Archbishop Bunn procured it to be enacted that no preferment should be given to any one who did not speak English. By the statute of the 28th Henry VIII., it was enacted, that, "If any spiritual promotion within this land at any time become void, such as have title to nominate, shall nominate to the same such a person as can speak English, and none other." And if by any chance a native were appointed, he was to take an oath that "he shall to his wit and cunning endeavour himself to teach the English tongue to all under his governance, and shall preach the Word of God in English, if he can preach;" yet under this system, such was the want of preachers, that the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, under Edward VI., says, “ Preaching we have none, which is our lack, without which the ignorant can have no knowledge; hard it is that men should know their duties to God and the king, where they shall not hear teaching or preaching throughout the year." In 1551, the English Prayer-book was to be read in the Irish churches, at a time when (as Leland, vol. ii. p. 94, tells us,) the Irish language was almost universally prevalent, and when English preachers were not to be found. Elizabeth (statute 2, section 13,) requires the clergy to read the prayers in Latin. In the schools, at the same time, the Irish language was prohibitedEnglish alone was to be enforced. (Education Report, 1813, p. 270.) In vain does Sir Henry Sydney implore the English Government (in his Report to Elizabeth, 1576,) to send out Irish preachers. In vain do Lord Bacon and James I., in a letter to Lord Chichester, state that the evils of Ireland arose from the want of ministers who could speak the Irish language. In vain did the subject again engage the attention of Charles the First's Government. With the exception of Bishop Bedell, hardly any one acted upon their recommendation. The translation of the Bible into Irish, only took place in 1686, and then it was due to the individual exertions of two men; and strange and monstrous to say, no reprint of the New Testament in Irish took place from that time till 1811, nor of the Bible till 1817.

But . you will observe these hinderances to the preaching of the Gospel did not arise from the Church, but from the State. They were Acts of the State, counteracting the efficacy of Protestant preaching, and as far as their mischiefs were corrected at all, they were corrected (as in Bedell's case) by the exertions of individual Churchmen. In Scotland the Church was useful, because it was made the instrument of teaching the people the Gospel in their own language. In Ireland it was rendered useless, because the Acts of Parliament and of Government prevented it from being applied to these ends. But this, it would seem, was the fault of the English Government, not of the Irish Church; it was the sin of selfish statesmen, not of the clergy. Nay, not only did the State interfere in this way to render the Church useless, but it allowed the Church, from its very commencement, to fall into ruin and destitution. In Queen Elizabeth's time (to take Sir Henry Sydney's report respecting the diocese of Meath) there was not one glebe-house, nor any place of residence for the clergy. The walls of many of the churches were thrown down-the windows and doors were ruined. "If," he says, "this is the state of the Church in the best peopled diocese, and best governed county, easy it is for your Majesty to con

jecture in what case the rest is.

Your Majesty may

believe that upon the face of the earth, where Christ is professed, there is not a Church in so miserable a case; the misery-of which consisteth in these three particulars, the ruin of the very temples themselves-the want of good ministers to serve in them-competent living for the ministers being well chosen." Lord Deputy Chichester, in the reign of James I., says, "The churches I found all ruinous, and many utterly defaced." For many years during the reign of Elizabeth, even the sees of Derry, Clogher, and Raphoe were suffered to remain vacant; and for years together Divine service was not used in any parish church of Ulster, except in the towns. Spencer justly says, referring the blame to the Government, "many more Roman Catholics might have been converted, if the English Government had done their part, and have supplied the country with learned, pious, and faithful preachers, that would have outpreached and outlived the Irish priests in holy and good conversation." The state of the Church was no better in Charles the First's reign. Bedell found his palace of Kilmore levelled with the ground, his cathedral church destroyed, and the parish churches all ruined, unroofed, and irrepaired. The revenues of the Church were diverted into the pockets of laymen, so that in addressing Charles I., the Convocation state"In all the Christian world the rural clergy have not been reduced to such extremity of contempt and beggary as in this kingdom, by the means of appropriations, commendams, and violent intrusions into their undoubted rights, in times of confusion; having their churches ruined, their habitations left desolate, and by inevitable consequence, an invincible necessity of a general non-residence, whereby the ordinary subject hath been left wholly destitute of all possible means to learn true piety to God." The effect of these spoliations was, that laymen possessed themselves of 1480 glebes once belonging to the Church, and the tithes of 680 parishes. From this arose the necessity for the union of parishes, in order to make a sufficient income for a clergyman; so that the state of the Church is thus described by Swift in his time:-" The clergy having been stripped of the greatest part of their revenues, the glebe being very generally lost, the tithes in the hands of laymen, the churches demolished, and the country depopulated, in order to preserve a face of Christianity it was necessary to unite small vicarages sufficient to make a tolerable maintenance for a minister."

