believed that circumstances of the kind had occurred) to run his life against the tenant, and to deprive him of property which his family had possessed years before. For this, as the law now stood, there was no remedy. The tenant was also placed in such a situation, that if the land were much improved by his industry and by the outlay of his capital, he was liable, on the renewal of his lease, to an increase of fine. In order to remedy this defect, it was proposed that every tenant who chose, should be enabled to demand from the bishop a lease of his land in perpetuity, at a fixed corn-rent. (Hear, hear.) Now, looking to these terms, the value of such a lease, at a fixed corn-rent, would be 20 years' purchase instead of 12, being an increased benefit of 7} years' purchase. But it was proposed that the bishop should grant leases in perpetuity at a corn-rent, on a tender of six years' purchase being made to him. That would confer a very great benefit on those who held bishops' leases, because it would give them the full advantage of any improvement which they might effect in the value of the land, and it would also provide against any hazard that might be apprehended from the bishop running his life against the tenant. The bishop would receive the same amount of rent as he did at the present time, but he would no longer have the power of running his life against the tenant. At present this could not be avoided. The alteration could only be effected by an act of Parliament. If, therefore, as he had already observed, an increased value would be created by the contemplated act of Parliament, then he had a right to assume that that increased value could not be claimed by the church. He therefore felt that even those individuals who objected to the interference with church property, or the appropriation of it to any other than church purposes, might, without any scruple, agree with him in this proposition, that whatever additional proceeds were realized by the new system might be applied to such purposes as Parliament might think fit. They might give a tolerably accurate guess as to what was the value of the whole of these lands. He believed that 500,000l. a-year was the value to the tenants of all the bishops' lands; but the value to the bishops was only 100,000l. per annum. The amount of the proceeds arising from the grant of leases at six years' purchase would be from 2,500,000l. to 3,000,000l. This might be converted to the certain benefit of the state, at the same time that the system would be a great relief to the church tenant, and would not operate to the disadvantage of the bishop. (Hear, hear.) His right hon. friend had reminded him that the frequency of the bishops running their lives against the tenants' leases, was only known in some few sees. It was, however, a practice which ought not to be suffered to exist in any see. He had now stated the whole of the plan which it was his duty to submit to the house."

I. The principle on which Lord Althorp grounds the right of the state to this despotic invasion of church property is thus stated by himself:

"Even those who declared that it was unjust and improper to interfere with the revenues of the church would agree with him that if, by the Act of Parliament which would be introduced on this subject, any new value was given to benefices, that new value so created did not properly belong to the church, and whatever was raised by it might be immediately appropriated to the exigencies of the state."

This is his grand position, and on this his supposed "right" is based. It is very easy to say "those who declare" &c." will agree" with him. However, I not only do not "agree with him," but would undertake to demonstrate, that even were his postulate proved,

the doctrine from it is most iniquitous, and capable of the most tyrannical application imaginable. To furnish a plea for despotism and state rapacity, to plunder half the estates in the kingdom, nothing more would be requisite than to frustrate the intentions of the donors or testators, and compel the life tenant to sell the fee to the occupier. This, according to Lord Althorp's doctrine, would be creating a "new value," and the difference between the value of the fee, and occupying tenant's interest, the legislature might seize for its own purposes. On this dangerous doctrine I shall not now dwell, as I intend to demolish, without ceremony, the hypothesis of the "new value." Every body understands what usually becomes of the superstructure when the foundation is demolished.

"A new value!”—and pray, reader, what is this “ new value?" Lord Althorp will not even call it a dormant value, because that would be admitting that if the state only called it into action, it must belong to the church. No! it must be "new"-it must be "created" by Lord Althorp. But suppose it turns out to be neither new, nor even dormant, what then becomes of his argument? Will it be believed that he attempts to prove it to be a "new value" by shewing that the tenants now hold their lands at about one sixth of their real value for terms of twenty-one years, which the bishop may or may not renew as he pleases,-that any bishop, when he thinks his own interests, or that of his church, require it, can resume the other five-sixths, without the assistance of the legislature, by running his life against the lease, nay, that he expressly tells us, "this cannot be avoided as the law now stands,”—that the proposed assistance of the legislature is to take away this value of the additional five-sixths from the landlord (the bishop or the church) and transfer the fee of it to the tenant at half the price which a tenant's term of twenty-one years is worth? And this he calls "creating a new value."

