Church of Ireland.

Having, in the preceding chapter, given a detailed account of the general principles and management of the Church of England, it will not be requisite to be equally copious in our exposition of the Irish Protestant establishment.

In the past and present state of Ireland we have a striking illustration of the tendency of the government that is said to “work well,” and the wretchedness of her population, her tithe-system, her vast tracts of land, either ill-cultivated or totally unproductive, her judicial and magisterial administration, her insurrections, factions, burnings, desolations, and bloody domestic outrages,—all symptomatic of a community entering on the first stages of civilization,—afford irrefragable proof of the excellencies of the good working government. In England, it is true, there are grievous abuses in the absorption of public money by the Aristocracy, in the denial of justice by the cost and uncertainty of legal decisions;—in the tolerance of commercial monopolies, in cornlaws, partial taxation, and other oppressions;—but these sink into insignificance when contrasted with the sufferings of Ireland. There the natural order of society has been inverted, and the government for many years existed, not for the benefit of the people, but the people existed solely for the benefit of the government.

Among the various forms under which oppression has been carried on, the most conspicuous is the Church Establishment; one is at a loss to conceive for whose benefit this institution exists in Ireland. Is it for the benefit of the clergy, the people, or the state? If by the former is meant those who minister religious instruction, it can hardly be said to be of advantage to them. The teachers of religion in Ireland are nearly all Catholics, a vast majority of the people are of the same persuasion, and what religion there is the expense is chiefly defrayed by voluntary contributions. Neither the really operative clergy, therefore, nor the people, benefit by the church establishment. With respect to the state, the advantage appears not less equivocal. The alliance betwixt church and state is founded on reciprocal benefits—that, on the one hand, the state shall give its civil protection to the church, and, on the other, the church shall aid in sustaining the state, by its influence over the people:—this is the basis of the compact; and it follows, when the church loses its influence, when it loses the adherence of a majority of the population, when it is no longer able to sustain the state, the compact is dissolved; it has no claim for protection, and its alliance becomes a source of weakness instead of power.

Such is the actual condition of the Irish church, such the advantages it confers on the government; it adds little to its authority, affords no aid to the civil magistrate, neither the law nor its ministers are rendered more sacred by its influence—quite the reverse. Authority is degraded and abhorred in Ireland, solely on account of the ecclesiastical establishment: it is the colossal grievance of the country, the source of all its factions, murmuring, and discontent. Why then, it may be asked, is the establishment maintained? On what principle or pretext is it justified? The godly cannot defend it from piety, the politician from reasons of state, nor the patriot for the blessings it confers on the community. Whose interest, then, is identified with the odious system? The only rational answer that can be given to this question is the fact, that there is, in Ireland, as in this country, an oligarchical interest, which has entwined itself round her institutions, and whose support is incompatible with public liberty and happiness. For many years Ireland was the prey of a favoured caste, a selfish and bigoted faction, who divided her as a spoil; and such was the wretched policy of the general government, that it was weak and unprincipled enough to avail itself of the folly and cupidity of such agents to preserve a precarious sovereignty—when, too, its frown would have made the same creatures, who were ready, at any time, to sacrifice their country for a pension or a place, instrumental to her greatness and welfare. Under the Wellington and Grey administrations attempts have been made to introduce a more impartial and enlightened system; with what success time must develope; but it is apparent, so long as her ecclesiastical establishment is continued—it is vain to expect contentment and tranquillity.

The Irish branch of the United Church is more pregnant with abuses even than its sister establishment in England; presenting a more revolting spectacle of inordinate incomes, of lax discipline, of laborious duties without adequate remuneration, and of an immense ecclesiastical revenue levied under circumstances of greater insult, partiality, and oppression. The points most deserving attention in the exposition of these subjects are, first, the revenue of the Irish Protestant establishment; secondly, the number of individuals among whom this revenue is divided; thirdly, the hardships and impoverishment resulting not less from the amount than the mode in which the clerical income is levied; fourthly, the patronage of the Irish church; lastly, the diminutive portion of the population who derive even a semblance of benefit from the intolerable burthen imposed on the land and industry of the community. We shall touch on these several heads of inquiry as briefly as possible, confining ourselves strictly to such facts as illustrate the state of the church.

To begin with our first topic—the Irish Church Revenue. Within the last ten years a mass of important details has been laid before parliament relative to the estates and revenues of the Protestant establishment; but, either from inability or reluctance in the parties interested to communicate the requisite information, our knowledge is still far from complete and accurate on this interesting branch of public statistics. Upon the authority of documents so communicated we shall, however, in great part, found our exposition; and thus, by relying on the statements of the clergy themselves, their registrars, and other dependent officials, we shall at least avoid the imputation of having arrived, through a prejudiced medium, at an exaggerated result.

