Chapter V (2)

The two national churches, thus by act of parliament and royal proclamation, united into, so to speak, one imperial church, with an identical "doctrine, worship, and discipline," had a good many antecedents in common, and a good many others that were peculiar to each side of the channel. Irish Protestantism had never been a servile or even a close copy of its English senior. Whether, as Swift sarcastically maintained, the sermons of Dublin pulpits were flavored by the soil, or whether the cause of difference lay in the atmosphere, the Irish variety of "the churches of the Reformation," was as full of self-complacency and self-assertion, as any of the sisterhood. It imbibed at the start, chiefly from Usher, a larger draught of Genevan theology than was quite reconcilable with the Thirty-nine Articles; it has been almost invariably toryish in its relations to the state; while the English establishment, at least since 1668, has been pretty equally divided between the two great political parties. But the most singular peculiarity of this very modern church of Ireland was the persuasion it arrived at, and endeavored to impress upon the world, that it was the veritable primitive Christianity of the Green Isle; that instead of tracing its origin to quite recent acts of parliament, its pedigree ran up nearly to the Acts of the Apostles; that Saint Patrick and Saint Columba were its true founders, and not such saints of yesterday as George Browne and James Usher. Whenever it was necessary to enforce the collection of tithes, or to protect the monopoly of university education, the statutes at large were resorted to as the true charter of its institution; but whenever it became requisite to defend its anomalous position, by writing or speaking, the Protestantism of Saint Patrick--his independence of Rome more especially--was the favorite argument of its defenders.

No "reformed" community has ever made such desperate and persistent efforts, with such flimsy or wholly imaginary materials, to bridge over the long space of the middle ages, in order to make some show of historical connection with the first founders of Christianity. But the recent revival of genuine ecclesiastical learning has utterly dissipated the last fond efforts of these spiritual genealogists; and the very first acts of its existence as a separated body, are now as well understood as the 41st of George III., by which it became a copartner in "the United Church of England and Ireland," no longer ago than the first day of the year of our Lord, 1801.

The history of the Irish member of this curious ecclesiastical firm may best be traced through the statutes at large. As its parentage was parliamentary, so its life has been legislative. There is one advantage in having this description of authority to refer to, that it cannot be disputed. The "Journals of Parliament" in England and Ireland, from the reformation to the civil emancipation of the Catholics in 1829, are good Protestant authority. The peers and commoners of the old religion were excluded from the English houses, from the 10th of Elizabeth (1567) to the 9th of George IV., (1829,) a period of 262 years; and in Ireland, the last parliament in which Catholics sat was that of 4th James II., (1689,) followed by a period of exclusion, before the union, of 111 years. {202} It was not found possible, so early as the time of the two first Stuarts and Elizabeth, to wholly exclude Catholics, or, as they were then called, "recusants," from membership in either house in Ireland; and accordingly we find them a formidable minority in those rarely occurring assemblies, such as the Irish parliaments held in the 11th and 25th of Elizabeth, the 11th James I., the 14th Charles I., and the 12th of Charles II, In the second James's short-lived parliament of one session, hastily adjourned to allow his lords and gentlemen to follow their master to the banks of the "ill-fated river," they were a majority; but with that evanescent exception, the statutes of Ireland are quite as exclusively Protestant authority on all church matters as those of England previous to the union of the legislatures and the churches, and subsequently down to 1829.

The history of Protestantism in Ireland, from first to last, is a political history. Its best record is to be found in the parliamentary journals as well in the reign of Henry VIII. as of George III. And though we do not propose to dwell, in the present paper, in anything like detail on the annals of that establishment previous to the present century, we must condense into a short space the main facts of its first appearance on the scene, and its early parliamentary nurture and education, to account for the facility with which it ceased to be, even in pretence, a national church at the time of the legislative union. Political in its origin, its organization, and its government, from the first hour of its existence, it had neither will, nor wish, nor ability, if it had either, to resist the designs of the state, which included its incorporation into the imperial system. As the lay representation of Ireland was recast, as the seal and the standard were changed, so the institution started by statute and royal orders in council in the sixteenth century came naturally to have its individuality extinguished by other statutes and orders in council in the nineteenth. If this so-called "Church of Ireland" had really believed itself to be what its champions had so often asserted, the true and ancient national church of the kingdom, it would at all events have made some show of patriotic resistance before making its surrender.

Not only, however, was it not really national in its origin, but it was then, and always, an eminently anti-popular institution. There was not, as in other countries during the reformation, even the pretext of what is called a popular "movement against Rome." No Luther had arisen among the Celtic or the Anglo-Irish Catholics in that age of perturbation. The ancient faith was received as implicitly by the burgesses of Dublin as by the clansmen of Connaught, and the spiritual supremacy of the pope seemed a doctrine as impossible of contradiction to the descendants of Strongbow as to the children of Milesius. No internal revolt against Roman discipline or Roman doctrine had shown itself within the western island. There was no spiritual insurrection attempted from within to justify the resort to external intervention. The annalists of Donegal, who are commonly called "The Four Masters," and who were old enough to remember the first mention of Protestantism in their own province, thus unconsciously express the amazement of the educated Irish mind of those days at the new doctors and doctrines:

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"A.D. 1537. A heresy and a new error broke out in England, the
effects of pride, vainglory, avarice, sensual desire, and the
prevalence of a variety of scientific and philosophical
speculations, so that the people of England went into
opposition to the pope and to Rome. At the same time they
followed a variety of opinions, and the old law of Moses, after
the manner of the Jewish people, and they gave the title of
Head of the Church of God to the king. There were enacted by
the king and council new laws and statutes after their own
will."

