Chapter IX (4)

A nature so profound, so true, and so enlightened was constituted for friendship, and Emily Linder served as a model in this regard. She possessed those two qualities by which it is best retained--candor and disinterestedness. What she was capable of as to the latter quality has already been sufficiently shown. An open frankness was the groundwork of her character. She possessed a kind but impartial judgment, and in the right place she knew how to assert it. The same sincerity was expected of others, and nothing with her outweighed truthfulness. Whoever offended in this point came to conclusions with her speedily and once for all. A half-and-half sincerity or prevarication could force even her dovelike mildness to resentment. When called to pass judgment upon the work of a friendly artist, there arose a noble contest between frankness and kindness. Her opinions were always to the point, and by the soundness of her judgment she gave food for reflection. But in cases of a change of opinion after more mature consideration, she was quick to acknowledge herself at fault. A single incident may illustrate this. On occasion, of a defence, by an artist, of a celebrated master, to one of whose works she had taken exceptions, she replied:

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"My first judgment, then, was unquestionably hasty. But among
friends I shall never like that degree of caution always
insisted upon which admits of no quick and impulsive word; for
thus would all open-heartedness be repressed; a thing which no
amount of shrewdness or cool deliberation could ever replace. I
beg for myself the privilege therefore, hereafter, just as
often, and perhaps just as hastily, to express my opinion."

She reposed the same confidence in the judgment of others. All the more weighty art matters about which she concerned herself were submitted to the counsel and decision of intelligent friends of art. She took the most lively interest, also, in every important event or crisis in the families of these friends. Her thoughtful consideration loved to express itself in pleasant souvenirs and playful surprises of gifts; and her fidelity often extended even to the departed. Many a friend, after having passed to a long home, was endowed with a memorial Mass which she established for the repose of his soul. The Klee and Möhler memorial, a composition of Steinle, copies of which she caused at her own expense to be made, she intended (an intention, indeed, never realized) as an aid to the establishment of a Klee and Möhler fund; and a lasting monument it would have proved to the memory of these two noble men. For any expression of fidelity toward herself she was deeply grateful; particularly in her more advanced years, after she became more and more aware how rare a thing is disinterested attachment in this age of unprincipled selfishness. "Any instance of loyal attachment," said she, "moves me the more deeply in these times, when truly it is no fashionable virtue."

A special object of her loving thoughtfulness was her beloved Assisi, the little convent of the German sisters of St. Francis. In times of great distress, particularly during the ravages of the Revolution, it was no small consolation and delight to receive thence, after a long interval, reassuring intelligence. Particularly was this the case during the Mazzini terrorism of 1849. In the autumn of this year, she announced to a friend, with something like motherly pride: "I have received tidings lately from our German nuns at Assisi. Appalling things have happened at Rome, and indications of the same have threatened elsewhere, even at Assisi. But the good women bravely set at naught all intimidation and threat, and have come out entirely unharmed. Yes, even the gangs themselves are reported to have said: One cannot get the better of these Germans, they pray too much. May we all of us lay hands upon the same trusty weapon!" The burgher-maiden whom she took with her as candidate to Assisi on her journey to Rome in 1829, has already been, for the last twenty-four years, Superior of the German convent; it so chanced that she attained to this position the very year that Emily Linder became a Catholic. During that time, more than twenty Bavarian maidens followed her to Assisi. If the gratitude of happy people, who praise God daily that they have found "the true ark of peace," ever proved a blessing, this blessing accrued, in rich measure, to the artist from Assisi. Her name is entered in the memorial book of the convent, and, so long as this spiritual order exists, she will live there as their "best benefactress, and as their dear, good mother in Christ." Thus is she spoken of in the numerous and touching letters of the pious sisters.

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Seldom has a human being made a more magnanimous use of a large income than the departed Emily Linder. Her benevolence was on a grand scale. Her whole nature was generosity itself; but that which at first was but natural good will to all became afterward, by the pious spirit which pervaded her, an element of her religious worship. She considered herself but as the almoner of the riches God had entrusted to her. Her goodness was of that serene character which never showed aught of impatience toward those begging or initiating charities. She gave to both with equal friendliness. She contributed lavishly to public institutions for the sick and suffering. And yet what she gave to the individual poor, and such special families as were commended to her, must also have been a very considerable sum. In these simpler distributions of charity she showed a marked delicacy. The modest poor who came to her house she never allowed to be waited on by her servants, but administered to their wants herself. In some instances she bore her gifts on certain specified days to their dwellings; and in these cases she was just as systematic, and as punctual to the day and the hour, as in all things else. Christmas in her house was a festival of the poor. The lines of Clemens Brentano in his collection of sacred poems, entitled _To the Benefactress, on the Occasion of her Presentation to the Poor_, refer to this incident. To what extent and in what instances she served as unknown guardian angel, her intimate friends rather guessed at than knew. The character of her benevolence, generally, was piously-noiseless and still. Through hidden channels she often reached far in the distance, sustaining and rescuing (both physically and spiritually) where the need was very urgent. Often, thus, a gift flowed forth from her and sped like a sunbeam into some languishing heart. Many an obstacle has she removed from the path of a struggling child of humanity; into many a stout but wounded spirit has she infused new life and energy. Clemens Brentano termed this a "heavenly little piece of strategy."

