door, in his own tongue, the true belief; their word prevailed against the potentates of the earth; and on the ruin of Barbaric pride, and pontific luxury, they placed the naked majesty of the Christian religion.

This light was soon put down by its own ministers, and, on its extinction, a beastly and pompous priesthood ascended. Political potentates, not Christian pastors, full of false zeal, full of worldly pride, and full of gluttony, empty of the true religion. To their flock oppressive, to their inferior clergy brutal, to their king abject, and to their God impudent and familiar; they stood on the altar, as a stepping-stool to the throne, glozing in the ear of princes, whom they poisoned with crooked principles and heated advice, and were a faction against their king when they were not his slaves; the dirt under his feet, or the poniard in his heart.

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Their power went down; it burst of its own plethory, when a poor reformer, with the Gospel in his hand, and with the inspired spirit of poverty, restored the Christian religion. The same principle which introduced Christianity, guided reformation. What Luther did for us, philosophy has done, in some degree, for the Roman Catholics, and that religion has undergone a silent reformation; and both divisions of Christianity, unless they have lost their understanding, must have lost their animosity, though they have retained their distinctions. The priesthood of Europe is not now what it was once; their religion has increased as their power has diminished. In these countries particularly, for the most part they are a mild order of men, with less dominion and more piety, therefore, their character may be, for the most part, described in a few words-morality, enlightened by letters, and exalted by religion. Such, many of our parochial clergy, with some exceptions however, particularly in some of the disturbed parts of the kingdom; such some of the heads of the church; such the very head of the church in Ireland. That comely personage who presides over a vast income, and thinks he has great revenues, but is mistaken; being, in fact, nothing more than the steward of the poor, and a mere instrument in the hand of Providence, making the best possible distribution of the fruits of the earth.

"Of all institutions," says Paley, "adverse to cultivation, none so noxious as tithe; not only a tax on industry, but the industry that feeds mankind."

It is true, the mode of providing for the church is exceptionable, and in some parts of Ireland has been, I apprehend, attended with very considerable abuses; these are what I wish to submit to you. You will enquire whether, in some cases,

the demands for tithes have not been illegal, the collection of them oppressive, the excess of demand uncharitable, and the growth of it considerable and oppressive. Whether, in all cases, the tithe-farmer has been a merciful pastor, the titheproctor an upright agent, and even the vicar himself a most unbiassed judge.

In this enquiry, or, in forming some. regulations for this enquiry, you will not be withheld by the arguments of pride, bigotry, and prejudice; that argument which, reflecting on God, maintains the sacred rights of exaction; that other argument which, reflecting on Parliament, denies your capacity to give redress; that other argument which, reflecting on human nature, supposes that you inflame mankind by redressing their grievances; that other argument which traduces the landed interest of Ireland as an extortioner, and belies one part of the community to continue the miseries of the other; an argument of calumny, an argument of cruelty. Least of all, should you be withheld by that idle intimation stuffed into the speech from the throne, suggesting that the church is in danger, and holding out, from that awful seat of authority, false lights to the nation, as if we had doated back to the nonsense of Sacheveral's days, and were to be ridden once more by the fools and bigots. Parliament is not a bigot; you are no secretary, no polemic; it is your duty to unite all men, to manifest brotherly love and confidence to all men. The parental sentiment is the true principle of government. Men are ever finally disposed to be governed by the instrument of their happiness; the mystery of government, would you learn it? Look on the Gospel, and make the source of your redemption the rule of authority; and, like the hen in the Scripture, expand your wings, and cover all your people.

Let bigotry and schism, the zealot's fire, the high-priest's intolerance, through all their discordancy, tremble, while an enlightened Parliament, with arms of general protection, overarches the whole community, and roots the Protestant ascendancy in the sovereign mercy of its nature. Laws of coercion,

perhaps necessary, certainly severe, you have put forth already, but your great engine of power you have hitherto kept back; that engine, which the pride of the bigot, nor the spite of the zealot, nor the ambition of the high-priest, nor the arsenal of the conqueror, nor the inquisition, with its jaded rack and pale criminal, never thought of; the engine which, armed with physical and moral blessing, comes forth and overlays mankind by services the engine of redress; this is government, and this the only description of govern

ment worth your ambition. Were I to raise you to a great act, I should not recur to the history of other nations; I would recite your own acts, and set you in emulation with yourselves. Do you remember that night when you gave your country a free trade, and with your own hands opened all her harbours? That night when you gave her a free constitution, and broke the chains of a century, while England, eclipsed at your glory and your island, rose as it were from its bed, and got nearer to the sun? In the arts that polish life, the inventions that accommodate, the manufactures that adorn it, you will be for many years inferior to some other parts of Europe; but, to nurse a growing people, to mature a struggling, though hardy community, to mould, to multiply, to consolidate, to inspire, and to exalt a young nation, be these your barbarous accomplishments!

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I speak this to you, from a long knowledge of your character, and the various resources of your soul; and I confide motion to those principles not only of justice, but of fire, which I have observed to exist in your composition, and occasionally to break out in a flame of public zeal, leaving the ministers of the crown in eclipsed degradation. Therefore, I have not come to you furnished merely with a cold mechanical plan, but have submitted to your consideration the living grievances, conceiving that any thing in the shape of oppression made once apparent — oppression, too, of a people you have set free-the evil will catch those warm susceptible properties which abound in your mind, and qualify you for legislation.

