I the Key to the Lower House. portion of the rent, tithes, and taxes of England in the dissipations of France and Italy. The liberal hospitality of young WYNN, however, has turned to be of a more considerate character; the hospitality of this fortunate youth is intended solely for the entertainment of his own family. We learn from the newspapers that his brother, Sir WATKIN WILLIAMS WYNN, and Lady Harriet Williams WYNN, and eight more WYNNs, repaired to Berne to share the hospitalities of the generous youth, provided out of the taxes of the People of England. Oh! JOHN BULL! JOHN BULL! how thy good-nature is abused! There is no parallel to the Swiss Job, except the Lisbon Job of Mr. Secretary CANNING. It is well known that the son of this respectable gentleman, as Lord ELDON styles him, was in a declining state of health, and required a purer air; when the father was sent Ambassador to Lisbon, where there was no court, at an expense to the country of eighteen thousand pounds. Here, too, was hospitality, and keeping up the honour and dignity of the country! Wynn, Owen, Sligo. VOTED against Catholic Emancipation, 1822;—no trace of attendance on other questions. Wyvill, Marmaduke, York, son of the Rev. Mr. Wyvill, a veteran friend of Major Cartwright in the cause of Parliamentary Reform. VoTED for repeal of Six Acts, for Manchester inquiry, for Lord J. Russell's reform; 1822, for reduction of Army, ditto Postmaster and Lay Lords, for Sir R. Wilson, for repeal of Salt Tax, for Reform; moved for a large reduction of Taxes, as the only efficient mode of relieving the distresses of the country. DID NOT VOTE for Mr. Lambton's reform; 1822, for Civil-List inquiry; against young Wynn, ditto Alien Bill; for reduction of Influence of the Crown; against Irish Tithe System; repeal of Window Tax. Yarmouth, Earl of, Camelford. Called to the Upper House. [Yorke, Sir Joseph Sydney, Ryegate, brother to the Earl of Hardwicke ; Vice-Admiral of the White. VOTED for reduction of one Postmaster, otherwise with the Treasury. In the rotten borough of Ryegate the householders have nothing to do with the election of representatives. The freeholds are the property of the Earl of Hardwicke, who nominates his brother, and of Lord Somers, who nominates his son. NEW MEMBERS. H. Porcher, Esq. as M.P. for Clitheroe. Charles Ross, Esq. M.P. for Orford, in the room of the N.B. The Parliamentary Return of the Salaries and Emoluments of Members of Parliament will be placed at the end of the Supplement. The Church. THE CHURCH. In the remarks we are about to offer on the Church Establishment, we do not mean to meddle with the doctrines of the national religion. We have heard there are no fewer than one hundred different sects of Christians, and it would be great presumption in us, who are only laymen, and never thought much on divinity, to decide which of these multifarious modes of worship is most consonant with scripture. A certain Protestant Archbishop said, "Popery was only a religion of knaves and fools ;” therefore, let us hope that the Church of England, to which the Right Reverend Prelate belonged, is a religion of honest men. Our business is not with the doctrines, but the temporalities of the Church. To us the great possessions of the clergy have long appeared an immense waste, which wanted surveying and enclosing, if not by act of Parliament, by the act of the People. Like some political constitutions, our religious establishment has been undeservedly applauded; it has been described as the most perfect in Europe; yet we are acquainted with none in which abuses are more prevalent, in which there is so little real piety, so much intolerance, and in which the support of public worship is so vexatious and oppressive to the community. Most countries on the Continent have reformed their church establishments: wherever a large property had accumulated in the heads of the clergy, such property has been applied to the service of the nation; and we are now the only people who have a large mass of ecclesiastical wealth The Church. appropriated to the maintenance of an indolent and luxurious priesthood. Even in papal Rome the church property has been sold to pay the national debt; so that far more property belonging to the clergy is to be found in any part of England of equal extent than in the Roman state. The cardinals of Rome, the bishops, canons, abbots, and abbesses, have no longer princely revenues. A cardinal who formerly had thousands has now only four or five hundred pounds a year. Residence is strictly enforced, and no such thing as pluralism is known; the new proprietors of the Church estates live on them and improve them to the best advantage. In France, there has been a still greater ecclesiastical reformation. Before the revolution the clergy formed one-fifty-second part of the population. The total number of ecclesiastics, in 1789, was estimated at 460,000, and their revenues at £7,400,000. In 1821, the total number of clergymen, protestant and catholic, was 35,643, and their total income only £1,047,837. Throughout Germany and Italy there have been great reforms in spiritual' matters; the property of the Church has been sold or taxed for the use of the State, and the enormous incomes of the higher have been more equally shared among the lower order of the clergy. In Spain, the estates of the Church are now on sale for the use of the nation. The proceeds, which are estimated to produce 186 millions, exclusive of tithes and other dues of the clergy, will more than pay off the public debt of that regenerated country. The tithe has been reduced one-half, and yet, under the new system, is found amply sufficient for the maintenance of the priesthood. In Portugal, the plan hitherto adopted has been somewhat different: the property of the Church is not on sale, as in Spain, but the ecclesiastical revenues are ordered to be paid into the public treasury, in proportion of forty to seventy per cent. according to the case. The Spanish plan is much better, and no doubt will be ultimately adopted in Portugal. Wherever these reforms have been made they have been productive of the most