But the laws and statutes enacted by the king and council in England, for changing the national religion, were not immediately either extended to, or proposed for imitation in, Ireland. The zeal of the crowned apostle was tempered by the exigencies of the politician. Before this king's time, the English power in Ireland had been essentially a colonial power; "a pale" or enclosure, or garrison. Whoever will not mark the point, will miss the very pivot of all the operations of the new religion in Ireland. Henry VIII. had inherited from his father, the first king of united England for a century, the ambition of making himself equally master of the neighboring nation. During the twenty years of the sway of his great cardinal-chancellor, this object never was for a moment lost sight of. When Wolsey went down to the grave in disgrace without seeing it fulfilled, his royal pupil continued to prosecute the plan to its entire accomplishment. This result, however, he only reached in the thirty-second year of his reign, (1541,) some six years before his miserable end. Ten years previously, (1531,) he may be said to have established the new religion in England by compelling the majority of the clergy to subscribe to his supremacy in spirituals; within two years followed his marriage with Anne Boleyn; and in 1535, his order appeared commanding the omission "of the name of the Bishop of Rome from every liturgical book," which may be said to have completed the severance of England from Rome.

Not only did not Henry, in obedience to his political design of adding another crown to his dominions, not press his reformed doctrines immediately upon the Irish of either race, but he expressly reprehended his deputies at Dublin for having prematurely attempted the national conversion. In the same year in which he struck the pope's name from every liturgical book, he sharply rebuked George Browne, an English ex-Augustinian whom he had appointed Archbishop of Dublin, for destroying certain relics of saints in the churches of that city. Again in the same year. Secretary Cromwell writes officially to contradict "a common rumor," that he intended to pluck down the statue of "our Lady of Trim," which was as famous on the west, as our "Lady of Walsingham" on the east of the channel. Four years later, we find the Lord Deputy Grey, after a victory over O'Neill at Bellahoe, halting with the whole court and army at this celebrated place of pilgrimage, and visiting this same shrine of our Lady--"very devoutly kneeling before her, he heard three or four masses." At that moment, in the thirtieth year of Henry VIII., and the sixth of his open rupture with Rome, any Celtic-Irish or Anglo-Irish Catholic, in the ranks of Lord Grey, not particularly well informed as to the affairs of the neighboring kingdom, might have rested honestly in the belief that he was serving a Catholic prince in full communion with the rest of Christendom.

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But as soon as the election to the kingship, which it is not in our way here to dwell upon, was successfully over, and the new royal title proclaimed, confirmed, and acknowledged abroad, especially in Scotland and France, and by the emperor, then there came a change. The politician being satisfied, the apostle awoke. A commission of reformation, at the head of which sat Archbishop Browne, undertook the purgation of the Dublin and neighboring churches, producing as their warrant the royal authority, "dated years before." A sufficient guard of horse and foot accompanied these commissioners, and were much needed to protect them from the populace. The statues and relics in the cathedrals of Leighlin, Ferns, and Kildare; the Lady statue at Trim, and a famous crucifixion in Ballyhogan Abbey, were forthwith destroyed. So far and so soon as they could venture into the interior, this "work, of reformation," under the royal warrant, was pushed on vigorously, in order, as Henry's commission expressed it, "that no fooleries of this kind might henceforth for ever be in use in said land." This royal order (1539) sounded the key-note of spoliation, and little more than this was attempted during the remainder of this reign. The first serious effort at national conversion was made under the orders in council of the 4th of Edward VI., (1551,) when on Easter day the English liturgy was for the first time publicly recited in Christ Church Cathedral, the ex-Augustinian archbishop preaching from the text, "Open mine eyes, that I may see the wonders of the laws," (Ps. 119.) The liturgy was printed the same year at Dublin, in English, and the lord deputy was instructed to take measures to have it "translated into Irish in those places that need it." The following year the work of spoliation was resumed with new vigor at the famous seven churches of Clonmacnoise, and other points upon the Shannon. Within twelve months thereafter, young Edward died, and the five years' reign of Queen Mary gave a respite to the Irish church. It was a period too short for restoration, but long remembered with regretful affection for the temporary exemption from persecution it had afforded.

Anti-national and anti-popular in its conception, the reformation presented itself in Ireland as the enemy at once of the useful and all the fine arts; of all that amused and ennobled and entertained the people. Among both races, war was a business, and the layman's hand was always within reach of his weapon. The arts of peace--agriculture, architecture, botany, medicine, music, were all inmates of the convent and the monastery. The civil glories and treasures of the country were hoarded up where alone they could be secured, in the chancel and the cloister. It was, however, the first duty of the new reformers to strike down and demolish these venerated remains of the piety of former generations. Pictures brought from abroad, or the work of native artists, were defaced; stained windows were brutally broken; shrines smashed; beautiful missals thrown into the fire; croziers broken to bits; chalices and ciboriums melted into bullion; bells blessed to the offices of peace and forgiveness melted down to be cast into ordnance; and all the endearing, civilizing, and solemn associations interwoven from childhood with these consecrated objects of art, were rudely torn out of the bleeding hearts of the people. In the six remaining years of Henry, and the six of Edward VI., nearly six hundred religious houses were thus stripped, desecrated, and dismantled. {205} "They sold their roofs and bells," say the Four Masters, in the annal already quoted, "so there was not a monastery left from the Arran of the Saints to the Iccian Sea, which was not broken and shattered, except a few only" in the remoter corners of the kingdom. Of the regular religious orders then established in that small kingdom, the rule of St. Augustine was followed by 256 houses, male and female; that of St. Bernard by 44; of St. Francis by 114; of St. Dominick by 41; of St. Benedict by 14; of Mount Carmel by 29. Besides these, it is a pathetic and instructive circumstance to remember, that there were then, even in that far western island, not less than 22 houses of Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, vowed to the redemption of the Holy Sepulchre, and 14 of the Trinitarian Order for the redemption of Christian captives from African slavery. All these, with their interior furniture and external possessions, were with ruthless hand transferred to the new clergy, or converted to worldly purposes, in order to prepare the way of the new religion as set forth by the king's order.