This noiseless activity in art and benevolence did not withdraw her attention from what was going on outside, and although she never stepped beyond the natural boundaries of her position, and was of too quiet a nature to mingle generally in the strife of parties, she nevertheless, to the last year of her life, maintained a lively interest in all the great church and political questions of the day. The prodigious changes which took place in the world during the fourth period of her life, what heart would not have been profoundly stirred by them? But, however painful to her the prevailing Machiavelism of the age, the insanity of the revolutionary leaders, the pitiable confusion of the people, and the undermining of all conservative bulwarks in state and society, courage and hope still maintained the upper hand. The pressure upon the church and the Pope filled her perhaps with concern, but did not dismay her. She had the right standard, and the consolation which it brought, in judging of the destinies of the nations. When the revolutionary storms of 1848 and 1849 burst upon them and swept over Germany and Italy, she remarked: "The experience of all history, and the consolation it imparts, is just this: God allows men their way to a certain point, and where the end seems just achieved. But then is inscribed with an almighty hand, the '_Thus far_.' And though his church be shaken, this is far better for us than to be reposing upon cushions of ease."

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Her confidence was similarly undisturbed during the succeeding momentous years. During her attendance upon the drama of _The Passion_, at Oberammergau, in the year 1860, she was occupied with reflections upon the stupendous drama of passion of our own times. "There is something so fearfully grand in the present events of the world," she wrote to her friend in Frankfort, "that a certain elevation fills the soul, raising one above this little life of ours upon earth. The image in our mind of the holy father is already so spiritualized that it begins to be invested with the sanctity of the martyr. How many may have to follow in his martyr footsteps? Shall we live to see the victory? At my time of life, no; and yet a secret joy often possesses me at the thought of this glorious era. But I say with you, the great task for us all is to gain heaven. God vouchsafe this!" The latest period of German distress she lived through with the intensest sympathy. She accepted the appalling catastrophe as a severe trial, even to her own personal feelings and hopes, and recognized in this calamity the initiation of a still greater. "For me," she wrote to the same friend, "the hope of any kind of a future is now past. I must subject my heart to no more disappointment; but the mercy of God for the individual is still attainable and great; to every one accessible and possible. You belong, of course, to the younger generation, and can still dream of a sunrise for our German fatherland. The result of the present calamity, swiftly as it may seem to be plunging us into irremediable ruin, will, nevertheless, never go the length intended by the Prince of Evil. God stands above him; that is certain. The future will be a different one; a very different one, from that which we could ever surmise or guess, even the future of the church. And this future will be God's. Let that content us."

Her life was a bright contrast to the demoralization, the unrest, the arrogant selfishness of our age. She presented to those among whom she lived the picture of a self-sustained, unselfish, reposeful soul. Humility, trust in God, and compassion, this was the fundamental harmony of her daily life. Old age, which often, indeed, smooths away from the good all little imperfections and blemishes of character, rendered her still more considerate, patient, and gentle. Her love of simplicity was as great as were her means. In her own household, well systemized, careful economy; outside of this, severe, almost noticeable plainness. But to her applied the line of the poet:

"A blessing she could see in lowliness to be."

While denying herself, she gave with lavish hand to poverty and distress, to art and to the church. She moved with measured, dignified pace; but a certain religious harmony of action imparted to her being and doing an indescribable grace, which is always the accompaniment of inward purity, and a religion based upon humility.