If we look at the Irish Church, the state of the case is simply this :There are 1,385 benefices in the Church of Ireland; there are 2,405 parishes, so that above 1,000 parishes have been swallowed up. Take the state of the Church a hundred years ago. There are now in the Church 2,000 clergy; there ought to be, if all were put on a proper footing, nearly 1,400 glebe-houses, and as many churches. Now about a hundred years ago there were less than 800 clergy, only 400 churches, and 150 glebe-houses. If, therefore, the Church was inefficient it was inefficient from the spoliation which had fallen upon it. It was impossible that clergymen could reside or labour in their parishes, when there was no house to live in, or church to preach in. The attempt, therefore, was abandoned, and if there was any vigour in the Church during the reigns of George I. and George II., it was the noxious

vigour of a few leading men, such as Primate Boulter and Primate Stone, men of lives very different indeed from the laborious lives of many of the present bishops of Ireland, men who were to be found at the Castle in Dublin-artful and intriguing politicians. But so far from its being the wealth of the Irish Church that made it inefficient, it was the very reverse; it was its poverty which kept it so, and the best proof of this is, that no symptom of improvement began till 1770, and then it arose from the improvement which then took place in the agriculture of Ireland, which increased through tithes. The Church, deprived of glebes and of the tithe of agistment, had been starved down to the lowest state of weakness. She then began to receive a better sustenance, and with that she put forth some signs of vigour. From that time she improved. The improvement was at first in the material parts of the institution in the outward fabric; she erected glebe-houses, built up ruined churches, and enabled ministers to reside. From the time I speak of to 1800, she doubled the number of her glebe-houses, added more than a third to her churches, and a fifth to her ministers; but still, at the Union, in place of 1,400 glebe-houses, and as many churches, she could only muster 300 glebe-houses, and 689 churches; and instead of 2,000 ministers, 1,000. Nay, even now, after a lapse of 35 years, in which great improvements have taken place, the Report of the Commissioners of Instruction in 1835, informs us there are only 850 glebehouses, and 1,338 churches for 2,000 clergy. There are still (even if we give up 1,000 parishes, and abandon the hope of providing for their separate instruction) 535 glebe-houses wanting, 210 churches, and 157 benefices without a minister. The primate (Com. 1825, p. 507) gives us a specimen of the state of things still existing in Ireland. He tells us of five parishes in one county, Louth, without churches, in two of which the tithes belong to laymen, and the tithe-owner allows nothing for the support of the clergyman. I am far from saying that there has been, or is, no fault on the part of the clergy themselves. There were gross faults, and gross vices; but they arose, in most cases, from the destitute state of the Church which I have described,-a Church in so degraded a condition as that of Ireland was sure to be looked down upon, and avoided by all who could find employment elsewhere. Good men would not enter it, as they knew they could not reside and discharge their duties. The effect was that its wealthy livings fell into the hands of those who took them with no view to spiritual duties, and who took advantage of the want of houses to spend their incomes in English or continental watering-places. In like manner the bishoprics of the Church were given too often to those who had no recommendation but their rank or political influence. The whole discipline of the Church was thus relaxed and abandoned. We cannot wonder that in such a state the Irish Church should have been inefficient. But with augmented revenues came a different state of things. It was her revenues which raised her character. She was inefficient from the time of Henry the Eighth down to the middle of the reign of George the Third. What was the state of her revenues at that time? Spoliation-poverty-beggary! She acquired a better income at the period I have marked, about sixty years ago. Did she

