EXTENSION OF AGITATION.

In our Seventh Article, we drew our readers' attention to the political aspect of popery. Since those remarks were written, Mr. O'Connell has addressed the first letter of a series to the people of Ireland, in which he has stated the objects of the Precursor Society. In this letter he boasts that in half an hour 2,000 persons enrolled their names. We cannot do better than introduce the nine grievances under which Mr. O'Connell declares his countrymen to labour. At present, we shall make no further remark, with the exception of observing, that unless there be a counteraction on the part of Protestants, the revolutionary spirit of the Great Agitator must inflame the land to that degree, that nought, save a decided interference of Providence, can save it from total destruction. The following are the grievances :

"1st. The giant grievance of Ireland is, the domination of a party over the people, the separation of the Irish into two classes-an ascendancy class and a subjugated class-a master class, and a slave class.

"2dly. The second grievance of which Ireland has to complain is the administration of justice. Yes, the administration of justice.

"3d. The third grievance belongs to the same category with the second -the administration of justice. The branch I now allude to is more Ministerial than judicial, yet its influence is great-I mean the appointment of sheriffs. In the corporations which have that power the evil is known and universally felt. The exclusive nature of our corporations renders partiality inevitable. In Dublin, the seat of our superior courts of justice, no man for years upon years has been appointed sheriff unless he has given the most distinct pledge of being an anti-Catholic partisan. How strange it would appear in any other country but Ireland, that for an office which the law constituted for the pure administration of justice the qualification should be not only an avowal, but a pledge of party spirit! The sheriff ought to be strictly impartial. Yet, in Ireland, he owes his appointment to a proof of decided partiality. This evil extends its deleterious consequences all over Ireland, not only because such a sheriff returns the juries for the Court of Queen's Bench, but in the numerous civil causes which any plaintiff may deem it his interest to try with the aid of a Dublin sheriff and a Dublin jury.

"4th. The fourth grievance which Ireland sustains belongs again to the category of the administration of justice. It consists in the increasing partisanship of our juries, the encouragement given by the leaders of the Opposition to the Orange faction; that encouragement increases individual party spirit, and, unhappily, that spirit is daily becoming more and more rife in the jury-box. Unless Orangism be put down, and all religious distinctions be totally buried in oblivion by means of a perfect equalization of civil rights, this source of legal iniquity will last, and Orange juries will continue to convict innocent Catholics, and acquit, as they have so often done, guilty-notoriously guilty-Orangemen.

"5th. The fifth grievance also belongs to the law, I mean the magistracy. The partial and oppressive conduct of the Irish magistracy has

been proclaimed by men of all parties, Tories as well as Whigs. By each and every party we have been promised revision and redress; from none have we obtained it. It is true, that Lord Normanby has gone through an investigation of the magistracy, and that he has struck out of the commission several names. But how many obnoxious men has he left? How many truculent and worthless partisans has he left in the commission? He has used the pruning knife with a trembling and restricted hand-and now the old game is going on; almost every improper person deprived of the commission of the peace has multiplied solicitations to be restored-I am sorry to say some with success, and there is every appearance that many more will equally succeed. Our magistracy, therefore, is but little amended, and the amendment is daily growing more scant and unsatisfactory.

"6th. The sixth grievance is one of the utmost magnitude. It includes the Church temporalities. There is a Church in Ireland richly supported by the State, which is not the Church of the people. The English people

taking the majority for the whole-have their Church supported by the State. The Scottish people have their Church, in like manner, supported by the State. The Church supported in Ireland by the State is not the Church of the Irish people, nor of one-tenth of the Irish people. A miserable fraction have the Church revenues, which ought to belong to all.

"7th. The seventh grievance is one of such notoriety that it needs only to be mentioned. It is the unreformed state of our corporations.

"8th. The next great grievance is the state of the elective franchise. The contrast between Scotland and Ireland in this respect is most afflicting. The contrast between England and Ireland in this respect is most insulting.

"9th. The ninth and the last of the selected grievances, and one of the greatest of all, is the inequality of the Parliamentary representation. If we had our proper proportion of representatives, we could set at defiance Tory baseness, Tory-Radical treachery, and Whig apathy.

NEWFOUNDLAND AND BRITISH NORTH AMERICA SCHOOL SOCIETYALARMING PROGRESS OF POPERY.

AT the Annual Meeting of the Devon and Exeter Auxiliary, the Rev. J. Haselgrave attended from the Parent Society. In the course of his observations, he said, that the Government, having, through a mistaken policy, withdrawn the grants to the Schools lately under the patronage of the Propagation Society, most of these Schools were now closed, the inhabitants being unable to raise the necessary supplies. The Roman Catholics had availed themselves of this opening, and had sent out one Bishop and fortynine Priests, who were seduously employed in swelling their ranks, and evincing a zeal worthy a better cause, while the whole number of Protestant Clergymen in the colony was eleven, and four of these residing in the capital; this colony, which was a century ago an entire Protestant population, numbers now nearly half Roman Catholics-so that the position of the Newfoundland Schools

acquires, in consequence, a more than ordinary importance, as we value our National Faith, and observe its perils in that quarter. The Society has under its auspices forty-six schools, and almost 9,000 scholars the whole amount of its funds last year was only 1,6867. 19s. 7d. If it had 10 or 20,000l. at its disposal, the Society might not only make a more effectual effort in Newfoundland, but also venture its operations through North America, where an awful dearth of sound scriptural instruction is felt.

TITHE COMMISSION.

