Conclusion.

We have now fairly brought forward whatever can elucidate the present state of the United Church of England and Ireland, and its claims to the support and veneration of the community. Those whose vocation is to mislead and delude may attempt to impugn our statements and calumniate our motives; but their labour will be vain, unless they can disprove our facts. We have trusted to nothing apocryphal, and rarely depend on the testimony of individual observers. Our statements have been chiefly drawn from the admissions of the parties who wallow in the corruptions of which we complain,—from official returns to parliament,—and other accredited sources of information. On the results derived from these we have occasionally submitted reflections, the justice of which we leave to the reader’s consideration.

If such ecclesiastical establishments as we have exposed be much longer tolerated in their existing state, the people will evince a patience and fatuity far exceeding any previous estimate. No doubt there are mysteries in the art of governing, as well as truths in science, that have not yet been discovered. It is impossible to foresee what unheard-of wiles, delusions, and influence, priestly cunning may bring into play to stifle the claims of truth and justice. A nation, which, from groundless fear of change, was deluded into the support of a thirty year’s war against human rights and happiness, and had entailed upon it a debt of eight hundred millions, may, by some new fascination, be brought to tolerate a church that absorbs annually eleven millions of public income, ostensibly for religion, though it is religion’s most dangerous foe, and not one hundredth part of which rewards the labours of those really engaged in clerical duty. A pretended anxiety for our spiritual welfare, will, however, no longer serve for a cloak to temporal rapacity. The repetition of such detected knavery would be a national insult and impertinence: some new-fangled scarecrows, therefore, must be devised, other than the dangers of irreligion and democratic encroachment, to consecrate hereafter the oppression of tithes and the absurdities of rotten boroughs.

Secular abuses sink almost into insignificance when compared with those of the church establishment. One hundred and thirteen privy councillors receiving £650,164 a-year out of the public taxes, was an astounding fact; but we are sure, and those who have honoured us with attention in the preceding exposition, we are convinced, will believe us when we affirm it would be easy to select a smaller number of sinecure ecclesiastics who receive more and do less than this devouring clan of Oligarchs.