of Clarence ought to be satisfied with what the country had already done for him. The hon. member concluded by moving, as an amendment, "That the bill be read a second time this day six months." con Mr. E. Davenport seconded the motion. When the distress which prevailed in the manufacturing towns was sidered, ministers came, he thought, with a very bad grace to propose a grant of this nature. There was one contingency not provided for by the bill. Suppose his majesty should contract another matrimonial alliance [a laugh]. What then was to become of this 9,000l. a year. Such an occurrence was not at all improbable; though it might form a very good joke to the gentlemen on the other side, though, as he thought, not a very decorous one. The duke's salary had already been increased several times upon the ground of the high price of provisions. Mr. Wells said, he could not conscientiously approve of any addition to the salary of the duke of Clarence. rupt? It was a mean and scandalous waste of the public money. If he could lay on the table of the House accounts of the distress occasioned by taxation, he could prove that, for the 9,000l. proposed, fifteen thousand persons had been turned out of their homes. The House divided: For the Second Reading 128: For the Amendment 39. HOUSE OF LORDS. Monday, March 5. CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION IRISH VESTRIES.] Lord King said, he had a petition intrusted to him by the Catholics of Ireland; and, as it related to the state in which they were placed with respect to the church of Ireland, he had been unwilling to present it before he saw an Irish prelate in the House. The petition complained of the exactions which were practised on the property of the Catholics at the will and pleasure of Protestants, for Protestant purposes, and with very little check given to them by those who had the power to control such proceedings. The petition stated the grievances the Ca Mr. Alderman Waithman said, he would not object to a liberal allowance to every branch of the royal family. Notwith-tholic suffered from being obliged to pay standing the distress felt throughout the country, he would not now oppose a grant for that purpose; but he looked upon the present proposition as one of the most illtimed measures that was ever submitted to parliament. The very day it was introduced, the House had heard from the right hon. gentleman a most gloomy description of the condition of the people. In his magisterial capacity, upwards of eighty persons had been summoned before him for non-payment of church and poor rates, which could not be enforced against more than ten. He was astonished that the right hon. gentleman should have courage to make the proposition on the very evening when a committee of emigration was moved for, to provide means for sending the industrious but distressed people out of the country. sums of money, levied by vestries, where Protestants voted away the money, nineteen-twentieths of which were paid by Catholics; Catholics being excluded by law from voting at vestries on a great many occasions. The petition stated, that the church of Ireland was the richest primeval Christian church in the world; the people the poorest and most wretched in any country. The number that professed the faith of the Established Church was comparatively the smallest in any country in the world which was burthened with an established church. The petition went on to state the injustice of persons being allowed to tax others, while the classes who paid the money had no control whatsoever over them. He was aware of an act being passed professing to be for the relief of the Roman Catholics, as assessed by Protestant vestries. That act, however, so far from being a relief, was an aggravation of the evil. Whether this was true or not he could not say; but that was the opinion of those who stated that they were aggrieved. Certainly, Catholics were, in a Mr. Hume wished to ask the right hon. great many cases, excluded from being pregentleman how, as an honest man, he sent at vestries. It was true that they had could propose such a vote, when he must a right of appeal; but, coupled with a conknow that as a financier, he was bank-dition which few Catholics, he was afraid, Mr. Monck described the various sources of the duke's income, and contended that his royal highness had already a sufficiency to support his dignity. The additional allowance was most unseemly in the present state of public distress. In were enabled to comply with; namely, I paid for by the Catholics. He would now sureties of 1007. each, to answer any costs go to another cathedral, that of Lismore. that might be given against the appellant. In 1812, 951. was paid for repairing the In order that their lordships might see cathedral gates; in 1813, 1007.; in 1814, that the petitioners did not complain with- 1221. 8s. 1d.; in 1815, 51.; in 1816, out reason, he would read to them some 1007.; and in the year 1817, 201. What of the exactions practised on the Catholics, did their lordships think the expense of which would appear quite incredible, had repairing these gates amounted to?-to a they not been sanctioned by the authority sum of no less than 4887. Michael Angelo of a parliamentary return. He thought had said that the gates of a celebrated their lordships would be astonished at some church in Florence were so beautiful that of the items. In the parish of St. Thomas, they were fit to be the gates of Paradise. Dublin, at a vestry composed of Protest- He did not know whether the gates of Lisants, voting away money that was paid by more cathedral were equal to those famous the Catholics, the following were charges, gates in Florence, but he thought it was year after year, that were exacted from the the highest price ever paid for gates in the Catholics: for wine to the sacrament, world. These expenses were paid for by 281., for a sextoness 301. for a sexton 301., the parish, nineteen-twentieths of which for a beadle 201. There was, besides, an were composed of Catholics. He would extraordinary compensation made to the now take another diocese, that of Cork. rev. Mr. Field, and the rev. Mr. Copland, Here the items were as follows:-Paid to for attending early service, of 501. each. the parish clerk, 201.; for singing anthems, Two women were also paid for attending 347. 