They are, 'in truth, indefatigable, and their whole time is devoted to their duties.

"These statements do very imperfect justice to the subject; and I wish them to be considered merely as brief specimens of what might be abundantly adduced. Enough, however, has appeared to show, that the Irish clergy do not slumber on their post; that, as opportunities are ministered to them, they are instant in season, and out of season, at the call not only of duty and conscience, but of taste and inclination. For such services prove more than mere activity; they could not thus be performed, unless the heart were in the work." PP. 58-64.

So much for the "profligacy" of the Episcopal clergy of Ireland in the discharge of their ecclesiastical functions. Let us now attend a little to their conduct in promoting measures of beneficence, and plans of publick utility.

In all our parish churches, during divine service, on the first day of the week, after the manner of primitive times, a collection is made for the relief of the poor; and this fund is largely indebted to the Christian exertions of the parochial clergy. In the larger congrega. tions, the sums thus raised are considerable; in the smaller, often above what might be expected; and in many instances the amount is almost, and sometimes altogether, applied in aid of the poor Roman Catholick population. In addition, charity sermons are preached in all great towns; and the contributions are on a scale unknown in England, where there are other modes of relief. In Limerick, in Waterford, in Cork, above all, in Dublin, the sums raised exclusively in the churches of the establishment, and by the eloquence of the established clergy, are of a magnitude, which, considering the poverty of the people, and the embarrassments which unhappily prevail, is truly astonishing. Before the depreciation of the times, 7007. 8001. 1000l. 1200l. were no uncommon collections, at a single sermon. One distinguished Christian orator, the late lamented Dean Kirwan, in the course of his ministry in our Church, a space of about twenty years, raised by sermons within the city of Dublin, the sum of 75,000l. But for the exertions, indeed, of our clergy, many of our largest and best charitable institutions would not now exist. And while they have done much directly, they have done more consequentially. They have thus produced a generally diffused spirit of beneficence, which enters into the character of the people, and which the people cannot forget to have been nurtured and matured, by the same Christian eloquence and feeling, which gave birth to it." pp. 65, 66.

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Independently of their spiritual functions, the clergy are extremely useful, in establishing and superintending charitable institutions. In the country parts, every thing depends upon the clergy :dispensaries, societies for promoting industry, civilization, but especially education. I know one parish, where, by the exertions of the clergyman, four schools were raised; and two other parishes, in each of which the clergyman raised three." " pp. 84, 85,

In the year 1822, an act of parliament was passed for the better regulation of prisons in Ireland, by which all bridewells and smaller pri

sons were placed under the gratuitous inspection of the parochial clergy.

"Throughout the whole of that country, the smaller gaols and bridewells were found to be in a most deplorable condition. For the most part, under the immediate direction of a very inferiour class of keepers, with scarcely the semblance, in too many instances, of inspection or control on the part of the local magistracy; their interiour state was, what might naturally be apprehended, wretched in the extreme. The food, the bedding, the ventilation, the whole management, of such a description as was shocking to humanity; and these abodes of wretchedness were also nurseries of vice." p. 85.

The manner in which the clergy have discharged this duty, and the reform they have introduced into the prison discipline, will appear from the following official testimony of the inspectors general, Majors Woodward and Palmer.

The valuable aid which this branch of prison regulation has received, by the superintendence of the parochial clergy, cannot be sufficiently estimated.

"The law has imposed upon them a new duty, in the local inspection of bridewells, situated in their respective parishes, without any remuneration whatever; and we are gratified in reporting, that the wishes of the legislature have been universally met with a benevolent and disinterested zeal, worthy of that order. The regulations of the court of king's bench have clearly defined the duties which belong to the inspection; and we have the satisfaction of feeling, that, in our control over a department so widely scattered, and over small prisons, under the immediate care of persons of a lower class, we have an effectual counterbalance to these disadvantages, in the co-operation of the parochial clergy. Their inspection affords to us, at all times, a power of reference to an upright and intelligent officer, resident on the spot; and secures a conscientious check upon the several returns received from each bridewell, and upon the prices of all articles purchased for the bedding and subsistence of the prisoners. We feel also assured, that no instances of irregularity and oppression would be suffered to exist, under a local inspection placed in such hands. This arrangement has removed an almost insurmountable difficulty, in reducing the regulation of these dispersed prisons to a uniform practical system. pp. 86, 87.

