of members of, or persons in communion with, the United Church of England and Ireland, in each benefice or parish, distinguishing, in the cases of such benefices as comprise more than one parish, the number belonging to each parish separately, and to the Union collectively, and also to state the distances of the parishes in each union from each other respectively; to state the number and rank of the ministers belonging to or officiating within each benefice, whether rector, vicar, or curate, and whether resident or nonresident, and whether there is a church or glebe-house thereon; to state the periods at which divine service is performed in each parish. church or chapel, and the average number of persons usually attending the service in each, and to state generally whether those numbers have been for the last five years increasing, stationary, or diminishing; to ascer tain the number of the several other places of worship belonging to Roman Catholics or Presbyterians, and other Protestant Dissenters, and the number of ministers officiating in each, the proportion of the population of each parish belonging to each of such persuasions respectively, the periods at which divine service is performed in each of their chapels, and the average number of persons usually attending the service in each, and to state generally whether those numbers have been for the last five years increasing,

stationary, or diminishing; to ascertain the state of each parish, with reference to the means of education, the number and description of schools, the kind of instruction afforded therein, the average attendance at each, and the sources from which they are supported, and to state generally whe ther the numbers attending the same have for the last five years been increasing, stationary, or diminishing; to enquire generally whether adequate provision is now made for the religious instruction and for the general education of the people of Ireland; and to report such other circumstances connected with the moral and political relations of the Church Establishment, and the religious institutions of other denominations dissenting from the Esta blished Church, as may bring clearly into view their bearings on the general condition of the people of that part of our said United Kingdom called Ireland."

Little doubt can remain as to the real object of this Commission, when the expressions quoted in italics are considered, and it is recollected that it was issued by a Movement Administration, in order to avoid a collision with Mr Ward's motion, which was expressly to ap propriate" the surplus property" of the Irish Church, as it is called, to the service of the State. But all doubt is removed by what Ministers said on the occasion. According to the report in the Times, "Lord Althorp pronounced that it was unnecessary for the House to declare an opinion on the first part of Mr Ward's resolution,'-namely, that which asserted the power of Parliament to deal with Church property as the exigencies of the State might require.

"Lord John Russell avowed that it would be absurd to appoint a Commission, if they were not really to deal with the surplus Church property' beyond the wants of the Protestant population, if any such should be found; and further, that the funds of the Irish Church might be properly reduced, with a view to the purposes of moral education.'

"In the reported speech of Mr Spring Rice on the same occasion, we find, in substance, the following words: If it were proved to his satisfaction that the wealth now enjoy,

ed by the Protestant Church of Ireland was more than adequate to the purposes to which it was originally devoted, &c., he would consider the question how that excess of wealth might be best bestowed, not only for the sake of the Protestant Church, but of the other interests of the nation.'

This is pretty well, coming from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Colonial Secretary, and another Cabinet Minister in the House of Commons. Earl Grey is equally explicit in the House of Peers. He expressly said, that, provided it appeared that a surplus existed, it might be applied to the other purposes of the State, as the public exigencies may require." This is just in effect admitting the principles of the French National Assembly, who "confiscated the property of the Church to the purposes of the State, and took the clergy, charities, and education of France, under the safeguard of the national honour." We are not going quite so fast as our more impetuous neighbours, indeed, but following precisely the same road. In vain may Lord Lansdowne declare that he will "never sanction the appropriation of the surplus Church revenues to any other than pious and charitable purposes connected with the Establishment;" and Lord Brougham, as to the Catholic Church having one single fraction of a farthing of the fund, no noble Lord who sat on the opposite side of the House would more strenuously oppose such a measure than himself;" and "that the fund is to be applied to the purposes of education and charities belonging to the Established Church." These declarations and restrictions will never alter the nature of the measure which is approaching; they will not diminish one iota of the danger with which it is fraught. Who is to be the judge of the purposes to which the surplus fund is to be applied? who is to decide what is a due provision to the clergy, and what extent of the property is to be deemed surplus? who is to decide whether L.48 a-year is not enough for every parish priest, and L.300 a-year adequate for every Bishop, as the Constituent Assembly did in dealing with the surplus property which they acquired from their greater ecclesias

tical spoliation? who is to decide whether a Protestant clergyman is not to be suppressed, unless a certain proportion, perhaps threefourths or four-fifths of the population are Protestant? Who is to decide what are the purposes of "education and charity" to which the surplus is to be applied? whether it is not to be the cramming the poor with crude trash called political economy, instead of giving them the Bible and the Prayer-book? whether a seminary, on the principle of excluding religion," like the London University, is not meant to be set down in every county; and the poor given out of the ecclesiastical funds the means of reading the Times and the Morning Chronicle, but neither the New Testament nor the Liturgy? The answer to all these questions is the same. The "Spirit of the Age," in other words, the demands of the ten-pounders, must be the rule and the measure of the work of spoliation: and they will soon discover that charity begins at home; that the “ purposes of the State" are the relief of its necessities; and that what "the public exigencies require" is an appropriation of the revenues of the Church to the wants of the Consolidated Fund.