use that income to make her clergy more torpid-more corrupt-more non-resident? I will tell you, and I will tell you upon no partial evidence. Mr. Grant says in 1823 (I have already quoted his words), that there have been none more zealous for education than the Irish clergy. Mr. Burnett, the Independent Minister, says, that the conduct of the clergy is essentially changed; that they are not now men of routine, but men of piety; no longer mere official functionaries-" more men of religion than men of the world." Dr. Doyle (Tithe Committee, 1832, p. 336) says, that in 1824 the clergy of the Church began the new work of the Reformation; and, again he says (p. 341), "latterly the Protestant clergy have almost universally been influenced with over zeal in religion." Mr. Leslie Foster (Committee, 1825, pp. 1 and 3) says, "the conduct of the clergy has improved materially within the last fifteen years. Previous to that change their execution of duty was much more remiss, and they were then very generally non-resident." Dr. Cooke, a Presbyterian Minister of Ulster, high in fame and in piety, says, "there are not amongst the Protestants of the world more faithful or efficient heralds of the truth of God for the salvation of man, than are the Established Clergy of Ireland." Here then is sufficient evidence of the present character of the clergy, and you will observe that by this concurrent testimony the change in their character, dated from twenty or twenty-five years ago, and that you will observe, was just the time when, from the increase of the revenues of the Church, additions had been made to the numbers of churches and glebe-houses, unions had been dissevered, parishes created, the clergy were enabled to reside, and residence was enforced. I believe indeed that there is not a greater contrast than is presented by the state of the Irish Church at this moment, and its state during the three previous centuries. In the first case, a Church dilapidated, its fabrics in ruins, its ministers poor, or if rich, non-resident, ruin written on its walls, corruption and disgrace in its services. At this moment its churches increasing in numbers, houses for the clergy built or building, residence enforced wherever it is possible, and a most laborious, disinterested, and self-denying body of men, exhibiting the virtues, the forbearance, and the zeal of primitive Christians. Wealth, indeed, a few may enjoy, but of this the great portion are destitute; their incomes precarious, their lives endangered, their families exposed to privation,-yet their labours abundant and their devotion unwearied, and their fortitude unbroken, the demagogue's butt, the priest's victim, the assassin's aim; but patient, and constant, and triumphant in their calling. (Applause.)

Such are the men whom Mr. Mahony, looking to the civilization of Ireland, proposes to enforce the residence of throughout the country; and such are the men whom the demagogues, whether lay or priestly, who feed on the vices of the peasantry, desire to hunt out of Ireland. The witnesses hostile to the clergy bring instances of non-resident clergymen, and complain of their non-residence as an evil. It is an evil, and we demand that it should be corrected; but it is the residence of the priest which is the evil, and, if we paid them, it would be on the condition that they should remove from Ireland. Wherever the clergy reside there we find, with Mr. Mahony, there is civilization, and

wherever the priests reside there is vice and disorder. The one are useful through Ireland to cultivate the moral soil, and the other are noxious, as retarding the progress of industry and morals.

Now observe the fraction of Irish rent which is laid aside, in order to secure the residence of Protestant ministers.

The rental of Ireland is about twelve millions; that of the Church is about half a million: that is, eleven millions and a half pass into the pockets of the landlords, one half a million into those of the clergy; or put it in another form, the soil produces sixty parts: forty of these go to the cultivation, nineteen to the landlord, one to the clergyman. Out of sixty shillings, the landlord has nineteen and the Church one shilling. But in many parts of Ireland the charge is much lower. Over three dioceses the clergymen receive but 7d. an acre, in two 5d., in two 4d. In order to support the roads of the counties the assessment levied is 1s. 5d. an acre; this is paid by the landlord, and wisely paid, as without roads his farm would be valueless; he pays far less than this to the clergyman, and yet without moral improvement, what is the value of his farms and acres? I put it therefore to the landlords, whether the establishment of 2,000 moral agents and their location throughout Ireland is not, if they look to the value of their property alone, of the utmost consequence; and whether it would not be well worth their while, in order to secure that end, that the State should keep back one of the twenty shillings which pass into their pockets, and appropriate it to the support of those moral agents? That is the whole demand, a demand with which no other class in the community have any concern, except to reap the benefits of the residence. If this be the just view for the landlords, what should be the view of the community at large? Have they no interest in retaining one shilling out of the landlord's twenty shillings, and appropriating it to the Protestant clergymen? How great that interest is I have already shown. Landlords may be non-resident-their residence may be hurtful. Mr. Inglis has produced many instances of their neglect and selfishness in Ireland: over them we have no control, but over the clergy our control is direct; it is our own fault if we do not make it effective. They may be made to reside, and their residence may be made in all cases that instrument of moral good, which in most cases it is found to be.

Let us now advert to another point, and observe the number of Protestant ministers in Ireland. There are in Ireland 2,403 parishes, 1,385 benefices. Let us compare the benefices of Ireland with the parishes of England and Scotland. There are twenty millions of statute acres in Ireland: 27,457 square miles. In Scotland there are twenty-seven square miles to each parish; in England five square miles; in Ireland eighteen square miles to a benefice.

Lord Morpeth, in his speech June 3, 1836, states that there are thirteen to fourteen square miles in each benefice, supposing the benefices 1,250. Even this statement would be quite sufficient for my argument; but Sir Robert Peel has exposed the gross errors of Lord Morpeth's calculation, so that whatever may be his value as a statesman, his reputation must be very low as a statist.

Nay, if we were to divide the extent of Ireland among the 2,405