The Sun.
London, England, 1836-10-15 00:00:00

OF TfiIiPUBLIC JOURNALS.

The avowed and the only object his Majesty's Mi-
nisters had in view when they, consented, agreeably to
the declared will of the House of Commons, and the no-
torious desire of the nation, to engraft the appropriation
clauses on the Irish Tithe Bill, was to facilitate the
adjustment of that long and violently agitated question,
by conciliating the favour or assuaging the hostility of
the Catholic tithe payers, and thus to secure their in-
come to the Clergy of the Established Church. They
felt the impossibility of settling the question amicably,
and therefore effectually, without making some con-
cession to the feelings of those—the great body of the
Irish people—who are burdened with the maintenance
of an immense ecclesiastical establishment for the ex-
clusive benefit of the clergy of less than 1-10th of the
population of the island. They saw no middle course
between moderate concession and a fierce system of co-
ercion which must end in convulsion, perhaps in the
dismemberment of the empire, undoubtedly in the ruin
of that domestic peace which enriches England by
fostering commerce and enables her to defy foreign
foes, being secure in her internal tranquillity. To
this pass did the obstinate bigotry of the Tory party
bring matters. The clergy must perish, or civil war
must be waged in defence of tithes, or the hostility of
the people to that impost must be softened down by a
prudent compromise. The Tories preferred the se-
cond alternative, though they lacked the means to
carry their plan into operation ; and in the mean time
doomed the clergy to starvation, or an unseemly
war of latitats and rebellion-ruffianism. Lord

Melbourne and his colleagues adopted the third
and only feasible course. They proposed to give
the tithe-payers, in other words, the Catholic
population, an interest in the perpetuity of the
tax, by appropriating any surplus of the ecclesias-
tical revenues -which should remain, after suitable
provision had been made for the spiritual instruc-
tion cf the Protestants of Ireland; to the admirable
purpose of national education without distinction
of creeds. It -was not intended by the flamers of
the Ministerial. Bill to divert a shilling from the
pockets of the clergy, until their wants were first
amply provided for. The first charge upon the
aggregate sum of ecclesiastical revenues was to be
the suitable maintenance of the Protestant clergy.
And when this purpose was fully accomplished, then,
and only then, -was the appropriation principle to come
into operation. The children of the peasantry were
to receive none of the blessings of education through
the revenues o:f the Church, until the Ministers of
the Church were first adequately remunerated for their
spiritual labours. But sinecures and pluralities—
those monstrous abuses of the present ecclesiastical po-
lity, were to be swept away ; and idle clergymen, who
'had no flocks to tend were not to be perpetuated at
the expense of the poor, and to the great disgrace of
religion, while thousands were hungering for instruc-
tion, or for more substantial aliment. By this most
desirable reform, Ministers took care to secure a sur-
plus, while they infused a spirit of usefulness and po-
pularity into the Established Church.. Their plan
'Was, a., we all know, reeisted factiously by the Tories,
and defeated, on the plea: that, forsooth, the principle
of appropriation recogelzed in the Ministerial met.-
Sure was fraudulent and sacrilegious. It was de-
'dared by the Tory Peers, including almost ail the
mitred Lords, to be a robbery of the Church and a Sa-
crilege to appropriate a farthing of its unchristianly
enormous revenues to the education of the poor.
In the beginning, the abstract right of Parlia-
ment at all- to interftre with the revenues of the
Church was boldly
.denied. This objection, however,
soon fell to the ground. It was based upon a dange-
rous geoulidworit. • If Parliament had no right in the
19th century to hitt:l-fen: with the property of the
Church, neither had it a right to do so two centuries
ago ; and thus vanished the title of the Protestant
Church to its bishops' lands and tithes. The Tories
felt the force of this answer to their absurd objection :
and, prudence overcoming fanaticism, the right of
Parliamentary interference was conceded, and its exer-
cise assented to in the enactment of the Temporalities
Act, which abolished ten bishoprics, together with the
.church-rates, the abolition of the latter being an ac-
tual appropriation, to the-merest lay purposes, of sonic
60,0001. a year of the former revenues of the Church.
