The Sun.
London, England, 1835-07-24 00:00:00

on'y. The living was that of Gra.lara, in the province of Ar.
mash. 'I he number of inhabitants were,
In Granird 635
Co!umkil .. 33'i..
Drumlomon - - '
Killeshindra, alias S.::rabby
Bal!yma-lugh *4,...,692

Making a total of
Now, in this union there were five parishes ; each parish had
a church and a separate' Curate ; so that out of 700/. a year
five parishes were to bs served, and six Clergymen and their
families supported.—( Load cheers.) The Noble Lord then
mentioned other similar instances, and, among them, one of a
benefice in the diocese of Meath, where the Protestant po.
pulation amounted to 1,289, and the space occupied by the
benefice was twenty-two miles long (Irish), and averaging
from five to seven in breadth. The six Clergymen were
five Curates, besides the Incumbent, to be supported on is -
gross income -of 3851, la another instatice, which the
Noble Lord quoted, in the county- of Galway, there wen,.
582 Protestants, and the income was 205/., and. the ex.
treme points of the benefice were fifty miles apart, and it
was in the wildest part of this the' wildest district of Ire-
land that the principal parish was situated. If the Govern-
ment were really anxious to supply' the wants of the Clergy—
not in pampered luxury, but decent comfor;:, which was
the indefeasible right of eve. 's member of the Established
Church —augmentation instt-.,:;t: Ippropriation might have
entered their minds fur the re 7 sr omuch poverty,- and par-
ticularly itt a Bill professing to rcgt.tite eeclesiatical reve-
nues.—( Cheers.) isserlA loev stater too=t extraordivary
misconception of the N, lars Lord ( Lord INK peril). In Kil-
carry there were t,o2s Hiabisants., with s.'n income attached
to the benefice of 215/., which. would he reduced according to
the proposed alteration to ',2v!. There ‘.ve-re two adjoining
parishes with an incotae which would be reduced to
260/. These parishs; fornieit tt u!!ion of six miles is lenAth
and ono toile in !ffeadtli, and becao it was c'all-td a union,
without reference to the &wait amount of income, it was to be
reduced, lie wpuict ask whether this was not a one-sided
mode of proceeding, and nhetbc-r it son 1n! not be a better
mode to vote at once a mock surplus ?,—(Lone( Cheers.) He
had deviated, however, from the case of Kilcarry. The No-
ble Lord had stated that hi that place there was only a pre.
beudary attacheq, 01 0 duty consisted in reading prayers
•oneo or twice a-yeair. Now, how was- She fact ? The parish
contailKa aOO Protestants, and had an incumbent and curate,
f :alt resident.—( Loud cheering, in Which Lord Morpeth vo- •
eiferously joined.) The Noble Isse‘d cheered ; but he
thought it a most extraordinary Cheer in ' answer to a tri-
umphant counterstatement. Monkstown, and Dr°.
mond, were now united parishes, with an income of 150/.
—( Hear, hear.) income was derivable from Monks-
town, but tho duty was performed at Collin, but because
thotoondf,s contiguous it is proposed to separate it trorn,the
ul"."ott, and this, it is gravely stated, is done for the pufpese
of better administering the ecclesiastical revenues. It rettlyr
he did consider, passed the powers of any human being to re-
sist laughter at so preposterous a proceeding.-_( Cheers,.) Al-
lusion had been made to the unfortunate Church Temporali-
ties Bill. If any Hon. Gentleman was under the delusion
that, in supporting that Bill, he supported a principle similar
to that now introduced,, he would soon set hint right. The "
Church Temporalities Bill made it competent for certain Ec-
clesiastical Commissioners to suspend, incumbents from their
benefices on Certain conditions. But a Curate was to he pro-
vided, and after the payment of his stipend, the residue was to
go to the building of a glebe house. If there were Iv, Protest-
ants at all in the parish, the funds were to be appropriated for
more effectually maintaining the Church in other quarters.
If such," said the Noble Lord, " is the principle of
the Bill now -before the House, I at once withdraw my
opposition." It the superfluity when discovered was so to
be appropriated, he would give up at once any further attempt
to impede the measure. But the fact was that the sole dis-
cretion was left in the present instance to any person—to the
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—or to any one rather than to art
Ecclesiastical Commissioner, and was in all respects as
distinct frsim the Church Temporalities Bill as light from
darkness.—(Cheers.) The Noble Lord then proceeded to
point out some more of the absurdities which he considered
would arise from the system of • dividing the parishes.
There were two livings which, of all others, were the worst
paid; one received only 1551. per annum ; but they both ap-
peared to bear very ominous namesi for one of them was
called Castle Ennis, and the other Chapel Russell,__
Msaughter.) To be serious, these livings did not enter Into
the proposals of his Noble Friend. \acre there was much
duty and little pay his Noble Friend proposed to make no
addition ; but where there was little duty and much pay, there
appropriation was to take place. He complained of the cou-
fusion which his Noble Friend had made between benefiees
and parishes. English Gentlemen who listened to the sub-
ject were in the habit of saying "nothing could be more mon-
strous than that there should be so many parishes with so
few Protestants in them," and they asked, " Could any
man object to taking away such livings ?" But these parishes
were often united into benefices, and although the parishes
singly had few Protestants,_ yet, united into benefices, the
Protestants were many ; and yet these benefices were tra be
dealt with' SS single parishes, and because there were not
fifty Protestants-qtr.-each they were to be annihilated. Ho
hoped that Hon. Members would not be misled by terms, for
the benefiCes were, in fact, one undivided parish. The
church was not the church of the parish but of the benefice ;
the Clergyman was not of the parish but of the benefice; and
in the days when the vestry cesa was collected it was as-
sessed-• en: the-benefsets;:-,and the churchwardens were
not elected for the parish but for the benefice ; and, he asked,
upon what ground could his Noble Friend, when he found
the income of a beneficel large, be ready to reduce it ? and
when he came to consider the amount of duty to be per-
formed he stated not the duty of the benefice, but the
duty of each parish ?—(Cheers.) Could any man conceive
that his Noble Friend would have drawn such distinctions
between parishes of 400 Protestant inhabitants merely because
one was-divided and the other not ? The report contained the
number of benefices which possessed less than ten, less than
forty, and less than a hundred Protestants, and so on. The
Commissioners told the House that the Ecclesiastical parishes
were not coterminal with the civil parishes, and yet his Noble
Friend confounded them, and such was the way by •whelt be
got at his surplus. His Noble Friend had looked at the re-

