The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-05 00:00:00

IRISH SOCIAL BURDENS.

On Saturday last Lord Fermoy, as Lieutenant of
the county of Cork, presided over a large meeting
of magistrates, ratepayers, and others interested, to
consider the necessity a dividing the county and
holding separate !ass:lzes for each division, repre-
sented by a separate grand jury. In the course of
his opening addriJss his Lordship said he had taken
the trouble of looking into the question of Irish
taxation, and had come to the conclusion that Ire-
land for loyal purposes was the heaviest taxed
country i u Europe. To bear out this view the noble
chairman quoted the following facts and figures :
" The Grand Jury cess in Ireland amounted to the
sum of over a million, but he would put it down at
that figure, and the poor-rate amounted, in round
numl-Jers, to about £500,000, making a total of
xi,r,00,000. There were also other local burdens.
There was the tithe rent charge. He had
hr.ard the funds of the Established Church of
Breland estimated by some as low as £500,000
a-year, and by others at £BOO,OOO, and the truth
might be estimated as between the two, so that
they might put them down at between £600,000
and £700,000. There was also another
Church supported by the people of Ireland
out of the fruits of the land—a Church that never
liked to be ignored, and which, in his mind, ought
not be ignored by anybody wishing to be considered
as a philosopher or statesman as regarded Ireland
—he meant the Roman Catholic Church, the Church
of the great majority of the people of the country.
That was no doubt supported by voluntary contri-
butions, but in considering the burdens the people
had to bear, whether they were voluntary or im-
posed by law made no difference as to the amount.
The only mode he had of ascertaining the amount
contributed for the support of the Catholic Church
was a very simple one. He found there were four
archbishops, and he had put them down at £BOO a
year each, making £3,200; 24 bishops, at £6OO a
year each, amounting to £14,400; 2,291 priests,
whom he put down at £2OO a year each on an ave-
rage, made £458,800. Then they had the building
of chapels, subscriptions for the propagation of the
faith in foreign countries, subscriptions for the
Pope and many other objects connected with the
Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, and he did not
think he was under the mark when he put them
down at £200,000 a year, and that would bring up
the expenses of the Roman Catholic Church to
nearly £700,000 a year, somewhere about the same
as those of the Protestant Church. There was also
the Presbyterian Church, the Wesleyan, and other
congregations of Dissenters. The Presbyterians
were partly supported by the Regium Donum , and
partly by voluntary contributions. He did not
think he was over the mark in stating that the
voluntary contributions of the Presbyterian and
other Dissenters amounted to somewhere about
£200,000 a year. Therefore they had about
£1,500,000 raised for religious purposes in Ireland,
adding to that £1,500,000 of county cess and poor
law taxation, they had a gross sum of £3,000,000
paid by Ireland for local purposes, out of a rental,
according to Griffith's valuation, of £12,000,000 ;
that is they paid 25 per cent. on the gross rental
of the country towards local contributions and taxa-
tion."