It is but fair to point out, that the preachers of this religious revolution were only in part, though in a very considerable part, the receivers of the spoils. A new aristocracy arose on the ruins of the monasteries and churches. Some Irish houses may claim to have ancestors who came in with Strongbow; but many more founders of families came in penniless adventurers at the reformation. The Bagnals and Chichesters, in the north; the St. Legers, Boyles, and Kings in the south; and the Burkes and Croftons in the west, were formerly, and some of their descendants still are, the largest inheritors of ecclesiastical plunder. The chartered minorities of townsmen, whose consciences consented to take the oath of supremacy, were not without their recompense even in this world. The neighboring church and convent property was frequently assigned to these corporators, no matter how few in number, for the use indeed of the corporation; but as they generally contrived to become in their individual capacity tenants under themselves as a corporation, there was at least one description of occupants in the country, who held their lands on easy conditions. These corporate bodies, which continued exclusively Protestant down to the passage of the Irish Municipal Reform Bill in 1834, were often reduced to a ludicrously small number; but even in such Catholic cities as Limerick, Cashel, Clonmel, and Waterford and Drogheda, they continued to possess and dispose of, and often to alienate, the former endowments of pious chiefs and barons to the suppressed convents and colleges of the vicinity.

The new proprietory and clerical interests thus created at the expense of the confiscated church, were placed in a position to require the constant protection and superintendence of the creative power. And this again required, most unhappily both for church and state in that country, the continuous proscription and suppression of those who represented the important interests so dispossessed and disinherited. From thence arose the deadly feud between law and nature, which has disfigured and degraded humanity in Ireland; which has so effectually separated the very ideas of law and justice in the modern Irishman's mind that his first presumption in all conflicting cases is (to his own loss frequently) against the law, rather than in its favor. The body of legislation of which we speak had long ago swelled to the dimensions of a code, and since the early years of George III. has been known exclusively by the name of _The Penal Code_. {206} The principal collections of this code are by Sir Henry Parnell, (afterward Lord Congleton,) Mr. Bedford, an English barrister, Mr. Mathew O'Conor, of the Irish bar, and the late indefatigable Dr. R. R. Madden. The commentators on the code, from Edmund Burke to Bishop Doyle, or rather the advocates for its amelioration in the first place, and afterward for its total repeal, included almost every name distinguished for liberality in the British annals of the last hundred years.

The first of these proscriptive enactments dates from the 2d year of Elizabeth, when a parliament representing ten counties was held at Dublin. By this assembly the acts enforcing uniformity of worship, and the queen's supremacy in spirituals as well as temporals, are said to have been passed; though others say this parliament adjourned without regularly adopting those measures. In the 3d year of the same reign a further act is found on the Irish Statute-Book, obliging, under forfeiture of office and civil disfranchisement for life, "ecclesiastical persons and officers, judges, justices, mayors, temporal officers, and every other person who hath the queen's wages, to take the oath of supremacy." Commissioners of ecclesiastical causes were created by an act of the same session, "to adjudge heresy" according to the canonical scriptures, the first four general councils, and the laws of parliament. By this commission, five years later, (1564,) the English _Book of Articles_ was declared of full force in Ireland. These articles were twelve in number.

"1. The Trinity in Unity;
2. The Sufficiency of the Scriptures to Salvation;
3. The Orthodoxy of Particular Churches;
4. The Necessity of Holy Orders;
5. The Queen's Supremacy;
6. Denial of the Pope's authority 'to be more than other Bishops have;'
7. The Conformity of the Book of Common Prayer to the Scriptures;
8. The Ministration of Baptism does not depend on the Ceremonial;
9. Condemns 'Private Masses,' and denies that the Mass can
be a propitiatory Sacrifice for the Dead;
10. Asserts the Propriety of Communion in Both Kinds;
11. Utterly disallows Images, Relics, and Pilgrimages;
12. Requires a General Subscription to the foregoing Articles."

The subsequent legislation of Elizabeth in Ireland was chiefly political, if we except (in the 11th and 12th of her reign) the act respecting vacant benefices, and the act establishing [Protestant] free schools.

Parliaments in those days assembled at long and uncertain intervals. The only one held during the first James's reign in Ireland--twenty-seven years after Elizabeth's last, and twenty-one before Charles I. convened another--was purely political. This parliament was opened and managed by the Lord Deputy, Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, whose avowed and almost only object in using such an agency was to make his royal master "as absolute as any king in Christendom." Four years later, (1639) was held the second and last Irish parliament of this reign, and simultaneously, (at the instance, and under the advice of Laud), the able, iron-nerved, and most unscrupulous deputy summoned a convocation of the bishops and clergy of the established religion, which forms a very curious picture of the state of that establishment at the end of the first century of the reformation. Strafford himself shall be our authority at this point, and as abbreviated in Mr. Godkin's book, pp. 64 and 65.