We shall commence with the revenues of the Episcopal Clergy. The incomes of the bishops are derived principally from land, but partly from tithe. In some dioceses, in the West of Ireland, a fourth part of the tithes of almost every parish is paid to the bishop; affording decisive testimony of the ancient fourfold division of parochial tithes, and of the veracity of the allegation of those who affirm that the poor were formerly entitled to share equally with the bishop and priest in the produce of this impost. The practice, however, is not universal; and the revenues of the bishoprics chiefly arise from their immense landed estates. In the session of 1824, returns were made to parliament of the number of acres attached to the several Irish sees. These returns are very incomplete, and were mostly compiled by the registrars from the fallacious representations of the tenantry. Three dioceses, Dromore, Down, and Raphoe, made no return at all; alleging that, on examining the leases of the church lands, it was found they did not mention “the number of acres demised.” In the return from Armagh, it is remarked that the number of acres has been calculated from the representations of the tenants, but “the lands have never been surveyed.” Of the magnitude of the errors in these reports, we may judge from the fact subsequently ascertained, that, in one of them there was a trifling omission of thirteen thousand acres. Enough, however, may be collected from them to show the vast extent of ecclesiastical property: in fact, it is clear that the bishops’ lands are held, leased, and managed much upon the same liberal scale and principle that lands are in Australia, Canada, and Nova Scotia; and the conjectural estimates by Wakefield, and other statists, of what their immense incomes, either actually are, or might be made, under an improved system of tenure and cultivation, are not remote from the truth. We shall insert the number of acres returned by fourteen sees; the acres are Irish, which makes the amount about one-third less than it would be in English acres.

Mr. Leslie Foster, one of the barons of the Irish exchequer, estimates the lands belonging to all the sees to amount to 617,598 Irish acres, which are equal to about 990,000 English acres. This does not include the demesne lands attached to the episcopal residences, and which, by the same authority, are said to vary from 100 to 500 acres each; making the entire patrimony of the bishops about 623,598 acres, or, according to Beaufort’s map of Ireland, one nineteenth of the entire soil of the kingdom. This, it must be allowed, is enough for the maintenance of twenty-two bishops, especially when it is considered a population of eight millions is to be supported out of the remainder.

However, the area grasped by the right reverend fathers affords an inaccurate idea of their incomes. Mr. Baron Foster supposes the average value of the see-lands to be 20s. per acre. Even at this low rate, the bishops’ lands, if out of lease, would yield a total revenue of £623,598, averaging £28,340 to each prelate. Some of the wealthier sees, as those of Derry, Armagh, Tuam, and Elphin, would have incomes, respectively, of £94,836, £63,270, £49,281, and £31,832, exclusive of what might be derived from tithes, patronage, and other sources. But the nature of ecclesiastical tenures precludes the bishops from realizing incomes to this amount. It scarcely ever happens the occupying tenantry are the bishops’ tenants; the immediate lessees hold from the bishops for the term of 21 years; the bishops renew the leases from year to year, always leaving 21 years unexpired; the rent reserved to the bishops is mostly the old rent payable in the time of Charles II., which has become almost nominal, and the real incomes of the bishops proceed from the annual fines for renewing the leases. Now these fines usually amount to about one-fifth of what an ordinary landlord would receive for rent. So that, if the actual worth of the see lands be £623,598, the sum ordinarily received does not exceed £124,719.

We have thought it expedient to explain this, because it is a subject on which there has been a great deal of misapprehension. The fact is, the spiritual tenures are one great obstacle to agricultural improvement in Ireland. The Church is a principal proprietor of the soil, but the vast tracts she holds can never be cultivated to advantage under the uncertainties of the existing system. Much of the land is rough pasture, bog, and mountain, which requires, in the first instance, a great expenditure to render productive; but who would risk capital in the undertaking with a lease which, by law, cannot exceed twenty-one years; or with a certainty of having a fine levied on its renewal, augmented in exact proportion to the money and labour expended in improvement? Again, an ecclesiastical tenant is never sure of his landlord, being constantly liable to be changed, not only by death but translation. New lords, as the proverb says, often bring new laws. Although the usual course is to renew every year at one-fifth of the real worth, yet some prelates act differently; they will have surveys made—demand exorbitant fines—or wait the fall of the leases, which are relet at a nominal rent, perhaps, to their own relations. From these causes arises the non-improvement uniformly remarked in the condition of the church lands. It is a great obstacle to the public prosperity of Ireland, and the practice is as little favourable to the interests of the bishops as to those of the lessees, by rendering the incomes of the former not only less than they otherwise would be, but uncertain, varying, as they do, with the amount of the fines, or perhaps they lose the fines altogether, the tenants electing to run out their leases, and thus the advantage stands over to the succeeding diocesan.

In spite of these drawbacks, the bishops, from estates, tithes, brokerage in livings and other means, contrive to make a very profitable crusade. In the Edinburgh Review (vol. xliii. p. 483) their incomes are stated to average £10,000 a year each, or £220,000 in the whole. The patronage of an Irish bishop, of which we shall hereafter speak, is nearly as valuable as the income of his see. The vast revenues appendant to the bishoprics may be inferred from the immense wealth the prelates leave behind them. A former Bishop of Clogher, (the predecessor of the soldier-bishop,) who had been Cambridge tutor to lord Westmoreland, went over to Ireland without a shilling, and continued in his bishopric for eight years, and, at the end of that time, died worth between £300,000 and 400,000. It was stated, by Sir John Newport, that three bishops, in the last fifteen years, had left the enormous sum of £700,000 to their families.