The Abbé Haneberg, in his beautiful tribute at her grave, remarked, "She seemed, during the last twenty years of her life, to emulate the most pious of her friends and daughters of Assisi, and to aim even to outdo them, so systematic and untiring was her service to God." Of this, however, her friends knew but little. How much she thus quietly accomplished was never fully known until after her death. It will suffice here to state that in the year 1851 she informed herself, through the Superior at Assisi, of their daily regulations, and the usual succession of religious exercises. Her everyday life was identified with the daily life of the church. {236} She appreciated the significant beauty and expressive symbolism of churchly ordinances, and in close observance joined in their celebration. To this end, she followed the _Ordo_ of her diocese, and her favorite prayer-book was the Missal. Her knowledge of languages stood her in good stead here; for, in addition to the modern languages, she had also learned Latin, and had become sufficiently familiar with it to follow intelligently the language of the church. Cardinal Diepenbrock, in 1850, wrote to her of a lady who was occupying herself with the Latin, or church, language; "A worthy study," he remarked. "Have you not also begun it? It strikes me that Clemens was saying something about it. But perhaps you were able to get no farther than the _mensa_; the _mensa Domini_ would naturally be enough for you." But she went farther than this. In her manuscripts were found Latin exercises, written under the guidance of the worthy old Bröber. One room of her spacious residence was arranged as a chapel, in which was the superb altar-piece by Eberhard, "The Triumph of the Church." This chapel was favored by the ordinariat with a Mass licence. On the anniversary of her union with the church she was accustomed to receive holy communion here; and here the departed Bishop Valentin, of Regensburg, once celebrated Mass. Here, also, she devoted daily a certain time to meditation and the perusal of the Holy Scriptures. Her favorite place of devotion, however, was the little chapel of the ducal hospital which she frequented twice a day; early in the morning, and again at evening. She had for years a quiet little place in the organ gallery where, day by day, in all weather, and at all seasons of the year, she consecrated a couple of hours to prayer.

As the years flew by, she withdrew herself more and more from the world, and sought to be "hid in God." The departure to their final home of so many friends, together with other events, served as slight admonitions, which by her thoughtful heart were not unheeded. She recognized in this matter fresh cause of gratitude to God, who was dealing so tenderly with her to the very end. "I consider it," she wrote, "a special favor of the Lord that he grants me so long a preparation for my final hour." Years previously, she had put herself in Christian readiness for her last journey, and only hoped that it might prove "a good death hour." With customary precision, she had ordered all her temporal affairs. She had even made provision as to her interment, and the final burial service. Her arrangements for the latter of these, written in a bold and beautiful hand, were dated the 7th of October, 1865. On the festival of the Epiphany, 1867, she was for the last time in her favorite little chapel of the ducal hospital. Only a few weeks previously, she had begun to feel ill, and now symptoms of dropsy suddenly developed themselves. The invalid recognized her condition with Christian resignation, but did not yet relinquish hope of a recovery. "The task now is, to resign myself and to be patient. God help me to this," she wrote at the close of January. It was her last letter. Her friend Apollonia hastened from Regensburg, and she, who, twenty-three years before, had stood at her side when received into the church, was now to stand at her death-bed. The invalid requested that her friend should remain with her one week; and exactly at the close of the week she died. During her illness she found special consolation in the house-altar, where, to her great spiritual comfort, her worthy confessor repeatedly celebrated mass. {237} From this Eberhard altar, where she first made profession of Catholic faith and where she yearly commemorated that happy event, she now received the viaticum and extreme unction. In conformity with her wish, on the festival of St. Apollonia mass was again celebrated in her little chapel. It was her last mass, and the final union of the two friends in holy sacrament. She seemed now to rejoice in her approaching dissolution as though it were a return home. One morning as her priest entered, she stretched out her arms and exclaimed, "May I--oh! may I go home?" "Yes, the guardian angel accompanies you, he guides you thither," was the reply. Thereupon she was silent, remained in deep meditation, and spoke but little after. Yet she seemed to participate in all that transpired; if prayer were uttered, she prayed also; to all who drew near she gave a friendly glance, but, for the most part, remained absorbed and still.

On the day preceding her death, she summoned all her strength, and with difficult effort gave expression to several wishes, the last of her earthly life. She recalled an admirable artist, whom she held in high personal esteem, from whom she had long desired a picture as an addition to her collection. She directed a very considerable sum to be sent to him for a historical picture, which was now to be painted for the museum at Bale. The future of her poor, also, such as had been accustomed to receive little charities, engaged her thoughts; she desired that these charities should be continued until they had found other benefactors. Her last words were in allusion to Jerusalem. She bethought herself of the "Watchers at the Holy Sepulchre," (of the order of St. Francis,) and also of the "Zion Society," to both of which she had made yearly contributions, and which she now similarly remembered. Thus had her life its characteristic close. Her last mental activity was exercised in works of charity, of art, and of religion. With a glance at Jerusalem and the sepulchre of her Saviour, she now went forward toward the new Jerusalem. Her end was the falling asleep of a child. In the early morning of the 12th of February, 1867, without a single death-struggle, she sank into slumber--quietly, painlessly, peacefully.

A gentleman, intimately befriended with her, remarked, "After her death, I had occasion to observe the intense grief of those who had been recipients of her bounty, and then first became aware what a truly royal munificence had been hers, which all were ignorant of, save God and the poor." Such were the tears that followed her, together with those countless others, which during her life she had already dried.