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"He had ordered a convocation of the clergy to meet
simultaneously with the parliament for the purpose of adopting
the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, so that the
Irish articles might become a dead letter. The convocation went
to work conscientiously, digesting the canons, etc., to the
best of their judgment; but Wentworth found that they were not
doing what he wanted, and resolved to bring them to their
senses. In a letter to Laud he chuckled over his victory,
apparently quite unconscious that he had been playing the
tyrant, _circa sacra_, in a style worthy of Henry VIII.
Having learned what the committee of convocation had done, he
instantly sent for Dean Andrews, its chairman, requiring him to
bring the Book of Canons noted in the margin, together with the
draught he was to present that afternoon to the house. This
order he obeyed; 'but,' says the lord deputy, 'when I came to
open the book, and run over the _deliberandums_ in the
margin, I confess I was not so much moved since I came into
Ireland. I told him, certainly not a Dean of Limerick, but an
Ananias, had sat in the chair of that committee; however, sure
I was an Ananias had been there in spirit, if not in body, with
all the fraternities and conventicles of Amsterdam, that I was
ashamed and scandalized with it above measure.' He gave the
dean imperative orders not to report anything until he heard
from him again. He also issued orders to the primate, the
Bishops of Meath, Kilmore, Raphoe, and Derry, together with
Dean Leslie, the prolucutor, and the whole committee, to wait
upon him next morning. He then publicly rebuked them for acting
so unlike churchmen; told them that a few petty clerks had
presumed to make articles of faith, without the privity or
consent of state or bishop, as if they purposed at once 'to
take away all government and order forth of the church. But
those heady and arrogant courses he would not endure, nor would
he suffer them either to be mad in the convocation nor in their
pulpits.' He next gave them strict injunctions as to what the
convocation should do. They were to say content, or not
content, to the Articles of England, for he would not endure
that they should be disputed. He ordered the primate to frame a
canon on the subject; but it did not meet his approval, and so
the lord deputy framed one himself, whereupon his grace came to
him instantly and said he feared the canon would never pass in
such a form as his lordship had made, but he was hopeful it
might pass as he had drawn it himself. He therefore besought
the lord deputy to think a little better of it. The sequel is
best told in Strafford's own vigorous language--'But I confess,
having taken a little jealousy that his proceedings were not
open and free to those ends I had my eye upon, it was too late
now either to persuade or to affright me. I told his lordship I
was resolved to put it to them in those very words, and was
most confident there were not six in the house that would
refuse them, telling him, by the sequel, we should see whether
his lordship or myself better understood their minds in that
point, and by that I would be content to be judged, only for
order's sake I desired his lordship would vote this canon first
in the upper house of convocation, and so voted, then to pass
the question beneath also.' He adds that he enclosed the canon
[Footnote 48] to Dean Leslie, 'which, accordingly, that
afternoon was unanimously voted, first with the bishops, and
then by the rest of the clergy, excepting one man, who simply
did deliberate upon the receiving of the Articles of England.'"

[Footnote 48: The first Irish canon.]

We pause and draw a hard breath, after this dictatorial description of how to rule a church and have a church, to observe that the Irish Protestant prelates of those days were no mean men; Bramhall was Bishop of Derry, and Bedell of Kilmore, and the primate so hectored and overawed by this Cavalier-Cromwell was no less a personage than James Usher. But being as they were, as they well knew they were, the creatures of the state, what could they do when brought into conflict with the author and finisher of their law?

Omitting the period of the civil wars and the Cromwellian Protectorate as a period phenomenal and exceptional, deserving study apart, we pass to the first parliament of Charles II., (1662,) in which one of the first contributions to the statutes which we find, is the renewal of the Elizabethan act of uniformity. In the same session was passed the acts of settlement and explanation, which have been called "the Magna Charta of Irish Protestantism." These acts confirmed to their Puritan possessors the properties of the Catholic gentry confiscated by Cromwell for their attachment to both Charleses, and extending into almost every county. Of 6000 proprietors, so confiscated, but 60--one per cent--were restored, in part or whole, to their hereditary estates.

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Thirty years later, after William's victory over James II., 4000 remaining Catholic proprietors were subjected to a similar proscription--so that in that half-century 10,000 owners of estates forfeited them for their fidelity to their ancient, and their hostility to what Mr. Froude correctly calls "the intrusive religion."

No parliament sat again in Ireland, till that short one of a single session before mentioned, (the 4th James II.,) summoned in 1689. This parliament repealed the acts of settlement and explanation, Poyning's law, and other coercive and intolerant statutes; but the issue of battle went against King James, and the two succeeding reigns became fruitful beyond precedent of penal legislation. Although the 9th of the "Articles of Limerick"--at the close of the war--had simply imposed one unobjectionable sentence as an oath of allegiance on the defeated party, the act (2d and 3d William and Mary) prescribed an elaborate form of abjuration of the doctrines of transubstantiation and of the invocation of saints, and declaring the holy sacrifice of the Mass "superstitious and idolatrous."' The oath of abjuration concluded by the denial to any foreign prince or prelate (namely, the pope) of "any jurisdiction, power, superiority, preeminence, or authority, _ecclesiastical_ or _spiritual_, within the realm." There never was a more shameful breach of public faith than this statute. The treaty of Limerick had simply prescribed this form of oath for the restoration to their former _status_ of all who chose to take it: "I, A. B., do solemnly promise and swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to their majesties King William and Queen Mary; so help me God."