The career of Warburton, the predecessor of Dr. Brinkley in the see of Cloyne, is an example of the sudden acquisition of wealth by the Irish bishops. Warburton, whose real name was Mungan, died in 1826. He was the son of a poor road-way piper, in a little village in the north of Ireland. He was a Roman Catholic, and intended for that Church. On the continent, where he was sent to study at one of the Catholic colleges, before the building of Maynooth, he was thrown, by accident, into the society of the earl of Moira, and having won his favour, was induced to change his destination from the Roman to the Protestant Church. He was, after taking orders, appointed chaplain to a regiment in America, and there he married his first wife, a lady said to have been particularly recommended by lord Moira. That lady soon after dying, he married his second wife, now his widow. With her he changed his name to Warburton. He became dean of Ardah, then bishop of Limerick, and from thence was translated to Cloyne. He was a man of courteous manners, and much esteemed in the higher circles. His ruling passion was the acquisition of riches, which the retired situation of Cloyne afforded him opportunities for indulging. From the hour of his arrival there he continued to amass wealth, and the result was he left £120,000 among his children, three sons and one daughter, one of whom is a colonel in the army, another a major, another in the church, and the daughter married archdeacon Mansell. The bishop was unexceptionable as a private individual, and strict in the observance of religious forms, but he was neither respected nor esteemed in his neighbourhood. He drained the diocese of an immense annual sum, but he returned no part of it in works of charity. He abstracted himself from all society, and held his station more as a petty despot, exacting a subsidy from the toil of the people, than as a Christian pastor, in daily communicating with his flock, to whose care a great revenue was entrusted, as the steward for the children of want and misfortune. His palace was more like a rack-rent farmer’s house than a gentleman’s mansion. The coldness and apathy of the people at his funeral formed the best comment on his life and character.

Such is the general run of Irish prelates; without the claim of public services or superior mental endowments, they succeed to honours and vast revenues, obtained through intrigue, family connexion, or political interest, and die loaded with spoil, either on a foreign soil, or amidst the scorn and hatred of the people whom they have impoverished and oppressed. Only a month ago we passed over, in Kent, the remains of Dr. Bennett, Warburton’s predecessor. He was buried in an obscure grave in Plumstead church-yard, with a common stone slab over him. He died in 1820, after holding the see of Cloyne twenty-six years, and draining at least a quarter of a million from the Irish soil. Yet he must have been an absentee, otherwise he would have been buried in his cathedral, or among the clergy of his diocese.

Let us resume our inquiries into the ecclesiatical revenues of Ireland. Of the extent of the estates of the Deans and Chapters, we have no means of forming an estimate, there having been no return laid before parliament of the real property of the ecclesiastical corporations. Many of the dignities as well as the sees are known to be extremely valuable. The Deanery of Down, for example, in 1790, was worth £2000 per annum; in 1810, it let for £3700. The archdeaconry of Armagh is returned at £1662 per annum; the chancellorship £2385, and the precentorship £2350. By comparing the cathedral and collegiate establishments of Ireland with those of England, it may, perhaps, be possible to form a conjecture of their relative value. In England the income of the Deans and Chapters is £494,000: but, as the number of members of these corporations is double what it is in Ireland, it is probable their endowments exceed in the same proportion. We may, therefore, conclude that the Deans and Chapters have estates and endowments a little exceeding those of the Irish Bishoprics, and producing a total revenue of £250,000 per annum.

Next in order let us advert to the incomes of the Parochial Clergy, from tithes and glebe. Ireland contains 18,000,000 of English acres of land, of which 900,000 pay nothing to the church; 4,000,000 pay from endowments about one-third of their tithes, and the remaining 13,000,000 and upwards are liable to pay full tithes. The share which the clergy actually derive from the soil will be best ascertained from the valuations of the Tithe Commissioners, acting under the authority of Mr. Goulburn’s statute. Compositions under this act continue in force twenty-one years when the original right to tithes revives, and vary in amount every third year, if the average price of wheat or oats fluctuate one-tenth. Had this act been exclusively framed by a conclave of tithe-eaters, it could not have more adroitly guaranteed their interests; and this is strikingly exemplified by the provision which provides that the tenant may deduct his share of the composition from the landlord’s rent, and, if in arrear, it must be paid in preference to debt, rent, or taxes—that is, the parson’s claim must have priority of that of a creditor, the landlord, or even the King. It is a very cunningly devised measure for perpetuating, without lightening, a most grievous burden. A design is entertained by the Heads of the Church to introduce a similar project into England, but we trust the intention will be frustrated. Its direct tendency is to fasten on the community the tithe-tax like the land-tax; with this difference, that the latter is paid by the landlord, but the former would have to be paid by the tenants, and augment with every increase in capital and industry. Its tendency is also to make the pastors completely independent of their congregations, converting the former into annuitants who derive their incomes as independently of their parishoners as if paid out of the public treasury. The motives for residence will be still further lessened; many parsons before, from having few or no hearers, had little inducement, from the claims of duty, to reside on their livings, but now they will not even have the tithes to look after,—no need of watching the growth of potatoes, the increase of farm stock, nor extension of tillage; their composition-money, like the rent of the absentee-landlord, may be remitted whole and entire to them at London, Paris, Bath, or whatever place they may select as best calculated for unobserved luxurious indulgence.

