en masse. In Kerry, and in Mayo, the conversions have been on a large scale, notwithstanding furious persecutions directed against the converts by the Romish priesthood.

Now we think that what has been stated does supply some answer to the somewhat over-confident questions of Mr. Macaulay :

"I readily admit that there has been a change of mode of life among the Protestant clergy of Ireland. God forbid, that I should accuse them of the faults of those who have gone before them. I know that there are clergymen at the other side of the channel who are not to be surpassed in diligent attention to their duties by any on this side. what proselytes do they make? Is their Church gaining ground?"

But

We have shown that the Church is gaining ground rapidly in Ireland, that it is making converts, that it is doing this in spite of almost every imaginable difficulty and obstruction, and, amongst the rest, in spite of the enmity manifested to her in and out of Parliament by persons who are in communion with her.

The improvement of the Church in every way is incidentally brought out in the following observations of the Commissioners, on the items of expenditure, in providing the requisites of Divine service :

"An additional number of churches and chapels having been built since the establishment of the Commission, has increased the demand for salaries and church requisites, and additional duties having been required of the sextons in attending more constantly to the ventilation of the churches, and lighting fires in them on certain days in the week as well as on Sundays, has occasioned an increase of expense, as well in the amount of their salaries as in the supply of fuel. The Commissioners considering that attention to these matters tends to the preservation of churches, and the diocesans having required a much stricter attention to the celebration of evening service, has necessarily occasioned a great increase of expense, under the head of fixtures and lights. And lastly, there has been a much more frequent celebration of the communion, which has required a greater supply of requisites under this head".

"How monstrously vexatious it is, that this Irish Church will not die a natural death! Positively the nuisance is increasing and thriving, notwithstanding all our efforts to abate and to extinguish it. We have done every thing in our power to browbeat, and insult, and discourage it. We have knocked off ten of its bishops-we have dipped our hands in its income to the extent of 200,000l. per annum-we have alienated its church lands

8 Times, April 24, 1845.

• Correspondence, p. 18.

for a tithe of their value1-we have trampled on the Orangemen —we have left the Protestants without protection, and have aided agitation and persecution in every way. The Romish priesthood has been uniformly encouraged; it has been admitted to our councils; we have extinguished Protestant schools, and have placed the population under the guidance of monks of the Christian Doctrine, and Jesuits, and Carmelites, and other Roman Catholic instructors-and yet, notwithstanding all we have done, this very inconvenient and troublesome Church of Ireland will continue to exist, and to gain ground!

6

"Now what are we to do in this case? It is really one of very great difficulty and embarrassment. On the one hand we are very strongly pressed by our friend O'Connell and by the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland, (on whom we are to depend in future, be it remembered, for the peace of that country,) to exterminate the Church of Ireland; and we are also very strongly urged to the same step by our friends the Whigs and Radicals and Young Englanders' in Parliament. It is true that such a concession might endanger the English Church: that, however, is not our affair. It would undoubtedly be very convenient to gratify our friends in and out of Parliament who have been so long clamouring for the extinction of the Irish Church. But then the puzzle is, how we can manage to accomplish this, while the Church is making way in the manner which it has done for the last ten years. We fear that John Bull might exhibit still more unequivocal symptoms of restlessness than he even did the other day in the case of the Maynooth endowment; indeed there is no knowing to what extent his feelings might be roused, if we were to meddle with this affair. Hah! it might be the destruction of Liberals of every class and denomination! We must positively keep matters as quiet as we can, and make no definitive arrangements with reference to the ecclesiastical establishment in Ireland till after the next general election.

"There is another considerable embarrassment in this case too; and we really hope that O'Connell and Lord John Russell will bear this in mind, and make some allowance for us. Hansard -(we wish that man had never existed-his volumes are an absolute torment in such times as these)-Hansard, we say, is unfortunately no abstraction, but a solid and most unpleasant reality: and we cannot shake off the conviction, that from the pages of

1 "The power of converting their ecclesiastical leases into fee-simples, has turned out so good a bargain for the lessees, that it has been calculated to be worth generally not less than fifty per cent, or to have doubled the value of their property." Past and Present Policy of England towards Ireland, p. 341. If this be true, the State has handed over to the Church tenants in Ireland ecclesiastical property worth 8 or 10,000,000l. for about a tenth part of that sum!

this very inconvenient record may be gathered sundry and various expositions of our own principles, opinions, and conduct in former years, which would probably have the effect of strengthening the hands of such men as Inglis, Colquhoun, Shaw, Ashley, &c. in a way which would not only be detrimental to our character for consistency and integrity, (which is of course, though unpleasant enough, a minor consideration,) but might even seriously impede the course of our legislation.

"The debates on the Appropriation Clause,' (which we opposed, as it was evident that the ministerial benches must have remained in the possession of the Whigs for an indefinite period, if we had not at that time headed the popular feeling against the spoliation of the Irish Church,) these debates, we say, are replete with matter which may prove highly inconvenient in every point of view, if we should bring forward measures for the extinction or even the reduction of the Irish Church Establishment."

But to pass from these imaginary deliberations in the Cabinet to sober matter of fact, we are about to refresh our readers' memory a little in reference to the statements and arguments put forward by her Majesty's present Ministers during the debates on the Appropriation Clause:' we select a very small portion indeed of what may there be found: but small as it is, we think that it may supply matter for uneasy cogitation, and may ruefully lengthen the visage of many an exulting Liberal, who in these halcyon days is looking to the realization of all his most cherished theories by Sir R. Peel, as a matter of most glorious certainty.