999

"I should feel it presumptuous in me," says Major Woodward, "to offer such a testimony, were it not drawn from me as a debt of gratitude for the services rendered by their [the clergy's] benevolent labours, to the department under my inspection. Setting aside all those feelings of attachment which I have always had to the established Church, I must, as a publick officer, whose duties call him into close contact with them throughout the most remote, and (by all others of the higher classes) deserted parts of the kingdom, declare, in common justice, that, were it not for the residence and moral and political influence of the parochial clergy, every trace of refinement and civilization would disappear.

"They have now, in the kindest manner, added the care of the poor prisoner, in gaols which were scenes of misery and oppression, to the various duties in which they supply the place of the natural guardians of the peace and prosperity of the country: and, had not this resource been provided by the prison-act, I should have despaired of effecting any radical reform.' pp. 88, 89.

999

The woes of Ireland, no one can deny; and no friend of humanity would seek to conceal, or extenuate, any abuse, by which those woes are generated. But there is as much, and perhaps more, injury done to society by overlooking the real causes of those woes, and assigning to them a wrong origin, as by an attempt to conceal them. And for this reason; that by mistaking the cause of the disorder, that very principle may be removed from the system which may ultimately be the means of palliating or curing the evil.

It is not the enormous wealth of the clergy which has caused these woes; for the Bishop has asserted on his own knowledge, and has shown by an appeal to unquestioned and unquestionable documents, that the whole income of the Church does not much exceed the sum which is annually drawn by Irish absentees from two counties alone. The bishops and clergy, when compared to other landed proprietors, are in fact poor. "Their incomes," he grants, "did increase during

the war; but this increase arose not from an enlargement of the acreable composition, but from the additional quantity of land thrown into tillage. The depreciation of their incomes, on the other hand, bas been produced by the diminution of tillage, by the reduction of titherates, by the breaking down of an impoverished tenantry, by the efforts of many landlords, and all middle-men, to preserve, undiminished, their enormous rents, covenanted for at a period, when, from the competition of an overflowing population, the cupidity of him who had land to let, was the sole measure and limit of the sums proffered, by those who must find land to take. And what has been the consequence to the clergy? My lords, from my own knowledge I can state, that during the last two or three years, several most respectable, and not ill-beneficed clergymen have had but a nominal revenue.” p. 28.

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Some, indeed, of the Irish clergy I know, who, but for their own private fortunes, which they bountifully spend, could not maintain themselves in the Church. Others, I rejoice to call my friends, men devoted to their calling, yet qualified to move in the most exalted sphere, men respectably, sometimes nobly, allied, who, with benefices nominally of large value, have not only been obliged to put down their carriages, and resign those moderate unostentatious comforts, to which they were habituated from early youth,-but who find it matter of difficulty to educate their children and to provide the common necessaries of life. Yet, these men are not chargeable with any extravagance, either of themselves, or of their families; they have not in their expenditure surpassed the bounds of prudence; except perhaps (but you will forgive them this wrong) they may have somewhat exceeded in bounty to the poor." pp. 29, 30.

The Bishop enters largely into the subject of church revenues, and shows that the enemies of the Church have greatly magnified them for the purpose of producing popular excitement. He shows that the bishops cannot, from the nature of their leases, possess enormous incomes; and what is very deserving of observation, that the income of their lay-tenants, from the manner in which the episcopal revenues are raised, always bears a proportion to their own of FOUR to ONE. With regard to the clergy he states, that the average income of about eighty parishes, is £400 or $1778. But these are parishes of the higher order. The fair average income would be about £250 or $1111. Not one of the bishopricks exceeds in yearly value £5000 or $22,000, an income which, though large in America, is small in comparison with the lay-estates of Ireland. And it is to be recollected that the Irish lay gentry being absent, the great burden of supplying the wants of the poor in Ireland falls upon the bishops and beneficed clergy.* What is done in America by our wealthy merchants, must be done in Ireland by the bishops and clergy; the whole being shifted off upon them by the Irish absentees.

