Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent / The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two

by William Carleton

The Rev. Phineas Lucre, then, was a portly gentleman, having a proud, consequential air stamped upon his broad brow and purple features. His wife was niece to a nobleman, through whose influence he had been promoted over the head of a learned and pious curate, whose junior Mr. Lucre had been in the ministry only about the short period of twenty-five years. Many persons said that the curate had been badly treated in this transaction, but those persons must have known that he had no friends except the poor and afflicted of his parish, whose recommendation of him to his bishop, or the minister of the day, would have had little weight. His domestic family, too, was large, a circumstance rather to his disadvantage; but he himself was of studious, simple, and inexpensive habits. As for dinners he gave none, except a few fragments of his family's scanty meal to some hungry, perhaps, deserted children, or to a sick laborer when abandoned by his landlord or employer, the moment he became unable to work. From the gentry of the neighborhood he got no invitations, because he would neither sing—dance—drink—nor countenance the profligacies of their sons—nor flatter the pride and vanity of their wives and daughters. For these reasons, and because he dared to preach home truths from his pulpit, he and his unpretending children had been frequently made objects of their ridicule and insolence. What right, then, had any one to assert that the Rev. Mr. Clement had received injustice by the promotion over his head of the Rev. Phineas Lucre, to the wealthy living of Castle Cumber, when he had no plausible or just grounds beyond those to which we have adverted, on which to rest his claim for preferment? The curate was pious, we admit, but, then, his wife's uncle was not a lord. He was learned, but, then, he had neither power nor the inclination to repay his patrons—supposing him to have such, by a genius for intrigue, or the possession of political influence. He discharged his religious duties as well as the health of a frame worn by affliction, toil, and poverty, permitted him; but, then, he wrote no pamphlets adapted to the politics by which he might rise in the church. He visited the sick and prayed with them; but he employed not his abilities in proving to the world that the Establishment rewarded piety and learning, rather than venal talents for state intrigue or family influence.

Far different from him was his aforenamed rector, the Rev. Phineas Lucre. Though immeasurably inferior to his curate in learning, and all the requisite qualifications for a minister of God, yet was he sufficiently well read in the theology of his day, to keep up a splendid equipage. Without piety to God, or charity to man, he possessed, however, fervent attachment, to his church, and unconquerable devotion to his party. If he neglected the widow and the orphan whom he could serve, he did not neglect the great and honorable, who could serve himself. He was inaccessible to the poor, 'tis true; but on the other hand, what man exhibited such polished courtesy, and urbanity of manner, to the rich and exalted. Inferiors complained that he was haughty and insolent; yet it was well known, in the teeth of all this, that no man ever gave more signal proofs of humility and obedience to those who held patronage over him. It mattered little, therefore, that he had no virtues for the sick, or poverty-stricken, in private life, when he possessed so many excellent ones for those in whose eyes it was worth while to be virtuous as a public man.

Mr. Lucre, possessing high political connection, and withal affecting to be very religious, presented singular points of character for observation. He was a great disciplinarian in theory, and rendered it imperative on his poor overworn curate to be so in practice; but being always engaged in the pursuit of some ecclesiastical windfall, he consequently spent most of his time, and of his money, either in our own metropolis or London—but principally in the latter. He did not, however, leave either his discipline or his devotion as a public man behind him. In Dublin, he was practical in worshipping the Lord Lieutenant—and in London, the King; whilst his curate was only worshipping God in the country. The result of his better sense and more seasonable piety soon became evident, on his part, in the shape of an appointment to a second living; and that of his curate, in obscurity, poverty, and that useless gift, a good conscience.

We have said that Mr. Lucre was not Pious; yet we are far from saying that he had not all the credit of piety. His name, in fact, was always conspicuous among the most bountiful contributors to the religious societies. Indeed he looked upon most of them as excellent auxiliaries to the cold and scanty labors of those worldly-minded or indolent pastors, who think, when they have furnished every family in the parish with a Bible and a sheaf of tracts, that they have done their duty. Mr. Lucre, consequently, bore an excellent character everywhere but among the poor, sick, and indigent of his two large parishes; and if a eulogium had been called for on him, he would have received an admirable one from the societies to whose funds he contributed, from the gentry of his respective parishes, and from the grand juries of the two counties in which they we're situated.

What more than this could be expected? Here was ample testimony for those who required it, to establish the zeal, efficiency, talents, integrity, charity and piety of that worthy and useful minister of God—the Rev. Phineas Lucre, D.D.

Such were a few of the virtues which belonged to this gentleman. His claims for preferment were, indeed, peculiarly strong; and when we mention the political influence of himself and his friends, his wife's powerful connections, added to his able pamphlets, and the great mass of sound information regarding the state of the country, which in the discharge of his religious duties, he communicated from time to time to the government of the day—we think we have said enough to satisfy our readers that he ought not to be overlooked in the wealthy and pious Establishment, which the Irish Church then was. Still, in fact, we cannot stop here, for in good truth Mr. Lucre had yet stronger claims for preferment than any we have yet mentioned. He did not stand in need of it. In addition to a large dowry received with his wife, he possessed a private fortune of fourteen hundred pounds per annum, with which, joined to his two large livings, he was enabled to turn out a very primitive and apostolic equipage, such as would have made the hearts of the Apostles rejoice in reflecting, that so many new virtues were to spring up in the progress of society from the lowly-religion they established.

