Crisis of the Irish Church at the close of 1831.

In Ireland ecclesiastical oppression appears to have reached its term of duration. When a people become unanimous, their fiat is omnipotent and without appeal. It is this which will abase the usurpations of the Boroughmongers, and the same power has decided the fate of the Irish Protestant clergy. At the time we are writing there is all but a national insurrection against the tithe system. In Queen’s County, in Kilkenny, Clare, and Tipperary, the resistance to clerical oppression is nearly unanimous—and the spirit is rapidly spreading to other counties. The incomes of many of the clergy have become merely nominal; instead of seizing and selling the produce of others, they are compelled, as a means of temporary subsistence, to bring their own domestic chattels under the hammer of the auctioneer. Yet the law is in their favour; the courts have power to decree and the sheriffs to seize the goods of the refractory. But who will buy—who dare bid at a tithe auction? There is the rub. Laws and acts of parliament are empty sounds—they are mere “ink and parchment unless guaranteed by public opinion.” The police, the magistracy, and an army of 30,000 men are powerless against six millions united.

Ministers, finding the battle is lost, have brought the subject before parliament. But it may be doubted whether their views are yet commensurate with the vastness of the undertaking. The Protestant church may be considered virtually dissolved; in fact and opinion it is gone. It has fallen, not so much from its secular oppression as its monstrous incongruities, and from its failing to answer one object—moral, social, or political—for which a church was ever established and supported. A composition for tithe, for the benefit of the priesthood, is out of the question; nothing remains but a general commutation with the landed interest for the benefit of the public—we say the public, because the fee simple of church property is not in the clergy, but in the community at large. The example of Scotland must be followed and improved upon. An equal provision or none for the pastors of all sects, a provision for the poor and for popular education, are the fragments to be seized out of the wreck of the establishment. At all events, in the approaching transition, the tithes must not be suffered to slip into the rents of an absentee proprietary. No! Ireland must have the benefit of the two millions now spent in other climes. It would clothe her nakedness, reclaim her wastes, appease her hunger, and civilize her generous but yet barbarous population.

A system like that described in preceding pages could not, by possibility, be lasting. It contained within itself the seeds of destruction. Yet it has been long and obstinately persevered in through midnight outrage, assassination, and massacre. To enforce this abominable oppression 26,000 persons have been butchered in twentys and tens within the last thirty years. Surely this hecatomb of victims is large enough to appease the Moloch of ecclesiastical cupidity. Horrible as the system has been, the mere proposition for reform has been delayed to the twelfth hour. So long as the people only suffered, their cries were unheeded. But the clergy themselves are now the victims; they have lost their incomes; they did very well without churches and congregations, but they cannot do without tithes; so the legislature flies to their relief. The millions pleaded in vain, but their handful of oppressors is listened to. Is this justice? No! it is only fear and selfishness. Nevertheless, like good Christians, we must pardon injuries—forget the past—and provide for a better futurity.

While we fervently hope to see the condition of Ireland improved by the cultivation of her vast resources, by the improvement of her laws and magistracy, by the annihilation of factious interests, and by a provision for her destitute poor, still we cannot help entering our protest against the repeal of the Union. Had not the decree against the Boroughmongers gone forth, we might have embraced such an alternative; but as the days of the Oligarchy are numbered, we can see no good reason for separating the destinies of Ireland from those of England. It is useless to disguise—the ultimate object sought by the Repealers is the erection of Ireland into an independent state under the presidentship, kingship, or something else of the “Liberator:” but men, we trust, are too enlightened to be ridden over rough-shod, either by the wiles of priests, of mendicant patriots, or military adventurers. We do not inquire what individuals—but what the people would gain by this revolution? From Britain it would sever the right arm of her power; and what advantages would Ireland reap by a separate existence? She does not possess, within herself, the elements to constitute an united, prosperous, and enlightened community. Supposing, for a moment, she escaped a century of civil war, and forthwith passed under the yoke of the “ex-king of Kerry,” with a deplorably ignorant population for his lieges—a fanatical, but richly endowed priesthood, as they would be with the lands and tithes of the Protestant establishment—for the servile instruments of his sovereignty—what a spectacle would she present! Under such a regime, it is easy to discern insuperable obstacles to every social improvement. For ages she would be no better under her new autocrat, than Portugal under Don Miguel, or Naples under the sway of a Bourbon. Every sincere well-wisher to the greatness and happiness of England and Ireland must deplore the idea of dismemberment: united, they may be a source of mutual light and power; dissevered, they would be the luminary of day and lamp of night struck from their orbits. Such an event holds out no remedy for any specific evil; whatever measures for the good of Ireland could be effected by the senate of College-green, may be effected by the reformed parliament of the united kingdom; and this without the delay, clash, and conflict inseparable from rival legislatures. A dissolution, therefore, of the empire cannot be sought as the mean of public good, but as a mere stalking-horse to selfish aggrandisement.

Under an enlightened general government, England and Ireland may pull together for the mutual advantage of both, and, we trust, by speedy and effective reforms, so unfortunate a catastrophe as a legislative separation will be averted. It cannot be forgotten how Ireland was governed by her own parliament—the most corrupt, selfish, and ignorant set of legislators that ever assembled between four walls. For what then should it be revived? The true policy for tranquillizing the country and disarming faction is obvious; remove grievances and confer benefits. Instead of burthening the yet struggling manufactures and agriculture of the Irish with additional taxes, as was sought to be done by the Wellington ministry, a resource ought to be sought in the crown-lands of Ireland, and in the wasted estates of the Church, in the million of neglected acres possessed by absentee bishops, and in the million and more worth of land and tithe possessed by the collegiate bodies and nonresident incumbents. Here is the panacea for cementing the Union, producing contentment, and supplying the wants of an impoverished Exchequer.

The besotted tyranny which has impeded the prosperity of Ireland will hardly be credited by posterity. Her population is only half-civilized; in religion, manners, and domestic habits, no better than the rabble of the Peninsula; while her lands in whole districts are as little cultivated as the wilds of Tartary. We do not allude to the bog and mountain wastes; and these, in great part, continue such from an obstinate legislation which tolerates, year after year, the remains of baronial tenures;—but would it be believed that there is, or was, so recently as 1821, a tract of country in the south of Ireland, occupying 800 square miles of territory, in which there is not a single resident gentleman, nor clergyman, nor a single road fit for a wheel-carriage to pass? This is the testimony of Mr. Baron Foster; and hear it, Boroughmongers! you, who have expended millions to fortify Canada, as you did the Netherlands, for a rival power, and to provide colonial sinecures and offices in sugar islands, converted into hells for the infliction of torture on your fellow-creatures,—hear, and look at home, how you have governed and elicited the resources of our great dependency, placed at the threshhold, in the very bosom of the empire!

Who can revert to the history of the Oligarchy without indignation? Rotten boroughs and tithes, as much as sinecures, pensions, and exorbitant salaries, have been the great obstacles to sound national policy. The holders and expectants of these have been ever bandied together, no less by a sense of common iniquity than common interest, to oppose every salutary amelioration. On every public occasion, on every general election, the priest and the placeman united to oppose the enemy of imposture and peculation: from these no hope of good could be indulged; but the people have at length risen in their might, and the days of misrule will speedily end.