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that be where little exertion is required , and little labour performed ! But your Lordship with great simplicity asks , if such inducements did not exist , where should we find persons duly qualified ? ' My Lord , I answer among the pious and good . " And , we ask , could the Church be worse supplied than it is , and the people be more neglected than they are , if his Lordship and the rest of the bishops were as poor as their hard-working and much-despised curates ? There is not much reason to wonder that the
Bishop of Ferns has undertaken the defence of the abuses in the Irish Church
since , though better than some of his brethren , his hands also are soiled with corruption . His own son has benefited by the union of parishes , and though it has never been customary in Ireland to pay tithe on such produce , the Bishop has recently demanded tithe on tobacco and mangel wurzel . " It is demands such as these that render our clergy unpopular , and alienate the affections of the people . " With all these abuses in existence , however , the Bishop declares that the Irish Church was never so pure as at present . What an augsean stable must it have been , nay is ! Those who have in this matter acted with Lord Mountcashel declare that the Church is in great
peril , partly from the hands of the Catholics being untied , and partly from the inquisitive spirit of the day . Unless the abuses which * ' gnaw her vitals' * be speedily removed , they see not how the church can avoid entire destruction , and most of the sympathy with Protestantism now found in Ireland is owing , they declare , not ~ to the Church , but the Dissenters , especially the Presbyterians .
The Earl of Mountcashel followed up in the House of Lords what he had begun at Cork . As the basis of a motion , " that an humble address be presented to his Majesty , praying that he might be graciously pleased to appoint commissioners to inquire and state whether any and what abuses exist in the Church Establishment of England and Ireland , and if any , to report such measures as may be most expedient for the remedy thereof , "
his Lordship presented a petition signed by nearly three thousand persons members of the Established Church , among the signatures of whom were those of upwards of sixty magistrates of the county . In the course of his speech on the subject , the Noble Lord stated several facts , the substance of the chief of which we subjoin .
" The wisdom of our ancestors" is finely exemplified in the ecclesiastical law , which enjoins that " no ecclesiastical person shall wear a print or wrought cotton night-cap , or shall wear a cap of blue or black silk velvet /' With all the wealth possessed by the Irish Church , there is , it appears ,
accommodation in the churches of Ireland for only 173 , 250 persons , while there are 1 , 270 , 000 persons belonging to the Church of Ireland . To ascertain with accuracy the amount of that wealth is , in the present state of things , impossible . False reports relatively to it are made to Parliament . Parishes are described as worth £ 40 or £ 50 a year which produce quadruple that amount . The amount of acres belonging to the Church is misstated : in
one case the report is 15 , 000 below the fact . The tithe-compositiort bill has been of service to Ireland . England needs something of the sort . To prove this , his Lordship , among other things , affirms , " Jn one of the documents I have received , I find an account of a clergyman who distrained a Bible . ' " Whilst such scenes occur , parishioners cannot be expected to listen with complacency to the sermons of those who are parties to them . " The following story is amusing : ' ¦ ' Upon the way they fell in with a goose followed by a train of goslings , the clergyman began counting them , m ^
Untitled Article
696 Irish Church Establishment
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1830, page 696, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2589/page/40/
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