A new objection was then raised : indeed, the appro-
priation clauses involved a sacrilegious plunder of
the clergy. Such was the pretext of the Tory
Peers for ruining the Bill by which Ministers
hoped, and with good reason to effect • a satis-
factory adjustment of the tithe question I Was
this plea valid ? Did the Cabinet of 1835,
for the first time, recommend an appropriation of a
portion of the revenues of the Protestant Chnrch in
Ireland to the purposes of national education ? Turn-
ing to the statute-book, we find an Act of Parliament
—tile 12th of Elizabeth, chap. 1, which is entitled an
Act for the erection of Free Schools. The intention
and object of the framers of this Act are to be ga-
thered from the following words of its preamble, to
which we intreat the reader's attention :
" For as much as the greatest number of the people of
this your Majesty's realm (Ireland) bath of long time lived
in rude and barbarous states, not understanding that Al-
mighty God bath by his divine laws forbidden the manifold
and heinous (haynous) offences which they spare not daily
and hourly to commit and perpetrate, nor that he bath
by his Holy Scriptures commanded a due and humble
obedience from the people to their princes and rulers,
whose ignorance in these so high points touching their
damnation proceeded] only of lack of bringing up the
youth of this realm either in public or private schools,
where through good discipline they might be taught to
. avoid those lothesomc and troublesome errours. - It
may therefore please your Excellent Majesty, and be it
enacted (sec. 1.) by your Highness, with the assent of the
Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in this pre-
sent Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the
same, that there shall be j'ro»z henceforth a free school
within every diocese of this realm of Ireland, and that the
schoolmaster shall be an Englishman, or of the English
birth of this realm, and that the Lord Archbishop of Ar-
magh, the Lord Archbishop of Dublin, and the Lords
Bishops of Meath and Kildare, and their several succes-
sors for ever, shall have the nomination, institution, and
appointment of the schoolmasters within their dioceses from
time to time for ever ; that is to say, every of them in his
own diocese, and that the Lord Deputy, or other Chief
Governor or Governors of this realm, for the time being,
shall have the nomination, institution, and appointment of
all and singular the schoolmasters, in and for all and singu-
lar the other dioseses of this realm, the four dioceses before
named excepted, from time to time for ever ; the school-
house for EVERY diocese be built and erected in the princi-
pal shire-town of the diocese, where school-houses be not
already built, at the cost and charges of the whole dio-
cese, without respect of freedoms, by the desire and over-
sight of the ordinaries of the diocese, or of the vicars-gene-
ral, and the sheriff of the shire ; and that the lord-de-
puty, &c., with and by the advice and consent of the same,
shall, according to the quality and quantities of every dio-
cese, appoint to and for every schoolmaster such yearly
Pension, stipend, or salary, when none is already ap-
pointed, as he, with and by their advice, shall think conve-
nient—whereof (of the salary) the ordinaries (bishops)
of every diocese shall bear yearly, for ever, THE THIRD
PART, and the parsons, vicars, prebendaries, and other
ecclesiastical persons of the same diocese shall pay yearly
for ever THE TWO ()TITER PARTS by an equal contribution,
to be made by said ordinaries.
The second section charges the Crown livings with
their quota of these expenses. Now, can anything be
more plain than the meaning of this Act of Parlia-
ment ? Did it not clearly and distinctly impose a di-
rect tax upon the clergy of the Established Church in
Ireland, for the purpose of national education ? Did
it not appropriate, in precise terms, a portion of the
ecclesiastical revenues to the same purpose—that of
edcuation, which the framers of the Tithe Bill of last
session had in view ? Here, then, is the Protestant
Elizabeth—the zealous patrols of the Reformation—
the fierce foe of Catholicism—setting the precise
example which Lord Melbourne and his colleagues are
denounced as infidels and sacrilegious robbers foi imi-
tating. The Duke of Wellington, Baron Lyndhurst,
Lord Stanley, and the other leading opponents of the
recent measure must have been aware of the existence of
this statute of Elizabeth. What will be thought of
their honesty in denouncing Lord•Morpeth's Bill as
a „robbery and sacrilegious spoliation ? But it may be
said that the late measure proposed the diversion of
the Protestant Church property to Catholic uses ? So
did the 12th of Elizabeth. The phraseology of that
statute leaves no room to doubt that the free schools
were intended for the education of Catholics ; for we
are not to suppose that the Protestants would be ac-

cused of that ignorance and of those " haynous"
crimes which are laid to the charge of " the greatest
number of the people" of Ireland in those times.
