to be attended to was, the state of the town parishes. If the clergymen of the towns were to depend on the revenues derived from these benefices, none of the Irish clergy would be in a worse situation, while they had the most important duties to perform. For many of them there was, at present, little or no provision, and consequently an abuse, though a necessary abuse, had crept in, viz., that a country parish, where the duties were less arduous, and the revenue considerable, was not unfrequently combined with the benefices in towns. He desired to get rid of this practice; but, in order to effect this, that portion of the clergy must have a reasonable and moderate income. There were many cases where clergymen had the superintendence of large districts in towns, with a gross income not exceeding 400l., without a glebehouse, and were compelled to encounter the expense, not only of living in a large town, but of providing a residence, with a population of 10,000 or 12,000, or even more, committed to their charge. The town of Belfast was comprehended in a single parish. It contained 17,942 members of the established church, according to the report of the commissioners, with a parochial income to the incumbent of just 300l. Another small benefice was the archdeaconry of Dublin, with the parishes of St. Peter and St. Keven, containing 10,114 members of the established church, and including also the perpetual curacies of Rathfarnham, with 890 members of that church, St. Mary's, Donnybrook, with 3,536, and Tarney, with 1,059, making a total of 15,599. In this one benefice there were sixteen clergymen with eleven

churches. All would admit the necessity of providing a decent income for all clergymen thus situated. He proposed, in the first instance, that the ecclesiastical commissioners should be instructed to inquire into the state of the clergy in cities and towns, and to report immediately on the total number, on the nature and extent of their spiritual duties; the number of curates employed; whether adequate glebe-houses existed, whether adequate accommodation was provided for the population in churches and chapels; on the amount of net revenue, and the sources from which it was derived; whether from tithes, ministers' money, or parochial benefices attached to them; and whether, by any alteration of the limits, greater facility might not be given for the discharge of the spiritual duties, and a more adequate remuneration to the incumbent. He proposed, in the next place, that the commissioners should lay this report before the privy council, with their opinion on those cases which most required augmentation of income, increased church accommodation, or a subdivision of parishes; that a similar list should be made out of the parochial benefices which yield a less income than 50l., and up to 300l.; and that there should be a specification of the cases, with reference to increase of income, the nature of the duty performed, and the augmentation or subdivision of the benefices. On the demise of any incumbent of a benefice, with an income not exceeding 500l., and a population of not more than 100, the commissioners should make a report on the spiritual duties attached to it; its extent, income, and population; the state of the glebe-house and church, and

the propriety of annexing it to any adjoining parish, subject to a limitation consequent on the ele ment of space which he introduced, that it should not contain au area of more than thirty square miles. The commissioners should be empowered, in cases where the income did not exceed 500l., nor the population 100, to recommend a reduction of revenue to 300l., the sum which had been fixed by the Church Temporalities Act, as the point at which taxation of benefices ought to commence. As to the application of the difference between the income now derived from the benefice, and the funds which would ultimately be left to it, he proposed that that be'ance should be applied, in the first instance, to the raising of a sum, for the purpose of erecting a glebe-house upon the benefice, if there was not one upon it already. In a small parish, he considered the building of a glebehouse, which would render the residence of the clergyman among his flock indispensable, as a point more primary and more important even than the building of a church itself. If the circumstances of a parish required it-if there was a congregation which rendered the building of a church necessaryand if the income of the parish was insufficient to meet the expense of building a church for the accommodation of that congregation, he proposed that any surplus which should remain, after glebehouses were built in all the parishes which wanted them, should be applied to the building of such churches. But beyond these local demands, which he considered to have the first claim upon the House, he proposed that the surplus of all benefices which should ultimately be reduced, but never