2s.; for instructing the boys, 221.; early service; so that it would appear that for the sacramental wine, 221.; and to the vestry was first of all forced to pay the parish clerk for evening attendance, 347.; preachers for their attendance, and after- as if he had not enough already; for washwards to buy a congregation to hear them. ing the church linen, 91. 2s.; for candles The two women had a yearly stipend allowed for the church, 301. All this sounded them for attending as well as the clergy- most extraordinary to English ears. man; and thus their lordships might go on the diocese of Elfin there was paid for reyear after year, for as sure as the same pairs done by order of the bishop, 2207. sum was charged for the clergyman attend- Cash paid to the bishop for outlay by him ing, so sure were the two old women paid two sums of 501., and one of 337. for their attendance. And it was the these charges it appeared to him, that the same with the sacramental wine. Every vestries imitated a certain assembly, which year 281. was charged for that article; never made the expenses it had to vote as it would seem, therefore, that there was small but as great as possible. The vesno falling off in the number of the com- tries were to be sure but a very humble municants. He would now take another imitation. A person once went into that parish. In that parish he found that 150l. assembly, and he thought it a very strange was charged for compensation for early place, in which very strange things were service: there was paid to the organist done. One man handed up a paper, and 701.; to Margaret Ryan, gallery keeper, mumbled a few unintelligible words over 201.; to assistant gallery-keeper 207.; to it, which he afterwards found to be a vote the vestry-keeper 207.; to the organ- of some millions. So a Protestant carpenblower, 201.; for sacraniental wine, ter hands up to a Protestant mason an es201. In another parish, 597. 11s. 8d. was timate of necessary repairs, and they get charged for the sacramental wine. He a very good job between them, and it turns thought such a charge quite enormous. out that there is a very large sum to be In Dublin, the diocese was charged with paid. One reason that was given why so the expense of repairing the cathedral. few Catholics attended the vestries was, In England, it was both the law and the the general satisfaction their proceedings practice to pay for the repairs of the ca- had given. How far that was the case, thedral out of the property of the cathedral. would appear from the opinion of those But in Ireland the cathedrals were thrown who were interested in the matter; who upon the parish. In the diocese of Wa- stated, that a small proportion of the parish, terford, in the union of Trinity, there was an interested minority, was enabled to this item for repairing the roof of the tax, to a great amount, the majority who cathedral, 2207., levied by the yestry, and were composed of Catholics. It was most From unconstitutional to take money from a man | siderable had been referred to. He meant without his own consent. It was nothing the sacramental elements. But the noble less than downright robbery. That, how-lord must be aware, that when there was ever, was but a part of the mischief. If a man appealed to the sessions, he must do two things. He must employ a good practical lawyer, and he must find two sureties bound in 1001. each to answer for the costs. The noble lord moved, that the petition be read. The Bishop of Chester observed, that many of the things complained of by the petitioners, if they were objectionable, might equally be made a subject of complaint in England. He certainly did not feel himself called upon to defend the particular acts referred to, or to support Protestants in making exactions on Roman Catholics. It must be allowed, that it appeared hard in principle, that so large a majority of persons as that described in the petition, should possess no countervailing power to protect their interests. If they had no such protection already, he had no hesitation in saying that some alteration was necessary. With regard to vestry jobs, he confessed that, from his own experience in England, he must say that they were more frequent than, for the interest of the church, they ought to be. He had taken the pains to look through the ponderous volume to which the noble lord had referred, and he must express his opinion, that, considering the vast number of returns, the instances of abuse appeared to be extremely few. There were one or two points in the noble lord's speech which he should take the liberty of adverting to. As to the remark made on the sum of 50l. a-year being charged for each of two clergymen for performing morning service, he wished the noble lord to recollect that no clergyman was bound by law to perform divine service more than twice a day. When, however, a parish was large, it was usual to engage a clergyman for morning service, which was performed at six o'clock, and surely the noble lord would not consider 507, a-year too much for that duty. In such cases the churchwardens proposed a stipend to be given for the morning service; and that stipend was generally a small one. The same course was followed in many English churches, as in St. James's and other parishes