On the afternoon of the 14th of February a long funeral procession, composed of the best Catholic society of Munich, and throngs of the poor, together with the superintendent of public charities, (then represented by the mayor of the city,) moved from the pleasant mansion on the corner of Carl street toward the cemetery, to render their last homage to this noble friend of art and the poor. The Abbé Haneberg, an old friend of hers, pronounced the benediction of the church over her grave, which was located not far from the grave of Möhler. {238} In her written instructions, Emily Linder desired only a simple stone cross above her, the pedestal of the cross bearing the inscription:

The slumberer, here, confides in the mercy of God:

the simplest, but in its simplicity, the most touching testimony to a being whose interior life was all humility and trust in God, and whose exterior activity had been the purest mercy itself. To her might be applied a verse of the beautiful requiem addressed by Brentano to another departed friend:

"He, for whom our willing gifts
On the needy we confer,
From his eight beatitudes
Singled Mercy out for her."

The whole spirit which accompanied her through a life of seventy years still lived on in her bequests. The half of her large fortune she left to benevolent and charitable objects; chiefly to schools and hospitals. True Swiss that she was, she was specially mindful of her native city. The largest amount donated--200,000 florins--was bequeathed to the Bishop of Bale, for the benefit of his diocese. Her art-treasures were, with few exceptions, incorporated with the museum of Bale, to whose first establishment she had originally contributed no small amount, and which, with true patrician feeling, lavishly endowed during her life.

In these bequests to art and to the church, Emily Linder reared for herself a monument which will keep her in blessed remembrance; and this monument is only the last milestone of record on the pathway of a life thickly studded with works of charity. Truly a significant, steadfast existence, harmonious from its commencement to its very close.

In days of depression and perplexity would we gaze upon a portrait of true humanity, ennobled and enlightened by Christianity, (a portrait we might well present as a study to the young,) we may point with quiet confidence to the departed Emily Linder, and exclaim: Behold here a character noble, unselfish, and complete--a nature of rare purity and depth--a transparent and beautiful spirit, who verified her faith by her love.

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The Irish Church Act Of 1869.

"They" (the Anglican ministers of Ireland) "will not fleece
the sheep they cannot feed, and spend the spoils of a people
conquered, not won.--
"_London Times_, March 4th, 1869.

The measure for the disestablishment and disendowment of the English Church in Ireland, recently introduced by the English premier into the British Parliament, is one of the most startling and boldest steps which has yet been taken by that body to rectify the criminal blunders of three hundred years of mistaken legislation. Mr. Gladstone, in moving the first reading of the act, in a very long speech, evidently prepared with great care, while admitting it to be "the most grave and arduous work of legislature that ever has been laid before the House of Commons," felt the necessity of cautiously and almost apologetically stating the case and explaining the views of those with whom he acted. Mr. Disraeli, the leader of the opposition, while agreeing with his distinguished successor in office in nothing else, was forced to allow the scheme to be "one of the most gigantic that had ever been brought before the house"--an opinion which, judging from the temper of all parties inside and outside of parliament, appears to be unanimously entertained.

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The friends of the act are numerous in England as well as in Ireland, embracing all the Catholic population and a very large portion of dissenting Protestants of more advanced and liberal views in both countries. The Catholics of Ireland see in it the destruction of that infamous system which has not only robbed them of their altars and the graves of their ancestors, but compelled them to support in idleness and luxury what even Disraeli himself long since denounced as "an alien church." Though the partial restitution contemplated at this late day by this act bears no corresponding comparison with the magnitude of the evils borne, it is still restitution, and a most significant and, in a sense, abject admission of the utter failure of the experiment of the English government to force Protestantism on an unwilling people. The successful passage of the act will also necessitate the expenditure of large sums of money for purely charitable purposes, and what, in a national sense, is of more importance, it will remove one of the most salient and fruitful causes of Irish discontent. But it is in England that the question assumes the most portentous magnitude; for it has become apparent to every one there that the fall of the Irish Establishment is but the first act in the drama of the total severance of church and state in the entire British empire. The entering wedge well driven home in Ireland, the results in other parts of the United Kingdom become merely a matter of time. Sir John Grey, one of the strongest supporters of Mr. Gladstone's bill, himself a Protestant, hints at this in an article in a late number of his paper, the Dublin _Freeman's Journal_, in which he says: "He (Gladstone) will soon have powerful auxiliaries in the English curates, and they have more influence in forming public opinion in England than the bench of bishops and the ten thousand incumbents. The Irish curates will be in Mr. Gladstone's favor, and if ever disestablishment should be the lot of England--_and he would be a rash politician who would negative such a proposition_--the English curates would have in Mr. Gladstone's Irish measure a precedent for an equal measure of justice to themselves."

