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Untitled Article
per enn . a day . £ . s , d . s . & . of St . Peter ' s 69 4 7 | or 3 9 f Another ditto 46 3 1 or 2 6 § of St . Mary ' s , Shandon 46 3 1 or 2 6 | of St . Nicholas ...... 60 0 0 or 3 3 |
Some of these curates have already officiated nearly twenty years . One curate not long since resigned from old age , having served the best part of his life at a salary of £ 50 per ann * Irish currency , or £ 46 . 3 * . icL British . Another died after having been for forty years curate of St . Peter ' s parish * at an annual salary of not more than j £ 69 . 4 s * 7 ^ d . leaving a family in the most abject poverty . The Rev . A . E . is curate of the lucrative parish of Skull , sixteen miles in length , which contains so many Protestants that on
some days there are two hundred communicants ; the rector is Archdeacon of Connor , the most distant part of Ireland , and has not for many years visited the parish , and the only provision for the curate is the glebe house and land . The Rev . W . B . enjoys as rector of Inniscarra £ 1150 a year , he resides principally in England , his curate has scarcely the means of subsistence . In this living there has been a most lamentable lapse to Popery
within the last twenty years , and but for the exertions of the curate , there would hardly be a poor Protestant attending a church to which was formerly attached a large congregation . The Earl of Mountcashel states that he knows one who has served as a curate upwards of thirty-five years in a parish worth £ 1100 per annum , and who has a wife and seven children to support on a salary of £ 69 . 4 s . 7 Jd , about fivepence to each per day . To these , " innumerable other instances" of the wretchedness of the curates
might be added . And whilst they are all but starving , others are with " flinty hearts" ** wallowing in luxury and indolence on the wealth allotted by the nation for the propagation and support of the national religion , " and " regard their laborious assistants as little better than journeymen , apprentices , or menials , " nay , give them less wages than many handicraftsmen receive . We have spoken of the rectors , let us turn to the bishops . Studied secrecy and false returns to Parliament , with other things , make it difficult 6
to ascertain the real value of Church property * " Mr . Leslie Foster estimated the income of the Irish bishops at £ 4600 per annum . They are twenty-two in number . Thus above one hundred thousand pounds are enjoyed b y twenty-two persons . How far this estimate is below their actual receipts , it is not easy to say . The Bishop of Ferns himself rates the income of his brother of Derry at £ 15 , 000 per annum . These extravagant sums he tries to justify , by contending that without them the Church would
be devoid of learned men , as if the Unitarian body , whose ministers are the worst paid of all others , had not produced a Lardner , a Priestley , a Wakefield , a Cappe , a Wellbeloved , a Kenrick ; and as if Dissenting ministers generally did not even in regard to education rank upon a level with the clergy of the Establishment taken as a body . The Bishop of Ferns speaks frankly , when he tells Lord Mountcashel " the incomes allotted to the clergy are designed to induce men to enter into the Church , with the hope that it
will afford them a maintenance , and eventually a competence , or even affluence . " In noticing this perilous admission , Lord Mountcashel says , " No wonder prudent parents who love their little boys should Ax a longing eye ° n the snug things in the Church . Oh ! what would they do , or rather what they would not do , to obtain a good living for a younger son / And should he be unfit for other professions , how much more desirable must
Untitled Article
* Frith Church Establishment . 695
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1830, page 695, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2589/page/39/
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