beneficial effects; they have been favourable to religion and morality, to the real interests of the people, and even to the interests of the great body of the clergy themselves; they have broke the power of an order of men at all times cruel and tyrannical, at all times opposed to reform, to the progress of knowledge, and the most salutary ameliorations; they have diffused a spirit of toleration among all classes, removed the restrictions imposed by selfish bigotry, and opened an impartial career to virtue and talent in all orders; they have spread plenty in the land, paid the debts of nations, and converted the idle and vicious into useful citizens. The Church. Wherever these changes have been introduced they have been gratefully received by the People, and well they might; for, with such changes, their happiness is identified-liberty and intelligence diffused. ཝཱ To England, however, the spirit of ecclesiastical improvement has not yet extended; though usually foremost in reform, we are now behind all nations in our ecclesiastical establishment; though the Church of England is ostentatiously styled the reformed Church, it is, in truth, the most unreformed of all the churches. Popery, in temporal matters at least, is a more reformed religion than the Church of England. There is no state, however debased by superstition, where the clergy enjoy such prodigious wealth. The revenues of our priesthood exceed the revenues of either Austria or Prussia. We complain of the poor-rates, of the "dead charge," of the army and navy, but these together do not equal the burden of the Church. We complain, too, of overgrown salaries and enormous sinecures; but what are all these abuses, grievous as they are, to the abuses in our Church establishment, to the sinecure wealth of the bishops, dignitaries, and aristocratical rectors and vicars? It is said, and we believe truly, that the clergymen of the Church of England and Ireland receive, in the year, more money than all the rest of the Christian world put together. Our national clergy cost, at least, seven times more than the national clergy of France, while, in France, there are twentynine millions of catholics; whereas, of the twenty-one millions of people, comprising the population of our islands, less than one-third, or seven millions, are hearers of the Established Religion. Such a system it is not possible can endure. While reform and reduction are in progress in other departments, it is not likely the Clergy should remain in undisturbed enjoyment of their possessions. To protect them from inquiry, they have neither prescriptive right nor good works to plead. As a body they have not, latterly, at least, been very remarkable for their learning, 5, nor some of them for exalted notions of morality. It would be unfair to judge any class from one or two individual examples; but it cannot be denied that the name of the Established Clergy has been associated with the most disastrous measures in the history of the country. To the latest period of the first war against American independence out of the twenty-six English bishops, Shipley was the only prelate who voted against the war-faction. Watson was the only bishop who ventured to raise his voice against the French crusade, and he, in the latter part of his life, appeared to falter in his independence. Public education is a subject that appears to have a peculiar claim on the The Church. : attention of the Clergy; but it is a subject that has been generally neglected by them. Had not a jealousy of the Dissenters roused them into activity, neither the Bell nor Lancaster plans of education would have been encouraged by them. They have always manifested either indifference or open hostility to the instruction of the People, and in numerous instances appropriated to themselves the funds left for the purpose of teaching. Their encouragement of the Bridge-street Association shows their apprehensions from the diffusion of knowledge of 776 subscribers to the "gang gang" 130 were in holy orders, many of them bishops and dignitaries. Their conduct on the trial of the Queen cannot be forgotten; such a woful example of ignorance and servility was never before witnessed; though wallowing in wealth and abundance-ministers, too, of a religion which, of all others, inculcates charity and hospitality, yet they seem to have no bowels for the poor and destitute. At the late meetings for the distressed Irish, it was remarked that not a single Irish bishop attended, though it is notorious that the immense sums drawn by that class have been the chief cause of the miseries of the people. The late Winchester regulations were drawn up by clergymen of the Established Church. In these abominable regulations, it is provided, an English labourer shall not have more than THREE SHILLINGS a week for his maintenance--for house-rent, clothes, fire, and food; a single woman to have TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE a week, and no more; a woman with one child to have THREE SHILLINGS AND SIX-PENCE a week, and no more. It is further provided, that, if any neglect or refuse to perform the work found for them, they shall be punished as the law directs! These allowances were made at the Petty Sessions, at Winchester, on the Id 31st day of August, 1822. Of the eight magistrates who attended, FIVE were CLERGYMEN, another magistrate was a loan-contractor, the remaining to two, we believe, held, or were related to families who held, valuable preferbléments in Church and State. The five parson Justices were all PLURALISTS. The reverend Chairman had no fewer than six livings in the Church, besides a golden prebend at Winchester. Another parson Justice was the brother of a Peer, and had two livings; another was a Doctor of Divinity, and held FOUR livings; the remaining two, one had THREE, and the other Two livings. Such facts as these do not apply to individuals, but to masses of the Clergy, and, as such, may be considered as offering some criterion of their character. Indeed the general inferiority of the clergy might be inferred from their circumstances: living in wealth and indolence, they are |