"He therefore felt that even those individuals who objected to the interference with church property or the appropriation of it to any other than church purposes, might, without any scruple, agree with him in this proposition, that whatever additional proceeds were realized by the new system might be applied to such purposes as Parliament might think fit."

And the British House of Commons, once the Asylum from wrong and oppression, the focus of intelligence, honour, justice, and religion, that House receives with acclamations such reasoning as this! "You have by law a right (though you are so

Lord Althorp takes care to distinguish himself from those who have "scruples” against Church robbery. He will find others who have no scruples about other property, and who will hereafter outstrip him in his present race, and run farther than he wishes.

liberal that you seldom exercise it) of increasing the rent of your property six fold; we shall sell this right to your tenants for infinitely less than a third* its value. This I call ' creating a new value,' and shall pocket the proceeds."

But the Bishop, says Lord A., has his present rent, and loses nothing by the measure. Indeed! is the power of increasing it sixfold, or of having a tenantry holding at the indulgent rent of one-sixth, is that nothing? But the question is not what the Bishop loses, but what the Church loses, both in wealth and influence, and whether a direct robbery is perpetrated when fivesixths of her property are forcibly sold at less than a third of the value, and all her means laid at the feet of that unscrupulous and insatiable harpy-state necessity.

To complete this scheme, Lord A. (while bearing off the Government share of the spoil, three millions) proposes to tax the ruined clergy of Ireland from five to fifteen per cent., (not saying a word, that I see, about taxing the lay tithe impropriator who does nothing for the tithe ;) and he also stipulates that churches are to be abolished where duty has not been done for a given period,+ and none to be built where the pews are not previously rented; when every body knows that in an Irish population of a thousand, there would not be found half-a-dozen able or willing to rent pews. Is all this done in sheer ignorance, or is it intended as an ingenious gratification of rancour against the church by heaping mockery upon wrong?

II. Let us next turn to the supposed grievances to be remedied, or supposed advantages to be gained, which might be alleged, if not to justify, at least in some degree to atone, for this invasion of the church property.

I may observe, at the outset, that here it is no affair of tithesthere is no peculiar pretence that an undue profit may be taken upon the outlay of capital. It is simply a business of land letting an affair between landlord and tenant-just such as might arise between Lord Althorp, or anybody else, and his tenants, only the landlord happens to be a bishop.

Of course, some wonderfully hard and anomalous case will be made out to justify the Government of a free country (I say nothing of religion) in such a despotic exercise of power as compelling a landlord to sell the fee to the tenant at about a third of its value. Let us see what the case is.

First of all, the tenants excite most largely Lord A.'s sympathy. What a hard and cruel case their's is! Poor men! they are

Be it remembered Lord Althorp values the tenants' term (21 years) at 12 years' purchase, and sells the fee for six years' purchase.

Are the tithes of these to be absorbed by the landowner or by the state, and the tax of 5 to 15 per cent. to be unmitigated?

tenants of the church; and the church has the cruelty to exact one whole sixth-only think, one whole sixth, of the rent at which the land might be let. They have only a lease of twenty-one years, which is usually renewed yearly; or, if not renewed, the tenant would hold the land for his term at a nominal rent, or no rent at all.* Poor men! they ought not to hold it on these hard terms for only twenty-one years; but to have it for ever at half the price at which even this term of twenty-one years is valued. May we conclude that in Lord A.'s own property, he would not be guilty of the cruelty of taking a whole sixth of the value,-or, if he does, that he will offer the perpetuity at six years' purchase!

