villages are less numerous and important than in Great Britain. The food and clothing obtained by the peasantry are less in amount and value than falls to the lot of similar classes in any other civilized country. The Irish poor have seldom any opportunity of improving their condition: they possess a smaller share of what are called the comforts of life than any other description of persons in the British empire;-their habitations are wretched hovels, open to the wind and rain of heaven; the supplies of clothing and bedding are miserably deficient; and their food is of the very poorest description. In the midst of the most abundant harvests, and cultivating the richest soil in the world, the peasant derives from his labour the minimum which can support human existence. In a large district which has been most accurately surveyed, (the barony of Portenahinch, in the Queen's county,) out of 1187 farms, 1029 do not exceed twenty acres in extent, and 540 are under five acres! The principle of Irish tenures is also very dif ferent from that adopted in Great Britain, where, generally speaking, only two characters are known, the landlord and the tenant. In Ireland, on the contrary, A, the inheritor of an estate, grants a lease to B, who re-lets it to C, who lets it again to D; and thus it is transmitted through half the letters of the alphabet, each tenant endeavouring to reserve for himself a certain profit-rent from the land. The effect of such an arrangement is to create a class of idle annuitants, with very small and precarious incomes, and to interpose them between the inheritors and the occupiers of land, destroying much of that community of interest, and sympathy of feeling, which ought to subsist between them. On a population thus circumstanced, the severe pressure of the present times has fallen with peculiar weight. The landlord who deals with an cccupying tenant, is bound no less in duty than in interest to make such concessions as are proportionate to the altered value of agricultural produce. But it becomes difficult to apply this principle to the sub-infeudations of Ireland. A landlord possessed of a fee-simple estate of 1000l. a year, after reducing his rents fifty per cent., may still rely upon an income of 5007. A leaseholder, on the contrary, entitled to a profit of 1000l. a year, and subject to a rent of the same amount, is left totally pennyless, if fifty per cent. is to be deducted from his gross income. He is consequently left to choose between his own ruin and that of the occupant. Hostilities are instantly begun; crops are seized; the driver is put on permanent duty; the pound becomes the field of action; those valuable inmates of the Irish cottage-pigs and dairy cattleare carried into captivity; and the victorious auctioneer claims his triumph on the fatal ninth day. It is not too much to say, that leaseholds of this description, and leaseholders thus strug

VOL. I. NO. I.

D

gling

gling for profit-rents, extend themselves over three-fourths of Ireland. Hence, the sudden convulsion which has taken place throughout the empire, has been much more strongly felt in Ireland than elsewhere. Hence, too, the misery consequent upon that convulsion becomes much more extensive and difficult to remedy. The head landlord and the tenant are far removed from each other; and it frequently happens that the latter may be totally ruined, whilst the former neither claims nor receives an exorbitant rent. The shock, too, has been augmented by the revolution in the circulating medium of the country. In no one part of the British dominions had the paper system been carried to so extravagant an extent. At one period, Ireland was a country of bankers. To readers whose abstract idea of a banker has been formed among the sleek well-fed inhabitants of Threadneedle and Lom. bard streets, many of the specimens of Irish country bankers would appear animals of a very different genus. The circulating medium of the latter was not called to so high a destiny as to afford a subject for poetical amplification. It neither moved armies nor senates; it could neither buy a king nor sell a queen; it passed modestly as the representative of shillings and sixpences, and in some instances bore the value of three-halfpence only. Even after this singular currency had been withdrawn, the bank-issues continued to be most immoderate, and the result of such "unblest paper credit" was what might have been foreseen. The failure of eleven out of fourteen banks plunged the entire of the South of Ireland into ruin and distress, and the Irish nation was obliged to plead in forma pauperis for the mercy and compassion of Great Britain.

The state of the established church, and the mode in which its vast and augmenting revenues are collected, present considerations which cannot be overlooked. We believe that the church of Ireland possesses a greater proportion of the national income, than has been in any other modern instance devoted to the maintenance of the clerical order. We are inclined to believe that the duties which the church undertakes in Ireland are less than those performed by any similar establishment; or, in other words, that much is paid by the people, and but little received in return. The result has been, that the protestant clergy of Ireland partake very much of a secular character. "The established church is a great corporation, exceedingly well paid for the ministration of the gospel. It collects its revenues from the whole population of the country, without distinction of sects, but it confines its instruction to a very minute portion of the people. It is a spring at which all indeed are at liberty to drink; but the guardians of the fountain, careless how many or how few taste of the waters, exact payment

from

from those who loath the beverage, and from those who set no value upon it, as well as from those who esteem it highly, and drink of it abundantly*." We do not intend the slightest reflection on the body to which we allude. Revenues given them by the laws of their country, are to be viewed with respect, like other species of private property; and where a protestant pastor finds himself in the midst of a catholic flock, it is no reflection on his zeal to state, that his professional duties must necessarily be circumscribed. But it is surely impossible to deny, that a reform, maintaining the dignity and protecting the rights of the church, and yet diminishing the pressure on the community, ought to be diligently sought for, and honestly carried into effect. We are the more anxious to impress this part of our discussion on the minds of our readers, because we apprehend that some alteration of the tythe system is essential to the peace of Ireland. We apprehend it is equally essential to the dignity and indeed to the existence of the church. If ingenuity were called upon to devise a plan to throw a country into confusion, the tythe system of Ireland would be found to possess all the requisites sought for: it comprehends two characteristics, either of which would be sufficient to create discord in a community of pastoral simplicity and brotherly love. The tythe laws call upon the catholic to support a double order of clergy; they tax the industry and labour of the poor agriculturist, whilst they exempt from charge the spontaneous fertility of the pastures of the rich grazier. So gross a violation of justice, of policy, and of common sense, has rarely been exhibited in any other case: it does not exist in any other country in Europe, and it must cease to exist in Ireland, if that country is sought to be made what it ought to be.

