by taxes; the clergy by their own property. A tax is that portion of the property of the subject, which is levied by the state, according to its exigencies. The income of the clergy is no deduction from such property; tithes never were part of any property now in existence; and were the clerical order abolished, they would remain without a legal claimant. Those who call themselves landed proprietors would have no more right to them than a horde of Cossacks. On the other hand, tithes are in the strictest sense the property of the Church. By history, as well as by the genius of the Constitution, all property in Ireland is the gift of the British crown; the first gift was to the Church."-(pp. 29, 30.)

of the tithe property

In another part of his pamphlet, Mr. Phelan Perpetuity proposes the subject to his readers in a somewhat different and not altogether uninstructive and propri light, as follows (p. 37, ib.)—

"Failure of title must arise from one of two causes; the one a legal forfeiture; the other a chasm in the legal line of succession. The former of these operated to the removal of [some of] the Roman clergy; let us see whe ther the latter can be asserted of the Reformed: the case will stand thus:

"The Church of Ireland, on submitting to the Pope, was invested with certain temporalities by Henry II. Again :

The Church of Ireland, on renouncing the Pope, was confirmed in its temporalities by Henry VIII.

"If the investiture were valid, there is no reason for objecting to the reinvestiture. The admission and the renunciation of Papal supremacy were equally essential, or equally unessential things; and if the Church survived the one, we may be allowed to believe that it was

etary from its first rise

Abolition of tithes no benefit to the people.

The Church in what sense in

not annihilated by the other. There was no disruption of continuity at the Reformation, [the adoption of the changes then made by the bishops and clergy as a body, having the effect of preserving the derivative character of the priesthood, and maintaining the requisite unity of organization.] These circumstances, sufficient (as they would be) to prove the continued Catholicity of the Church, are abundantly conclusive for its continued identity, as a legal and constitutional incorporation.”

Further on, at p. 59 of the same tract, Mr. Phelan adds

"There is an extreme competition for land, a competition increasing with the increase of our population. Thus the landlord would be enabled to transfer to himself the benefits of the abolition. At present he makes, or professes to make, an abatement in consideration of tithes were tithes to cease, the abatement would cease with them.* Had J. K. L. considered this, he might have perceived that tithes are virtually a portion of the rent; and the parson a landlord no less than the squire. The only difference between them is, that to all who are willing to receive his ministry, the former stands in a nearer and more sacred relation. To the rest of his people he is, [in so far as they by rejecting his authority and instructions, can effect it,] simply a landlord, and like all others, founds his right upon the laws of his country."

So that in short, notwithstanding the pitiful moaning and whining of those designing huma

The truth of this assertion has since been strikingly verified by the Act which transferred a fourth of the property in question from the clergy of the Church to the pockets of the lay proprietors in Ireland. The Italics are Mr. Phelan's.

"the peo

nity-mongers, who depict our poor natives as debted to having to maintain, besides their own chosen ple" for her ministers of religion, "another Church in mag- support. nificence," that Church "the richest in the world,"--"supported at the charge of the poorest people on the face of the earth," and soforth; it appears that in truth, after all, the people only maintain the Church as they maintain the grocer, baker, cloth-merchant, or alehousekeeper. These latter they support by paying for their tea and sugar, bread and cheese, and other such commodities. The Church is paid for her lands, and gives them in return for the tithe. Her right to the soil, though less extensive, is in all other respects no less founded in justice and equity than that of the lay proprietor; but rather, more to be respected, as depending on a title far more deeply rooted in antiquity than his. And if the rapacious injustice of demagogue influence ever succeed in abolishing that which belongs to God's clergy, either this will be the commencement of more wide-spread anarchy and communism; or other and more exacting claimants will interfere, as on a former occasion, and make plain to "the people" how far they are the better for the Church's loss.

On the amount, and other circumstances, of Statements the property belonging to the Irish Church, a good deal of useful and important information is Primate of

VOL. III.

P

of his Grace the Lord

perty of the

all Ireland contained in the Charge of his Grace the Lord on the pro- Primate of all Ireland, delivered at his annual visitation in 1845. The following is the statement given in that address, relative to the emoluments in possession of the Irish clergy."*

Irish Church.

Tithes not

a tenth, but

a fortieth

part of the

increase

from tillage.

"And first I would refer to the revenues of the Church, which are still spoken of as being 'enormous.' The immense riches,' the lavish endowment' of the Irish Church, occupy a prominent place in every speech and pamphlet on this subject. In the last of these publications that I have seen, the attempt is made to lead the British public to believe that tithe, meaning thereby, as it is specifically asserted, a tenth part of the produce of the land, is still paid to the clergy by the cultivators of the soil. Although even when what was called tithe was formerly paid, it was not a tenth, but a thirtieth part that was received by them. And since that which was denominated tithe has been commuted into a rent-charge. paid by the landlord, it has been diminished by one

See the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal for February, 1846, p. 306. His Grace appears in this passage to refer to the following most extraordinary statement, contained, with much other matter scarcely less mischievous and false, in a Letter on the Irish Church, from the Rev. B. W. Noel, (lately of the Church of England, but now a Dissenter,) to the Lord Bishop (Daly) of Cashel :-" The Catholic population," (he means the Romanists of Ireland,)... "have been compelled, down to this very moment, to pay tithes, that is to make over a tenth part of their farms and potato gardens to the established clergy, who at the same time, possess all the estates and glebe lands that formerly belonged to the Catholic clergy." See the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal for August, 1845, (No. 62, p. 212,) where the reviewer of the subject adds among other corrections, "that if in the last clause of the sentence nobility and gentry' be substituted for 'established clergy,' the statement it contains will somewhat approach the truth, to which at present it bears no sort or kind of resemblance.”

the Irish

fourth; and it is, in reality, but a fortieth that is paid to the clergy of the Established Church. In other words, they receive a fourth part of the tithe. (a) And, were Average the income derived from this source, and from minister's incomes of money, to be divided equally among the beneficed clergy, clergy. it would yield them (after paying the salaries of their assistant curates) about £230 a year each. Were it equally shared amongst all the clergy, incumbents and curates, it would not give to each of them an income of £170. If the value of the glebe lands be also taken into account, the whole property of the parochial clergy, were it divided in equal shares amongst them all, would not produce for each of them £200 a year."

To this extract the following note is appended in the original :

above ex

(a) "The evidence given before the Select Committee Note, on the of the House of Commons, on tithes in Ireland, in the meaning of year 1832, by Mr. Griffith, the Commissioner of Valua- Tithes, as tion in Ireland, fully established the fact, that the pro- plained. portion which the tithe composition bore to the gross value of the whole produce or increase of the land was less than a sixtieth part; the present tithe rent-charge is, therefore, less than the eightieth. As it was the custom, however, to exempt some kind of produce from the payment of tithes, I have in view those only which were usually tithed, when I state, that the proportion paid was a thirtieth and not a tenth, and that the rentcharge is but a fortieth." (p. 19, note.)

Of the incomes of the bishops, his Grace remarks, in the same document, as follows:

"The rumours put into circulation as to the revenues of