terns, and foiind that if he took the number of ber.eficcs there
would be no chance of his obtaining a surplus. He said that
there were 860 parishes with under t)t) Protestant inhabit-
ants : but, supposing his Noble Friend had taken the bene-
fices, he would have found thei there were only forty-one in
all Irelind that did not contain a Protestant inhabitant.—
( Hear, hear.) And•what was the total income of these forty-
one benefices ? Why, the total income amounted to only
2,2351. per annum. After all that had been said of the
Church of Ireland, of the neglect of duties on the part of the
Clergy, and of sinecure Clergymen, it appeared that only
2,235/. per annum was paid to Protestant Ministers who with-
in their benefices had no Protestant communicants. Surely
his Noble Friend could find ample means of applying this
2,2351, to the benefit of districts in which no provision was
made for the spiritual wants of the Protestant population. It
might be applied in augmenting small incomes, and in dimi-
nishing enormous unions in other parts of the country.—
There were 1,545 places of Protestant worship, 1,383 bene-
ficed Clergymen, and 752 Curates to be maintained, the
incomes of which .beneficed Clergymen amounted, upon an
average, to only 2201. a year, whilst the average con-
gregation of each was • 616 persons.—( Hear, hear,
hear.) 'ln the case of the Church of Scotland it had.been
deemed by the old fathers of the Church that no Minis-
ter should have the care of a larger number of souls than
1,000. Ile did not mean to say that one, two, or three thou-
sand might not be provided for by one minister, but on the
other band. in Ireland, where the districts were so extensive, it
was impossible for one man to take charge of so many ; and
yet the Noble Lord's plan went •to add. tracts of country to
what was already too large. But the Noble Lord was deter-
mined to hate a surplus, and he therefore took only one side of
the question, deducting where there was a superfluity, and
never adding where there was a deficiency. The Noble Lord
had said that he cared not whether the service of the Church
was adequately performed, or whether a parish had few Church-
men or no Churchmen, but the revenues of the national Church
should be applied to the general purposes of the population
dissenting from the Church. This was a question of Roman
Catholic use or of Protestant use, and not a quest-ion of sur-
plus.—( Cheers). His Noble Friend had admitted the necessity
of a national Establishment, he admitted the importance of
religion, and acknowledged that religion could not be main-
tained without human means, and that the best of all means to
maintain religion was an-Establishment, and if the national
Establishment were only for the benefit of a small portion of
the population, then he had a right to apply its revenues to
the Roman Catholic population. because the object of a na-
tional Establishment was to teach the great truths of Christi-
anity in which the people were agreed. But the purposes of a Pro-
testant -Establishment were no such thing. Its object was to see
that the service of the national religion should be duly adminis-
tered, without any mixture of errors with what it held to be the
truth. He dissented from the doctrines of his Noble Friend,
and he would tell him—lie would tell that House—he would
tell the people of England—that his Noble Friend's argument
led irresistibly to the appropriation of Protestant revenues to
Roman Catholic purposes.—(Cheers.) The feelings of the
country never would allow the Noble Loid to carry such a
Bill.—( Hear, hear.) He would rather see the Protestant
revenues appropriated to Catholic pnrposes than the half-and-
half mode of proceeding which was the object 'of the pre-
sent Bill. The Hon. Member for Middlesex had told Mi-
nisters that on their own principle they Never could succeed.
Ministers had said that they would 'hot appropriate the sur-
plus revenues of one part of . Kland to the deficiencies of any
other parts. He would wish.to see this done.—( Hear, hear.)
• But if his ri oble Friend protested against this doctrine, he
asked him what security was there in the present Bill for the
local application of the funds raised by the confiscation of
Church revenues ? The funds were not to be applied locally
within the parish, but they were to be applied at the discretion
of the Lord Lieutenant for the purpose of religioes education,
without any distinction of •sects, The Bill contained no
tecurity whatever for the application of the funds, and it
would be absurd if it did. Out of this dilemma the House
could not get. if the surplus were to lv applied without the
parish, it was a perfect matter of liilfference to the parish-
ioners whether it was applietenty miles or a hundred miles
off. He would ask hr-",soble Friend whether in his conscience
he believed-117.:-;ttis Bill really stood upon any fixed principle,
411"- , •feether. it could be a final or peaceable settlement cf
1 Ireland. His Noble Friend himself had acknowledged the
reverse, for ha had designated the measure not as a final set-
tlement, but as a temporary comprordise. • -
We here understood Lord John Russell to say "'No."
Lord STANLEY then continued. Did his Noble Friend
believe it permanent? Ile knew that ha did not.
uset hireho
take the votes of the gentlemen on his
ail/Iv:et l
meet him (Lord
rested upon this as a final measure,