When all the charges incumbent on the commissioners are provided for, including one million dollars for themselves, a matter which they will not be likely to neglect, there will be left of the effects of the defunct Establishment the handsome sum of over seven million pounds sterling. What disposition to make of this money was a puzzling question for a long time among the legislative administrators. That it was to be devoted to some Irish purpose was understood from the first; but grants of money to Ireland have heretofore turned out to be mere jobs, much more beneficial to government employees than to the supposed recipients of the bounty. Besides, as Mr. Gladstone says, they wanted to make this measure a finality, and to dispose of the money once and for ever. To have divided it among all religious denominations per capita, would throw the bulk of it into possession of the Catholics, to the great chagrin of the sects; and to have expended it on one or two local internal improvements would have created sectional jealousy, and given rise to the cry of favoritism. Appreciating these difficulties, the friends of the act have resolved, and, we think, very wisely, to devote it to the general charities of the island, not directly connected with any particular denomination, as follows:
"1. The support of infirmaries, hospitals, and lunatic asylums in connection with the grand jury cess or other assessment in lieu thereof.
"2. In support of reformatory and industrial schools, Ireland acts, and in aid of other grants for that purpose.
"3. The salaries of trained or skilled nurses for poor persons in sickness or in labor.
"4. The suitable education and maintenance of the blind and of the deaf and dumb poor in separate asylums.
5. The suitable care, training, and maintenance, in separate asylums, of poor persons of weak intellect, not requiring to be kept under restraint. The commissioners may, from time to time, during their trust, report to her majesty whether there is any income available for the purposes mentioned in this section, and, upon such report being made, it shall be lawful for her majesty, by order in council, to direct such available portion of income to be applied for the aforesaid purposes, or any of them, under such management and control as aforesaid."
The poor-law commissioners are to be entrusted with this capital sum, and the distribution of the annual revenue arising therefrom, which is calculated at £310,000. There are two very patent reasons for this distribution. Already the sum of £140,000 for similar purposes is annually raised by a tax called "county cess;" "a heavy tax, an increasing tax," says Mr. Gladstone, "and a tax not divided, like the poor law, between the owner and the occupier, but paid wholly by the occupier; and a tax not limited, like the poor law, to occupations above four pounds in value, but going down to the most miserable huts and cabins. The holders of these most wretched tenements are now required in Ireland, and required increasingly from year to year, to pay, not that which is done by the wealthier portion of the occupants who contribute to the poor law, but to pay for that class of want and suffering which ought undoubtedly to be met, which in every Christian country should be liberally met, but which can only be met by the expenditure of considerable funds in comparison with those which are paid to support the pauper." The frightful increase of those classes of unfortunates to be thus provided for in view of the decrease of the entire population by emigration [Footnote 53] calls loudly for some legal interposition. From 1851 to 1861 the number of deaf and dumb persons increased from 5180 to 5653; and during the same decade the blind increased from 5787 to 6879, while the number of lunatics increased from 9980 to 14,098, or nearly fifty per cent!
[Footnote 53: The emigration from Ireland from May 1st, 1851, to December 1st, 1865 amounted to 1,630,722 souls.]
With this last act of Christian charity, we hope to see the traces of former injustice gradually fade away from the public mind, and the bitter memories and sectarian jealousies of the past give place to a new era of good feeling and brotherly affection. Time is not only a great healer of wounds, but a great reformer of ideas. Taking a retrospective glance at the history of Ireland for the past hundred years, and watching how, step by step, the church in Ireland, from the veriest depths of despondency and contumely, has risen in power, strength, and numbers by its own innate vitality, we are not too sanguine in believing that it has a glorious future before it, unsurpassed by that of any country in Europe. Though its members embrace the great majority of the poorest classes in the land, they have, in that short period, studded the country with magnificent cathedrals and substantial parish churches; though unaided by a government which, if not positively hostile, was certainly indifferent, they have built and are generously sustaining, hundreds of colleges, convents, hospitals, and asylums, where learning flourishes as in the pristine ages, and where the poor, the needy, and afflicted are comforted and consoled. And though famine has decimated the hardy peasantry, and emigration has torn millions of the "bone and sinew" from their native shores, the Catholics of Ireland are still, as they always will be, the people of Ireland. It is true that a great many changes have yet to be effected through the means of legislation before the Irish or English Catholic is placed on an equal footing with his more favored fellow-subject. In Ireland, he must eventually have equal representation in the British parliament. The laws controlling the marriage of persons of different religious beliefs, those relating to the tenure of lands and spiritual devises, and to the disqualification for office on account of religious opinions, must be repealed and sent to dwell with all the other legal rubbish of a bygone age of bigotry. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, which is a disgrace to an enlightened government and a standing insult to the bishops and people of the country, must share the same fate before the crown can expect or ought to receive that heartfelt loyalty which springs from good and impartial government. The times in which we live imperatively demand those reforms, and we are very much mistaken in the strength and spirit of our co-religionists in the United Kingdom if they do not also quickly and pertinaciously demand them.