The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-23 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1844.

The Charitable Bequests Act appears to have
created nearly as great a ferment among the Catholic
clergy of Ireland as the Tractarian schism has created
among the English clergy. The former, for the first
time for many a long year, are split into two distinct
parties, each of which seems to entertain no very
inordinate amount of goodwill towards the other.
11Ioreover, each party has the honour of being headed
by as Archbishop, whose zeal in the views which he
advocates js of a firm and ardent character. Arch-
bishop MURRAY is at the head of those who are in
favour of the Charitable Bequests Act, while Arch-
bishop M'IIALx—" the lion of the fold of Judah," as
he is styled by his admirers-y-leads the van of those
who are opposed to it. The latter is warmly seconded
in his opposition by Mr. O'CONNELL, aided by
a majority of the priests of Munster and
Connaught, and the great mass, apparently,
of the Catholic Repealers, all of whom denounce'
the Act in question as a piece, not merely of ques-
tionable, but of mischievous policy on the part of the
Government. As for Archbishop itt
~.....URRAT he, it
would appear, is supported by the most temperat

and rational, but less noisy portion of the Catholic
middle classes—men who have not yet sworn undying
I hostilily to the PEEL Administration, but are ready to
accept of "good," even though it may "come out of
Nazareth." In consequence of this dissension among
the members of his persuasion, Archbishop MURRAY
has deemed it fit to address a Pastoral Letter to the
Roman Catholic Clergy and Laity of the diocese of
Dublin, wherein he explains his reasons for consent-
ing to take a share in the execution of the Charitable
Bequests Act, observing that he should consider it
a gross dereliction of duty, were he to fling
away any opportunity which this Act—im-
perfect as he admits it to be—places within his
reach of guarding in safety the treasury of the
poor, and of securing for the service of the Church
whatever property benevolent individuals may choose
to vest in the new Board, to be permanently dedi-
cated to that purpose. The Archbishop then enters
into some details respecting the embarrassments by
which Roman Catholic charities have hitherto been
surrounded. It seems that, in the year 1763, an Act
was passed requiring returns of all charitable be-
quests in the sister country to be made to the Pro-
testant Primate and the Bishops of each diocese at
their annual visitation; and subsequently a Commit-
tee of Charity of the Irish House of Lords was ap-
pointed under an order of that House. By the Act
of Union this Committee necessarily ceased ;
and, by a law, which has never since been either
altered or amended, the present Commissioners
of charitable donations and bequests were incorpo-
rated, consisting of the Protestant Archbishops and
Bishops of Irelamd, the Dean of St. Patrick's, the
incumbents of all the parishes in Dublin, and the
Judges. The latter, as might be expected, never at-
tended the Board, consequently it was managed ex-
elusively by dignitaries and clergymen of the Esta-
blished Church, who gave altogether a Protestant
character to its proceedings. Such being the case,
the Roman Catholic Archbishops and Bishops of Ire-
land addressed in 1840 a memorial to Lord MORPETII,
wherein they intreated—and surely not without suffi-
cient reason !--that the Board of Irish Charities might
be rendered more generally useful and popular by the
introduction of Catholic Commissioners, and by some
other measure which might have &tendency toplace their
charities upon the same footing as those of their Pro-
testant fellow-countrymen. " The recent Act," says
Dr. MURRAY, "appears to have been intended to
grant all that we then sought. It admits to the Board
of Charity Catholic Commissioners in sufficient
number to check any adverse influence which might
be attempted regarding the application of Catholic
charities ; and it takes away the dangerous power
enjoyed by the former Board of alienating, under
certain circumstances, Catholic bequests from the
known objects contemplated by the testator, and of
applying them to purposes which, if living, he would
abhor. So far our prayer has been granted. The state of
insecurity in which our charities were placed has been
removed ; and had the Act stopped there, we could
not, without the greatest inconsistency, utter one
word of complaint against it." The Archbishop
then goes on to point out the leading defects of the
Act in question, but takes care to add that, not-
withstanding the partial blemishes whiA tend to
render it unpopular, no one can look into it with
an unprejudiced eye, and not see that it confers
advantages on the Catholics of the very
highest value, giving them, among other things, the
power of vesting property, without trouble or ex-
pense, in perpetual security, for procuring glebes for
their clergy, and for building, enlarging, and up-
holding or furnishing their places of worship. Not-
withstanding the violent opposition raised among
certain parties in Ireland to the Charitable Bequests
Act, we incline to regard it, despite its admitted de-
fects, in the same favourable light as Dr. AfURIAY,
and to consider it as a step in the right direction.