below the amount of 300l. a-year, should be placed at the disposal of a general board of commissioners, to be applied to the augmentation of those small livings which required it. This augmentation would be restricted to a maximum of 300l., unless the benefice were in a town. On the one hand, no small benefice would be augmented beyond, and no rich one would be reduced below 300l. If there should be any parish above forty square miles in extent, and containing more than 1,000 persons in connexion with the church of England, he proposed to allow the commissioners to divide that parish, provided they did not augment the income of the clergyman appointed to each division be yond 300l. a-year for each individual clergyman. He thought that if a parish required division, the income of the clergyman appointed to each division should be 300l. a-year. He infinitely preferred dividing a large parish among clergymen, each enjoying 300l. ayear, to leaving it as a single living, with a large income to a single clergyman. He further proposed, with regard. to town parishes, that when the requisite funds should be at the disposal of the commissioners, those benefices should be augmented which had an income below 400l. or 500l. ayear. Such benefices had the first claim upon the surplus fund; and, if any surplus should be found to exist, to such benefices it ought to be applied.

When all this is done, continued his lordship, have I shown any disposition to maintain a luxurious and overgrown church establishment? Have I not expressed a desire to meet fairly every case where, apparently, there is an ex

cess of income-where, apparently, there is too small a Protestant population-and where, apparentÎy, there are too small duties for each clergyman to perform? But I should have been ashamed of myself if, putting the case so, I had looked at that view of it alone, and had not looked at the other interests-I mean the interests both of the Protestant parishioners and of the Protestant clergymen in Ireland. I implore, therefore, his majesty's government to recede from that position to which, most unwisely, and on the most false premises, they have bound themselves and the house along with them. If they wish to get rid of the glaring discrepancies now distracting society -if they wish to put an end to the collisions now occurring so unfortunately and so frequently in the collection of ecclesiastical revenues in Ireland if they think that the settlement of this question can be achieved by doing what is right and just, and reasonable, and moderate, in the way of concession-I entreat them to hesitate before refusing me the means of introducing to their consideration the measure which I now propose to lay before them, and which will, I have reason to believe, meet the concurrence of those who never can, and never will, concur in the abstract principle of the bill at present before the house. Let them only reflect how much they can obtain by this proposition - how much is fairly and frankly proffered to them-how much of real defect is corrected how much of substantial justice is accomplished-how much of peace and tranquillity is restored to Ireland-and how much of that

harmony, which formerly existed between this and the other house of parliament, and which recent events have tended to disturb, is likely to be derived from assenting to my motion. I call upon them to consider, whether,-for the sake of a principle, which, if they can apply at all, they can only apply in an infinitely insignificant degree, which they will never be able to carry into effect, and which, if insisted on, mars all probability of coming to a settlement on this question,—whether, in grasping at a shadow, they can feel themselves justified in abandoning a substance which fairly, frankly, and cordially, without reserve, equivocation, or hesitation, I may venture to say, on the part of the church, I am now empowered to offer them.

Lord John Russell reminded the house, that he had expressed his willingness to allow lord Stanley to bring in his bill as a substantive measure; but when it was now moved as an amendment on the original motion before them, it was merely a new form of opposing the second reading of the government bill, and raising the question on the principle of that bill.

They had been appealed to as gentlemen; but he hoped they were something more-that they were representatives of popular feelings, and popular interestsrepresentatives, not of local bodies, but of all the people of the empire, including that outlawed portion of the people, the six millions of Roman Catholics in Ireland. They had been told, too, that they ought not to overlook the interests of the children of the Irish clergy, and had been reminded how painful a consideration it must be to a clergyman

that his income would not enable him to provide for his children after his death. But were there not other persons, the Roman Catholic people of Ireland, who were also compelled to consider what was due to their children and families, and might ask what advantage they derived from the expenditure of this 400,000l. levied annually from their pockets? He was not prepared to say that the doctrine that the established church ought to be that of the majority, ought to be carried out to its full extent in Ireland. He had no intention of so carrying it out; but he maintained that the interests of the great body of the people ought not to be disregarded. The duty of the state was, not to select and support that creed only which the legislature or other supreme authority considered founded on truth, but to provide means for inculcating the principles of morality and religion among the great body of the people. If we were to found a church establishment on another doctrine, we should find ourselves spreading through Hindostan the religion of the church of England; we should find ourselves spreading, among the Catholics of Canada, and among the members of various other religious persuasions distributed through our different colonial dependencies, that one form of the church of England, and insisting upon them all displaying conformity to it. Now, it was impossible that we could set up any such absurd pretension. Therefore it was, that the present bill, like that of last year, proceeded on the principle, that while you preserved to the Protestant church of Ireland what was necessary for the spiritual VOL, LXXVIII.

