payable by law, the incumbents are not able, in general, to enforce payment of more than one-third of these two-thirds: the parish minister, to avoid ruin by law suits, must relinquish the demand of small tithes and dues, and content himself with what his parishioners condescend to pay him, by way of composition, for the tithe of corn and hay; which composition never amounts to onehalf of the value of the tithe, and is paid, not in money, but by a note of the farmer payable in six or twelve months. As the parson is not, himself, a competent judge of the value of the tithe, he is obliged in general to employ some man, skilled in country business, as a proctor, or agent, to estimate the tithe, and make compositions with his parishioners for it. Such proctors from their superior knowledge of the value of the tithes, generally obtain more, for their employers, than the parson himself could obtain, and for that reason are odious to the parishioners: but with all their industry and skill, they never do levy near the value of the tithe, and more than the value they could not by any mode obtain, because if they over-estimated it, the farmer could compel them to draw the tenth, and refuse any composition; with which the Irish incumbent could with very great difficulty comply, as all the parishioners would certainly, to the best of their powers, impede and obstruct him, and carriages

he could not hire at any price. The Talent ministry instructed all their Irish partisans to declaim against the payment of tithes in Ireland, to represent the Irish Protestant clergy and their proctors as harpies and extortioners; and the leaders of the party proclaimed, in parliament, that they meant to make alterations respecting the tithes in Ireland. It is obvious that they did not mean to make any such alterations in favour of the established clergy in Ireland, but meant to make further reductions of the sums paid there on account of tithes ; and considering the present reduced state of these payments, further reductions must approach very near to annihilation; and such is probably the ultimate design of the party. This measure, if carried into effect must be attended with the complete subversion of the Protestant church establishment in Ireland, for in the first place, the tithes being no longer payable to the Protestant parish ministers, will be paid to the Romish priests throughout the kingdom by all persons of their communion; they are bound to such payment by their religion, and Romanists are more numerous among the Irish peasantry, than among any other class of the people. In the Romish manuals, in one, particularly, circulated throughout Munster, by Doctor Butler, late titular Archbishop of Cashel, there gre enumerated six commandments of the church,

which he states that all Romanists are obliged to obey; the fifth of these, is to pay tithes to their pastors hence it is plain that the abolition of the payment of tithes to the Irish Protestant clergy, will be a transfer of them to the Irish Romish parish priests. The next consequence of this projected abolition of tythes in Ireland will be the total extinction of the Protestant parochial clergy in that country, for they have nothing to subsist upon but the tithes, whereas Romish priests have a multitude of ways and means for the extraction of money and subsistence from their votaries, such as auricular confessions, absolutions, indulgences, and above all the wonderderfully profitable doctrine of purgatory; so that if a Protestant minister were placed in a parish, in which the number of Protestants exceeded the number of Romanists in the proportion of two to one, and if the payment of tithes were abolished, the Protestant minister would starve, whilst the Romish priest would have a comfortable subsistence. The extinction of the Irish Protestant parochial clergy, any person will see, must be attended with the utter ruin of the Protestant church establishment in that country. In such an event bishops and other church dignitaries must submit to the same fate with the parochial clergy: their business is to superintend the incumbents of parishes and their curates, and to see that they

perform their duty; when there shall be neither incumbents nor curates, their office will cease, and they will become useless; they must therefore look for extinction; the state will not support general officers when there is no army to command.

Lord Coke's observation on the effects of the plunder of the church deserves here to be inserted. Bishop of Winchester's Case 2d. Coke fol, 44. "The decay of the revenues of men of the holy church, in the end, will be the overthrow of the service of God and of his religion. It is recorded in history, that there were, amongst others, two grievous persecutions, one under Dioclesian, the other under Julian, surnamed Apostate; for it is recorded, that one of them, intending to have rooted out all the professors and preachers of the word of God, slew all the priests; but notwithstanding that, religion flourished, for sanguis martyrum est semen ecclesiæ. But the persecution under the other was more grievous and dangerous, because, as history saith, he slew the priesthood, or the order of priests; for he robbed the church, and spoiled spiritual persons of their revenues, and took all from them whereon they mightlive; and thereupon, in short time, did follow great ignorance of the true religion and service of God, and, thereby, great decay of the christian profession; for none will apply themselves, or

their sons, or any other which he hath in charge, to the study of divinity, when they shall have, after long and painful study,nothing to live upon."

As further evidence of the hostility of the Talents' ministry to the Protestant establishment in Ireland, it can be proved, that during their reign strict injunctions were issued in Ireland, to all persons under the influence or power of government, not to write or publish any tract, or even paragraph, against the Irish Romanists; and to abstain, in all public assemblies, from controverting any point contained in their petitions, or exposing, in any manner, the mischiefs resulting to a Protestant state from the pernicious political tenets, by them held as tenets, of their religion. At this very time the press in Ireland teemed with the grossest Popish libels and calumnies on the Protestant church, its doctrines, its establishments, the characters of its venerable clergy, ancient and modern, and with the most audacious falsehoods against the consitution in general; yet the Talents' government thought fit to close the mouths of Protestants, and prohibit all literary opposition to this torrent of Romish falsehood and abuse; imitating, exactly, the conduct of King James the Second, in his persecution of the Protestant prelates, and, in particular, of the Bishop of London, and Dr. Sharp, Rector of St. Giles's, London, for