emption from the tax, in spite of the positive law. On account of the nonpayment in the 900 parishes, and the small payments in the rest, under the antiquated valuation the First Fruits Fund, which should be the whole first year's income of every ecclesiastical preferment in Ireland, produces, on the average, less than 5007. a year.*

In 1808, Sir John Newport, who has laboured for the good of his native country with a degree of diligence and discretion as well as zeal not common in Irish statesmen, moved for leave to bring into the House of Commons a bill to authorize a new and complete valuation, which even with the exceptions that he proposed to make in favour of the small livings, would have produced between 20,000l. and 30,000l. a year. This motion was rejected, on the ground of the hardship of such a tax as the First Fruits. How, or upon whom, the hardship was to operate, neither our own inquiries, nor the imperfect notices left us of the debate, enable us to perceive. We need scarcely say, that this new valuation of the first fruits would not affect any one actually in possession of a living; and we should certainly object to the measure, if it were accompanied by a clause compelling a clergyman to accept a living whether he would or no. But as we apprehend Sir John Newport had not compulsory induction in view, the hardship must consist in this,-that a clergyman taking a living, however much he received beyond his deserts, would get less than he desired! In consequence of the trifling amount of the present fund, various sums, from 10,0007. to 50,0007. have beeen yearly voted in aid of it; and not much short of half a million has been bestowed in this way since the Union. This perhaps is the most wanton of all the misapplications of public money during an unexampled course of profligate expenditure. In Ireland, the Church, in the aggregate, was overgorged with wealth; and there was not the slightest difficulty in making its riches contribute to the necessities of its poorer members, without injustice to individuals. According to Dr. Beaufort, out of 2244 parishes, which make up the parochial unions of 21 dioceses, 293 are in the gift of the Crown, 1391 of the Bishops, 21 of the University, 367 of private persons, 95 are impropriate and without churches or incumbents. Thus, 1684 are in the hands of the Crown, or of nominees of the Crown. In respect, therefore, of more than two-thirds of all the parochial benefices of Ireland, besides all the dignities, there could not be the least pretence that "property" would be encroached on, or valid rights infringed, by the sequestration of all or any part of the incomes, on the first vacancies. Let us take, then, the absurd hypothesis, that the ideal body, the Church, has an indefeasible right to the property which the clergy enjoy, we must at least admit that this property may be laid out for the benefit of the Church. The most extravagant advocate of the vested rights of a fictitious entity can hardly go the length of asserting that the Legislature should not have the power of directing the income of a corporation to be expended in the manner most conducive to the end for which that corporation was originally established. If, therefore, the building of churches, and the purchasing of glebes, were the most urgent of the wants of the Church, it would have been, according to any mode of considering church property, not only a justifiable, but the only proper mode of disposing of the incomes of the useless bishopricks and overpaid livings, to apply them to the relief of these necessities. But in the conduct pursued towards the Irish Church,

The produce in ten years, from 1801 to 1810 inclusive, was 49421. 10s. 6d. We have not seen the subsequent returns. Mr. Hume states them at 30007. in ten years.

we have the monstrous spectacle of a corporation not only claiming inviolability for the riches which destroy its health and threaten its existence, but (because those riches are distributed with preposterous inequality) extorting from an overtaxed people more money to supply the local deficiencies of that which is so excessive as a whole. When we think, that, in some years, more than the whole of the produce of the hearth-tax, or one-third of the net produce of the pestiferous window-tax, was applied in aid of the enormous funds of the Church,-when we reflect that this was done in a country which tithes, and taxes, and local assessments were keeping in a constant state of confusion and blood,-we are lost in wonder at the audacity which could advocate, and the folly which could submit to, the extortion of this additional portion of the public property, for the use of an establishment of which the wealth has always been the weakness.

There is one quality without which this imposition upon the nation could never have been successfully carrried on, a quality with which the Church, in its corporate capacity," seems bountifully endowed-we mean cool and intrepid assurance both of assertion and demand. In the case of no other service to which public money is applied, would a demand be made upon the people for increased supplies, without an attempt at least to show that the sum-total of money expended is insufficient to procure the services required quite otherwise in the Church. In the Irish diocesan returns of 1807 and 1819, we have some remarkable instances of the manner in which "the Church" appeals to the nation for pecuniary help, at the moment that it affords evidence of its own superfluous opulence. We have before mentioned the condition of the benefices in the diocese of Derry as to glebe land, which, according to the average rent of land in that district, 188. per acre (according to Mr. Wakefield and others), would give an income of 3007. a year for each clergyman, besides all the tithes. In addition to this, the Bishop of Derry has lands, which, if they were out of lease, would, it is estimated, produce 120,0007. a year. In 1807, the head of this diocese, in which the Church property, over and above the tenth part of the gross produce of the land, must be worth not much short of three millions, had to answer the circular query,- By what mode may the condition of such livings, as are of a value too small to afford to resident incumbents the means of comfort, be improved?" In answer, the Bishop, after mentioning the inadequacy of the First Fruits Fund (we have shown how that has happened), says," There is at present no other mode of improving such livings; but the funds may be increased by the bounty of the King in Parliament.' For the building and repair of churches, he says, "Vestries should be empowered to lay on large sums, payable in gales;" to lay on large sums, payable, not by the clergy, but by the laity. It never once occurred to this Bishop, that any part of the profits of the overgrown benefices, which he enumerated, should, as they became vacant, be applied to these purposes; nor does it occur to any one of the twenty-two Archbishops and Bishops in Ireland. "The bounty of the King in Parliament," and "gales," -a demand upon the treasury of the state, then engaged in an expensive war, -or a heavy and unequal tax upon the inhabitants of particular districts,to these, or any other modes of getting the money, except the obvious and proper one, the Bishops have no objection.