And the 10th article of the same treaty had provided: "The oath to be administered to such Roman Catholics as submit to their majesties' government, shall be the oath aforesaid and no other." Yet within the same twelvemonths in which William's generals and lord-justices signed this latter compact, the new penal law was passed, and the new oath of abjuration was imposed. In 1691, the tolerant treaty was signed; in 1692, when the few Catholic peers and commoners who ventured to present themselves appeared to be sworn in of the new Irish parliament, they were met by this infamous oath of abjuration, driven out and disqualified. Above a million of their broad acres were forfeited, as a further penalty on those who refused the oath, and we need not be surprised to find, at King William's death, (1702,) that but "one sixth part" of the property of the kingdom remained in Catholic hands.

The 7th and 8th William and Mary re-enacted, with additions, the Elizabethan penal laws. Of these additions the principal were:

1. Authorizing the Protestant chancellor to name guardians for
Catholic minors.
2. Act to prevent recusants (Catholics) from becoming tutors in
private families, unless by license of the Protestant
ordinaries of their several dioceses.
3. An act to prevent Roman Catholics acting as
guardians to minor children.
4. An act to disarm Roman Catholics.
5. An act for the banishment of popish priests and prelates.

During the reign of Queen Anne, however, the code received its last finishing contributions. In the 1st and 2d of this queen was passed "the act for discouraging the further growth of popery," of which the following were the principal provisions:

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"The third clause provides that if the son of an estated Papist
shall conform to the established religion, the father shall be
incapacitated from selling or mortgaging his estate, or
disposing of any portion of it by will. The fourth clause
prohibits a Papist from being the guardian of his own child;
and orders that, if at any time the child, though ever so
young, pretends to be a Protestant, it shall be taken from its
own father, and placed under the guardianship of the nearest
Protestant relation. The sixth clause renders Papists incapable
of purchasing any manors, tenements, hereditaments, or any
rents or profits arising out of the same, or of holding any
lease of lives, or other lease whatever, for any term exceeding
thirty-one years. And with respect even to such limited leases,
it further enacts that, if a Papist should hold a farm
producing a profit greater than one third of the amount of the
rent, his right to such should immediately cease, and pass over
entirely to the first Protestant who should discover the rate
of profit. The seventh clause prohibits Papists from succeeding
to the properties or estates of their Protestant relations. By
the tenth clause, the estate of a Papist, not having a
Protestant heir, is ordered to be gavelled, or divided in equal
shares between all his children. The sixteenth and
twenty-fourth clauses impose the oath of abjuration, and the
sacramental test, as a qualification for office, and for voting
at elections. The twenty-third clause deprives the Catholics of
Limerick and Galway of the protection secured to them by the
articles of the treaty of Limerick. The twenty-fifth clause
vests in her majesty all advowsons possessed by Papists.

"A further act was passed, in 1709, imposing additional
penalties. The first clause declares that no Papist shall be
capable of holding an annuity for life. The third provides that
the child of a Papist, on conforming, shall at once receive an
annuity from his father; and that the chancellor shall compel
the father to discover, upon oath, the full value of his
estate, real and personal, and thereupon make an order for the
support of such conforming child or children, and for securing
such a share of the property, after the father's death, as the
court shall think fit. The fourteenth and fifteenth clauses
secure jointures to Popish wives who shall conform. The
sixteenth prohibits a Papist from teaching, even as assistant
to a Protestant master. The eighteenth gives a salary of £30
per annum to Popish priests who shall conform. The twentieth
provides rewards for the discovery of Popish prelates, priests,
and teachers, according to the following whimsical scale: For
discovering an archbishop, bishop, vicar-general, or other
person, exercising any foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction,
£50; for discovering each regular clergyman, and each secular
clergyman not registered, £20, and for discovering each Popish
schoolmaster or usher, £10. The twenty-first clause empowers
two justices to summon before them any Papist over eighteen
years of age, and interrogate him when and where he last heard
Mass said, and the names of the persons present, and likewise
touching the residence of any Popish priest or schoolmaster;
and if he refuses to give testimony, subjects him to a fine of
£20, or imprisonment for twelve months.

"Several other penal laws were enacted by the same parliament,
of which we can only notice one; it excludes Catholics from the
office of sheriff, and from grand juries, and enacts that, in
trials upon any statute for strengthening the Protestant
interest, the plaintiff might challenge a juror for being a
Papist, which challenge the judge was to allow."--_McGee's
Ireland_, vol. ii. pp. 605, 608.

We may here turn from this repulsive record of tyrannous legislation to inquire into the consequences of it all at the end of the second, and once again at the end of the third century, from the reformation.

George II. came to the throne in 1727, and bequeathed it to his successor in 1760. This generation saw, therefore, the close of the second century of the great Protestant experiment; and if a centennial celebration had been proposed to them in 1751, the report of progress made must have included the following principal facts.