In the first place, let us hear the arguments of the Premier himself, which establish very convincingly the fact, that the right of the Church in Ireland to her property rests on a solemn national compact-on positive engagements entered into at the Emancipation in 1829-and on principles embodied in the Church Temporalities Act. They also include a reply to the argument based on the numerical inferiority of the Irish Church, and supply a refutation of the exaggerations now so universally prevalent in reference to ecclesiastical revenues. Listen, then, ye "Conservative" advocates of Church spoliation!

"I am prepared," said the hon. bart., "to assert the rights of the Church to the remnant of the revenue which is left to her. All that I now ask is, permission to state calmly the grounds upon which I come to this conclusion. In the first place, I entreat you to bear in mind that there are other parties who are looking to our decision with equal anxiety to that which the Roman Catholics take in the result of the question-I mean the Protestants of Ireland. I am not disposed to deny that if you are clearly and decidedly of opinion that an imperative public interest requires the abandonment of a national compact, the

violation of long prescription, the abrogation of laws affecting property -I am not disposed to deny the abstract absolute right of the Legislature to do all these things; but I do assert that before you do them, before you violate a solemn compact, and falsify the expectations to which you have yourselves given rise, you ought to be convinced, by arguments approaching to demonstration, of that overpowering necessity, which can alone be your vindication "."

We have heard much lately of some compact alleged to exist on the part of the English Legislature, to preserve the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth. We presume that Sir R. Peel, and all those who on this ground contended in favour of the Maynooth grant, will not dispute the cogency of the following arguments of the right hon. bart. himself in 1835. He remarks that three great measures have been adopted within the last forty years, affecting the relations of the Protestants of Ireland with their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects.

"The first of these measures was the Act of Union, which differs in this respect from an ordinary law-that it was a national compact, involving the conditions on which the Protestant Parliament of Ireland resigned its independent existence. In that compact provision is made which, if any thing can have, has an obligation more binding than that of ordinary law. . . .The Act stipulates for the continuance and preservation of the Established Church as the Established Church of England and Ireland. There is first a stipulation that the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the united Church shall remain in full force and for ever. Here you will say there is nothing specific as to Ireland; no mention of Church revenues. There is not: but superadded to this stipulation is another, as binding as solemn, and which being superadded, implies some new guarantee; the guarantee, I contend, of temporal rights and possessions. It is as follows: the continuation and preservation of the said united Church as the Established Church of England and Ireland, shall be deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the Union.' This is the first of the three measures to which I referred, as the outworks and defences of the Church in Ireland'."

Now to this it will doubtless be replied, that the Church may be retained as the Established Church, notwithstanding certain reductions in its revenue and in the number of its clergy and hence it is inferred that there would be no violation of the Act of Union in making such reductions to any extent that might be deemed advisable. We shall merely put this case: Suppose the reduction to extend to all the parochial clergy in Ireland with one exception, the revenues of the remainder being confiscated; would

2 Hansard, 1835, vol. xxvii. p. 732.

3 Hansard, ibid.

this be continuing and preserving the united Church of England and Ireland? Would this be an honest interpretation of the Act? If not, we cannot see how confiscation or spoliation on a lesser scale can be made consistent with the Act of Union. Sir R. Peel next argued that the Emancipation Act of 1829 partook of the nature of a compact :

-

"By that Act the Protestants of Ireland were led to believe that all intention to subvert the present Church Establishment as settled by law within these realms was most solemnly disclaimed and utterly abandoned. They were assured on the obligation of an oath that no privilege which the act confers would be exercised to disturb or weaken the Protestant religion or the Protestant Government within these realms. They were told (by Sir R. Peel and his friends) that the removal of the civil disabilities of the Roman Catholics would give new security to the Church in Ireland*."

We have here from the hon. bart. the fullest admission, that the Protestants of Ireland have a right to expect the preservation of the Established Church in its full integrity, because such integrity was solemnly pledged to them at the passing of Emancipation. It was guaranteed to them by the Government of that day, and by the repeated promises of the Roman Catholics. It may be very convenient for politicians at the present day to forget these engagements, but they remain in their full force, and the honour of this country is pledged to their observance. The preservation of the Church of Ireland in its full integrity and efficiency is, we say, a matter of distinct public engagement and covenant. But we proceed to Sir R. Peel's argument on the "Church Temporalities Act."

"You determined, and in my opinion, wisely, to review the state of the Irish Church, and to remove any imperfection and abuse. You provided, and in my opinion wisely, that ecclesiastical sinecures in Ireland should follow the fate of civil sinecures that measures should be adopted to reduce the revenues of livings too amply provided for, and to apply the excess to the increase of livings for which there was no adequate maintenance, and to the building of glebe houses. Those who introduced that Act contended, at first, that the improved fund obtained by the conversion of bishop's leases into perpetuities might be applied to secular purposes, but the subsequent abandonment of that clause, and the whole remaining tenor of the Act, clearly show that the principle of reserving ecclesiastical property for strictly ecclesiastical purposes was rigidly adhered to ".

The following passage furnishes a reply to the argument advanced by Mr. Ward, and by the author of the "Past and

4 Hansard p. 723.

5 Hansard, 1835, vol. xxvii. p. 724.