[p. 98]
|98| from the Catholic population conquered by them all the churches. The Irish, whose poverty, misery and the degeneration and demoralisation arising from it are a standing theme in Parliament, admitted by all ministries, are compelled to pay their own clergymen out of the few pence which they can possess and to provide a place for divine service, but on the other hand to pay the tithes of all the produce of their lands to Anglican clergymen, in whose extensive parishes, comprising even two, three, six and more proper parish villages, there are often only very few Protestants (at times the sexton is the only one); they are compelled to pay also for the repair of the church buildings, now Anglican, for the provision of the utensils of worship etc. The enemies of Emancipation have held up chiefly also the bugbear of the reform of such a crying injustice as a probable consequence of that measure; but its friends have, on the contrary, reassured themselves and their adherents essentially by the thought that with Emancipation the demands of the Catholics would be satisfied and the establishment of the Anglican Church in Ireland would be the more secure. This relation, without example in a civilised and Christian-Protestant nation, and the positive title of right, upheld by self-interest, have held out hitherto against the religious disposition which is to be presupposed in the Anglican clergy and against the reason of the English people and its representatives; the Reform Bill does indeed put some more Irish members, among whom there can also be Catholics, into the House of Commons; against this circumstance, however, the increase contained in the same Bill of the members from that class whose interest is bound up with that condition of the Church would be likely to hold more than the balance.
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