We do not wish it to be inferred that Ireland is covered with rich livings. Indeed, in some places, the livings are so lamentably poor, that (as is expressed in the returns with the modesty characteristic of the Church) the

incomes are scarcely sufficient to pay the salary of the curates;" the incumbents themselves, who are non-resident, being reduced to the sad necessity of receiving very little for doing nothing. In one case, for example, the living of the united parishes of Dongore and Kilbride is returned as a "preferment extremely small-1507. a year nearly;" but we are relieved from our distress, by looking into another column, and finding that a resident curate does the duty for half the money, the incumbent being non-resident. Indeed, in the more lamentable returns of 1807, we always found the benevolence of the curates stepping in to the aid of the misery of the incumbents. In the diocese of Limerick, according to these returns, the parish of Dromdeely was worth but 201. a year. The incumbent, however, was not resident, and induced a deputy to perform the duty for thirty shillings! a bargain, however, which was, in reality, less hard than might be supposed, as we find there was no church in the district. The test of the adequacy of the income of a living seems to be, that it affords comfort to the incumbent-after paying the salary of a curate.

In Ireland, there is the same beautiful diversity as to the extent and populousness of livings as in the sister kingdom. The country livings vary from 200 acres to 40,000 acres in extent. In many parishes there are no churches, though, en attendant, the tithes are not the less diligently collected. In the bishoprick of Waterford and Lismore, on 52 parochial benefices, there are but 33; and in Limerick, with 105 benefices, but 69 churches. In a word, the Irish Establishment, in its present condition, seems calculated to answer no end but to make the Church of England appear excellent in the comparison; a result which it would seem à priori to require some ingenuity to bring about.

The question, whether this Establishment should or should not be reformed, is one on which every man whose opinion carries with it the least influence should make up his mind; and as to the answer to it, we, who see constantly before us the effects of a Church Establishment constructed on rational principles, can feel no sort of doubt. If it be merely intended by the Irish Establishment to show how rich and flourishing the few may be where the many are wasting in misery and ignorance,—if it be intended to show, that 850 men may be happy and idle, while millions are labouring for subsistence in vain,-the policy pursued towards it may be allowed to be rational and consistent. If the object be to attach the Irish people to the Protestant creed, the idea of stationing among a savage peasantry a number of beneficed clergymen, whose wealth supplies them with every temptation to desert their duty, and of making them raise their incomes by a tax which involves them in perpetual strife with that peasantry, is perfectly grotesque in absurdity. Whatever may be the supposed effects of a richly-endowed Church in maintaining a particular creed, it is evident that it is not the machine for the conversion of a people. In many parts of Ireland there are church of Ireland clergymen in rich livings, with absolutely no Protestant parishioners. This state of things, though very deplorable for the Church in her corporate capacity, is the best that can be imagined for the Clergymen. So long as his parish continues free of Protestantism, he is free from all the conditions of service which are in other cases attached to the property of the Church. He must hate a convert, as a Justice of Peace hates a poacher. The way to insult him must be to enter his church. Mr. Reid, in his recently published Travels in Ireland, relates a story of a moral torture practised by a Catholic farmer on a beneficed clergyman, by

regular attendance at a church, where, but for the presence of this unwelcome visitor, there would seldom have been a congregation. The neophyte soon brought the pastor to terms, and obtained a reduction of his tithes as the price of his relapse to the errors of the Church of Rome. It is evident, that the larger the incomes of the parochial clergy are, the less important the voluntary contributions of their parishioners, the more unmixed will their motive be to keep the Protestant religion out of their parishes.