"We have dispossessed the Catholic proprietors of five sixths
of their property during this last century; we have excluded
them from the bench, the bar, and parliament; we have
prohibited them being guardians or teachers of youth; we have
disfranchised and disarmed their whole body, even their nobles
and gentry; yet as far as the people are concerned, we labor in
vain. There has been lately (1747) a census of the kingdom, and
out of 4,300,000 inhabitants, 3,500,000 are returned as
papists. Even in Ulster they are not supplanted; in Leinster
they are three to one; in Munster, seven to one; in Connaught,
twelve to one. Without property, with few priests, and scarce
any bishops, still doth this perverse generation increase and
multiply. What can we do with them more than we have done to
convince and convert them?" To this searching question some
observer more profound than the others seems to have replied,
"Try education!"

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The third centennial celebration of the introduction of the English liturgy into Ireland--the 51st year of the union of the two national churches--would have afforded an excellent opportunity of taking stock, humanly speaking, of the progress made in a hundred years. But no one thought of suggesting an appropriate celebration of the great event, and so, unhappily, the precious opportunity has been lost. We shall endeavor, however, to supply the want of such a comprehensive retrospect; and here, for the first time, we find the facts and figures of Mr. Godkin's book of considerable service to the subject. From the House of Commons debates of the year 1834, Mr. Godkin gives the following sketch of the arguments and illustrations used in support of "the Church Temporalities Act:"

"Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, and Mr. Sheil, while fully
admitting that an establishment tends to promote religion and
to preserve good order, contended that it ought not to be
maintained where it fails to secure these objects, and that it
must always fail when, as in Ireland, the members of the
Established Church are only a minority of the nation, while the
majority, constituting most of the poorer classes, are thrown
upon the voluntary system for the support of their clergy.
Concurring with Paley in his view of a Church
Establishment--that it should be founded upon utility, that it
should communicate religious knowledge to the masses of the
people, that it should not be debased into a state engine or an
instrument of political power--they demanded whether the Church
of Ireland fulfilled these essential conditions of an
establishment. They asked whether its immense revenues had been
employed in preserving and extending the Protestant faith in
Ireland? In the course of something more than a century it was
stated that its revenues had increased sevenfold, and now
amounted to £800,000 a year. Had its efficiency increased in
the same proportion? Had it even succeeded in keeping its own
small flock within the fold? On the contrary, they adduced
statistics to show a lamentable falling off in their numbers.
For example. Lord John Russell said, 'By Tighe's _History of
Kilkenny_, it appears that the number of Protestant families
in 1731 was 1055, but in 1800 they had been reduced to 941. The
total number of Protestants at the former period was 5238,
while the population of the county, which in 1800 was 108,000,
in 1731 was only 42,108 souls. From Stuart's _History of
Armagh_, we find that sixty years ago the Protestants in
that country were as two to one; now they are as one to three.
In 1733, the Roman Catholics in Kerry were twelve to one
Protestant, and now the former are much more numerous than even
that proportion. In Tullamore, in 1731, there were 64
Protestants to 613 Roman Catholics; but according to Mason's
parochial survey, in 1818 the Protestants had diminished to
only five, while the Roman Catholics had augmented to 2455. On
the whole, from the best computation he had seen--and he
believed it was not exaggerated one way or the other--the
entire number of Protestants belonging to the Established
Church in Ireland can hardly be stated higher than 750,000; and
of those 400,000 are resident in the ecclesiastical province of
Armagh.'"--pp. 153.

Now, for the maintenance of this church of 700,000 out of a population of 7,000,000--this church of a tenth of the people--there were then and now are held in mortmain of the best lands of the kingdom, above 600,000 acres. We are told by the poet:

"A time there was ere England's woes began
When every rood of ground sustained its man."

The Irish soil is not so nutritious; still, even there, every acre stands for a soul saved or to be saved, according to "the doctrine and discipline" of the united church. {211} In addition to the lands and their revenues, there are also certain supplementary parliamentary grants not to be despised even by light and worldly-minded persons. Mr. Godkin enumerates, in his introduction, several of these:

"It may be desirable to add some more precise information on
that subject. There was a return made to Parliament, dated 24th
July, 1803, and signed by the then Chief Secretary, Mr.
Wickham, who certified that it was made up from the best
materials in the chief secretary's office, and believed to be
nearly accurate. From this return it appears that the number of
parishes in Ireland then was 2436; of benefices, 1120; of
churches, 1001; and of glebe-houses, 355. This represents the
state of the establishment in the year 1791.

"From 1791 to 1803 the Board of First Fruits granted the sum of
£500, in 88 cases, for the building of churches, making a total
of £44,000. During the same period the Board granted £100 each
for 116 glebe-houses, making a total of £11,600.

"From a parliamentary return, ordered in 1826, it appears that
within the present century the following amounts have been
voted by parliament up to that date: Gifts for building
churches, £224,946; loans for building churches, £286,572;
total, £511,538, for building churches in twenty-five years.

"During the same period gifts were made for glebes, £61,484;
gifts for building glebe-houses, £144,734. Loans were granted
for the same purpose amounting to £222,291, making a total for
glebes and glebe-houses of £428,509. Thus, between the year
1791 and 1826 the Establishment obtained for churches and
glebes the sum of £940,047. The number of glebe-houses in 1826
was increased to 771, and of benefices to 1396. The number of
cures with non-residence was 286." [Footnote 49]

[Footnote 49: The following additional figures (from the
_Union_ to the year 1844) are given on page 96:
For building churches,-- £625,371
For building glebe houses,-- 336,889
For Protestant charity schools,-- 1,105,588
For the Society for
Discountenancing Vice, etc.-- 101,991]

And, on the other hand, the celebrants of the third centenary, if they had thought of holding one, would have learned from Mr. Godkin (himself a resolute Protestant of the Unitarian school, and an ex-reverend) of the alarming increase of popery of late days even in the very capital of English authority.