The opposition to the act comes in the first place from the whole body of Anglican bishops and clergymen in Ireland, if we except the Bishop of Down and a few badly paid curates who would benefit by its passage. The Orangemen, that most pestiferous of all social and political scourges, of course sustain their reverend friends, and their loyalty on this occasion has culminated in a remonstrance signed, it is said, by over two thousand noblemen and landed "gentry." Hostility to the policy foreshadowed by Mr. Gladstone was very active and virulent in England during the late elections, and is now exhibited in the Commons by a large and active tory minority. The English ecclesiastics have also taken up the cry with equal earnestness and scarcely less vehemence. At the last sitting of the New Convocation of Canterbury in London, an address to the queen in opposition to the provisions of the act was proposed and carried by the upper house, and upon being sent down to the lower house for adoption, the following and similar amendments were enthusiastically added: {240} "Above all," say those reverend gentlemen, "we are constrained by our sense of duty to your majesty and to the Reformed Church of England and Ireland, humbly to represent to your majesty that disestablishment of the church in Ireland cannot be had without repudiation, on the part of the nation, of the necessity and value of the Reformation." This language is explicit and forcible enough, but the Synod of both Houses of Convocation of the Province of York, held on the same day, goes a little farther. "This convocation," they affirm, "view with sorrow and alarm the proposed attempt to disestablish and disendow the Irish branch of the United Church of England and Ireland, as seriously affecting the interests of the church in that part of the British dominions; as a fatal encroachment on the prerogatives of the crown; as unsettling the constitution of church and state guaranteed by engagements entered into by acts of union, and confirmed to members of the church by the solemn sanction of the coronation oath."

That part of the coronation oath prescribed by the first William and Mary, chapter sixth, to which allusion is here made and which is the straw that the drowning Anglicans are endeavoring to grasp, reads as follows: "_Question:_ Will you, to the utmost of your power, maintain the laws of God, the profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? And will you preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this realm, and to the churches committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them or any of them? _King and Queen_: All this I promise to do, (king and queen lay hands on the holy Gospel, saying,) so help me God." The condition of this solemn oath would at first sight appear to preclude the queen from signing the act, were we not assured by the confident tone, and even the express words, of Mr. Gladstone that her majesty's views were entirely in accord with those of her first minister, and in fact, that she had already placed in the hands of parliament her right of ecclesiastical appointments in Ireland.

The history of the Irish Church Establishment, now happily about to disappear for ever, is so familiar to most intelligent readers that it requires but a passing notice. Since its birth at a so-called Irish parliament, summoned by Lord Grey in 1536, down to the present time, so unjust have been its proceedings, so rapacious its ministers, and so oppressive its exactions of an ill-governed and neglected people, with whom it never had the least sympathy, that Christendom has stood aghast in mingled wonder and disgust. Not only were the Catholics of Ireland despoiled of their churches, abbeys, and convents, the monuments of piety and learning and the dispensaries of Christian charity, reared by the hands of benevolent ancestors for over a thousand years, but the very humblest abodes of worship were handed over to a foreign clergy, preaching a new religion at the point of the sword, ignorant of the very language of the country, and by birth and training bitterly hostile to every interest, spiritual and temporal, of the people they were sent to teach. Nor was this all. The despoiled masses were compelled to pay, and still pay, for the support of this "alien" church a tithe on every foot of cultivated land in the kingdom, and upon the produce and stock derived from or raised on the same. {241} The amount of property thus filched from the overburdened farmers and peasantry of Ireland under color of law, and the additional _annual revenue_ wrung from that half-famished nation, is thus estimated by no less an authority than the English premier: [Footnote 51]

[Footnote 51: This, of course, is but a very small portion
indeed of the property taken from the Catholic Church in
Ireland under Henry VIII. and succeeding monarchs. Most of
the abbey lands were first vested in the crown and then
granted to courtiers and others at a nominal rent as the
reward of their apostasy. Many of the wealthiest families in
Ireland derive their titles to their lands from those acts of
spoliation.]

"The commissioners appointed in 1868 estimated the annual value
at £616,000, but, with all respect for their long labors, he
must differ from them, for they had placed it too low; for one
of their body, in a subsequent publication, estimates it at
£835,000, but for the present purpose he would take it at
£700,000. The capitalized amount was as follows:

Tithe rent charge, £9,000,000
Land, £6,250,000
Other property in money, etc., £750,000
Total, £16,000,000

The result is that the whole value of the ecclesiastical
property of Ireland, reduced and cut down first of all by the
almost unbounded waste of life tenants, and secondly by the
wisdom or unwisdom of well-intentioned parliaments--the
remaining value is no less than £16,000,000 of money,
considerably more than on a former occasion I ventured to
estimate, but then my means of information were smaller than
they now are."