When we see the quantity of evil inflicted on Ireland by the levying of tithe,-when we see the good prevented, in a hundred ways, for the want of that wealth which is mischievously lavished on the clergy,—we can hardly believe that a reform of the Church of Ireland will not take place. A reform of that Church is, from the large proportion of its patronage in the hands of the Crown, or the nominees of the Crown, as easy as it is desirable. We Presbyterians can hardly conceive that there will be any one found bold enough to affirm, that a bench of twenty-two bishops, to superintend 860 resident incumbents, and to watch over 4 or 500,000 Protestants of the Establishment, is either useful or ornamental. According to the estimates of Mr. Wakefield, the property of six of these bishops,* when out of lease, would produce 580,0007. a year,-a sum which would give an income of 6507. a year for each of the resident incumbents of Ireland; or, which would be quite as well, an income of 5007. for each of the clergy, and a fund for the establishment of a school in every parish in Ireland. All this could be done, and the tithes, as far as they are paid to the clergy, could be rapidly abolished by the mere sequestration of six bishopricks as they became vacant, without injury to the feelings or violation of the rights of any man. The details by which it would be necessary that such a plan should be filled up are very simple and obvious. When this reform should be accomplished there might still remain sixteen bishops to superintend a smaller number of Protestant clergy, and a smaller number of Protestant laity, than one bishop is very easily able to superintend in England. We do not mean to insinuate that they should be allowed to remain; but as our purpose is to do good, we would show, in passing, that even after an in-、 calculable benefit had been conferred on Ireland, the Episcopal establishment might still remain extravagantly large, and form a very pretty fund for the purposes of Parliamentary influence,-the real purposes for which it is suffered to exist.

As to the Church of England, an inquiry into its actual condition must appear equally desirable to those who do, and to those who do not, think highly of its efficiency and utility. The smallness of the incomes of many of its living is not complained of so loudly by any persons as by its most zealous friends. Now, if this clamour be meant as any thing more than a pretext for the maintenance of the extravagant parts of the Establishment, by making the members of it who are made inefficient through poverty, a set-off against those who are made inefficient through opulence, the general means of remedying the evil are obvious, and nothing but an inquiry is required to develop the details. The Table which we referred to above as the cause of the mistake of the author of the "Remarks," as to the numbers of places of worship in England, shows that, in 1812, the 1881 parishes, to which it referred, contained 4,937,782 people, so that each of those parishes had 2650 inhabitants on the average. The 8812 remaining

parishes contained 5,564,718 inhabitants, or about 630 people each, as the average. In 1809 there were 3998 livings under 1507. a year; and there were also in the same year, out of 11,194 livings from which returns were made, 7358 cases of non-residence. Though we have shown, by the comparison of the state of different dioceses, that the smallness of the livings is not the real cause of the prevalence of non-residence, it is at least one of the pretexts for it. The consolidation of small parishes, where circumstances admit of it, would at once remove this pretext, and the poverty of the greater part of the small livings; and the sequestration of some of the superfluous dignities of the Church, or the levying of first fruits and tenths, according to their real value, upon the overpaid perferments which might hereafter become vacant, would speedily raise the incomes of the remainder. The different distribution of the Church patronage,-the property of advowsons, to which we always suppose attention to be paid, renders a general reform in England a less easy and straightforward work than in Ireland. According to Bishop Watson's computation, in his Charge, 1809, seven tenths of the patronage of parochial livings were in the hands of lay individuals or lay corporations; three tenths being in the hands of the Crown, of ecclesiastical corporations (chiefly composed of nominees of the Crown), and of the Universities; and the greater part of the poor livings are the property of individuals. These circumstances, however, though somewhat untoward, oppose no insurmountable obstacles to reform. It is the interest of the patrons to submit to a consolidation of poor livings, making arrangements for alternate presentations; because, as a mere matter of merchandize, two livings of this description would be worth considerably more in their united than in their divided state.

Whatever other steps may be taken with respect to the Church of England, a Parliamentary inquiry into its condition is imperatively called for. It is called for, if it needs reform, to show the degree in which reformation is needed, and the way in which it may be effected. It is called for, if it needs no reform, to show that the imputations on it are unfounded. It is needed, to prevent the repetition of the waste of the public money, of which we had such gross instances, when, in the time of the greatest drain on our resources, 100,0007. was granted yearly for the augmentation of poor livings, in utter ignorance of the manner in which the fund already available for that purpose had been mismanaged. It can only be resisted by those who, conscious of the grossness of the abuses by which they profit, think the Church alone cannot bear that exposure to the light, to which every other institution in the country is happily subjected.

ON THE NECESSITY OF A THOROUGH REFORM IN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.*

We have been suspected, we know, of being unfriendly to the Church of England. But we are not-at least on the present occasion. The causes which led to her great Reformation, we think, indeed, should still reform her more; and, with the fullest sense of the general soundness of her doctrines, and the benefits which her establishment has conferred on the com

* Letters on the Church. By an Episcopalian.-Vol. xliv. p. 490. September, 1826.