The people of England must therefore, either proclaim the people of Ireland to be unfit for corporate institutions, or they must join us in the collision, and in that collision the people of the three kingdoms could not be unsuccessful. Day after day he saw, in the calm and deliberate judgment of the people of England, the progress of the question of justice to Ireland, and the necessity of another organic reform. He saw no hope for Ireland without that reform; for the Irish ascendancy party had got the ears of a majority in the House of Lords. When defeated in that House, they talked of another place, in which they were certain of succeeding. They were true prophets. The House of Lords had taken its part; the House of Commons was now doing the same; the people of England would determine between them, and might God defend the right.

The motion to reject this amend ment of the Lords was carried by 324 against 238, being a majority of 86.

On the 13th and 14th of June, the Bill was brought back to the shape proposed by ministers, its provisions, in so far as regarded corporations, being limited to the twelve towns which lord John Russell had mentioned. Mr. O'Connell had spoken of this limitation as not affecting any principle, but being a mere question of detail, whether there should be fifty corporations or twelve

a view of the matter which would equally have made it merely a matter of detail, if the question had been whether there should be fifty corporations or only one. Mr. Crawford, however, who regarded this change as a sacri

fice of the principle, moved the restoration of all the towns which had formed schedule E, describing their omission as a compromise by which ministers were attempting to conciliate the Lords. He found himself, however, in a minority of 148 to 8. A Committee was then appointed to draw up the reasons of the House for not agreeing to the amendments of the Peers, and the amended Bill was delivered to the Lords at a conference on the 17th of June. The violence, in the meanwhile, with which the Peers had been assailed by the radical supporters of the Bill, had roused a feeling by no means favourable to the designs of these headstrong men. They had not only failed to excite public enthusiasm in favour of these new corporations, but they had provoked addresses in favour of the amendments of the Lords, praying their Lordships, above all, to maintain their rights, as an independent branch of the legislature. fast sent up a petition signed by 12,000 persons; another proceeded from 5,000 operatives and tradesmen of Leeds. Amongst them all the most important was a petition from the bankers, merchants, and traders of London. In presenting it, the Duke of Wellington observed, that he was not astonished, considering all that had passed and was passing on the subject of the deliberations of that House, and particularly in this metropolis, that these petitioners should feel alarm on the subject of the independence of the House of Lords. However, knowing their lordships as he did, he would say that he for one felt no He was thoroughly conon the one hand, that

alarm. vinced,

Bel

their Lordships would not allow themselves to give way on any apprehension of danger with which they might be menaced; and he was also thoroughly convinced on the other, that they would not allow themselves to be influenced by any threat of that description, so as to take a course which was not dictated by pure wisdom, and by a consideration of what was essential to the best interests of the country.

On the 27th of June, Lord Melbourne moved that the amendments of the Commons should be taken into consideration. Lord Lyndhurst met the motion with a negative, and another debate followed on all the topics already discussed. The motion was lost by

a majority of 220 to 121, and the Bill sent back to the Commons with the Lords' reasons for adhering to their amendments. In the House of Commons, on the 30th of June, lord John Russell moved, and the House agreed, that the amendments should be taken into consideration that day three months, thus dropping the Bill. Thus terminated, in the mean time, the discussion of a question which had excited attention more as a trial of the state of parties, than from its own merits, and the only positive result of which was, that the time was not arrived, when the House of Peers should sink down into a chamber for registering the decrees of the Commons.

T

HE other great party question of the session regarding Ireland was the Tithe Bill. Ministers had resolved, or had been compelled by their Irish supporters, to re-introduce it in the same shape which it had borne the previous year, not only containing those provisions for diminishing the amount and regulating the collection of tithe, which removed its pressure from the occupier, and prevented all collision between the payer and the receiver, and upon which all parties were agreed, but containing, likewise, that appropriation clause which had been so strongly opposed in the Commons, and which, being at once rejected by the Lords, had occasioned the loss of the bill. The resolution of ministers was, that however expedient and proper the other provisions of the measure might be, they ought not to be adopted, unless they were accompanied by the declaration of the principle of appropriation, because nothing less would satisfy the papists of Ireland. Their opponents answered, that the other provisions VOL. LXXVIII.

of the measure produced practical good, and removed all cause of complaint except in so far as complaints were directed against the existence of tithe in any shapeand ministers had not yet gone the length of professing, openly at least, that such complaints should be regarded; that the declaration of what was called the principle of appropriating a surplus, was an absurdity,when no surplus existed: that it was mischievous because its necessary consequence, and its true meaning, was, that a surplus, which did not exist, must be created by plundering the Protestant church. That even if a surplus existed, after duly providing for the Protestant church, it ought to be appropriated only to Protestant ecclesiastical purposes; and that if it was true that the papists of Ireland would not be satisfied, unless some part of these funds were appropriated to other purposes, the true meaning of this was, that it was to be the first step in a design of breaking down the Protestant establishment altogether.