From the contemplation of past injustice we can now turn with a sense of relief to the provisions of the act itself, and which, under such peculiar circumstances, are perhaps as wisely and judiciously framed as can be expected. On its passage it may be slightly altered in some of its minor details, but there is little room for doubt that the act substantially as first presented will become law.

And first, those parts of the Acts of Union of the Irish and English parliaments, passed at the beginning of this century, permitting certain Irish bishops to sit _ex officio_ as lords spiritual in the British House of Peers, and giving to the decrees, orders, and judgments of certain ecclesiastical courts in Ireland the force and authority of law in that part of the realm, are unconditionally repealed. The thirteenth section of the act prescribes: "On the 1st day of January, 1871, every ecclesiastical corporation in Ireland, whether sole or aggregate; every cathedral corporation in Ireland as defined by this act shall be dissolved, and on and after that day no archbishop or bishop of the said church shall be summoned to or be qualified to sit in the House of Lords."

Thus we see that Irish Anglican bishops will no longer be considered worthy to sit beside their right reverend brethren of England on the benches of that respectable but rather sleepy conclave known as the House of Lords, and that the Protestant Church in Ireland will be resolved into a mere voluntary body consisting of clerics and laity, whose regulations will only affect themselves as matters of mutual contract, but who will have no legal jurisdiction nor recognition except such as may be conferred by subsequent acts of parliament on local corporations. When we reflect that the prelates thus so unceremoniously thrust out of the Lords, and who with their _confrères_ are stripped of all extrajudicial authority, were, and still are, the most active promoters of the Act of Union and the fiercest opponents of its repeal, we cannot help admiring the poetic justice which now offers the bitter draught to their lips. Like Macbeth, they but taught "bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor."

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The act next provides for the appointment of a commission which shall exist for ten years from the commencement of its operations, and be clothed with full power to reduce to its possession all the property, lands, tenements, and interests of or now belonging to the Established Church of Ireland, and to reconvey, sell, or dispose of the same according to the provisions of the act, after the 1st day of January, 1871. The church-buildings now in use by the Established Church will be handed over, with all their rights, to the "governing body" of the particular church under the voluntary system of organization; those not in general use or so dilapidated as to be incapable of repair, being from their antiquity or the beauty of their architecture, like St. Patrick's, Dublin, to the number of twelve, will be transferred by the commissioner to the care of the Board of Public Works, with an adequate appropriation in money for their proper care and preservation. Against this latter arrangement we entirely and emphatically protest. St. Patrick's Cathedral at least, if not every one of those twelve churches which the Anglicans have neither the numbers to decently fill nor the generosity to keep in repair, instead of being put in care of poor-law commissioners or any other secular body, should be handed over to the Catholics of the country, the real owners and spiritual heirs of their founders. This, after all, would be nothing more than an act of tardy justice, and a reproof not only to the sacrileges committed in them by the "Reformers" of the sixteenth century, but to Anglican poverty and niggardliness in the nineteenth century. In the hands of the poor-law commissions, who have shown little reverence and less antiquarian lore, those magnificent temples will become simply objects of wonder to the passing tourist; surrounded by all the artistic and beautiful graces of our holy faith, they would be living, breathing evidences, as it were, of the unswerving devotion to and the glorious rejuvenation of that faith in the Island of Saints. If not too late, we wish to see this portion of the act changed; if this cannot be done, we wish to see the Catholic and the liberal members of parliament move in the matter by the means of subsequent legislation.

See and glebe houses and their curtilages and gardens vested in the commissioners may be sold to the governing body of any church to which they are attached, for a sum equal to twelve times the annual value of the house and land so conveyed, payment to be made in installments within twenty-two and a quarter years. Upon application from the same or a similar governing body, the commissioners may sell, in the case of a see house, thirty acres, and of any other ecclesiastical residence, ten acres, contiguous land, for such sum as may be agreed upon by arbitration. It is further provided that, whenever any church or church sites vest in the commissioners, not subject to the above conditions, they shall dispose of the same by public sale at their discretion. This latter clause, though simple in its terms and apparently unimportant, constitutes in reality one of the most interesting features in the act. Knowing as we do the intense devotion of the Irish Catholics for the crumbling ruins of the old churches built by their brave and zealous ancestors, where in the olden time walked so many holy men now with the saints in heaven, and the cold indifference or ignorance of the Anglican clergy in relation to such sanctified places, we can confidently predict that not many years will elapse ere those precious memorials of the past will be in the possession of the people who have so watched in silence and in tears their desecration by the followers of the religion of Henry and Elizabeth. {243} It will also be remarked in this part of the act the constant recurrence of the term "governing body," so expressive of the total reduction of the once proud Church of England in Ireland as by "law established" to the same condition as that occupied by mere Methodists and Presbyterians.