Such is a pretty full sketch of a large class which existed at a former period in the Established Church of Ireland. Mr. Lucre was, besides, what may be termed one of the first fruits of that which is called modern sanctity or saintship, being about two-thirds of the Tory and High Churchman, and one of the Evangelical.

In the same parish of Castle Cumber resided two other clergyman of a different creed and character; the Rev. James Roche, the venerable parish priest, was one of those admirable pastors whose lives are the most touching and beautiful exponent of the Christian faith. In this amiable man were combined all these primitive virtues which are so suitable, and, we may add, necessary, to those who are called upon to mingle with the cares and affections, joys and sufferings, of an humble people. Without pride, beyond the serene simplicity which belonged to his office, he yet possessed the power of engaging the affections and respect of all who knew him, whether high or low. With the poor, and those entrusted to his spiritual charge, were all his sympathies, both as a man and a pastor. His, indeed, was no idle charge, nor idly, nor with coldness or pride, were its duties entered upon or performed. His little purse and small means were, less his own than the property of the poor around him; his eye was vigilant of want and of sorrow, of crime and frailty—and wherever the painful rebuke, the humble and the consoling word was necessary, there stood he to I administer it. Such was Father Roche, as the pastor of a large but poor flock, who had few sympathies to expect, save those which this venerable man was able to afford them. Very different from him, on the other hand, was his curate, the Rev. Patrick M'Cabe, or M'Flail, as he was nicknamed by the Orangemen of the parish, in consequence of a very unsacerdotal tendency to use the horsewhip, as a last resource, especially in cases where reason and the influence of argument failed. He was a powerful young man, in point of physical strength, but as his temperament was hot and choleric, the consciousness of this strength often led him, under its impulse, in desperate cases, to a mode of reasoning, which, after all, no man more than himself subsequently regretted. Zealous he unquestionably was, but beyond the bounds prescribed by a spirit of Christian moderation. I know not how it happened, but the Orangeman hated him with an intensity of detestation, which, however, he paid back to them tenfold. His vast strength, which had been much improved by a strong relish for athletic exercises, at which he was unrivaled, when joined to a naturally courageous and combative temperament, often prompted him to manifest, in cases of self-defence, the possession of powers which they feared to call into exercise. This disposition, however, which, after all, was not so unnatural, he properly restrained and kept I in subjection; but, in order to compensate for it, he certainly did pepper them, in his polemical discourses, with a vehemence of abuse, which, unquestionably, they deserved at his hands—and got. With the exception of too much zeal in religious matters, his conduct was, in every other respect, correct and proper.

To return now to Darby, whose steps have been directed, not exactly towards Constitution Cottage, but towards the spacious glebe-house of the Rev. Phineas Lucre, which brought him about a mile or two out of his way. The fact is he was beginning to tire of M'Slime, who, whenever he had occasion for his services, was certain to shear him of his fees on the one hand precisely as M'Clutchy did on the other. The change of agents was consequently of no advantage to him, as he had expected it would be; for such was the rapacity of the two harpies that each of them took as much as they could out of the unfortunate tenants, and left Darby little to comfort himself, with the exception of what he got by their virtuous example, an example which he was exceedingly apt to follow, if not to exceed. For this reason he detested them both, and consequently felt a natural anxiety to set them together by the ears whenever he thought the proper occasion for it should arrive. Now, an event had taken place the very day before this, which opened up to his mind a new plan of operations altogether. This was the death of the under gaoler of Castle Cumber. Darby began to think of this as a good speculation, should it succeed; but alas! upon second reflection there stood an insurmountable difficulty in his way. He was a Roman Catholic so far as he was anything; and this being a situation of too much trust and confidence at the period to be given to any one of that persuasion, he knew he he could not obtain it. Well, but here again he was fortunate, and not without the prospect of some consolation. The extraordinary movement in the religious world, called the New Reformation, had just then set in with a liveliness of judgment, and a celerity of conversion among the lower classes of Roman Catholics, which scarcely anybody could understand. The saints, however, or evangelical party, headed by an amiable, benevolent, but somewhat credulous nobleman, on whose property the movement first commenced, ascribed this extraordinary conversion altogether to themselves.

The season to be sure in which it occurred was one of unprecedented destitution and famine. Fuel was both scarce and bad—the preceding crops had failed, and food was not only of a deleterious quality, but scarcely to be procured at all. The winter, too, was wet and stormy, and the deluges of rain daily and incessant. In fact, cold, and nakedness, and hunger met together in almost every house and every cabin, with the exception of those of the farmers alone, who, by the way, mostly held land upon a very small scale. In this district, then, and in such a period of calamity, and misery, and utter famine, did the movement called the New Reformation originate.