However, let us attend to the workings of this precious scheme of Lord Wellesley’s Irish administration, and the light it throws on the value of parochial tithes. But first we must give the reader an idea of the rapacious manner in which church-preferment has been cut up in Ireland; how the parishes have been compressed into unions; how the unions have been dovetailed into enormous pluralities; how the pluralities and unions together have been tacked to dignities and offices; and how all these good things, like so many bunches of grapes on a string, have been heaped on the Beresfords, Trenches, Saurins, and Plunkets, as the means whereby the resources of the country may be absorbed.

Be it known, then, that there are in Ireland 2450 parishes. Now, as no parish (though some districts or portions of land are) is wholly exempt from the payment of tithes, each parish ought to have at least one resident minister, one church, one parsonage-house, and one glebe. This is the ecclesiastical state which ought to subsist. Instead of which there are only, according to clerical authority, one thousand and seventy-five rectors, vicars, and perpetual curates in all Ireland, and of these not more than two-thirds are said to reside on their benefices. In the whole 2450 parishes there are only 1100 churches, and of these churches 474 have been built within the last century by means of grants of public money. There are only 771 glebe-houses, and though there are some benefices with two or three glebes, containing 4000 acres, there are many parishes without any glebe at all, the land, through negligence or abuse, having been lost or alienated, it not being unusual to find a patch of ground, designated as glebe, situate in the middle of a gentleman’s lawn or part of his demesne, to which he lays claim in virtue of some patent right, granting him the lands and tenements of a church for ever. It follows from this that there are more than three parishes to every resident incumbent; there is less than one church to every two parishes; and, if every parish had its pastor, as it ought, there would be nearly four parsons to live in every glebe-house.

To accommodate these dilapidations and inconsistencies the policy of consolidating the parishes into unions has been resorted to. As in many parishes there were neither hearers nor a church, there could be no need of the services of an officiating minister. In these parishes it would have been rational either to have abolished the tithe or applied the produce of it to some other purpose than the support of a sinecure rector or vicar. But this did not accord with the temporal interests of the church. Hence the expedient of unions of parishes; that is, clusters of parishes, in various numbers, from two to a dozen and more, have been compressed into a single benefice, forming one presentation, held by a single incumbent, and this incumbent, perhaps, a pluralist, holding two or more of these ecclesiastical conglomerations. In England a similar abuse prevails; it frequently happening that two or more rectories, vicarages, or parochial chapelries are held cum, or with, others, forming a single benefice; but the instances are neither so numerous nor outrageous as in Ireland. In the latter country unions may be found thirty-six Irish miles in length, containing as many square miles of territory as some of the petty kingdoms under the Heptarchy. One union, that of Burnchurch, in the diocese of Ossory, formed by an act of the privy council, and in the gift of the king and the bishop alternately, consists of no fewer that thirteen parishes. Here is a benefice! If a man is fortunate enough to obtain, as is not impossible, two or three such benefices, he is more like a bishop at the head of a diocese than a parish priest.

Of the whole 2450 parishes there are only 749 held single, the remaining 1701 parishes having been consolidated into 517 unions, forming, in the whole, 1266 parochial benefices. The territorial contents of the benefices vary in different districts. According to Mr. Erck, in the northern, southern, and eastern provinces, they average 6544 Irish acres, or upwards of ten square miles, with the exception of those in the dioceses of Clogher and Killaloe, and in the three western dioceses of Elphin, Clonfert, and Killala, where they average from 10 to 12,000 acres; in the dioceses of Derry, Kilmore, Raphoe, Ardfert, and Achonry, they average from 12 to 15,000 acres; and in the western diocese of Tuam they average the enormous area of 25,800 acres. The union benefices have been constituted under different authorities, by parliament, by charter, by act of council, by license of the bishops; and some are of such ancient date that the period and mode of their origin cannot be traced. All the unions are permanent except those under episcopal authority, which enure only during the life of the incumbent, when the parishes may revert to their original state. But if an union has been once formed it is generally continued to successive incumbents, and it is not likely the bishops will dissolve them, especially if they happen to be, as is mostly the case, the patrons. In fact, it is by the heads of the church, whose duty consisted in the maintenance of more strict ecclesiastical discipline, that the abuse of unions has been chiefly encouraged. Of the 517 unions 230 are of episcopal creation, and 126 more have been established under an authority almost identical with that of the bishops,—namely, the privy council of Ireland. We subjoin a classification of the unions now subsisting, as we collect them from the Ecclesiastical Register, for 1830, pp. 14, 15. So long established and intimately cemented have some of these unions become, that the boundaries of the parishes of which they consist it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to trace; and there are among the apologists of ecclesiastical abuses those who would avail themselves of this circumstance, and boldly affirm that the parishes in some unions are not distinct parishes, only town lands, and this though the denomination and names of the parishes are fully set forth in the titles of every incumbent!