in the metropolis. To this item of expense he understood the Catholics did not object. Another item of expense which was very con any surplus of those elements, it was directed by the rubric to be given to the poor. Now, as there was no poor-laws in Ireland, it was probable that, on that account, the charge for wine was greater than it otherwise would be, because the almoner of the church would thereby be enabled to relieve proper objects. With regard to the two old women who were stated to be paid for attending morning service, it must be observed, that there were in every place of worship persons who opened the pews, lighted the candles, and did other necessary offices. They were the servants of the church, and were paid for their services. This, he had no doubt, would be found to be the case, on examining the charge for those two women. As to the salary of the organists, he doubted if that was, or ever had been, objected to, by the Roman Catholics. He knew that in a parish in Dublin, in 1812, nine-pence had been collected from 1,800 houses for defraying this expense, but the trouble to the collector was so great, that the Roman Catholics agreed among themselves to give 70l. a-year. In 1819, several salaries were raised by the Roman Catholics from 401. to 50l. a-year. In 1820, 107. a-year was added to the salary of the clerk in the parish he had alluded to; and the addition probably might be for instructing children to sing anthems. With respect to the Roman Catholics attending vestries, he was aware that they had not the right of voting or of opposing the vote which might be come to; but it appeared that their opinion was always attended to. The Roman Catholics were, indeed, generally consulted on such subjects; and if they had not so been in the instance alluded to, it was probable that their voices would, before now, have been heard beyond the narrow confines of their own parish. He was ready to acknowledge that there might be some cases of hardship; but it did not appear that the actual abuses had been such as to induce the Catholics generally to complain; and, as far as he could learn, the Catholics had been no less liberal than their Protestant brethren in remunerating the services in question. Lord Clifden observed, that when the churches of Ireland were, in the reign of Henry 8th, and his successor, Elizabeth, The Earl of Limerick in reply to the observations that the funds of the cathedrals ought to pay the expenses of their repairs, said, that in Ireland the cathedrals were, in many instances, parish churches, and that, therefore, the charges for repairing them fell on the parish. taken from the Catholics and given to the I proper sense of the difficulties that were Protestants, they were in good repair; but personal to him on the occasion. He was they had since been suffered to fall into fortunate, however, in one respect; namely, decay. Every man, acquainted with Ire- which was the period of time at which this land, knew that he could not ride the dis- duty had devolved upon him. The subject tance of three miles without seeing a had been brought forward at different church in ruins.. Now, however, a fancy times, and certainly under far more unhad been taken to build churches; but it favourable circumstances than at present was very unreasonable that the Catholics existed. When he recollected, that the should be compelled to pay for the re- cause of the Catholics had received the building of churches, which the Protest- sanction of the most eminent men of the ants had allowed to go to ruin. country; when he recollected that it had been supported by Burke, by Fox, by Pitt, by Sheridan, and "last, not least," by Grattan; when he recollected that almost every individual distinguished for his intellect had added his authority to the great mass of opinion in its favour-it appeared to him, that that man must be possessed of singular confidence who, without the most mature deliberation, and the most profound reflection, and also without the means and the ability to account for and justify his conviction, could make up his mind against such a weight of authority, to resist the motion with which he should have the honour to conclude. It should, too, be recollected, that however these great men differed upon almost all other subjects-however they might have been at variance respecting other points of policy, they were all unanimous upon this. Many of them were in situations in which ambition, be it good or be it bad, operated as a powerful incitement on their Lord King, having been appealed to by the right reverend prelate, on the subject of the charge for the expense of morning service, must say, that 507. certainly was not too much in England for Protestant purposes; but that 150l. was far too much in Ireland for performing that service for a comparatively small number of Protestants. Lord Strangford, without intending to follow the noble lord through his items, said, it happened to be in his power to answer him on one point. He was in Ireland last Easter twelvemonth. He then went to the church of St. Thomas, Dublin, to the morning service, when so far from there being only two old women present, there were, at seven o'clock in the morn-minds; but, on this subject, where there ing, four hundred persons in the church, and afterwards that number was increased to eight hundred communicants. This being the fact, what became of the assertion of the necessity of paying two old women to attend the morning service? And what became of the supposed enormity of the charge of 281. for wine, when eight hundred communicants were assembled on this ocasion. Ordered to lie on the table. HOUSE OF COMMONS. ROMAN CATHOLIC CLAIMS.] After numerous Petitions had been presented, both for and against the Claims of the Roman Catholics, Sir Francis