Besides " the greatest number of the people" of that
realm were unquestionably Catholics in the days of
Elizabeth. Furthermore, the only personal limitation
specified in the statute is that which obliges the school-
master to be an Englishman or of English origin.
Hence it is palpable that the Queen and her Parlia-
ment provided for the education of the Catholics of
Ireland out of the revenues of the Protestant Church.
Nor are we at liberty to infer, from the wording of the
statute, that the education which its framers con-
templated was sectarian. There is no allusion to
creeds, no mention of Protestantism to warrant the
supposition that the system of education then set on
foot was merely religious or exclusively Protestant.
On the contrary, the context goes to prove that general
education, without distinction of creeds, was the object
aimed at by the rulers of that period. And are the
present Liberal Administration deserving of reproach
for following the useful precedent set by Queen Eliza-
beth ? She was never suspected of a design to re-
establish Catholicism upon the ruins of Protestantism;
yet it has been seen that she appropriated largely from
the revenues of the Protestant Church to promote edu-
cation among the Catholic peasantry of Ireland. After
this we do not expect to be called upon to repel charges
of sacrilege or robbery from Lords Melbourne, John
Russell, and Morpeth, merely because they wish to
facilitate the collection of tithes, to save the Established
Church from ruin, to pacify Ireland, and to diffuse
the blessings of a moral education among the people.—
Morning Chronicle.
Of the manner in which the Scotch Municipal Bill
is working in the fangs of the northern Radicals and
Dissenters, the reformed Town-Council of Edinburgh
have recently furnished an instance, which we verily
believe is without a parallel, except in the conduct of
those Popish legislators who, in broad violation of their
oath, are endeavouring to the top of their bent the
subversion of the Protestant Church. Several months
ago, when pointing out the dangerous power committed
by that Bill into the hands of dissent (which, in its
political bearings, is neither more nor less than repub-
licanism clothed in the forms of religion), we men-
tioned, that to invest Dissenting town councillors with
the privilege of a vote in cases where the appoint-
ment of clergymen to Established Churches devolved
upon Municipal Corporations, was manifestly to arm
them with a mischievous weapon for stabbing the na-
tional religion ; inasmuch as it afforded them an oppor-
tunity of filling up vacant benefices with the most
feeble and inefficient incumbents, which the ingenuity
of sectarian spleen could ferret out. But while we felt
strongly fortified in this objection, both on account of
its abstract' reasonableness, and especially on the ground
that since Dissenters (with the exception of a few non-
jurine• Episcopalians and Papists) did not exist in
Scotland till the year 1734, they are neither the parties
by whose suffrages such Corporation patronage was
originally meant to be exercised, nor less tainted with
that enmity to the Presb) terian establishment, on ac-
count of which Popish patrons are to this day dis-
qualified by law for issuing a church presentation
within its pale ; still, with all this force of argument
to bear us out, we refrained at the time from any
lengthened expostulation on the subject, because we
did not believe that the partisans were yet born who
could lend themselves to the actual perpetration of
evils, the very atrocity of which disposed us to treat
them as mere improbable contingencies. This, we
adinit, is strong language. -Whether it be warranted
or otherwise, by the recent conduct of a majority of
the Edinburgh councillors (into whose anti• church
conspiracy, we regret to say, a respectable Conserva-
tive has in this instance been betrayed as an unin-
tentional abetter), the sequel will sufficiently show.
