The Sun.
London, England, 1834-10-15 00:00:00

true meaning and substance cannot be mistaken, ex-
pressive as it is of a determination on behalf of the
clergy to eVorce by law the recovery of that income
which they have lost for no other reason but that the
law was already proved to be powerless. But if in-
effectual to replace the clergy where they'have been,
and to restore a tithe condemned alike by sovereign and
people, the legal process which is threatened by the
primate and his supporters (perhaps we might more
properly call them his Grace's dependents) will amply
suffice to convulse society, and if persisted in, to
plunge Ireland into a civil war, terminable only by the
destruction of one (we shall not say which) of the
parties engaged in it, or by such a desolation of the
whole island as would render it an unfit asylum for any
inhabitants but wild beasts. We should be loth to
charge members of the church with anything so hor-
rible as a calculation of chances founded upon the
probable occurrences or results of a religious conflict
with reference to their own worldly interests. We
should almost shudder to suspect the clergy of com-
puting how much it might be for their temporal benefit
to provoke a war in Ireland for the sake of forcing the
Protestant body of both countries to take their part
against the Irish Catholics. Even were England to
interpose for the protection of Protestant life and pro-
perty in Ireland, the clergy may assure themselves
that England will never make war upon the Irish
Catholics for tithe to the established clergy. An at-
tempt to enforce tithe by law, therefore, although it
may produce an armed interference for the general pre-
servation of peace and property by Great Britain, will
not under any circumstances be applied by her to per-
petuate the existence of an institution liable to be
administered in a manner so inconvenient, so vexatious,
oppressive, and exasperating as the tithe system.
Besides their resolutions above referred to, the
Armagh clergy have agreed upon asking each other
sundry questions with regard to the extent of their
several parishes, the number of their (non) payers of
tithe, &c., leading, in fact, to little or nothing more
than a knowledge of the prodigious magnitude of their
common misfortune, and of its irretrievable nature. We
fear that all which is knowable upon the subject has
long since been ascertained, and that stir how they will
with whatever rapidity or in whatever direction, it is
but the movement of a poor squirrel in a cage—escape
by such means is wholly out of the question. Irish
tithe law in the hands of the Protestant clergy would
now be just as formidable, as a Papal bull of excom-
munication has been, any time these fifty years, against
heretic princes ; either is held to be an obsolete and
pointless joke. Were we deemed worthy of admission
to the councils of the clergy, our care would be most
earnestly to dissuade them from lifting any legal or
other temporal arm in defence of their arrears of tithe
revenue. If they submit to the force of circumstances,
there is a strong sympathy in favour of their sufferings,
which cannot fail to work eventually, and promptly, for
their relief. Instead of resolutions to go to war with the
Irish landholders, they would do more wisely by peti-
tioning the Tory leaders in the House of Lords to
revise their fatal policy of last session, and to vote at
once, nemine dissentiente, the bill and the whole bill
recommended by Lord Melbourne, after having passed
the House of Commons. They might act prudently
by entreating the heads of the liberal interest in the
House of Commons to refrain from visiting upon the
helpless church the sins of her sham protectors, and to
pass once more the Tithe Commutation Bill of last
August, without levying any fine or other penalty upon
the clergy in revenge for the arrogant and reckless de-
cision occasioned by the infatuated Conservatives at
the end of the last session. The church will be utterly
extinguished if she arms, whereas by meekness and ac-
quiescence she may disarm her enemies, and rivet the
devotion of her friends. We do yet trust that the
Beresford spirit of Armagh may expend itself on or
near the spot which inspired it, and not blast the
whole ecclesiastical surface of Ireland with its poison.
—Times.