And here in fact lies the cause of the woes of Ireland. It is not the wealth or the non-residence of the clergy; for the clergy in general do reside, and their wealth is a blessing to the people. Nor is it the English who have landed estates in Ireland; for among these are to be found some of the best landlords in the whole country. The Bishop, himself an Irishman, foretells, that if Ireland is to be improved, and rendered prosperous, she will be primarily indebted to the English proprietors of Irish estates."

The distress of Ireland arises from Irishmen themselves; from the fact that the Irish gentry absent themselves from their own country, drain it of its resources, oppress it by the tyrannical exaction of their rents, and the farming of their revenues, and become alienated from its inhabitants, insensible of their woes, and unwilling to relieve their misery.

"Irish absenteeship," says the Bishop, "has no bowels; it has no principles. English proprietors of Irish estates have their hearts sof tened by the tenantry among whom they live. But pure Irish absenteeship has no such compensation. There are no present objects to keep the affections in healthful exercise; and where the affections are not thus exercised, they must wither and dry up. A distant tenantry, never visited and never seen, under these circumstances, seems to be considered, like one of those ingenious contrivances which I have admired at his majesty's mint, a mere system of machinery for the putting forth of so much coin. I am compelled to say, and I grieve to say it, that the most afflicting part of a clergyman's social duty con

* Much has been said of the non-residence of the Irish protestant clergy. Into this subject the Bishop enters largely; detects the gross errours of Mr. Hume and others in their statements respecting the extent of non-residence; and shows that there are not above twenty or thirty beneficed Irish clergymen, the sick and infirm excepted, who are moccupied by active clerical duty in some part of the country.

sists in vain, fruitless efforts to wring a wretched dole, which might keep alive the starving paupers on his deserted estate, from the mere Irish absentee ;-to extract sunbeams from cucumbers." p. 73.

"One case may be taken as a specimen :-it was vouched, during this session, in another house, on the most unimpeachable authority. In a certain western county of Ireland, during the calamitous summer of 1822, a subscription was raised for the relief of the poor, by the resident gentry, land-holders, and clergy. Application for assistance was made to the absentee proprietors, who annually abstract from that county the sum of eighty-three thousand pounds. And what was the amount of their congregated munificence? My lords, it was eightythree pounds! Not a farthing in the pound of their annual Irish income! Had these proprietors been resident at home, this never could have happened. They could not have witnessed the complicated wretchedness of famine, of nakedness, and of disease, without some effort to relieve it. But, they were Irish absentees; and their contribution amounted to eighty-three pounds." pp. 74, 75.

In consequence of this system of absenteeship, the clergy are in many places almost the only resident gentlemen; and in those parts especially where they have least professional employment, they are the chief, and too frequently the sole, moral prop and stay. In that very province in which, to relieve the general distress, absentee penury contributed in 1822 only one pound for every thousand which it abstracted from the country, it pleased Providence to raise up a diffusive instrument of good, and that instrument one of the hierarchy, whom the Reviewer denounces as profligate.

"If the London distress committee, if its honourable and worthy chairman, were asked, who, at that period, stood foremost in every act of beneficence, and labour of love, they would, with one voice, pronounce the Archbishop of Tuam: from morning to night, from extremity to extremity of his province, at once the mainspring, the regulator, the minute-hand of the whole charitable system. As distress deepened and spread abroad, he multiplied himself, he seemed gifted with a sort of moral ubiquity. He proved himself worthy to rank with Marseilles's good bishop,' and, hand in hand with him, to go down to the latest posterity, among the benefactors of mankind." p. 78.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

TO THE EDITOR OF THE GOSPEL ADVOCATE.

THE following excellent Tract, entitled, "The Day of Adversity: Reflections suited to the hour of sorrow, the bed of sickness, or the loss of beloved relatives," is by the Rev. Basil Woodd, M. A. Rector of Drayton Beauchamp, and Minister of Bentinck Chapel, St. Mary-lebone. The author observes that it "was drawn up with a design of being left at the House of Adversity, as a means of strengthening the hints which might be suggested by a pastoral visit. The chief atten