ing the surplus to moral and religious purposes, now declared himself prepared to sanction at once the principle of the 147th clause, or rather to go far beyond it, adopting a new principle-that it should be applied to secular purposes. (Lord Althorp here said, "no; not to secular purposes.") Not to secular purposes! What did he mean by giving forty per cent to the landlord? was that a moral and religious purpose? What a mockery was all this! The bill of last year, sanctioned by the chancellor of the exchequer, which enacted the consolidation of certain bishoprics and the annihilation of ten others, had thereby provided a fund, and the preamble of the act declared to what purposes it should be applied. It was the noble lord's own act; the 147th clause was struck out of it, and the assent of another branch of the legislature was thereby secured. But what said the preamble?" Whereas the number of bishops in Ireland may be conveniently diminished, and the revenues of certain of the bishoprics as well as the said annual tax applied to the building, rebuilding, and repairing of churches, and other such like ecclesiastical purposes, and to the augmentation of small livings, and to such other purposes as may conduce to the advancement of religion, and the efficiency, permanency, and stability of the united church of England and Ireland;' and then it was provided, that monies should be advanced for building churches, and effecting the other recited objects. Well, that act of parliament passed in 1833, tithes having been suspended in the interval; and now, without a shilling which they could apply for the advancement of re

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ligion, the very first act which government had recourse to was, to lay hold on the first dawning of an appearance of a fund, and appropriate it to the Irish landlords. So long as they went on in their present course, varying their own acts from day to day, saying, on the first of a week, that their own mind was not made up as to a surplus, and not, of course, prepared to deal with it, and that if such a fund should present itself, it should be applied to moral and religious purposes, and on the last day of the week, without the report of the commissioners, determining the existence of a surplus, and consenting to apply it to purposes so entirely secular as to make up the contributions of the Irish landlord

while they pursued such a course, they might, no doubt, please those who sought the destruction of the church, but they would never attract the confidence of any soberminded body worthy to exercise legislative functions, far less secure peace and tranquillity in Ireland: for he would affirm, without the least hesitation, that, at the present moment, there was as little chance or prospect of effecting a peaceable and satisfactory extinction of tithes as at any period within his recollection. He could not disguise it from the house that there must be reasons for the course which government were now adopting, which did not appear on the face of this bill. As he had said before, in his conscience he believed that the late commission had been appointed for the purposes of delusion. It had answered all the ends which it had ever been intended it should answer; and the chancellor of the exchequer, without waiting for it, was ready even now to deal with

the principle of appropriation. He believed that the cause of the vacillation which ministers had shown on this subject was, not that they preferred the system of July to that which they had advocated in February, but because they considered it more likely to conciliate the votes of those on whose support they relied, and who had avowed their enmity to the Irish church.

Lord Althorp defended himself against the charge of inconsistency in supporting the present measure after having sanctioned the bill of last session, by saying, he had expressly declared on that occasion that the bill then passed would not affect, in his mind, the question of the appropriation of church property. But this answer did not meet the charge of sir Robert Peel, which regarded only the proceeds of such property as that enactment had placed under the management of the ecclesiastical commissioners. That act bore that these proceeds should be applied to ecclesiastical purposes; while the present bill provided, that they should likewise be applied towards reimbursing the public treasury for money which it might advance in a present to Irish landlords. In answer to sir Robert Peel, lord John Russell contended that, considering the state of tithes in Ireland, and the public feeling regarding them, it would have been vain to think of collecting them, unless a pledge had been given as to their appropriation: but the very complaint against ministers was, that they had given no pledge-that they had studiously evaded any declaration of the objects which they intended to include in a new appropriation. His lordship admitted, VOL. LXXVI.

that the other measure, which had been introduced on the subject of tithes, aimed at their reduction and final extinction; but within what interval? Surely not within such an interval as the present circumstances required. By the plan proposed by the government, arrangements would be made enabling all persons possessing an estate of inheritance to relieve their lands from the burden of tithes before the end of the year 1836, and, for an advance of from between 30 to 40 per cent, they would be enabled to get rid of the odious and vexatious burden of tithes. If the proprietors did not come forward and ask the redemption of their tithes, no sacrifice would be made; and whenever payments were to be made out of the consolidated fund, they went to the proprietor of the land, and, in effect, were reimbursed. Thus would an odious tax, and a system of violence and blood, both be terminated at the same time. The plan of redemption was not altogether abandoned; on the contrary,

government wished to see it carried into effect to a very considerable extent. He should, in a word, sum up the principle upon which his majesty's government proceeded in the matter: it was, that they had not, and would not, affirm the application in perpetuity of all the revenues of the church to the purposes to which they were at the present moment applied. He was not one of those who desired to see the established church maintained in Ireland, in the vain hope that at some distant time the great body of the Catholic population could be brought to sounder views of Christianity. That most assuredly must be the belief and expectation

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of those who pushed the extreme rights of the church to the length to which the right hon. baronet opposite had urged them. But as no expectation of that kind entered into his mind, he could not do otherwise than oppose such views. He could not, for the sake of remote, and, as he considered, visionary prospects, continue the warfare and blood which for so long a period had desolated Ireland. If the right hon. baronet were to hold the place, which he once did, in the councils of his sovereign, no man, who knew the circumstances of the two countries, could for a moment hesitate to say, that, at the end of two or three years, he would find himself under the necessity of coming down to that house, and abandoning a course which, for the time, consistency would compel him to adopt, but which would prove alike painful to England and intolerable to Ireland.