instruction and consolation of the Protestants of Ireland, any surplus derived from the revenues of that church, beyond the amount necessary for that spiritual instruction, was to be applied to the religious and moral instruction of the great majority of the population of that country-that you were not to consider that great majority as mere blanks in your empire-that you were to provide them, not with a church establishment according to their peculiar mode of faith, but with a system of sound, moral, and religious education, and to make that part and parcel of your ecclesiastical establishment.

The scale of income provided by the bill was, his lordship maintained, a liberal one. It afforded an income of 290l. a-year for each benefice. But if he were to take out of this calculation the benefices where there were more than fifty, and less than 500 Protestants, and also the benefices containing less than fifty Protestants, the whole amount of income would give an average of about 4117. as the income of each benefice. How stood matters in England? The ecclesiastical commissioners had reported "that there are no less than 3,528 benefices under 150l. per annum. Of this number, 13 contain each a population of more than 10,000; 51, a population of from 5,000 to 10,000; 251 a population of between 2.000 and 5,000 and 1,125 had each a population of between 500 and 2,000." Thus, there were 1,440 benefices in this country, each containing an average of about 500 persons, in which the incumbents all received an income under 150l. a-year, and the average income of those benefices [G]

would be somewhere between 100l. and 120l. a-year. Therefore we had in England 1,440 benefices, containing a population of 750,000 persons, in which the average income of the clergyman did not exceed 1207. a-year. Government proposed, that, in all benefices in Ireland containing more than 500 Protestants, an average income of 411. a-year should be given to the incumbent. When, therefore, members were shocked at the penury in which ministers left the clergy of the church of Ireland, what did they think of the penury in which the clergy of the church of England were left? The church of England, too, was the church of the majority of the people; its clergy were men daily and hourly performing their duty to their flocks, and rendering them services which they received with thankfulness, respect, and veneration; and when an average income of 4001. a-year was given to the clergy of the church of Ire land, it was given in parishes where there might be 500 Protestants, but where there were also 1,000, or 2,000, or it might be 3,000 persons of a different creed, to whom the religious instruction of the Protestant pastor was not extended, and by whom, if prof. fered, it would be refused. With respect to those parishes where there were less than fifty resident Protestants, he admitted that the sum of 100l. a-year assigned to the clergyman was but a small income; but it was an income larger than that enjoyed by many curates in the church at present. To say nothing of the glebe, it was one-fourth larger than the salary which was sometimes given to the curates of two parishes from which the rectors drew from

1,200l. to 1,500l. Besides, an Act of Parliament, the 7th and 8th of Geo. IV., passed in the orthodox year 1827, before Roman Catholics had any seat in that house, contained a provision that where there was any parish or parishes impropriate belonging to an archbishopric or bishopric, the archbishop or bishop might unite those parishes with any other benefices, provided always that the income of the benefices so united did

not exceed 1007. a-year. The reproach, then, of leaving the clergy of the Protestant church of Ireland to starve on 100l. a-year was a reproach, which, if it lay at the doors of the present ministers, also lay at the doors of those who framed the act of 1827, and who thought that in framing it they were conferring a benefit on the church of Ireland.

To lord Stanley's objection, that the bill contained machinery for creating a much larger surplus than the 50,000l. a year for education, and that the balance was to go to the consolidated fund for state purposes, lord John Russell answered, that as 50,000l. a year was to be advanced immediately out of the consolidated fund for the purposes of education, it would be some time before there would be more than a few hundreds a year in the hands of the commissioners applicable to the purposes of the bill, and very long indeed before 50,000l. appropriated by them, could be repaid by any surplus that might accrue. was likewise to be considered that another purpose to which that surplus, if there were any funds in the hands of the commissioners, would be applicable, was the compensation to be made to those now possessing advowsons who were

It