Graveyards, a subject scarcely less attractive than churches, is next dealt with in this elaborate act. When a church having a burial ground attached to it is vested in the commissioners, and the church-building is subsequently reinvested in the "governing body," the burial ground will be included in the order conveying the same; otherwise the burial grounds will be transferred to the poor-law guardians within whose district the same may be situated, to be used by them in a manner similar to those already taken or purchased by such guardians. This clause when carried out will change many graveyards now exclusively controlled by Protestants, but which in reality are and formerly were the property of Catholics, into places of public burial, and, _a fortiori_, Catholic.

Having disposed of the material interests and franchises of the Irish Church, we next come to the most important part (only, however, as far as the parties immediately affected are concerned) of the act, though the framers, evidently with a keen eye to the pockets of the disestablished, place it among the first in general interest. It appears under the unostentatious sub-title of "Compensation to persons deprived of Income." It provides that, on and after the 1st of January, 1871, the commissioners, having in the mean time ascertained the amount of annual income of the holder of any archbishopric, bishopric, benefice, or cathedral preferment, curacy, etc., shall pay to the holder of the same an annuity equal in amount to such income for life, or as long as such incumbent continues to perform the duties of such office; or such incumbent may commute his annuity in return for a certain payment in bulk, upon his own application and at the discretion of the commission. For these purposes the sum of about £5,000,000, or twenty-five millions of dollars, will be required to be paid out of the assets in the hands of the commissioners. This amount divided between two thousand ecclesiastics would give an average of twelve thousand five hundred dollars for each, but as that number includes the curates, the most numerous and worst paid of the Anglican clergymen, the archbishops and other high dignitaries will find themselves in receipt of enormous revenues during the term of their natural lives. Then there are other persons who are to become pensioners on the public bounty to the amount of four million five hundred thousand dollars; such as parish clerks, sextons, officers of cathedrals and ecclesiastical courts, parochial school-masters, organists, and all that sanctimonious and useless tribe whose mock gravity and unbending advocacy of church and state so frequently proved a source of amusement and derision to their less orthodox and perhaps less mercenary neighbors. With a sigh we part with that grave, shabby-genteel link between the Protestant curate and the seldom-met poor pauper of the Anglican Church, well remembering in our early boyhood with what awe we gazed upon their long, sallow visages as they stalked by meditatively, clothed in all the little brief authority of quasi-clerical life. {244} Thirty millions of dollars may be considered a large sum with which to pension off the clergy and their followers of a church which does not count three quarters of a million of souls, of all degrees, sexes, and ages; but it will be money well spent if it heep [helps?] to eradicate an evil which has so long afflicted a patient people. [Footnote 52]

[Footnote 52: A late number of _The Catholic Opinion_
(London) gives us the following statistics: There are, it is
said 700,000 Anglicans in Ireland and 36,000,000 Catholics in
France; that is, 51 times as many Catholics in France as
Anglicans in Ireland. The budget therefore of Catholic
worship in France should be 51 times £800,000, or
£40,800,000, to write which is enough to show the monstrous
iniquity of which Ireland has been the victim. The
Presbyterians, numbering 523,291 persons, receive a _regium
donum_ for their ministers amounting to £40,547, and a
subsidy of £2050 for their theological college at Belfast,
making a total of £42,597. Protestant dissenters have no
endowment, nor yet Catholics, excepting a subsidy to the
college at Maynooth of £26,360. Thus the Anglican
Establishment in Ireland has a revenue of about £800,000 for
700,000 persons, or about £1 3s. per head. The Presbyterians
receive from the government £42,597 for 523,291 persons, or
about 1s. 7 1/2d. per head. Catholics, £26,360 for 4,505,265
persons, that is, LESS THAN ONE PENNY HALFPENNY per head.

According to the last census, that of 1861, there were in
Ireland:

Per Cent of the
whole Population.

4,505,265 Catholics, that is, 77.7
693,357 members of the Established Church, 11.9
523,291 Presbyterians, 9.0
76,661 Protestant dissenters, 1.2
393 Jews, 0.0
5,798,967 Total 100.0]

The holders of advowsons, or the right to appoint to church livings--with the exception of the queen, corporations sole and aggregate dissolved by the act, and trustees, officers, and persons acting in a public capacity--are entitled to certain compensation to be ascertained by arbitration; one million five hundred thousand dollars being allowed for the liquidation of this description of claims. As no Catholic can exercise this right, even though the owner of the land in fee from which the right to appoint arises, it follows that whatever compensation is made will go to Protestants only. It would seem to any person other than an Anglican landlord that this clause is not only not in harmony with the equitable spirit of the body of the act, but that it is manifestly unjust. Advowsons are as much a relic of ancient feudal barbarism as any that were abolished by law under the commonwealth or Charles II., and should have been swept away when all the other devices for defrauding the industrious poor were abolished centuries ago. We waive altogether the question of their simoniacal character; for a custom so convenient for the land-holder and so profitable for younger sons of aristocratic families would hardly be condemned on that account by those who so largely profit by it. In addition to all the money which the commissioners are to reimburse as above mentioned, we find that upon the property of the Irish Church there is a building debt of some one million and a quarter dollars for the repair of churches, glebes, etc., which the commissioners are instructed to pay.