Mr. Littleton, in his reply, accepted, he said, in good part, the designation of a "thimble-player," coming, as it did, from one who, by his experiments on the Irish tithe laws, had undoubtedly carned the character of as great and skilful a performer of legerdemain as ever lived. He did not mean to use the words in any offensive sense; but it was impossible, to bear in mind the part taken by Mr. Stanley in 1831 and 1832, down to the period of his quitting the office of Irish secretary, without feeling that no individual had exhibited more ingenuity, played off a greater number of tricks, or more signally failed. He mentioned this, not as a reproach to his right hon. friend, whose measures in reference to the Irish church he had himself supported, but merely for the

purpose of observing, that animadversions on the part he had, perhaps he might say the misfortune, to take, came with a particularly bad grace from one who had himself experimented so largely and unsuccessfully upon Irish tithes. The member for the university of Dublin had solemnly predicted, that not a farthing of the sum which might be advanced from the consolidated fund would be recovered. The same member had predicted with equal solemnity, that the clergy would not pollute their fingers with a farthing of the money voted last year; yet, within a month of the expiration of the period for delivering in memorials, the castle-yard of Dublin was crowded with clerical gentlemen pressing forward to make their claims. He would tell the committee one short story, from which they might conjecture the state of things more generally. A clergyman, who was also a lay impropriator in the south of Ireland, was thus circumstanced. The tenants were indebted to him in the sum of 2,900l., and for seven weeks he had a large force of military and police engaged in attempting to collect the amount. After being employed a considerable part of the time in the attempt, they found it quite useless to proceed in the daytime, because, an alarm being invariably given on their approach, the cattle of the tithe defaulters disappeared, and there was no getting at them. It was then determined to attempt the seizures at night, but every Irish cottager had his dog, and the tramp of the horses was heard at a distance, an alarm was given, the people rose, and the cattle were driven into the houses, where it was not possible for the law to

reach them. This individual wrote to the Irish secretary's office, requesting that a statement might be submitted to the lord-lieutenant, setting forth that, after all these unavailing efforts to recover tithe, in the course of eighty days, the average amount collected was but 8. a-day. This gentleman declared his conviction that, unless the military were encamped over the entire district whence his income arose, there would be no possibility of starving the cattle out. He should not have noticed this matter thus publicly, if he did not feel it to be his duty to give hon. members a sample of what had frequently occurred in Ireland, in order to show the folly of persevering in the present system. The abandonment of the redemption clause, and of the investment in land, had been objected to. If the investment in land was abandoned, the redemption clause must also be given up, in the present state of the money-market. He thought that if an investment in land could be avoided, they were bound to avoid it. The majority of Irish landlords objected to it, and it was also objectionable on account of the political influence which it would confer on the church. He did not mean to say, however, that government would not have adopted the other course, if it had not discovered another resource for the tithe-owner in the shape of a rentcharge. The late colonial secretary had likewise inveighed strongly against the commission which had just been issued, describing it as a miserable abortion;" but in a speech delivered by him in 1824, on a motion of the member for

Middlesex, he had thus expressed himself, after stating that the wealth of the Irish church had been grossly exaggerated:"He could state, in conclusion, that many of the highest dignitaries of the church of Ireland were anxious that an investigation should take place, not partial in its bearings, and that the whole of their political and moral relations to the country should be brought under view. He hoped ere long that some such inquiry would take place, that some commission would go forth, to view, with their own eyes, impartially, and on the spot, the bearings of the church establishment on the condition of Ireland." Here was an accurate description of, and, as it seemed to him, a sufficient authority for, the appointment of the Irish church commission.

The division on Mr. Hume's amendment gave seventy-one in its favour, and 354 against it. The committee then divided on the original motion, when the resolution of ministers was carried by a majority of sixty-four, there being 235 for it; and 171 against it. At this stage, however, the progress of the bill was arrested for a time by circumstances to which it is now proper to advert, as they were calculated, by their moral and political effects on the composition of the government, and on the relations of parties, to exercise a strong influence on the spirit of all subsequent measures, and on the power or inclination of the ministers to resist dangerous demands, or adopt a decided and independent line of policy.