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The motion was opposed by Mr. Browne, member for the college, Mr. Parsons, and the Attorney-general. They admired the ability with which the motion was brought forward; but they stated their conviction that it struck at the foundation of the church establishment, and tended to degrade its ministers by bringing evidence to the bar to arraign them. The clergy would be degraded if their income was diminished. The distresses of the people did not arise from tithes, but from the conduct of their landlords. They admitted, that where tithe of turf had been demanded, it was clearly illegal; but every commutation appeared to them to be impracticable.

Mr. Curran strongly supported the motion. He said that the pastor and the flock were at variance; and for the honour and security of both, an enquiry should be adopted. He would never consent to abridge any of the rights of the church which were established by law. The grievances were considerable, and some effort to relieve the people ought to be made; the more so, as the present administration had boasted so highly of their spirit of economy and reduction.

The House divided on Mr. Grattan's motion; 121; Majority against Mr. Grattan's motion 72. Ayes, Mr. Grattan, Mr. Curran; for the Noes, general, Sir Hercules Langrishe.

Ayes 49, Noes Tellers for the the Attorney

TITHES.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE (MR. HUTCHINSON) MOVES THE BILL

TO COMPENSATE THE CLERGY FOR THE LOSS OF TITHES.

February 16. 1788.

THE House went into a committee on the bill brought in by the Secretary of State" to enable all ecclesiastical persons and bodies, in certain counties and counties of cities, to recover a just compensation for the tithes withheld from them in the year 1787, in the several counties and counties of cities therein-mentioned, against such persons as were liable to the same." Mr. Hayes (of Avondale), Mr. William B. Ponsonby, and Sir Lucius O'Brien, made some objections to the bill; among others, to the clause which, in particular cases, dispensed with the trial by jury, and to that which gave the claims of the clergy for tithe a preference over the right of the landlord for his rent.

Mr. GRATTAN said: I believe the House will excuse me if I trouble them with some observations on what has fallen from the right honourable gentleman. To whatever he asserts of his own knowledge, I give the most unbounded confidence, but to what he has received from others, I cannot pay the same regard; that at best stands only on the same ground with the information I have received, and which I have stated to the House. Thus we have information against information, assertion against assertion. I honour and applaud the right honourable gentleman for the part he has taken in this business; it is what I expected from him; but I cannot, therefore, give up my own judgment, or shut my eyes to the facts that I have stated. The right honourable gentleman has stated the general average rates of several dioceses. I have stated the particular rates exacted in the disturbed parishes; the House is to judge of the subject; and this very difference between the statement of the right honourable gentleman and mine, proves the necessity of going into the committee, where no member's report of the matter should be taken, but where papers may be called for, and every fact verified upon the oaths of credible witnesses.

The right honourable gentleman has stated, that he has

had information from the best authority, from the bishops themselves; and he states an average. Now an average may be reasonable, and in particular cases very unreasonable; the moderation of one man may be set off against the rapacity of another, and in general accounts cover his exaction: this is rewarding avarice and punishing Christian liberality. I have not, therefore, gone upon a general average, but on the exactions practised in particular parishes. The right honourable gentleman has stated, that tithes have not been raised in their value for the last twenty or thirty years in the dioceses of Cork and Ross. Now, upon this point also, I am ready to join issue with him, and if I do not show that in some of the most moderate parishes they have risen from four and five shillings for wheat and potatoes, to seven and eight shillings within the last thirty years, I will give up the question for ever. I desire the right honourable gentlemen to meet me, and rest it on that single point.

The right honourable gentleman has stated to you an average of the tithes of Cloyne. Sir, I am ready to show you a parish in that diocese where wheat pays 16s., potatoes 168., barley 9s. 9d., oats 8s., and meadow 6s. 6d. This, Sir, will be proved on the affidavits of the men who pay it, and supported by their receipts. This, Sir, is the return of the officer who tried the suits in Cork; and these are English acres. If, then, there be any thing like moderation in the average tithe of that diocese, how very low indeed must the charge of some parsons be to admit of this exorbitance! It must appear that in some parishes the parson extorts unreasonable tithes, in others he loses his right; and, therefore, the necessity of an enquiry.

The right honourable gentleman has adduced an example from England, to prove the moderation of the charge for tithes in Ireland; but the fact is, that England pays much less in tithes upon the whole, though an opulent country, than Ireland pays, poor as she is. I have the very best authority for saying, that the rate of tithes in the county of Chester is eight shillings an acre less than the rate of the diocese of Cloyne, whilst the husbandry of the county of Chester is eight shillings better; how then stands the proportion of the tithes of England to the wealth of England, and how stands the proportion of the tithes in Ireland to the wealth of Ireland?

Sir, I understand that in a great number of cases, the tithes have been fairly set out in the fields, and due notice given by the farmers; I understand these tithes are now perishing and rotting, because the parson will not draw them. If this be the case, would you give the parson a power to compel farmers