CHAPTER XV.

Lord Palmerston and the Irish Church-Paying, indirectly, the Irish Church money to the Pope caused by Protestant bishops.-Kings and bishops keeping back Church reform for their aggrandizement— The priestcraft of keeping vicars poor-The people's agitation for Church reform resulting at last in forming Queen Anne's Bounty Fund for poor vicars-The slowness of this relief in the hands of the English.

L

ORD Palmerston, who was both a good Conservative and a right Liberal, offered to save the Irish Church from the Pope, if the bishops would but make two or three reforms or alterations. But as they wanted still more power, money, and homage, they would alter nothing. So they lost all, and the Pope has all the power and honour now. He gets also much of the church money, in the name of education, employment, and alms, for his Irish religious, but starving subjects. He gets the money for himself, too, for these send him a part of what they get. Let the fate of the Irish Church convince us that, unless we reform speedily some abuses, our enemy will murder our English Church without a warning. The treatment of the Irish Church was too severe, for three guineas a week should have been left to every church for three services, and the people could supply any more money that was desired, and the bishops should have been allowed £300 a year and travelling expenses. The fate of the English Church will be still worse. Now

The King's pretended help for poor Vicars. 103

that the churchyards are gone, and not saved by our very bishops, but given up by them, we are terribly close upon another Church destruction. Unless the Church be speedily reformed one or two, or at the most three General Elections to Parliament will destroy her utterly, never to be rallied.

Whenever the country clamoured for Church Reform, or for providing the wants of poor vicars, some movement was made which resulted in delaying, and, therefore, in baffling the effort. I take the following account from Sir Robert Phillimore's Ecclesiastical Law, vol. 1, page 291.

"Soon after the Restoration, a bill was brought into the House of Commons, for erecting and augmenting of vicarages, and had a first reading, but proceeded no further; having as is supposed, been superseded and laid aside (at least for that time), in consideration that the ends proposed in it would be in some degree answered by his majesty's letter to the several bishops respectively, the substance of which was as follows "

"Our will is, that forthwith provision be made for the augmentation of all such vicarages and cures, where the tithes and profits are appropriated to you and your successors, in such a manner that they who immediately attend upon the performance of ministerial offices in every parish, may have a competent portion out of every rectory impropriate to your See. And to this end our farther will is, that no lease be granted of any rectories or parsonages belonging to your See, until you shall provide that the respective vicarages, or curates' places where there are no vicarages endowed, have so much revenue in glebe, tithes, or other emoluments, as commonly will amount to £100 or £80 a

104 Kings and Bishops baffling people's efforts.

year, or more if it will bear it; and in good form of law settle it upon them and their successors. And where the rectories are of small value, and cannot admit of such proportions to the vicar and curate; our will is, that one-half of the profit of such a rectory be reserved for the maintainence of the vicar or curate, as is agreeable to the said proportions. And our farther will is, that you do employ your authority and power, which by law belongeth to you as ordinary for the augmentation of vicarages and stipends of curates; and that you do with due diligence proceed in due form of law for the raising and establishing convenient maintainence of those who do attend to holy duties in parish churches."

The result of the effort made by the people to pass a law for feeding vicars was, that the king and bishops made out that they themselves are the men for doctoring such creatures, as if the people must not become so royal and ecclesiastical as to judge the cause of the fatherless and widow, and to feed the wretched, or to comfort them. The vicars, however, have been kept in the same miserable state as before.

It is impossible to see through the craft of those who are over poor vicars. As they are my clients, now that I am defending their cause, I must say that every trick is tried by some people to keep them poor. Either vicars will be opposed, attacked, if not even slandered, by some unknown enemy of the Church, whenever they seek an increase of stipend, or when their cause is espoused; or else a scheme of relief will be spoken of for them, which is not to be really carried out to good effect. Even the advocates of the cause of poor vicars and curates are not as earnest as they should be. I have seen much of popish priestcraft,

Priestcraft and animal wants at war.

105

and of the cunning logic of ecclesiastics, and I have studied human nature in the scriptures. The result is, that neither faith, hope, nor charity, in me; nor honour, social position, nor anything else, in others, satisfied me, but the actual money, or a sufficient stipend. So I went to my good patron and others, and they have provided my church with £200 a year for ever. It is hard to defeat the logic that requires the vicar's five senses to be satisfied, and his stomach to be actually filled. Nothing else is proof against craft, or the way in which poor vicars are treated.

In response to my appeal for a shilling to endow my church, I received a subscription with the following words:" From a vicar who has held his parish vicarage for 27 years: population 1,150; gross income £82." O! English, and Anti-Irish Reader, what do you say to the kingcraft or priestcraft that has arranged and allowed the continuance of this state of things?

A student from the College of Maynooth visited his parents, who were so poor that they could not afford him an egg for his breakfast. But he was honest enough to seize one of the two which his father and mother had for themselves. "Father," cried he, "holy mother Church, at Maynooth, fits me for the priesthood, and transmits to us the power of working miracles. Let you have faith, father, and a third egg will come to you out of these two; for your egg, father, is one, and mother's egg is one; I mentioned two eggs, and I spoke of a third egg: therefore, father, by Holy Mother Church's logic and priestly miraculous power, there are three eggs, and you, in faith, will have that church egg while

106

Using religion for robbing the simple.

mother and I are trying the goodness of these two." "My son," exclaimed the father, "you are a catholic genius every inch of you, and to help your goodness and honesty (seizing the egg from his son), you can have the miraculous egg you have made, and your old mother and I will have these two unsanctified ones." So the father, having seized the hen's egg from the son, he fled to Maynooth for the priestly logical one. But at that time Prostestant England endowed Maynooth with eggs, so he was saved the loss of his father's one. An empty stomach has little faith in the unseen, and priestcraft has very little honesty. Under the prétext of Church dignity, poor vicars are deprived of their maintenance, and their money is given in excess to bishops, Church dignitaries, and the well endowed rectors, without leaving them food enough.

The unconquerable power of clever craft consists in its having some truth and goodness mixed up with its selfish deeply laid schemes, to make its business acceptable, and to prevent people from seeing through its nature. Craft is like poison concealed in bread. The hungry man accepts the loaf, but he eats it to die, for the goodness of the bread cannot kill the poison. Every body resorts to craft who does not treat his neighbour fairly.

Surely Parliament could put a tax on rich livings, or on laymen's tithes, to support vicars. Surely bishops and rich rectors can beg money enough for poor vicars, as well as for new bishops and the various Church Societies, which prop up the bishops. My case is simply that vicars are poor, and that souls are destitute in consequence of this fact; that they are