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Untitled Article
dition of the country , and of its further progress , toput down the jeers of this affected and puppyish practicality . Tlie ability with which the task was executed would be a test of
statesmanship . Nor will it be possible to lead a great and free nation blindfold through all sorts of petty expediencies and unprincipled compromises as heretofore . Those who govern must learn to govern by means of the public intelligence . The sooner they begin to appeal to it more distinctly the better . They will be all the stronger for all good purposes .
We shall soon hear of the Church of Ireland ; and either the old battle will have to be fought over again , or a makeshift will be tried with the scheme lately propounded to the clergy by the Archbishop of Dublin . There is some cunning in this contrivance for backing out of a difficulty . It is proposed that government should buy up the tithes , and pay itself by a
landtax , taking care so to overpay itself as to leave a surplus ( the Archbishop says from 200 , 000 / . to 300 , 000 / ., per annum ) which can be applied to education or other national purposes . The purchase-money is to be vested in some unobjectional species of property , and intrusted to a Board of Commissioners , who , under the sanction of the Bishops , are to have the power of making a better distribution , as opportunity shall be afforded ,
by the falling-in of " vested interests . " So there will be the surplus to satisfy the reformers ; the church fortified against all intermeddling from without , or diminution of its funds , to satisfy the Tories ; their incomes kept up and realized to satisfy the clergy ; and the cessation of tithe-collection to satisfy the people . Truly , it is a well-intended and most ingenious concoction . But will the reformers be satisfied to leave the
correction of that incorrigible ecclesiastical corporation in its own hands ? Will the Tories be satisfied that this rich storehouse of patronage should be touched at all ? Will the clergy be satisfied not to get surplus as well as salary ? And will the people of Ireland be satisfied still to pay for a church they hate ,
because they only do so by one mode of taxation rather than by another mode of taxation ? Even if they be , the satisfaction of different parties , or of all parties , is not the sole object of legislation . There is a much higher , and a paramount object , to be accomplished . The principle on which the Irish Church , and when the time arrives , the English Church also , should be
treated is , the sacredness of its funds to the purposes of the mental and moral culture of the entire population . The people ' s right is , not to a little peddling surplus , but to the whole : to the whole , for the purposes just mentioned ; for any other purposes , to none . The true question concerns , not merely the fifty , ei g hty , or two hundred thousand pounds , but the eight hundred thousand pounds ( and probably much more ) in which , every shilling of it , the people of Ireland have a beneficiary
Untitled Article
66 Principles of Legislation for the ensuing Session .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1836, page 66, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2654/page/2/
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