Burdett rose, to bring forward the motion of which he had given notice. In bringing this great question before the House, he felt, he trusted, a was no alloy of ambition in the motive by which they were actuated, where the course they were pursuing was the reverse of popular, where they had to stem the tide of long-established prejudices, they risked every other consideration, and advocated a cause, from advocating which they could hope for no advantage, except the gratification of their own feeling of the importance, the justice, and the policy of the concession. Their authority was therefore doubled. It was not merely the authority of their intellect; it was also the authority of their conviction of what was due to a sense of right, the public good, and the best interests of the country at large. It must be, moreover, considered, that the great men to whom he had alluded had removed the principal difficulties by which the question had been environed. They had dispelled the clouds of ignorance; they had turned the current of misrepresentation; they had left the legislature to follow the dictates of pure reason, unencumbered by that learned lore which it had required the efforts of their extraordinary powers to remove. Such had been their labours; so that, at the present day, the question was reduced to one of a plain, simple, common-sense, practical nature. At the same time, and while he described the authority by which the cause of the Catholics had been sustained, it must not be forgotten, that their claims rested on the strong and solid foundation-if good faith was a strong and solid foundation-of a treaty; as well as on considerations of reason, justice, policy, and expediency. He hoped he should be able to describe the true grounds on which the question stood. But, before he entered into any examination of them, he implored the House to come to the discussion with minds free from all those feelings of irritation and prejudice, which, he was sorry to observe, on a late occasion, seemed to be but too prevalent. He intreated them to lay aside all personal feeling,-to forget all inferior and angry topics-and not to substitute the conduct of individuals for argument, in considering the wisdom of the great and important measure upon which they were now called upon to determine. Every candid man must be disposed to admit that-where the passions, had been long and strongly excited-where expectations had been long and painfully delayed --where interests of the greatest magnitude were at stake, occurrences might and must occasionally take place, that all must lament. Much had been done, and still more had been said, which no man could go the length of justifying; and, although, perhaps, less had been done and said, than, under such circumstances, might have been expected, yet there was no doubt much which was deeply to be deplored. All these considerations, however, would, he trusted, be allowed to merge in the merits of the great and important question, on which the House had now to pronounce; and, from a deliberate examination of which, he trusted they would not be turned by the influence of interests comparatively unimportant, and unbecoming topics of discussion. The hon. member for the county of Derry had, the other evening, told the House, that he would this night open the first page of a new history of Ireland. He trusted in God, that the new history of Ireland would not be like the old one; he hoped that it would not be " atrox præliis, discors seditionibus;" but that it would be a history of peace, and conciliation, and safety, and happiness, to all parties [hear, hear!]. It had frequently been objected to the Catholics, that their religion was inconsistent with civil liberty; and many men, otherwise of liberal minds, possessed with that opinion, opposed any further concession to them. But, who that called to mind the conduct of our Catholic forefathers-of those men of great renown to whom we were indebted for the civil liberty which we enjoyed-but must concur in lamenting, that names which rendered illustrious every page of our historynames without spot or stain of any kind— should, at the present day, stand as the appellations of a proscribed race? While we boasted of the institutions for which we were indebted to their glorious efforts institutions which no true Englishman would surrender but with life-institutions which, while they constituted our own security and happiness, were the admiration of the world-we withheld justice from the descendants of their immortal founders. When the House recollected, that even under all the disadvantages and disabilities under which the Catholics of the present day laboured, they never failed us in the hour of peril and of combat; when they recollected that many of the names of the heroes of Cressy and Agincourt, were also the names of the heroes of Waterloo-the name of Howard came at once strongly on his memory-when they also recollected, that the Catholics disclaimed the imputations of subservience to a foreign power which had been cast upon them; when they recollected the conduct of our Catholic forefathers towards that power to which the Catholics of the present day were supposed to be slavishly submissive-he thought they would feel ashamed of any longer withholding from them a full participation in the civil rights of their countrymen. Let the House only look at the reign of Edward 1st, when the pope endeavoured to interfere with the temporal concerns of England; and when that monarch replied, that he would not admit of any interference in his kingdom, on the part of the See of Rome. On that occasion, the barons of England wrote a letter to the pope, of which he had brought a copy with him to the House, although he would not trouble them by reading more than one or two sentences; |