But what possible ground can there be for taking the fee from the church to give it to the tenant, who, on Lord A.'s own shewing, does not pay above one-sixth of the value? Does not Lord A. well know, that the fines on church leases are always moderate, and that the man who has it for twenty-one years, has a large profit? What injustice would be done to him then, if the bishop should run his life against the lease, which Lord A. however admits to be a rare occurrence? What claim has the tenant for the perpetuity?

Lord A. talks about "the advantage" it would give the tenants" of any improvement which they might effect in the value of land." Does he not see that these tenants, if not already so, would become landlords! Can he not see that land bought at a third of its value, would be leased again at a rack rent instead of a sixth, and perhaps for seven years, or to yearly tenants instead of twenty-one years? What advantage would these new tenants secure from improvement of the land by the outlay of capital superior to that which, as tenants of the church at a low rent, and with a term of twenty-one years, they could have derived? Does Lord Althorp give his tenants better terms than these to enable them to derive the "full advantage of any improvement, &c."? No. He cannot. There is no grievance of the tenant, no benefit to the interests of agriculture, which call for this experiment. It is transferring the fee of the church lands to the tenantry, and simply bribing them, with a share of the spoil, to become accomplices in the robbery. The church is entitled to the other five-sixths; if she is compelled to part with that right at less than a third of its real value, the least that is due to her is the appropriation of the proceeds to her benefit; and not to be plundered of that, and at the same time loaded with a new tax on other benefices already impoverished by illegal combinations, and by a commutation in which a heavy per

Rather at a very small rent. For in Ireland the reserved rent is somewhat more than the nominal sum common in English church leases held on lives.-ED.

centage is taken from the value as a bonus to the purchaser. But the injustice and oppression will be more crying if these proceeds shall be applied to the benefit of those who have laboured and CONSPIRED for her destruction. I have heard rumours of such an application. Is she, like Ralpho's "bedrid weaver," to be offered up instead of the agitators to the fierce "Tottipottymoy" of popery and avarice, with all the offensive cant of a pretence of strict and tender regard for justice?

"Yet to do

The Indian Hoghan Moghan too
Impartial justice, in his stead did

Hang an old weaver, that was bedrid."-HUDibras.

Lord A., however, will find that the Irish "Hoghan Moghan" will not be appeased with one victim, he will want the "cobbler" too. Rent and property* will come next-popish tenants will be glad to get rid of absentee and Protestant landlords. A regular account is kept of the confiscated estates; the genealogies of the original families are sacredly traced and preserved. Let Lord A. beware of the precedent. Of that I shall speak

under the next head.

III. Having disposed of Lord A.'s postulate, and his arguments, which might, with less insult, have been at once supplied by "sic volo, sic jubeo," I shall briefly state my own views of the transaction regarded as a precedent, and in connexion with the Coronation oath.

In this light I cannot but consider it as most dangerous; first, to the English church and to all property; and, secondly, to the security of society, and to the religious principles of the people.

That, as a principle, it is applicable to one species of property as well as another, I have already observed; and to argue that it may not be used as a precedent for plundering the English church, when, by the Act of union, the Irish and English church are expressly declared to be the united churches, is an insult to common sense. Mr. O'Connell does not scruple to claim it already. Petitions already have been presented by Lords King and Teynham-not having even the decency to wait till the legis

Have any rumours reached Lord A. of a speech made to the populace, by a certain notorious agitator, at the last Spring Assizes at Tralee, from the very window next to the Judge's lodgings, in which the people were distinctly told, that the Tithes being now fairly finished, as soon as the Repeal was carried, they should come to a question of far more consequence to them than either of the former ones, viz., what title the gentlemen round them had to their estates? This speech will receive full illustration from a very interesting anecdote in Bishop Jebb's delightful Memoir of Phelan. Phelan was originally a Roman Catholic, and mentioned that a priest who was attending the funeral of one of his (Phelan's) relations, led him (then a boy) to the window, pointed out to him a tract of country, and told him never to forget that, though now in the possession of Protestants, it belonged to his family.-ED.