Thus we see that the sum of nearly thirty-two millions of dollars has been set aside as an inducement to the loosening of the grip of a very small and mercenary faction on the public purse ostensibly, but in reality on the very vitals of the industrial interests of the country. Let us now see what corresponding compensation has been made for the Catholics and dissenters.

It is well known that for over a century the Presbyterians of Ireland have been annually in the receipt of a limited sum of money called the _regium donum_. At first, as the term indicates, this was simply a gift from the crown, but of late years it has been regularly voted by parliament, and last year it amounted to £45,000. This grant is to be withdrawn; and as an equivalent, a sum of about four millions of dollars is to be capitalized by the commissioners, the annual interest of which will be nearly equal to the present donation. In addition to this, seventy-five thousand dollars are to be bestowed on the Presbyterian college of Belfast.

{245}

But the Catholics, who, notwithstanding the vast emigration of the last twenty-five years, form three fourths of the entire population, fare even worse than their dissenting brethren. The paltry grant of £26,000 to Maynooth College is to cease, and a sum equal to less than a half of that appropriated to the Presbyterians is to be substituted, the interest only of which will be devoted to the support of that distinguished nursery of Catholic learning. The building debt of some twenty thousand pounds which the college owes to the Board of Public Works is to be paid off by the commissioners; but, apart from this trifling sum, the Catholics of Ireland gain no direct material advantage from the enforcement of the new act; and it is to be hoped that, when time confirms the sagacity of the statesmen who have suggested the introduction of the present reform, and has done full justice to the moral courage of the men who have proposed it to the imperial parliament, the self-denial and disinterestedness of the Irish Catholic hierarchy, clergy, and people will be duly appreciated. However little flattering such unequal distribution of funds may be to the rightful claims of Catholics, we presume they will not think it worth their while to object to it. Many of them, we are disposed to think, would be willing to dispense altogether with state aid, if the rule were made general as far as regards Protestant sects. The Catholic Church in Ireland has never been desirous of leaning for support on the arm of the British government, and the experience of its members at home and in this country has amply proved that the church is always more prosperous and more powerful for good in inverse proportion to its reliance on the secular arm.

There is no provision made for Trinity college, that being left for future legislation, with an intimation from the premier that, while its interests will be properly attended to, it shall be deprived of its exclusively sectarian character. This is well. Trinity was endowed with many thousand broad acres violently taken from the rightful owners, the Irish chiefs, by Elizabeth, which must now yield an enormous revenue. It has been in times past, to a great extent, the nursery of enlightened intolerance and philosophic indifference; but when we recall the names of Swift and Mollineux, Grattan, Curran, the Emmets, Petrie, and McCullough, and many other illustrious friends of Ireland, who studied in its venerable halls, and there partially developed the germs of that keen wit, fiery eloquence, and scientific lore which graced a nation even in its darkest hour of humiliation, we can forgive their old _alma mater_ a great many backslidings. Trinity should be allowed to retain her revenues, and when her wide gates are thrown open for the reception alike of the Catholic, the Anglican, and the Dissenter, her sphere of usefulness will not only be enlarged, but doubly increased by the competition between the diverse elements of which the population of Ireland is composed. She will then cease to be sectarian, and become, in the truest sense, national.

We now come to the matter of assets to be reduced into possession by the commissioners, out of which the several sums above mentioned are to be paid--assets which, according to Mr. Gladstone's estimates, will amount to £16,000,000, or eighty million dollars. {246} Of this sum, £9,000,000, it is expected, will be derived from the commutation or obliteration of tithe rent charges; that is to say, the owners of lands from which tithes are now derived can, by the payment of a fixed sum to the commissioners, be for ever relieved from the tithe exaction; and, should they be unable to pay the whole sum down, they are to be allowed forty-five years wherein to pay it by instalments. Tithes, it must be remembered, have not, for nearly forty years, been collected directly from the cultivator of the soil, but from the owner, who, of course, added it to the rent, and thus, though the objectionable adjuncts of distrain and imprisonment for tithes, as such, were done away, the tenant had still to pay the odious tax in another form. As the clause of the act regulating this branch of the duties of the commissioners is perhaps the last of such a nature that will ever be allowed to encumber the statute-book of the British parliament, we quote it entire, simply premising that it seems fair enough, and in terms decidedly favorable to the landlords.