To do the Radicals justice, they make no secret of their designs; and if the work of spoliation begins, and ends in a universal wreck of private property, the rest of the people cannot accuse them of concealing their ultimate objects. Mr Ward expressly declared in the House of Commons, "that the model of ecclesiastical Establishments, that which all nations should strive to arrive at, was that of modern France, where the clergy of all denominations were paid by the State, and no one could boast any preeminence over other." Here, then, we have proposed for the British people, in the outset of their revolutionary movements, the final issue of similar convulsions on the other side of the Channel; and an open declaration that the total abolition of an Established Church, or any peculiar style of national faith, is the most desirable of all consummations. It was the majority in favour of a motion prefaced by, and based upon this declaration, that Ministers felt

an

themselves unable to resist; and it was to avoid a collision with a ma

jority supporting such a declaration, that the Irish Church Commission was issued. The danger, therefore, is avowed and imminent; a majority of the House of Commons, that is, of the body holding the public purse, has declared itself in substance in favour of the spoliation of the Irish Church, and an appropriation of what portion of its revenues they please to the purposes of the State; and this intention is loudly applauded by the Radicals and Revolutionists, the ten-pounders and democrats, the Catholics and Dissenters, the bankrupts and infidels, the profligates and rakes, throughout the State. It will require the utmost efforts of the united wisdom and probity, courage and virtue, rank and property, energy and activity, learning and genius, of the Empire, to avert the danger, and stop this first great and decided step in revolutionary confiscation. In any former period of British history, we should not have had the remotest apprehension for the result; the now awakened feeling of all the respectable and intelligent classes, would at once have given an immense majority to the Conservative side in the House of Commons, and another lease of glory and prosperity would have been assured to England; but the Reform Bill has thrown these classes into so obvious a minority, at least in the principal town constituencies, that it is impossible to contemplate, without the utmost apprehension, the means of constitutional resistance which are still in their power, and assuredly it is only by the greatest and most strenuous exertions on the part of all classes, and a total oblivion of all minor differences, that the victory can be obtained.

The very act of issuing such_a Commission as the present, is utterly subversive of any thing like an ecclesiastical establishment. If an enquiry is to be made into the comparative number of Catholics and Protestants throughout Ireland, with a view, doubtless, to the extinction or suspension of the Protestant worship, except where the latter are a certain proportion of the former, or to the application of the funds of the Church in such situations to

purposes foreign to religion, on what principle can a similar change be resisted in Great Britain? In those districts where the Dissenters outnumber the Establishment, how, after such a precedent, can their claims to be liberated from ecclesiastical payments, or have them diverted to the endowment of their own pastors, be resisted? How are we to draw a distinction between Tipperary and Huddersfield, Queen's County and Halifax? And if the possession of a numerical majority is to suspend or change the direction of ecclesiastical payments, how soon, in a selfish and corrupted age, may we not expect to see Dissenting principles generally triumphant, if it is thought that a liberation from pecuniary payments is to follow a declaration that they are the larger body? It is astonishing how rapidly the unthinking, but selfish majority (and they are ever the larger part of mankind) discover what profession of faith is to lead to pecuniary relief, The principle, in short, of taking numbers for the test-of basing ecclesiastical establishments on statistical returns, and endowing or stripping different churches according to the returns they can exhibit to a roving Government Commission, is utterly fatal to an Establishment. No Church can exist for ten years after such a principle is once admitted. The magnificent union of ALL the people under one roof; the oblivion of all temporal distinctions in the sight of Heaven; the noble and truly Christian principle of providing for the gratuitous instruction of the poor at the expense of the rich, and setting aside a certain portion of the landed property for the endowments of a Church founded on these principles, is for ever destroyed. Thenceforward the distinctions of the world will penetrate into the bosom of the Church; the rich will have one religion, the poor another: the firmest chain which unites together the higher and lower classes, will be snapt asunder; and the nation, instead of being wrapt in the imposing robe of uniform faith, will be decked out in a harlequin dress, distracting from the variety which it contains-contemptible from the divisions which it exhibits.