Having explained the nature of unions and their territorial magnitude, the reader will be better enabled to judge of the value of Irish benefices, and he must be convinced what a fortunate aspirant he must be who happens to be presented with two or more such benefices, besides dignities and offices, especially if he have not—as is possible—a church in any of them to preach in, nor a single Protestant to whom he need read prayers. In Ireland, as in England, there is great disparity in the value of livings; some are extremely small and insignificant, while others, according to the admission of his grace of Armagh, are worth £2300 per annum. We are as averse to the penury of one part of the church as to the corruptive opulence of another; for we dislike all extremes of condition, and are quite of Agur’s opinion in thinking that neither excess of riches nor poverty is for the good of individuals. The list of parishes we subjoin has been taken almost at random from the Parliamentary Returns of the amount of compositions for tithe: it will show the actual sums now paid by parishes in lieu of tithes, and, as the unions are enclosed in crotchets, it will be seen what monstrosities some of them are. The composition-rent put down is for clerical tithes only; the amount paid for impropriate tithes is omitted, as not forming part of the income of the incumbent. In some unions all the parishes have not yet compounded; in others the compositions have been annulled by the bishops, (who have a veto on these agreements,) as not being adequate to their reputed value. The names of the patrons and present incumbents have been collected from the Ecclesiastical Register of Ireland.

From the above statement it appears that the amount of composition-money paid in lieu of tithes, in some unions, amounts to £1410, £1407, £1554, £1569, and £1758; and that single parishes have come down to the tune of £1050, £1200, £1350, and £1440, in order to rid themselves of the worldly visitations of the spiritual locust. These sums, it must be remembered, are not the conjectural estimates of individuals imperfectly informed of the worth of parochial tithes; they are public and authentic returns, founded on an average and impartial valuation. It must, also, be borne in mind that the composition is a net payment, obtained without the trouble of collecting the tithes, or the expense of proctors or middlemen, and the receipt of which is better secured than the landlord’s rent or public taxes.

Many of the incumbents enjoying these really fat livings, are pluralists, holding other parochial benefices, beside dignities and offices. The names of the honourable Charles Knox, the honourable George de la Poer Beresford, the honourable Joseph Bourke, and other well-known signatures, are quite sufficient to indicate their connexions with the episcopacy and aristocracy of Ireland. It would require pages fully to set forth the families, connexions, and influence; the sinecures, places, offices, and pensions by which some of these honourables have sent forth their absorbents into the substance of Church and State. There is one man, however, James Hingstone by name, who, as far as we know, is not of noble blood, unless it be by some left-handed tilt; yet he seems to have reaped a plentiful harvest. He has compounded for the tithes of two parishes, that of Whitechurch for £784, and that of Aghabullogue for £750, making a snug income of £1534 per annum. But this is far from being the extent of his good fortune. He is, also, rector of Subulter, and prebendary and vicar-general of Cloyne. His son, James Hingstone, is vicar of Clonmult, and vicar-choral of the cathedral church of St. Colman’s. It were easy to give similar illustrations of others, but this must suffice.

Mr. Goulbourn’s bait has taken so well that nearly two-thirds of all the parishes in Ireland have compounded for their tithes: the progress of the measure, up to the present, will appear from the subjoined statement, exhibiting the number of parishes, in each diocese, that have compounded in the four provinces, the proportion between lay and ecclesiastical tithe, and the total amount of the compositions for both descriptions of tithe.

From the results of the compositions already entered into it is easy to calculate the value of tithes in all Ireland. Of the 1353 parishes, the average rate of composition for each parish, for impropriate tithe, is £50, for church tithe £241, and for ecclesiastical and lay tithes together £291. Supposing the whole 2450 parishes to compound for tithes at the same average rate, the annual value of impropriate tithes is £122,500, of church tithes £590,450, making the total burden imposed by tithes, lay and ecclesiastical, on the entire kingdom, amount to £712,950 per annum. The average tithe for the whole kingdom would probably exceed the sum here stated; since it is known the most fertile districts have been the most backward in compounding for their tithes.

The ecclesiastical tithe of £590,450 per annum constitutes only one item in the yearly emoluments of the parochial clergy. They have, also, glebe-houses, extensive glebes, minister’s money, and church-fees. In Ireland, “all things seem oddly made and every thing amiss.” Many benefices have neither glebe-house nor glebe-land; while others have two glebe-houses each, and two or more glebes, comprising a superficial area of 2000 acres. One-third of the benefices are destitute of any glebe whatever, and, consequently, of any residence; while the remaining two-thirds of the benefices are estimated to possess glebeland to the enormous extent of 91,137 acres. Supposing, with Mr. Baron Foster, the glebe to be worth, on an average, only £1 per acre, it forms a very considerable addition to the yearly revenue of the beneficed clergy.

