The Press.
London, England, 1858-10-30 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 30, 1858.

and we wonder, forsooth, that it does not work
as it should do!

According to the theory of our Church, the
parochial minister is to be the mainspring of
moral health and intellectual light to the great
body of the people among whom he is placed.
Individuals may have opportunities of mental
cultivation, sources of religious light, indepen-
dently of him; they may, through the power of
social influences at work in the upper strata of
society, be restrained front evil, and induced to
the practice of virtue, or, at least, of its
semblance. But to the general mass, to the
uneducated and unlearned, whose social position
is low and obscure, surrounded with manifold
temptations, religious truth is the only really
enlightening influence, and religious feeling the
only thoroughly efficient safeguard against evil,
and inducement to follow after good. And for
that truth and that feeling they are, if not
entirely, at least largely, dependent on the
degree of efficiency with which the clergyman
pursues the avocations of his sacred calling.
Now, there is no profession which, when dili-
gently followed, makes greater demands upon the
mind and heart of a man than that of the paro-
chial clergyman. his bead ought to be at all
times clear, his mental vision unclouded; his heart,
though made heavy at times, should never lose
its vigour and freshness for the work that is
before him. The duties publicly performed by
him within the walls of his church are the least
part of that work. It is under his superinten-
dence that the little ones of the flock are to be
trained in the way they should go ; by his gui-
dance and counsel that the young are to be kept
in that way on their entrance upon life and its
temptations; to his advice, and often to his bene-
volent aid, that any who are in trouble or diffi-
culty are to have recourse; from his consolations
that the sick and afflicted are to derive the com-
fort they need; by his admonition and reproof
that the evil-disposed are to be kept back from
the indulgence of vicious habits and criminal
courses, and those who have fallen from virtue
and honour brought to repentance, reformed and
restored to respectability and self-respect. No
man can do all or any of these things so well as
the parochial minister.
But, in order that he may be all this to his
flock, and to every member of it, at all times and
on all emergencies, he must not be a man weighed
down and dispirited by gnawing care and grinding
poverty; who finds it a hard matter to keep his
own head above water; who cannot stir hand or
foot for the good of his parish without anxiously
calculating whether it may not involve him in
expense which he is unable to meet; who has to
look sharp after the perquisites of his office, and
has little or nothing to spare for active benevo-
lence ; who, supposing him to be fortunate enough
to hit upon some mode of earning money, apart
from the duties of his calling, in order to eke out
a bare subsistence, is compelled to devote to other
occupations the time and attention which ought
properly to be given to his clerical functions.
How, we ask, is it possible that a man so situated,
with a mind and heart permanently depressed
by the circumstances in which he is placed, can
efficiently fill the position and perform the duties
of a parish priest ?

Tliat the majority, an immense majority, of
our working clergy—unless they be men of
property, or have succeeded in the speculation,
not unusual, nor very creditable, of marrying for
money—are in this depressing situation, is a great
reproach as well as an incalculable injury to our
whole social system. Had there been proper care
taken to avoid this reproach, had the increase of
our population, its congregation into dense masses,
been followed up by a sufficient—we do not say an
ample, but a sufficient—provision for an adequate
staff of parochial clergy well trained for their work,
—a provision which our national wealth would
easily have enabled us to make,—we should have
been at less expense for police and for prisons,
for convict establishments, penitentiaries, and re-
formatories; there would be less poverty, less
misery, less vice, and less crime, all over the
land. The truth of all this, we imagine, no
thinking person will deny. But, we shall be told,
the mischief is done ; to attempt to recover the
lost ground would be a hopeless task. To this
we answer that it is far from being as hopeless as
many think, and as, at first sight, it may appear.
In what way we must set about it, if we would
retrieve the past, is a question on which some
other time we may have a word to say.

J

IRISH ENCUMBERED ESTATES COURT.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS."