"Indeed, the progress of the Roman Catholic Church in this city
is astonishing, and has no parallel perhaps in any country in
Europe. In 1820, there were in Dublin only ten parochial
chapels, most of them of an humble character and occupying
obscure positions. There were at the same time seven convents
or 'friaries,' as they were then called, and ten nunneries,
which Mr. Wright described as 'religious asylums where the
females of the Roman Catholic religion find shelter when
deprived of the protection of their relatives by the hand of
Providence.' [Footnote 50] Now the loveliest daughters of some
of the most respectable and the best connected Roman Catholic
families leave their happy homes and take the veil, sometimes
bringing with them ample fortunes--devoting themselves to the
work of education and the relief of the poor as 'Sisters of
Mercy,' 'Sisters of Charity,' etc.

[Footnote 50: Wright's _Dublin_, p. 174.]

"There are now thirty-two churches and chapels in Dublin and
its vicinity. In the diocese the total number of secular clergy
is 287, and of regulars 125; total priests, 412. The number of
nuns is 1150. Besides the Catholic University, with its ample
staff of professors, there are in the diocese six colleges,
seven superior schools for boys, fourteen superior schools for
ladies, twelve monastic primary schools, forty convent schools,
and 200 lay schools, without including those which are under
the National Board of Education. The Christian Brothers have
7000 pupils under their instruction, while the schools
connected with the convents in the diocese contain 15,000.
Besides Maynooth, which is amply endowed by the state, and
contains 500 or 600 students, all designed for the priesthood,
there is the College of All Hallows, at Drumcondra, in which
250 young men are being trained for the foreign mission. The
Roman Catholic charities of the city are varied and numerous.
There are magnificent hospitals, one of which especially--the
Mater Misericordiae--has been not inappropriately called 'the
Palace of the Sick Poor'--numerous orphanages, several widows'
houses, and other refuges for virtuous women; ragged and
industrial schools, night asylums, penitentiaries,
reformatories, institutions for the blind and deaf and dumb;
institutions for relieving the poor at their own houses, and
Christian doctrine fraternities almost innumerable. All these
wonderful organizations of religion and charity are supported
wholly on the voluntary principle, and they have nearly all
sprung into existence within half a century."--p. 94.

{212}

Such is the latest presentation of facts in relation to "Ireland and her churches." Of Mr. Godkin's book (we don't know whether or not he is still called _Reverend_) we can only say that it is very fairly intended, and shows great industry in the accumulation of materials. From some statements in the historical introduction we most decidedly demur; but the valuable collection of facts in the second part, under the head "Inspection of Bishoprics," and the manifest desire to do, and to inculcate the doing of, justice to men of all churches, throughout the whole book, must bring in every true friend of Ireland the author's debtor.

-----

Love's Burden.

"My burden is light"

The Disciple.

"Dear Lord, how canst thou say
'Tis light,
When I behold thee on the way
To Calvary's height,
Fainting and falling 'neath its heavy weight?
Ah! no. For me thy burden is too great."

The Master.

"Good child, thou dost mistake
The burden I would have thee take.
The cruel load
That crushed me down on Calvary's road
Was thine,
Not mine.
What lighter burden can there be
Than that which Love would lay on thee?"

The Disciple.

"Kind Lord, how foolish is my speech!
I mark the truth which thou wouldst teach
To my cold heart.
Love all the burden bears of others' woes,
Beyond its might;
But of its own on them it would impose
Only a part,
And makes that light."

--------

{213}

Florence Athern's Trial.

The farm-house occupied by the Lees, Henry and Margaret, was an old-fashioned, plain brick building. It stood at right angles to a country road which formed a short cut from the turnpike (leading from the city of C---- to Hamilton, the county-town of Butler county, Ohio) to the mills down on the Miami, passing through Mr. Lee's property and by his garden-gate. The house was some fifteen or twenty feet back from the road, and built one room deep three sides, with an old-fashioned garret across the whole of the main building. A wide brick pavement ran from the gate opening into the road past the front of the house to another gate opening into a private lane, leading from the barn and stables, a hundred yards or so back of the house, to a creek some distance in front, which had been dammed up to afford a convenient watering-place for the farm cattle; another brick pavement, not quite so wide, encircled the rear and sides of the house. A broad gravel walk led from the back hall-door to a gate, which, with a hedge, separated the grassy yard from the vegetable-garden, up through that to the barn; another path led from the front-door down between broad grass-plats of grass, studded with evergreens and fruit-trees, over a rustic bridge that spanned a deep ravine, to some stone steps leading down to a spring, which, with the space around and the hill behind, was paved with stone, beneath which the water ran a few feet, then spread out into a creek fringed with willows. On the right of the path from the bridge to some distance behind the spring was a cherry orchard; on the left an open knoll bordered with flower-beds and shrubbery, and occupied in the centre by a rustic summer-house.

In front of the farm-house on the edge of the grass-plats was a row of locust-trees. The parlor was at the end of the house toward the road and to the right of the hall; to the left of that was the dining-room; and on the left of that again the kitchen, not fronting evenly with the rest, but leaving space for a porch running to the end of the house, into the end of which a door opened from the dining-room.