Another source of clerical emolument is that termed minister’s money, intended as a substitute for tithe, and which, as we have no assessment levied in the same way in England, it will be proper to explain. In cities and towns corporate, where there are small or no tithes, a power is vested in the Lord Lieutenant, authorising, by a commission, valuations to be made, from time to time, of every house; upon a return of such valuations, in which no house may be rated above £60, the Lord Lieutenant and six more of the privy-council are empowered to assess each house, in a yearly sum, for the maintenance of the incumbent. Under this authority valuations have been made of the parishes in the cities of Dublin, Cork, Waterford, and Limerick, and the towns corporate of Drogheda and Clonmel; and it is from the proceeds of these assessments that the incumbents of forty-eight city parishes are paid their stipends. We have not any public return of the incomes allotted to the ministers of these towns and parishes; if they average £500 each, it makes an addition of £25,000 a-year to the revenues of the parochial clergy. The clause which provides that no house shall be rated above sixty pounds originated, no doubt, in the same selfish policy that dictated the abolition of the tithe of pasture, and shows, in every measure, how scrupulously have been considered the interests of the wealthy Protestants, when the burden even of maintaining the established church of the ascendant party was thrown, with unequal weight, on their poor and politically-disfranchised catholic brethren.

The yearly sums derived from church-fees we can only conjecture. They do not, of course, from a vast majority of the population being separatists from the endowed worship, form so productive a source of emolument as in England. But, supposing the million of Protestants of different sects, in Ireland, pay for marriages, christenings, and burials only 5s. a-head, surplice-fees yield an income of £250,000. Without including, then, the emoluments derived by the parochial clergy from the dignities and offices they hold, from being masters of diocesan-schools, vicar-general or surrogate of a diocese, or official chaplain at the Castle; their total revenue, from the four sources of tithes, glebe-land, minister’s money, and church-fees, cannot be less than £956,587. If to this sum we add the incomes of the episcopal clergy and the deans and chapters already ascertained, we shall have the total amount of the burden imposed on Ireland by its Protestant establishment as follows:—

Here is, certainly, a noble revenue for the maintenance of a little insignificant church, with barely more than half a million of hearers. The established church of Scotland, with a million and a half of followers, is now considered amply endowed, although its revenues do not exceed £234,900, or one sixth of those of Ireland. The sums expended on the established priesthood of Ireland are nearly equal to one-half the amount of the revenue paid into the Exchequer, on account of public taxes for the maintenance of an army of 30,000 men, for defraying the expense of police and justice, for the support of the local administration, for defraying the interest of the public debt of Ireland, and its proportional contribution to the exigencies of the general government. It ought never to be forgotten that the immense income lavished on a luxurious priesthood, whose duties prescribe to them charity, humility, and self-denial, is wrung from a poor distressed population, of whom hundreds perish annually from sheer want of the necessaries of life, and the vast majority of whom—so little have they been benefited by the instructions of their well-paid spiritual guides—are in such a state of ignorance and destitution that they are little better fed, clothed, and lodged than the beasts of the field!

Our next inquiry is the Number of the Clergy, among whom the revenues of the Irish Church are squandered. The policy of the church, like that of the City companies and all corporations, has been to keep their numbers as few, and render their revenues as productive as possible. Formerly there were thirty-two dioceses in Ireland; these, either by parliamentary authority or by annexing sees to others by way of commendam, have been compressed into eighteen suffragan bishoprics. Thus the work of uniting sees has been nearly as rife as that of uniting parishes. The deans and capitulary bodies are kept up as in England, though their functions are little more than nominal, and the sinecure offices and dignities appendant to them serving only to augment the otherwise redundant incomes of the priesthood. The deans and chapters are endowed in some instances with tithes, in others with lands, and in most cases with both; but their possessions are, for the most part, divided, the dean having one part alone in right of his deanery, and each member of the chapter a certain part in right of his office. Of the thirty chapters, eighteen consist of the four offices of precentor, chancellor, and archdeacon, and of prebendaries, varying, intermediately, from one, as in the case of Dromore, to twenty, as in the case of St. Patrick’s, Dublin. The chapters of Waterford and Kilfenora are without any prebends, and in the chapter of Kildare the eight prebendaries, although they have a voice in the election of a dean, yet form no constituent part of the chapter, which is composed of other officials and four canons.

The precentor, or chantor, is generally the first member of the chapter; his duties, in the old religious houses in papal times, were important and various, consisting in the care of the choir-service, in presiding over the singing men, organist, and choristers, paying their salaries, and keeping the seal of the chapter and chapter-book. In these cathedrals, where a choir-service is still maintained, of which there are only a few in Ireland, the precentor has the superintendence of the choir, but in all others it is a mere title of honour, without any duty whatever attached to the office. The same may be observed of the chancellors of cathedral churches, the treasurers, provosts, and prebendaries, many of whom are without cure or ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and have nothing whatever to do for their emoluments and patronage, unless it be in taking their turn of preaching in the cathedral, and that is mostly performed by deputy.

