Management of the First Fruits Fund.

With so large a portion of the national wealth placed at the disposal of the clergy, the very least we might have expected the Legislature to do was to enforce the payment of all the taxes to which by law the Church was liable. We have already seen by what artifice the English ecclesiastics avoided contributing their full share to the First Fruits Fund; we shall now show that a similar but more flagrant evasion of their pecuniary obligations has been long tolerated on the part of the Irish clergy. Having already explained the nature of the annats (page 65) it will be only necessary here to remark that a similar usage formerly prevailed in both England and Ireland; with this difference, that the Irish clergy paid in lieu of the tenth, only a twentieth of the annual value of each benefice to the Pope. In the reign of Henry VIII. when the papal rights were extinguished, an act passed for annexing to the crown the revenue arising from first fruits and tenths, and the same provision was made, as in England, for ascertaining, from time to time, their real annual value. This arrangement continued till the year 1710: when Queen Anne, acting under the advice of her Tory ministers, remitted the twentieths to the clergy, rich and poor, without distinction, and gave the first fruits, alone, to form a fund for building churches, purchasing glebes and glebe-houses, augmenting poor livings, and other ecclesiastical improvements. The management of the fund was vested in trustees, consisting of the higher dignitaries of the church, and principal law-officers of the crown, who were empowered to “search out the just and true value” of the benefices of which they were to levy the first year’s income from each incumbent who came into possession. The valuation under which the first fruits were levied when they were given to the trustees, was the same as in the time of Henry VIII. and was not only very low, but did not include more than two-thirds of the benefices of Ireland. It was of course the duty of the Board of First Fruits to promote the objects of the fund, to have remedied the inaccuracies, and supplied the omissions in the original valuation; but this has never been done, and up to this day the first fruits are levied according to the defective valuation at the time of the Reformation. Owing to this mode of procedure, instead of the produce of the first fruits being the real worth of every vacant benefice and dignity, it is a mere nominal sum paid by the clergy. The bishop of Derry, with a revenue of £12,000, pays only £250 first fruits; the see of Clogher, worth £7000, pays only £350; and the see of Cloyne, worth £6000, pays only £10: 10. It is calculated that, at a fair valuation of Irish benefices, omitting those under £150 a-year, the first fruits would produce £40,000 a-year: whereas, in the ten years ending January, 1830, they produced only £5,142: 15.; from which £740 was to be deducted for salaries. During this period of ten years, fifteen bishoprics and four archbishoprics had become vacant, and the successors thereto liable to the payment of first fruits.

Can it be believed that the Imperial Parliament would sanction such an evasion of their duty by the rich clergy of Ireland? Such, however, has been the fact. Sir John Newport, every session for the last twelve years, has been making motions to establish the integrity of the First Fruits Fund; but his laudable endeavours have seldom met with the support of more than thirty or forty honourable members. But this is not the worst trait in the proceedings of the Collective Wisdom of the Nation: they have actually voted large sums out of the pockets of the people for the very objects for which this fund was appropriated. In the twenty years ending in 1822, the grants of parliament to the trustees of First Fruits in Ireland, towards building new churches, glebe-houses, and purchasing glebes, amounted to £686,000. Thus has £34,300 a-year been levied on this tax-paying aristocratic gulled nation, merely to save the richest church in the world from contributing to its own necessities. How much more has been levied by parochial taxation on the unfortunate population of Ireland, for the repair of churches and cathedrals, we have not the means of estimating. It is well known the sums raised for this purpose constitute one of the many grievances of the sister kingdom, the hardship of which is aggravated by the Catholics being excluded from voting in parish vestries when the church-cess is imposed. Had the Commissioners of First Fruits done what the law not only authorized, but required them to do, there would have been no need of church-rates, nor grants from parliament. Why the Commissioners have not done their duty and made a fair valuation of benefices is manifest enough; they are the patrons, holders, or expectants of large preferments, and a just valuation would be a tax upon themselves! Ought, however, “the Guardians of the Public Purse” to have sanctioned this selfish breach of trust? Ought they, whose business is to watch over the interests of the people, yearly to have voted away the public money, for objects for which there was already a legal and adequate provision? No innovation, nothing untried was to be attempted; the only measure requisite was that they should enforce the law of the land, for which, on other occasions, they profess such profound veneration. It is to the deficiencies of First Fruits, and the consequent non-residence of the clergy, for want of parsonage-houses and glebes, that the decay of Protestantism has been ascribed by their servile defenders: hence a regard to the interests of our “holy religion” one would have thought a sufficient motive for our virtuous representatives to interfere.

The most curious incident regarding the annats is the result of the endeavours of Mr. Shaw Mason, the Remembrancer of First Fruits in Ireland, to obtain a more authentic valuation. When the subject began to excite attention, this gentleman, the words of whose patent empowered him “to collect, levy, receive, and examine the just and true value of first fruits,” preferred a memorial to the Board, setting forth his authority and expressing his willingness to exercise it as his duty required. The announcement caused not a little alarm, the four archbishops at the time not having paid in their arrears. A report was made to the local government, who, after referring the matter to the attorney and solicitor generals for their opinions, intimated to Mr Mason if he persevered in his design of enforcing the payment of First Fruits at their real value, they would deprive him of his patent office, which he held at the pleasure of the Crown. The subject has been subsequently revived by the marquis of Anglesey, but with no better success; Messrs. Blackburn and Crampton, the attorney and solicitor generals of Ireland, having delivered an opinion in accordance with that previously given by lord Plunket—namely, “that the crown is not now entitled to re-value any benefice of which a valuation has heretofore been made and certified.”

So the matter rests; the rich clergy enjoy, undiminished, their princely revenues, and the public remains liable to the burthen of contributing towards the purchase of glebes and houses for Irish parsons, many of whom have already half a dozen houses, residing in none of them, and 4000 acres of glebe.