It was Christmas eve, 18--. A lovely, clear moonlight night, rendered brighter by six or eight inches of snow that had fallen the day before, and now lay glistening like diamond-dust in the rays of the full moon. No sound disturbed the silence save the occasional crackling of a branch or twig among the trees, and one or two passers-by on horse-back or in wagon, trudging merrily homeward; for though the railroad had long since made a much shorter route from the city to the mills and Hamilton, Mr. Lee had not retracted the permit to pass through his farm, and the road still remained open.

The parlor windows gave out a brilliant light from the candles burning on the mantle-piece and the Christmas tree, that blazed between them and the wood fire on the old-fashioned hearth. A group was seated round it. {214} Harry Lee, with just a shade of care on his joyous face and a few threads of silver through his thick brown hair, sat opposite the front windows at one side of the hearth; at his side, with her arm resting on his knee, seated on a low ottoman, was a young girl, his niece, Florence Athern; from the lamp on the table a little behind her the soft light fell on the masses of golden hair that covered her well-shaped head, and on the pages of a richly illustrated book, the leaves of which were held open by a hand perfect in its size, shape, and texture; and her face, as she raised it from time to time, in answer to a caressing nod or motion of her uncle, was very lovely, with a tinge of sadness in the light of the soft blue eyes and the curve of the sensitive lips. Opposite these two sat Margaret Lee. Younger than her brother, but old before her time, her sad face was still interesting, though it could not be called handsome. At her side was a younger sister, whose whole attention was given to the three children seated on the floor in the space before the fire, eagerly examining the gifts just taken from the Christmas-trees. Her husband sat on the other side of the table, on which was the lamp, looking over a book of engravings, and trying, from time to time, to restrain the uproar made by the juvenile group. Watching the children while her hands were full of gifts that had fallen to her share, stood an old colored woman, short and fat, and dressed in a neat black dress, while on her head she wore a false front of crinkled black hair and a black lace cap. Her kind old face beamed with enjoyment at the children's pleasure.

The room was furnished handsomely and with taste. One or two portraits and paintings of merit hung on the walls, and over the mantle-piece was a picture of the Nativity, wreathed with holly, and before which two wax candles were burning.

No one heard the step that approached the house; no one saw the wan but handsome face that was thrust close to the panes for a few moments. A tall, well-dressed man stood there looking in, then turned away with a sound like a sob and a sigh and covered his face with his hands. "It is she, my child, my darling; but I am not worthy, O God! I am not worthy!" He did not look in again, but turned and walked down the path leading to the spring, murmuring, "Fifteen years, and so little change in outward things. The same trees, the porch, the door-steps, only that snow-ball and these ailanthuses grown into large bushes, and here and there a flower-bed where there had been grass; but she--ah! how has my darling passed these years that have been so dreary to me?" Just then the kitchen-door opened, flooding the porch floor, the steps, and portion of the walk with light. One of the workmen came out, and the stranger drew himself closely behind a pear-shaped evergreen. "I hope," he thought, "the fellow will not bring a dog with him. He has a bucket in his hand, and may be going to the spring; in that case, I have no escape, for the snow will betray me if I move!" But the man said good-night in a German accent, and, whistling to the Newfoundland which had come out with him, and now stood snuffing the air toward where the stranger was hiding, turned and walked the length of the porch, down the steps at the end, past the pump and smoke-house, out through the gate into the back lane, and so up to the barn. "So," said the stranger, "he has gone to feed the horses for the night, and I am safe." {215} He walked slowly down across the bridge, and stood for a few moments on the topmost step leading to the spring; then went down there, and kneeling on the stones at the edge, scooped up some water in his hand and drank; then rising and brushing the snow off his clothes, he retraced his steps and once more gazed in at the parlor window. It happened that the old colored woman had just picked up the youngest child in her arms, and, followed by the others, was moving toward the door, her face turned full to the window, when she made an exclamation and nearly dropped the child she held. "Why, Tamar," exclaimed Miss Lee, "what's the matter?" "Oh! nothin'," replied the woman, "spec this colored pusson gettin' nervus, dat's all. Come long, chicks, to roost." And she left the room without affording a chance to the group round the fire to see her face, which bore a frightened look. But the children, busy with their happy prattle, did not notice it, neither did the nurse who was waiting for them. As soon as she had seen them snug in their beds, with stockings duly hung, and night prayers said, she started to return to the kitchen. Her mistress heard her, and came into the hall to speak to her, preceding her through the dining-room and across the space on the porch between the dining-room and kitchen doors, much to her satisfaction, to the latter department, to make some necessary arrangements for breakfast. On Miss Lee's return to the parlor, a game of whist was proposed, in which the four elders joined, leaving Florence to the quiet enjoyment of her book. After a rubber of three games, a motion to retire was made by the sisters; and Henry Lee, turning to Florence, said, "Well, Puss, is it not time to give up your book? Half-past eleven, my pet," (looking at his watch,) "and we must be up early, you know, to be ready for church, and dinner at Uncle Joe's to-morrow."

At last the brother and sister were left alone, and stood looking at one another for a few moments; then Mr. Lee spoke: "It must be done to-morrow. Who shall do it--you or I?"

"I think I had better, Harry dear. Women can deal better with women in such a time, although I know your tender, loving heart, and do not doubt it."