A dignity without cure is not incompatible with a parochial benefice, and both may be holden together without any dispensation for plurality; for though the dignitaries gain possession of office by institution, they are not instituted to the cure of souls. The cure attaches not to any office of the chapter as such; yet it is to be observed that there are no fewer than two hundred and nineteen dignities and offices, to which either, by charter or other means, one or more parishes with cure have been annexed, and of which parishes the tithes and emoluments are received by the collegiate sinecurists, and the duties, where any exist, are mostly discharged by a stipendiary curate. The fortunate possessors of these plural offices and parishes being eligible to other benefices, one individual may concentrate in his own person scores of dignities, offices, and livings, and enjoy an aggregation of ecclesiastical income and patronage almost incredible.

Next let us advert to the number of the parochial clergy, consisting of all ecclesiastical rectors having cure, vicars, and perpetual curates, and of whom there are, according to Mr. Erck, exclusive of ninety-eight dignitaries having cure, one thousand and seventy-five. The assistant curates, amounting to five hundred and fifty, do not, of course, form a part of the beneficed clergy; they are only deputies, removable at pleasure, and discharging the duties, at very miserable stipends, which ought to be discharged by their principals, who receive ample remuneration. Of lay-rectors, or laymen, possessing tithes as a lay-fee, there are seven hundred and eighteen. These, not being in orders, form no part of the ecclesiastical corps; they are usually denominated impropriators, as being, according to Spelman, improperly possessed of the tithes of the church; inasmuch as it severs labour from reward,—a principle which ecclesiastics profess to repudiate, though it is notorious, the most amply endowed incumbents of the United Church of England and Ireland are as justly obnoxious to the opprobrium of being impropriators as the secular parsons—having, by the intervention of curates and other devices, unknown before the Reformation, contrived to rid themselves entirely of every particle of spiritual duty.

The whole number of beneficed parochial clergy, without including collegiate officials, is then only 1075, according to the admission of the editor of the Board of First Fruits. This diminutive phalanx one would think quite small enough, in all conscience, to monopolize the cure of the 2450 parishes of Ireland. But the fact is, the number of individuals is not so numerous by a great many. We have seen that 1701 parishes have been compressed into 517 benefices. Some parishes are both rectorial and vicarial; that is, the same parish has a rector and vicar, united in the same person, and which, we suspect, reckon two in Mr. Erck’s enumeration of 1075. Then how many are Pluralists? The Ecclesiastical Register informs us, page 32, one hundred and thirty-five benefices are held with other benefices by faculty, dispensation, or permission of their diocesans. This reduces the number of individuals to 940. There appear to be 587 parishes where the vicarial are united with the rectorial tithes, or where both descriptions of tithe are united in the incumbent. It is probable, we think, the entire number of rectories, vicarages, and perpetual curacies are possessed by not more than 700 individuals, who also enjoy the chief offices in cathedrals, the diocesan schools, and public institutions of a religious and literary character.

From the Ecclesiastical Register, and other sources, we collect that the number of preferments in Ireland—episcopal, collegiate, and parochial—possessed by the established clergy, is—

Thus it appears there are 3195 offices shared among about eight hundred and fifty individuals, whose aggregate ecclesiastical revenue amounts to £1,426,587, averaging £1678 to each person. Such proportions between numbers, offices, and revenue are certainly without parallel. There is no example any where of 850 persons possessing, in see lands and glebes, one-eighteenth part of the soil, and claiming one-tenth of the produce of the remainder, which supports eight millions of people. No country, however debased by superstition, ever abandoned so large a portion of its real property, in addition to a tenth part of the national income, for the maintenance of a priesthood, forming less than a nine-thousandth part of the population.

It is not, however, the average income of either the Irish or English ecclesiastic that constitutes the principal abuse in their respective establishments. Although both churches might very well spare two-thirds of their aggregate revenues, and enough remain for the adequate remuneration of spiritual service, still it is not the redundancy of their united incomes that is so objectionable as the unequal and inhuman manner in which they are possessed by candidates of the same grade and pretension. We have before enlarged on this point in our exposition of the Church of England; we have there shown how masses of pay and pluralities of office are heaped on clerical sinecurists enjoying high connexions and influence; while the most useful and meritorious labourers in the ministry, divested of patronage, are kept in the most miserable poverty and dependence. Precisely the same injustice predominates in the Irish church. In the latter the grievance is more intolerable, for, in Ireland, church-patronage is chiefly in the hands of ecclesiastics, and it is invariably observed that the clergy have less regard for their brethren, and are more blindly intent on promoting their own personal and family interests than laymen.

We shall insert a tabular representation of the patronage of the Irish church; the number of parishes in Ireland is greater than appears from the subjoined statement, as is evident from the Ecclesiastical Register. But it is a point on which there is much difference of opinion, originating in the uncertain boundaries of parishes, and the extraordinary manner they have been consolidated, to serve the purposes of clerical rapacity.