Let our readers attend to the facts. The want of
church accomodation in that quarter is so noto-
rious and urgent, that a number of the inhabi-
tants, being utterly hopeless of any seasonable or ade-
quate supply front the perfidious Government who, as
mere expedient to shelve the question, appointed a
" Royal Commission of Inquiry," have contributed
voluntarily a sufficient sum to build several new
churches in the city or suburbs, especially for the
benefit of the poor. Among these, the intended edi-
fice at Greenside, within the extended royalty, has
been surrounded with a suitable parochial boundary,
defined by the proper authorities ; and on the applica-
tion of trustees nominated by the subscribers, it was
arranged with the Edinburgh Councillors, who are
under an obligation, by Act of Parliament, to build
certain additional places of worship, that the church
in question, with the patronage thereof, should be as-
signed and made available to the Town Council, as a
partial fulfilment of their parliamentary obligation,
provided that by allowing a double charge (then vacant)
to be henceforth served by only one clergyman, the
clerical stipend released by that alteration should be
permanently transferred to the new parochial erection!,
All this was amicably settled with the concurrent as-
sent of the municipal and ecclesiastical authorities ;
but not without the further understanding, that the
Greenside trustees were to have the privilege of nomi-
nating two or more clergymen, from among whom the
council were to elect the future pastor of the church.
Of course the appointment of a minister capable of at-
tracting a neglected population in a new locality was
an object of paramount importance to the success of
such an experiment. And so entirely did the council
recognise their understanding with the trustees in
reference to that appointment, when it suited their
purpose to do so, that the precipitate application of the
latter in favour of a highly popular clergyman, whose
removal from a crowded and influential congregation
to an unformed one in a poorer district was expected
to inflict a serious injury on the Church establishment
in Edinburgh, met with their immediate and unani-
mous sanction. It subsequently turned out, however,
that the clergyman in question declined the appoint-
ment. Then came the fuller development of the anti-
establishment intrigue which we are now to comment
upon. The Greenside trustees, on whom it devolved
to submit the names of other candidates for the new
charge, nominated three clergymen of approved popu-
larity and character, taking care to intimate with suffi-
cient explicitness the name of the gentleman who
(though not to the exclusion of the others) was the
object of their more immediate preference. But mark ye,
—either of the three would have formed an important
reinforcement to the establishment cause in Edinburgh.
It became, therefore, a point of sectarian policy not only
to reject the whole of them, but to fill up the vacancy
by appointing a person, who, without disparagement to
his amiable character and book-learning, is notoriously
deficient in the moral courage, dignified presence, con-
stitutional energy, and popular address, which are in-
dispensable in the present day both to attract a congre-
gation, and to cope with the coarse and insolent bearing
which Edinburgh voluntaryism exults in. No doubt
this manoeuvre involved a tremendous sacrifice of the
most important interests to mere party zeal, but not
too great to intimidate the Radical and Dissenting
councillors. They have boldly and basely carried it.
With the pretences that they rejected the able clergy-
man whom the subscribers and trustees expected to
be appointed, because he is alleged to decline co-opera-
tion with the Dissenting preachers who are leagued
against his church, and that some of the council majo-
rity who have effected this indecency are members of
the establishment—with these pretences we have no
further concern than to congratulate the rev. gentleman
on the persecution he has been subjected to for his con-
sistency ; while, as far as regards the Radical church-
men who have assisted in it, we tell them plainly " an
enemy
Math done this," be their pretext what it may.
Only observe, too, how their treachery to the Green-
side trustees evinces their determination to damage, as
far as may be, the national establishment in general.
Subscriptions are going forward in most of the prin-
cipal towns in Scotland for the purpose of providing
that additional church accommodation which Govern-
ment, in spite of their professions, seem determined
to withhold ; and one great incentive to this benevo-
lent zeal is, the confidence entertained by subscribers
not only that efficient clergymen shall be appointed to
the new churches, but that in all such appointments
the recommendation of their managing committees
shall be listened to with respect. Now, by showing
the subscribers that their confidence in this respect is
wholly unfounded, and that the churches built with
their money shall not for certain be supplied with the
clergymen they approve of, the anti-establishment