It is said that the Irish, not less than the English tithes, were for

merly destined to the Catholic religion; that the authority of Government transferred them to the Establishment of the Protestant faith, and that the same authority may reconvey them to their original destination. The answer to this is short and decisive. The Reformation was a complete Revolution in Church and State; it was ushered in by the most frightful acts of injustice, and accompanied by a violent transfer of property; and therefore it cannot be appealed to by any party professing the remotest regard to order or constitutional authority. If the Church reformers tell us that they take the Reformation for their guide, and found upon its precedent against itself we answer, that it was begun by Henry VIII., as Mr Hume has told us, by the confiscation of one-third of the landed property of the kingdom, and the execution of seventytwo thousand persons on the scaffold in a single reign; that it brought Charles I. to the block, established the military tyranny of Cromwell, abolished the House of Peers, and induced the hideous rule which produced the general delirium of joy on the Restoration. It was under these, the worst symptoms and effects of revolution, that the transfer of the property of the Catholic to the Protestant Church took place; and it is obvious from their bare enumeration, that it was a true revolutionary crisis, a violent_convulsion in religion, drawing after it a total overthrow of civil institutions; and that, therefore, it was an event like the battle of Hastings, or the Norman Conquest, in which all law and justice was set aside, and the stern motto, Vae victis, openly inscribed on the banners of the victorious party. If the advocates of Church reform adopt such principles, and refer to such precedents, we understand them, we admit their title if they choose to embrace them, and we only wish that they would openly proclaim their intentions. We should like to see them take the field, with a beheaded King on their banners, a dethroned nobility in their mouths, the confiscation of half the landed property of the kingdom openly announced, and the blood of seventy-two thousand victims on the scaffold, rising up in frightful array before them. Re

duced to such desperate features, stript of the delusion arising from professed liberality and regard for the lower orders, speedily would the Jacobin faction be reduced to its real strength, and hurled with indignant fury into the dust. It is the delusion of mankind, which, in such cases, is chiefly to be dreaded. The siren voice which leads them on over a path strewed with flowers to perdition, that constitutes the real danger. The more that the Revolutionists refer to the violent transfer of property at the Reformation, the better, because it unveils their real designs, and proclaims their intention of ripping up again a frightful wound, which has hardly been healed up by two hundred years of subsequent legal authority. We thought their design was different; we were told they wished Reform, and not Revolution; that restoration, not anarchy, was their object; that they abhorred all violence and illegal acts, and repelled with indignation the foul aspersions of the Conservatives, who uniformly predicted that, sooner or later, willingly or unwillingly, their frantic course would force them into such excesses. We denounced them from the beginning: if they refer to such a precedent, and declare their intention of following it, they have denounced themselves, and the nation will have itself only to blame, if it becomes their victim.

The case, in another view, at the Reformation, was widely different. There a total change in religious belief took place in the vast majority of the people; and this was immediately followed by a total subversion of all the institutions of the ancient faith. Whether the Protestants were not much to blame for their excesses in the hour of victory, is another matter; probably no impartial person will now entertain a doubt on that subject; and not a little has the nation since suffered from the deeds of violence then committed: but, at least, they had this to say, that they never pretended to keep any terms with the Catholics; that the scabbard was thrown away on both sides; and as they were threatened, if vanquished, with the stake, so they could only retaliate, if victorious, with the scaffold. Are these the principles on which the

Church spoliators are now prepared to act? If so, we again say we understand them; we perceive they declare a bellum ad internecionem against all the property of the State, and all the institutions of society; and woful as the prospect is, we have no doubt of the issue of such a conflict. But can they pretend that circumstances have now arrived, which call for, or justify so frightful an invasion of private right, and so ruinous a precedent of public injustice? Can they seriously assert that the nation has become Republican by so vast a majority in numbers, property, wealth, talent, and energy, as to justify a repetition of the total overthrow of society which occurred at the Reformation, or distinguished the French Revolution? an overthrow which at once sets at nought all the authority of law, and all the sanctity of religion; which openly overturns Government, and spoliates property; which at once suspends the axe over every head, and turns the people out like a set of frantic wild beasts, to fight it out in a vast arena till the strongest acquires the mastery? If not, then let them not go back for a precedent, in legal and constitutional times, to a catastrophe consequent on a total overthrow of society; or, while still professing some regard to private rights and public justice, refer to deeds done in distracted and barbarous times, when both were, by common consent, inhumanly and unpardonably abandoned.

"I wish, if this Reform Bill passes," said the Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords in June, 1831, "the noble Earl at the head of his Majesty's Government, would shew how he or any one is in future to carry on the Government."

"In pursuing," says Earl Grey in June, 1834, "6 a course of salutary improvement, I feel it indispensable that we shall be allowed to proceed with deliberation and caution; and, above all, that we should not be urged, by a constant and active PRESSURE FROM WITHOUT, to the adoption of any measures, the necessity of which has not been fully proved, and which are not strictly regulated by a careful attention to the settled institutions of the country, both in Church and State."

Was ever prediction more mar