The Irish bishops have a far greater proportion of patronage than the English bishops: the former have the gift of 1392 livings out of 2168; the latter have only the gift of 1290 out of 11,598. The livings, too, in the gift of the Irish bishops are far more valuable. Those in the gift of the Archbishop of Cashel are worth £35,000 per annum; those in the gift of the Bishop of Cloyne, £50,000; of Cork, £30,000; and of Ferns, £30,000. In the see of Cloyne one living is worth £3000, one worth £2000, and three worth £1500 each. A living of £500, as we have seen, is but a middling one in Ireland, and any thing beneath it is considered very low.

The king’s ministers nominating the bishops, and these having the disposal of all the livings, with the exception of a few belonging to the Universities, lay lords, and those that are tithe free, nearly the whole of the tithes and church revenues of Ireland are in the gift of the crown. Hence we may see how discouraging was the prospect of ecclesiastical reform under Tory ministers. The Irish sees were almost in the exclusive possession of their thick-and-thin supporters, in the families of the Beresfords, the Clancartys, Balcarrases, Mayos, Northlands, Rodens, Hoaths, Kilkennys, Caledons, &c. among whom one looks in vain for a single scholar or celebrated divine. Indeed the Irish Protestant Establishment formed a convenient and almost inexhaustible fund for parliamentary corruption; and appointments to it, like those in the Colonies, being out of sight of the English public, were often made without any regard to decency. Thus a lieutenant in the navy has been made an archbishop; a member of the House of Commons, a dean; a proprietor, and it is said editor, of a newspaper, a chancellor; and an aide-de-camp at the Castle, a rich rector. Such men as Sir Harcourt Lees, the heroes of Skibbereen and Newtonbarry, and Warburton and Percy Jocelyn, having attained preferments in the church, are still more illustrative. All the Irish representative prelates voted against the Reform Bill on its first introduction. Lord Mountcashel stated, in the House of Lords, that he knew an archdeacon in Ireland who kept one of the best packs of fox-hounds in the country. Another clergyman, not seven miles distant from the former, had, also, a pack of fox-hounds, with which he regularly hunted; and he knew of a clergyman who, after his duties in the church had been performed, used to meet his brother-huntsmen at the communion-table, on the Sunday, and arrange with them where the hounds were to start for next day. Can these things be, when it is alleged by Sir Robert Peel, that the church has no support to depend upon but her “own purity?”

However, the love of sporting is not confined to the clergy of the sister kingdom. The English spirituals have also a taste for rural sports, and a good pack of fox-hounds is deemed a suitable appendage to a cure of souls, as will be seen from the following notice: “To be sold, the next presentation to a vicarage, in one of the midland counties, and in the immediate neighbourhood of one or two of the first packs of fox-hounds in the kingdom. The present annual income about £580, subject to curate’s salary. The incumbent in his 60th year.”—Morning Herald, April 15, 1830.

But it is not these matters which engage our attention; we should care little about the sporting propensities of the parsons if they would leave to the industrious the produce of their labour. So far as manners and morals are concerned, the different sects of religionists may be left to watch each other; and that they will do with the most lynx-eyed attention. Only read what Mr. Beverley has written on this subject in his “Letter to the Archbishop of York.”

“It surely is not very edifying to behold a clergyman following the hounds, and though the fox-pursuing parsons are of a different opinion, and defend the practice with orthodox arguments, yet they cannot persuade the people to agree with them; in vain do they sing a song concerning ‘manly sport—no harm,’ &c.; for their parishioners will not listen to such trash, but indignant at the indecencies of their rectors, turn away in disgust to find better examples amongst the methodists and independents.

But indecent and unpopular as is the spectacle of a fox-hunting parson, perhaps one’s bile is not a little agitated in these exhibitions, by that sort of vestiary hypocrisy with which they choose to decorate the scandal: for it seems to be a received dogma of ecclesiastical decorum, that a parson is not to hunt in a red coat; provided only the scarlet does not appear, the reverend successor of the Apostles may leap over hedge and ditch without the slightest impropriety: give these successors of the Apostles a black or dark grey jacket, a pair of white corderoy breeches, and handsome top-boots, and then you save the character of the church; but if a young priest were to give the view-holloa in a red coat, all men would be shocked, and I suspect that ere long a grand and verbose epistle would come to him from Bishopthorpe.

The same farce in clothing is kept up throughout; at balls the successors of the Apostles must appear clad in black, or any of the shades of black. Thanks, however, to the ingenuity of tailors and haberdashers, such exquisite tints have of late years been discovered in silk stockings and silk waistcoats, such delicious varieties of light black, raven black, French black, and French whites—the black has been softened into winning lavender-tints, and the white has been so dexterously made to blush a morning blush, that it requires very great ingenuity to discover a layman from a priest in a brilliant ball-room. These, however, who are more apostolical, take the bull by the horns, and venture to place black-tinted buttons on the breasts of their shirts, a mark of the priestly office not easily to be mistaken! Of such a toilet there is great hope, and it would be a shame indeed if the black-button-bearing priests did not become rich pluralists at last.”

Mr. Beverley of Beverley is such a nice connoisseur in drapery, that we suspect him of being a bit of an exquisite himself: he is evidently an intense evangelical, and, for aught we know, may be a believer in Mr. Irving’s new revelation of a “gift of tongues.”