[p. 97]
|97| which has the high and most lucrative ecclesiastical posts to bestow, and has the interest of providing through such benefices for the younger sons or brothers who, since landed property in England in general passes only to the eldest son, are left without property. The same class is also, after the Reform Bill, to retain its position in Parliament, indeed even to extend it; it is therefore very problematic whether it has anything to apprehend for its interest, with regard to the riches of the Church and its patronage.
The apprehensions about a reform of such a condition of the English Church have every reason to extend especially to its establishment in Ireland, which for several years, chiefly in the pursuit of the matter of Emancipation, which in itself concerned only the political side, has been so vehemently attacked. The goods which formerly belonged there to the Catholic Church, to which, as is known, the majority of the Irish population belongs, the churches themselves, the tithes, the obligation of the parishes to keep the church buildings in repair, to provide the utensils of divine service, also the maintenance of the sextons etc., all this has been taken from the Catholic Church by virtue of the right of conquest and made the property of the Anglican. In Germany the Thirty Years’ War more than a hundred and fifty years ago, and in more recent times rational culture, have brought it about that to a country or a province, town, village, the goods belonging to the church of its population have been left, or that provision has been made in another way for the need of worship; {the religion of the prince and of the government has not confiscated the church goods of the territory which belong to another worship}. Even the Turks have for the most part left to the Christians, Armenians and Jews subjected to them their churches; while they also forbade them to repair them when they fell into decay, they yet let the permission for it be bought; but the English have taken
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