CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION, ETC.
The question of Catholic emancipation, although not formally stirred in either house during this session, was nevertheless kept alive by petitions from different districts and bodies in Ireland. These petitions were now especially directed to a disclaimer of the imputation of owing a divided allegiance; manifestly on account of the weight which the argument of the anti-Catholics on this point had carried with it in the debate of the preceding session. The speeches delivered on the presentation of them also characterized the imputation of a divided allegiance as a false pretence, because the Catholics in all their petitions declared, that, in the oaths which they took and were ready to take, they swore allegiance to his majesty alone. But Lord Liverpool rightly answered, that although he never doubted the sincerity of the Catholics in disclaiming civil allegiance to any foreign power, the fact could not affect the argument: he contended that spiritual subjection to a foreign power was inconsistent with civil obedience to our own sovereign.
While the claims of the Catholics were merely the subject of incidental remarks, the condition of the Protestant church in Ireland, became the subject of more direct discussion. Lord Kingston moved in the upper house for the appointment of a committee to inquire into the state of the Protestant church in the province of Munster. His motion was founded upon the evils which he stated to have arisen from the union of livings, and the consequent want of churches for Protestant worship. It was not uncommon, he said, to unite five, six, or even seven livings in one person; and in many parishes, if the Protestant inhabitants wished spiritual consolation, or to have the benefit of religious worship, the nearest clergyman who could advise them, and the nearest church in which service was performed was probably at a great distance. It was answered that as the returns on the table of the house, furnished by the lords’ committee to inquire into the state of Ireland last session, showed all the parishes that existed in Ireland, and the authority by which they had been made, the motion was unnecessary: it was withdrawn. The want of churches, which it was the object of this motion to supply, was connected with the administration of the fund formed of the first-fruits of all ecclesiastical benefices. These revenues, or the first year’s income of every benefice, had been originally payable to the pope; but on the Reformation they were vested in the crown, and they had been appropriated by an act of Queen Anne, in part at least, to the building of churches. Sir John Newport brought the management of this fund, and the insufficiency of the system according to which the contributions of the clergy to it were regulated, under the notice of the commons, by a series of resolutions declaratory of its nature and history, and by a motion for the appointment of a select committee to inquire into its condition and administration. He justified his motion by the fact that the first-fruits, where they were paid at all, continued to be paid upon the rate of valuation, for which there was no authority, and that consequently the greater portion of the fund sacrificed by the crown was allowed to remain in the hands of the clergy, while new burdens were laid upon parishioners to effect those very objects for which the fund had been created. This motion was opposed as a covert and most dangerous attack upon the property of the Irish church, and through it upon the property, not only of the church of England, but of all bodies in the state; and as being derived from a fallacious interpretation of the law, warranted neither by history, authority, nor expediency, On a division it was rejected by a majority of forty-eight to twenty-one. The mover, Sir John Newport, was subsequently more successful in endeavouring to institute an inquiry into abuses said to exist in the administration of the parochial rates levied in Ireland for the religious service of the Protestant establishment. He moved resolutions pledging the house to adopt measures for their removal, and on a division the motion was carried. Measures of greater importance were carried by government itself, namely, for promoting the education and moral improvement of the great mass of the Irish people. Grants for these important purposes were voted, though not without opposition from many members, on the grounds of the abuses and oppressions in the management of the schools in Ireland as detailed in the report of the preceding year; and that proselytism was made a part of the system of education pursued therein. In these discussions government manifested no desire to perpetuate abuses, nor any disinclination to cautious and practicable amendment. The same spirit was carried into other departments more strictly connected with the civil administration of Ireland. A committee on the state of the country had presented a report in 1825, recommending the adoption of various measures; and during this session several of those measures were carried into effect. Thus an act was passed consolidating the laws for the regulation and management of prisons; better regulations were enacted for the administration of justice in towns corporate; provision was made to remedy the inequalities of local assessments, by introducing an uniform valuation of baronies, parishes, and other divisions of counties; an act was passed which made provision for a more convenient and abundant distribution of lunatic asylums; and the law of Ireland was amended respecting the assignment and subletting of lands and tenements, by which some check was put to that infinite division, not of property but the use of property which had so impoverished and degraded the Irish peasantry. On the recommendation of the select committee of 1825, also, a motion for an address to his majesty was carried, praying him to order a commission for inquiry into the tolls and customs collected in fairs, markets, and sea-ports in Ireland. These tolls and customs had been granted to particular individuals and corporations, and great evils existed in the levying of them, whence the motion for inquiry. It was opposed both on the general merits of the measure, and on the inefficiency of the particular mode of inquiry proposed; but the motion was carried, and a select committee accordingly appointed.