Non-residence of the Irish Clergy.

It is a curious fact that, during the sway of the Catholic Church, no man was permitted to hold a benefice who did not perform the duties of it upon the spot, and it was left for the Reformation, which is said to have established religion in greater perfection, to entitle a man to a large income for the cure of souls in a district which he never visited. A great proportion of the Irish Bishops, Dignitaries, and Incumbents, are absentees; many of them whiling away their time on the Continent, and others dissipating their large revenues in the fashionable circles of Brighton and London. With the single exception of the Bishop of Kildare all the archbishops and bishops have each, within their respective dioceses, an episcopal residence, or see-house, with parks, chases, and demesne-lands attached. Yet they spend little or none of their time in Ireland in superintending the clergy. The families of some prelates reside constantly in England, and the only duty performed by the bishop is to cross the water in the summer months, take a peep at the “palace,” and then return to give grand dinners, and mingle in the gaieties of the metropolis, for the remainder of the year. The late Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry, resided twenty years abroad, and during that time received the revenues of his rich diocese, amounting to £240,000. This Right Rev. Prelate was the intimate associate of Lady Hamilton, the kept-mistress of Lord Nelson. The bishop lived in Italy, spending his princely income, wrung from the soil and labour of Ireland, among the fiddlers and prostitutes of that debauched country. The great primate Rokeby resided at Bath, and never visited Ireland. The parochial clergy are not more exemplary. Upwards of one-third of the whole number of incumbents do not reside on their benefices. Some of them, with incomes of £5,000 or £10,000 a-year, are living in France, with their wives and families. Others live at Bath, on account of the gout. Most of them never see their parishes, deriving their incomes through the medium of agents, or of tithe-farmers, and engaging a curate at some £30 or £50 a-year to attend once on each Sunday to read prayers; often, perhaps, only to the parish clerk.

According to the Diocesan Returns, in 1819, the following was the state of the provinces, as regards parochial residence and duty:—

The province of Ulster, containing 443 parishes or unions, had 351 incumbents resident, or near enough to do duty.

The province of Leinster, 281 parishes or unions, with 189 incumbents resident, or near enough to do duty.

The province of Munster, 419 parishes or unions, with 281 incumbents resident, or near enough to do duty.

The province of Connaught, 95 parishes or unions, with 65 incumbents resident, or near enough to do duty.

Thus, in 354 parishes or unions, there was neither an incumbent resident, nor near enough to do the duty of his benefice. These returns make the number of incumbents, resident and non-resident, amount to 1240. It is unnecessary to explain, after what has been already stated, that there are not actually so many individuals. The deception results from pluralities. Every benefice with cure has an incumbent; but, as each incumbent often holds two or more benefices, or is rector and vicar of the same parish, it reduces the number of individuals to the amount previously stated, namely seven hundred.

One great excuse for the neglect of duty by the protestant clergy is that they have scarcely any duty to perform. Notwithstanding all the inducements offered by the established religion, notwithstanding its monopoly of tithes, honours, power, and emoluments, it has scarcely any followers. A protestant is as rare to be met with in Ireland, as a Jew in England. Out of a population of eight millions, there are little more than half a million communicants of the state religion. The consequence is, that the church establishment is little better than an enormous sinecure, a prodigious job, carried on for the benefit of a few hundred individuals, to the impoverishment, disunion, and degradation of all the rest of the nation. The Irish Church has been aptly compared to some Irish regiment, in which there was the whole train of officers, from the colonel downwards, but only one private. Just so with the ecclesiastical establishment; there is the whole apparatus of bishops, deans, archdeacons, prebendaries, canons, rectors, and vicars; there are all these still, and, what is better, there are all the tithes, houses, gardens, glebe lands, cathedrals, and palaces: all these remain; but the people—those for whose benefit they were originally intended, they have adhered unflinchingly to their old communion. Why then should not the revenues and church lands follow them—the owners, for whose benefit they were first granted? Why keep up twenty-two bishops where there are scarcely any parsons? or why maintain these parsons, with large endowments, when they have lost their flocks? There are scores, aye, hundreds of well paid rectors and vicars, without a single protestant hearer; there are thirteen hundred and fifty parishes, without even a church to preach in; yet in all these parishes the tithes are levied or compounded for to the utmost farthing.

The anomalous state of the Irish Church has not escaped the notice of foreigners; and in the pleasant and instructive ‘Tour of a German Prince,’ there are some curious details. “I took,” says the writer, “advantage of the acquaintance I made to day to gain more information of the actual proportion between Catholics and Protestants. I found all I had heard fully confirmed, and have gained some further details; among others, the official list of a part of the present parishes and livings in the diocese of Cashell, which is too remarkable not to send it to you, though the matter is somewhat dry, and seems almost too pedantic for our correspondence.

In thirteen districts 78,182 Catholics and 2879 Protestants.

“Each of these districts has only one Catholic priest, but often four or five Protestant clergymen; so that on an average, there are scarcely twenty persons to each Protestant congregation. Kilcummin is the place I mentioned to you, where there is not a single parishioner, and the service, which according to law must be performed once a-year, is enacted in the ruins with the help of a Catholic clerk. In another, called Tollamane, the same farce takes place. But not a whit the less must the non-attending parishioners pay the utmost farthing of their tithes and other dues; and no claims are so bitterly enforced as those of this Christian church:—there is no pity, at least none for Catholics. A man who cannot pay the rent of the church land he farms, or his tithes to the parson, inevitably sees his cow and his pig sold, (furniture, bed, &c. &c. he has long lost,) and himself, his wife, and probably a dozen children thrust out into the road, where he is left to the mercy of that Providence who feeds the fowls of the air and clothes the lilies of the field.”—Tour in England, Ireland, France, v. ii. pp. 50-51.

Well may this lively tourist exclaim, “What an excellent contrivance is a state religion!”