The evil has been admitted on all hands, by men of all parties, and under administrations of the strongest contrast. It was admitted by Mr. Pitt, who held out a modification of tythes, as one of the great benefits which might be anticipated from the Union; and by a late Chancellor of Ireland, (Lord Redesdale) who had actually prepared a bill on the subject. It was admitted by the Whig administration of 1806; and by the Tory ministers who succeeded them in office. The Irish rebels before the Union, and the Irish secretaries after it; theoretical writers and practical statesmen; Pitt and Fox; Emmett and Mr. Peel; Lord Redesdale and Doctor M'Nevin; Mr. Pole and Grattan; Perceval and Paley; Adam Smith and the Marquis of Londonderry;-a rare and singular union of witnesses, of discordant principles-all agree in admitting the evils of the present system. Yet a most strange backwardness

Thoughts on the Education of the Irish Poor, p. 16.

+ Pitt's Speeches, vol. iii. p. 48.

has existed hitherto, against affording to the people of Ireland any practical relief on this subject. We say hitherto, because we feel satisfied that the consideration of this question cannot long be postponed; and because we are convinced that it will soon be manifest, that the present mode of supporting the clergy is more injurious to the community, and must ultimately prove more fatal to the church, than any which can be introduced as a substitute.

If it were possible to trace crimes to their origin, we are convinced that a vast proportion of the violations of the law in Ireland might be shown to have originated in the tythe system. The most dangerous conspiracies against the public peace, as well as the most severe enactments of the legislature, have flowed from the same source. The state of the tenures, and the extraordinary subdivisions of property, force the clergy almost unavoidably to employ agents or proctors, whose extortions are as notorious as they are lamentable. No real similarity exists between the collection of tythe in England and in Ireland; though it may be fairly assumed, that every objection which exists in this island, becomes much stronger in its application to Ireland, and that many of the most serious objections to ty the in Ireland are exclusively of a local nature. In England, the church deals directly with the payer of tythes. In Ireland, the tythe proctor is, and must necessarily be, interposed. In England, the burthen is equally distributed among the farming classes: in Ireland, it rests almost exclusively on the poorest orders. In England, tythe is imposed on a commodity generally brought to sale: in Ireland, it is exacted from the potatoe tilled for the actual support of the peasant. In England, tythes are applied to the support of a church establishment in which the majority of the people have a direct interest: in Ireland, for the maintenance of an order of clergy, from whose instruction more than nine-tenths of the people derive no benefit whatever. In England, the demands of the church can never exceed the real tenth of the produce, as the ultimate remedy of tendering the tythe in kind may always be resorted to: in Ireland, the laws are such as to make this remedy delusive and unavailing. A commutation of tythe in Ireland, so far therefore from rendering such an event more probable elsewhere, gives a new security to the clergy of England, by the correction of those flagrant abuses which are triumphantly cited as arguments in both countries.

It may here be observed, that tythes, even though nominally reduced, fall as a much more oppressive burthen upon land when any depression of prices takes place; particularly when, as in Ireland, such depression is connected with a considerable extension of tillage. The cultivation of poorer lands is thus rendered less productive; and it being upon such soils that the greatest amount

of

of labour and capital must be expended, a tax which presses on gross produce, and not on the profits of industry, must, under such circumstances, become peculiarly burthensome. In the best times the grievance of tythes was strongly felt-at the present moment it is intolerable.

We have already remarked, that the payments of tythe in kind can scarcely be said to exist in Ireland; nor are the remedies in the Exchequer, or in the Bishop's Court, very efficacious to an impoverished peasantry. It has been stated in Parliament, from respectable authority*, that the first step taken for the recovery of tythe to the value of eighteen shillings and tenpence, has been a citation which costs the defendant two pounds ten shillings. Proceedings before two magistrates, both selected by one of the parties, frequently being themselves interested in tythes, and often nearly connected with the clergyman, are scarcely less objectionable, though they may be found less expensive.

But it is argued that tythe is no real burthen on the cultivator; that as between landlord and tenant it must be paid by the former, and is only a deduction from the rent of land. It might easily be proved that in Ireland such is far from being the state of the case: but, even admitting the truth of the position, it should be remembered, that all the vexations and intolerable hardships of its collection are cast exclusively on the tenant. If the principle of commutation cannot be carried into effect, we are inclined to think that a most material improvement might be effected, were this burthen, in all future contracts, thrown upon the landlord; or, in other words, if the receipt of clergymen for tythe, were so far to be a payment of rent. In general terms it may be stated, that the inheritors of land are protestant, and the occupying tenants catho lic: the plan we have ventured to suggest, would thus obviously and directly cast the support of the established church, upon those who profess the established religion; and it would interpose between the proctor and the tenant a class of men capable of resisting any illegal extortion; a class of men whose remedies would not be murders and floggings, but actions at law and appeals to a jury.

We must allow ourselves one further observation. If the number of absentees, and the limited number of resident gentry, be, as has been stated, one of the principal causes of the misery of Ireland, a commutation of tythe would afford an immediate and efficient remedy to the evil so loudly complained of. Such a measure would give at once to Ireland the benefit of above one thousand country gentlemen, who, under existing circumstances, are de

*Sir H. Parnell, July 5, 1820.