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certain ecclesiastical courts in Ireland the force and authority of law in that part of the realm, are unconditionally repealed.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."

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. 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. 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]