[F]

The fate of the Municipal Bill, the firmness with which the Lords had dealt with it, and the impossibility which had been experienced of raising the country against the opinions and independence of the lords, held out to ministers a still more certain prospect of defeat, in which they would have still less upon their side the sympathies of the people. But, whatever their own inclinations might be in regard to a provision or declaration which almost all of them had formerly opposed as one of no practical effect, and unnecessary in itself, they could not resist the demands of their popish allies from Ireland, on whom, if not by disposition, at least as matter of fact, they were dependent for their continuance in office, and in whose eyes all enactments, which went to render the collection of tithe more easy, and peaceful, were positive evils, because such a state of things, instead of aiding, powerfully counteracted their great object of utterly abolishing tithe as impost paid for the support of the Protestant religion.

an

It was not till the 25th of April, that ministers again introduced the measure. Lord Morpeth, the Irish Secretary, introduced it by moving a resolution which did not raise the question between the parties, the resolution being merely: "That it is expedient to commute the composition of tithes in Ireland into a rent charge payable by the owners of the estate, and to make further provision for the better regulation of ecclesiastical dues and revenues." The opposition were agreed with the government as to the commutation. Sir Robert Peel, during his brief administration, had proposed to carry it into effect in a bill which the present

ministry rejected only because it took nothing from the church; and the concluding words of the resolu tion were very far from necessarily implying that "the regulation" of ecclesiastical revenues was to consist in making them cease to be ecclesiastical revenues. Lord Mor

peth, however, in opening the scheme which ministers intended to incorporate in their bill, announced that the principle of appropriation would still be declared and acted on. The bill, he said, would follow the uniform precedent of three previous bills, and he believed of four successive administrations, in converting the tithe composition into a rentcharge payable by the owners of the first estate of inheritance, as it was termed. It also preserved those terms of commutation which, in the bill of last year, had been adopted by both houses of Parlia ment, by conferring a deduction of 30 per cent upon those subject to the payment of the tithe composition. He would not propose, however any contribution from the national funds towards payment of the arrears of former years. On the other hand, he would abandon all claims for repayment of the sums which had been advanced to tithe owners under the Million Act, and which amounted to 637,000l. Although there were some persons from whom the demand might be made, yet he was fully convinced that the attempt to recover it would not repay the expense which would be incurred for pen, ink, and paper. Moreover, it would give rise to fresh exactions. It would occasion the renewal of demands upon the occupying tenant, whom all along it had been the first and foremost object of the Government to relieve. Some

doubt had been expressed as to the quarter in which the collection of the rent charges to be substituted for the tithe composition ought to be lodged. The bill of last year intrusted the collection to his Majesty's Commissioners of Land Revenue, the Board of Woods and Forests, with the simple intention of rendering the collection as secure and available as it was possible to the clergy, which the Government had considered to be only a just equivalent for the large permanent deduction from their income. This proposition, it had been contended on the one side, would have a tendency to put the church in the position of a salaried stipendiary on the state; and on the other, that it must be felt to be permanently pledging the revenue of the country to outgoings which it might be considered hazardous to guarantee. Ministers were of opinion that the necessity of now realizing property in a manner most likely to be effectual, and least productive of collision between the clergy and the laity, far overbalanced any merely theoretical objections on the other side; and they therefore proposed to intrust the collection of rent-charges to the board of woods and forests for a period of seven years, and thereafter until Parliament should otherwise determine. The bill would likewise contain the provision for allowing a re-valuation of the present tithe composition in the cases, and under the limitations, specified in the bill of last year. Those limitations admitted only solid grievances, while they shut the door against all false and frivolous pretences. These were the arrangements to be enacted in regard to existing incumbents. In regard to the

;

future regulation of the church revenues, government felt that they could not abandon those declarations and principles with which they entered upon office; that they could not shake off the engagement under which they conceived themselves to stand, of doing justice to the Irish nation and the terms of that virtual and most honourable compact they conceived to be, that if in the future disposition of the revenues of the Irish church something superfluous for its legitimate and becoming uses should arise, they should, after the satisfaction of all existing interests, apply that superfluity to the religious and moral education of the entire Irish people. In conformity with this principle, the government were anxious to obviate any just objections which might have been brought forward upon the last discussion of their measure against the mode of carrying their object into effect. They had every inclination to perfect and adjust the details of the bill, and would pay deference to suggestions from any quarter whatsoever, provided they adhered steadily and in good faith to its essential principles. now felt that he might consider the principle as established and conceded, that Parliament had a right to deal with the revenues of the church, if it should think them superfluous for church purposes; because, so long as the resolution adopted by the present Parliament stood upon their books uncancelled and unrepealed, he had a perfect right to think that that principle was now admitted. In the bill of last year this purpose was sought to be effected by the suspension of the Protestant establishment in all the parishes

He