Sir,—l must ask your leave to protest against
the accuracy of one portion of your remarks with
reference to the Encumbered Estates Act, in which
a meaning is given to tho words of Lord Chancellor
Napier which, to my mind, they do not convey, and
which, if I am not mistaken, he would be the first to
repudiate. In speaking of the enormous " change "
(revolution is a more correct word) brought about
by the operation of that Act in Irish landed pro-
perty, you say that "it was brought about neither
in pursuance of abstract theories, nor as the result
of a forcible subversion of the established order of
things, but was called for by an imperative necessity
as a remedy for acknowledged evils of the most
serious character, and carried into effect with a due
regard for existing rights."

It is against this last assertion that I cannot resist
from emphatically protesting. The Encumbered
Estates. Act, which had the Reformed Parliament
passed it some ten or twelve years before the time
ewpabb
xteeeht;e3rtnontahio. t
ene,d,gidtapr carriedeiudwgroniaho
dud
ebs,rt,
often
its
anarbsdabypefi
eeonrnrg.
anithttht
ouesvenael
sgrleyyarifftnogirstnetai
oaasi
nc,towt
jheisttiodohsho,
ta
stiocaawert oondwuf
ouarlhtoldeli
me; havetu b e
passedn,
h
confiscation surpassed boy
whichthe outrageous actshee ofl
of
au undiscriminating
atidespotng
ever inflicted on a conquered people.
No doubt the estates of the Irish landlords were,
generally speaking, deeply mortgaged. No doubt
that that state of things was the result of inexcusable
extravagance on the part of their former possessors,
and in some instances of the then existing pro-
prietors ; but, taking them as a body, the then land-
lords were tar more sinned against than sinning;
and one of the greatest obstacles to prosperity with
which they had to contend was the defective state of
the law, rendering it difficult for them to make a
good title to their land, so that they could not sell a
part to flee the remainder. The Legislature allowed
this grievance to continue unredressed for years,
during which a measure, such as the Encumbered
Estates Act, giving a varliamentary title, would have
relieved the worst part of their difficulties. Thus,
at a moment when the whole land was stricken down
with as severe a famine as any with which it ever phased
the Almighty to visit a sinful people, and when all
its awful consequences were in active operation, the
Imperial Parliament avenged their own delinquencies
on the Irish landlords and mortgagees, and passed
a series of measures which consigned to undeserved
penury and ruin a host of innocent individuals.
First was removed the grievance as to the difficulty
of procuring a title—an excellent measure, but one
which might easily have been passed ten years
before"; but this was accompanied by an Act enabling
ally one having a small mortgage on the property to
force its sale. To this was added a poor-law, the
amount of which was in some districts nominally
forty shillings in the pound, bie, in a vast number of
cases it absorbed the whole annual value of tne land.
'rhe machinery of confiscation was thus complete.
The laud in some districts was rendered worse than
valueless ; in others it was made of no value; in all its
value was materially diminished. Under such cir-
cumstances forced sales were ruinous to the owners;
but the power given to small debtors to sell, of which
they took a most extensive advantage, had this
lumber effect in diminishing the market price of
land—viz., that the market was glutted, and, as
always follows in such cases, the property to be sold.
was immeasurably depreciated. What follows"
Estates which four or five years before were of
sufficient value, and have now again become of
sufficient value, to pay off all the incumbrances upon
them, and to leave a handsome surplus tor their
proprietors, were sold at prices which were. only
sufficient to pay off the first mortgagee, and left the
other mortgagees and the owners in a state of abject
poverty and destitution.
I am not now going to enter into a detail of the
unnumbered instances of undeserved ruin thus
brought down upon some of the most respectable
gentry of Ireland by this rough and heartless legis-
lation ; neither do I wish to deny that the fearful
ordeal through which Ireland passed in those days
of death and confiscation has not resulted in a inure
prosperous and healthful condition of the who,
e
island than any previously known in her long sod
dreary annals of turbulence and misery. But let us
not with insufferable self-complacency
attr.
these beneficial results to the foresight, the w. tsdolut
or the justice of British statesmen and legalators;
t
They hod neither sufficient foresight nor wisdom
keep millions of our fellow. countrymen out of a state
of chronic starvation, nor had they sufficient skill to
prevent, ill the end, hundreds of thousands of them. 'butt
perishing by famine and pestilence. And w.als regent
to that other unfortunate portion of our Irish

ii