THE Tithe Commissioners have just published the following views and intentions of the Commission relative to the commutation of tithes :

The Tithe Commissioners for England and Wales believe it may determine the line of conduct of many tithe-owners and tithepayers if they now make public the views and intentions of the Commission, as to the manner in which it will apply its compulsory powers to the commutation of tithes.

During the last six months 1,003 voluntary agreements have been received.

If the process of commutation were wholly compulsory, the Commissioners would not think it prudent or perhaps practicable to press it at a quicker rate than this.

The apportionments have hitherto been completed with more harmony and with much less of irritation and opposition than had been generally reckoned on, but they consumed much more time than it is desirable they should.

The causes of this slowness are the limited number of persons to whom the parties to the agreements are content to trust the processes either of mapping and measuring, or of apportioning, and the great accumulation of work in the hands of that limited number of persons.

The Tithe Commissioners increase the quantity of work to be done in the country, by adding a number of compulsory awards to the voluntary agreements now making, and under which the apportionments are proceeding towards completion; they must either employ the same apportioners and mappers whom the parties themselves are now employing, or they must employ a different and inferior class, and one in which the parties show no disposition to place confidence.

If the Commissioners employed the persons at present employed, they could not materially accelerate the pace at which the apportionments are now completing. If they employed persons in whom the landowners had not confidence, discontent, appeals, and consequent on these, very heavy expenses both to the public and in

dividuals would follow, which must entirely destroy the harmony and contentment which have hitherto marked the progress of commutations. This would constitute an amount of evil which, in the opinion of the Commissioners, would very much more than balance any good which their immediate compulsory interference, on a wide scale, could effect.

The Tithe Commissioners therefore announce, that while the voluntary commutation proceeds at the pace at which it has lately proceeded, it is their intention to interfere compulsorily only in a limited number of cases, which will consist

1st. Of those in which litigation is in progress.

2d. Of those in which tithe has been taken in kind prior to the appearance of this circular.

3d. Of cases in which the Commissioners are requested by both tithe-owners and land-owners to interfere.

4th. Of cases in which an incumbent has been recently appointed, or may be hereafter admitted to a rectory or vicarage, and becomes thereby owner of the greater or small tithes.

The Tithe Commissioners wish it, however, to be understood, that if the progress of voluntary commutation slackens, they may probably think it right to interfere more actively and widely, and that they will interfere at once in any special cases or particular districts of which the peculiar circumstances appear to them to make an early interference desirable.

While making these announcements the Commissioners earnestly advise all parties to commutations to apply themselves deliberately, but resolutely, to the task of making voluntarily their own arrange

ments.

It is true that in few cases the compulsory processes may be completed as cheaply as the voluntary, the award; perhaps, even more cheaply than an agreement; but it is never certain that this will be the case in any one instance. It is highly improbable that it will be the case in the majority of instances.

Where the parties institute no contest, and make no struggle before the Commissioners, a compulsory commutation may be promptly and cheaply settled.

Whenever, either at the commencement of a compulsory commutation, or, what will oftener happen, accidentally and during its progress, any individual, however small his interest, grows suspicious and litigious, and denies facts as to past transactions and averages, or disputes admeasurements and valuations, he may force on a protracted investigation, admeasurements, and fresh maps and revaluations, which must lead to burdensome and indefinite expenses to be borne by the parties, besides causing a wasteful expenditure of public money. It is indeed clear, that an apportionment made by the Commissioners must, in nearly every case, be more expensíve than one conducted by the landowners themselves.

Should these considerations have their due weight with the parties, the Commissioners see no ground for doubting that by very far the larger portion of tithe will be voluntarily and amicably commuted. As yet, out of all the voluntary apportionments confirmed, the parties have been driven to re-valuations only in one.

The Tithe Commissioners wish the persons employed to map and apportion to understand very distinctly that, although under the circumstances enumerated here much forbearance will be exercised towards them, and although the power of taking the apportionment out of their hands will be very cautiously exercised, yet such forbearance will have its limits.

Whenever it is found that there has been trifling or loitering, or a disappointment of the fair expectation of their employers, the Commissioners (however much they may regret the necessity of doing so) will not hesitate to take the apportionment into their own hands. In such cases the time and cost already bestowed upon the work will be lost.

The Tithe Commissioners recommend all tithe-owners to take care that the first instalment of their rent-charge is due, and that tithe should cease to exist, on some quarter-day after the confirmation of the apportionment.

This will prevent the possibility of there being an interval between the signing of the agreement and the confirmation of the apportionment, during which they may find it practically very difficult to collect either tithe or rent-charge.

They also recommended to all land-owners to contract for the completion of the apportionment by some given day after the confirmation of an agreement or completion of an award, and to stipulate that if the apportionment is not then completed nothing shall be paid for it. If they do not do this, they will run the risk of having first to pay partially an apportioner selected by themselves, and secondly the expenses of an apportionment made by the ComW. BLAMIRE, T. W. BULLER, R. JONES.

missioners.

August 27, 1838.

VISITATION OF THE BISHOP OF OXFORD.

THE last charge delivered by the Bishop of Oxford enters so fully into the important subjects of the day, that we cannot forbear calling our readers attention to it.

The Bishop commenced by referring to the alteration introduced into the diocese, by the addition of Berkshire to Oxfordshire, by which the duties of the Oxford diocese were doubled; it was also contemplated when, existing interests ceased, to annex Buckinghamshire, with a population of 150,000 souls. However desirable it might be to create bishoprics, such as Ripon, &c. yet the other