When Mr. limn, deploring the wasteful impro-
vidence of the Tory. Administrations, of which the
Duke of WELLINGTON and Sir ROBERT PEEL were
successively at the head (we speak of that Govern-
ment which terminated in 1830, and of that which,
being established in December, 1834, on Sir Ro-
BERT'S return from Italy, closed its brief career in
April, 1835)—when Mr. liumE used to avow his
regret that there was a surplus of public income over
public expenditure—his avowal was listened to in the
House of Commons with surprise and incredulity.
It was to little use that he explained his meaning
to be, that a deficient revenue would, to a cer-
t.; n extent, compel a „„. :rtineas
the part. vi the Ministers of the day. This
last was a mere hypothesis. In the condition
of circumstances assumed by it, the result he con-
templatel might or might not occur. It would
be " time enough to think of that," whenever the
facts fell out. But to regret that a Government
should have a surplus of income—to deprecate so
positive, palpable, power-giving, an advantage, as that
of an annual balance of supplies over disbursements, to
consider it possible that " money in both pockets"
might be an evil ; this was a political heresy so novel
and startling, that the merest tyro in vulgar arith-
metic—green as transplanted from the halls of Ox-
ford into St. Stephen's Chapel—turned up his eyes
with astonishment at its enunciation ; looked grave,
or affected to sigh over the waning powers of the
veteran calculator. Nevertheless we have lived to
see the hypothesis of the Hon. Member for Montrose
verified by facts. The theory has found, if we do
not greatly mistake, an exponent in no other than
the Premier himself. Thanks to his wholesale
drafts on national credulity or timidity, he has re-
established, in the six-and-twentieth year of profound
peace, the most especially constituted war-tax ; and
in the third year of its levy, his " metallic tractors"
have conjured so vast an amount of money out of the
pockets John Bull that he has a very large surplus
on the aggregate of income over that of expen-
diture. Now so long as the former was only
the equation of the latter—so long as the Charges
of the State absorbed its Receipts, Sir ROBERT must
have been comparatively happy. No " good-
natured friend, in the shape of some influential land-
owner, could look in upon him at that inopportune
moment when he was just chuckling over the re-
dundant receipts of his Exchequer, and hint to him
significantly that he might find it very expedient to
remit a portion of the heavy malt duty. No hawk-
eyed Manchester Conservative could then ruffle hi;
equanimity, and ruin his breakfast, by a morning call
before office hours in Whitehall-gardens, with the
view of drawing the Minister's attention to the eligible
opportunity which had at length arrived, enabling him
to remit the import duty on raw cotton. There were,
then, no outcries from the poorer and the poorest
classes for the remission of the tea duties

The Excise was not assailed by a run of

popular demands upon the extinction of this
duty, nor the Customs invaded by the concentrated
appeal of thousands for the removal of that. Coffee
and sugar, less loaded with fiscal liabilities, continued
to be accessible to the rich, but to decline the con-
sumption of the poor, whilst they netted a handsome
yearly return into the coffers of the Treasury. But
now all this state of things is changed. There Is a
surplus. A great fact, this, and the cause of a great
sensation. How shall it be appropriated ? A great
difficulty, and the subject of the most conflicting re-
commendations. Friends supplicate; enemies threaten;
the Minister is utterly perplexed. "Take off the
Malt Duty," cry the farmers, "in the very
first place, or we, who placed you where
you are, will help to remove you to the
position from whence you came." " Repeal the duty
on raw cotton," say his county-kindred and political
supporters, "or else-" " Hold!" exclaim the in-
dustrial classes, whose contributions represent as much

as two-thirds, at least, of the whole indirect taxation

raised in this country, " you have lowered prices

by your legislation to a point which disables our

employers from giving us remunerating wages. We

get less money but have more taxation to pay; the

charge of which is no longer covered in our scanty
wages. We work longer hours to earn diminished

pay. Make cheaper, therefore, to us, by the remission
of the duties you take upon them, those articles of
which we are the largest consumers." And then

come trooping in a regiment of demands for
repeal of duty on tobacco, and beer, and tea, on

coffee, and sugar, soap, and raw cotton, and even on

paper.

What is Sir ROBERT (poor mail) to do ? The
" suggestions" of one body of his friends are expressed

so emphatically, that they are like the petitions to
GIL Bias for charity—enforced by the accidental

eloquence of a disbanded soldier's carbine. The
" hints" of another, somehow or other, have, all of