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Duties of a

The peculiar duties of the office of Church- CHAP. VII. warden in Ireland are of an Ecclesiastical nature: and manifestly unsuitable to any person who Churchwarden, is not a Protestant, Indeed they cannot be im- posed upon a member of any other religious communion, without palpable indecorum, and Brown's Eccl. disrespect towards the established form of worship. The Duties are principally these, viz.

Law, p. 27.

Law, vol 1.

To be guardian and keeper of the Protestant Burn's Ecol. Church, and representative of the Protestant p. 357.358, & parishioners.

To sue for the goods of the church: purchase

goods for its use.

Have a property in such goods.

Have special charge of the repairs:

of Gibson's Codex.

Jur. Eccles.

glazing of windows: paving, and levelling of vol. 1. p. 308,

floors.

To summon a Protestant Vestry attend at

all meetings enter the orders of the Vestry.

315, 644, &c.

To provide Protestant books of prayer, bid-p. 184, bibles, chalices, bells, communion tables, &c. 218, 379, 468. To present recusants, levy forfeitures upon absentees from church, forfeitures for not reading prayers once a month, for conventicles, &c.

To observe loiterers in church-yards, and whether the parishioners frequent the Sacrament as often as the Law requires.

CHAP. VII.

Duties of a
Churchwarden

Repugnant as
Catholics.

Catholics

To prevent strangers from preaching, without shewing their licenses.

To note strange preachers in a book.

To present ministers, deserting their function. To hinder the profaning of the church. To preserve decency in the congregation. To perform numberless other offices, wholly foreign and repugnant to the habits of a Catholic, an outrage upon his feelings, an enormous tax upon his time and attention, and impossible to be effectually fulfilled without offering public and repeated violence to his conscience.

Lest any Catholic might evade this office, by compellable to delaying or declining to take the necessary oaths of qualification, it has been enacted, « That "Churchwardens shall be deemed legal officers,

become Churchwardens.

23 and 24

Geo. 3. ch. 49, and made accountable, after six weeks' entry

scct. 10.

"of their election in the Vestry book;" which entry, signed by the Incumbent and three parishioners, is conclusive evidence of the election against the Churchwarden-although had without his assent or knowledge.

Previous to this Act, the usual punishment, for his refusal to take the oaths, was by Excommunication.

A Catholic, thus nominated to the office of Churchwarden, is not only burthened with the

various official duties already enumerated, but CHAP. VII. obliged to collect the amount of the parochial Churchwarden. applotments, estimated by Vestries in which he

has no vote. He is accountable to Protestant Vestries for the entire amount of those applot

ments, although he may never have been able to 3 Geo. 2. c. 11. SSES. 3 and 4. collect them. If he fails to collect them, aud to pay them over, he is to be sued by his successors as if he had actually levied them.

Thus he may be compelled to act upon, and enforce, all the applotments: perhaps, in many instances, made dishonestly, to gratify individual peculation, to transfer the fruits of honest industry to the hand of rapacious indolence.

Geo. 3. c. 52. sect. 2 and 3..

Further, he is chargeable with all arrears 21 and 22 due of his predecessors, if he shall not make, strict proof of his having sued them for such arrears within six months: and the bishop is empowered to sue him, as if his predecessors had fully accounted with him. This odious duty is cast upon the Catholic Churchwarden, although his predecessor may (as in some instances) happen to be a fraudulent or insolvent Protestant, perhaps the brother or son of the very Rector or Justice.

1

CHAP. VII.

SECTION 7.

Consequential mischief of these Vestry Laws.

Excluded from all Vestries for

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Further Mischiefs.

WE have now reviewed the Laws, which "exclude Catholics from all parish Vestries "held for considering questions respecting the repairing or rebuilding of Churches, and making rates for those purposes: respecting "the disposal of the parish estate or income, or démising it; the salary of the Parish

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Clerk, or the election of the Churchwarden." And we cannot dismiss the subject, however ungracious, without further illustration of the hardships, to which the Catholics are subjected by those disqualifications.

whatsoever pur from

poses.

They are, in fact and practice, prevented from attending even at those Vestries to which they are legally admissible: such as Vestries held for applotting road presentments, militia taxes, &c. for clecting Parish Clerks, overseers, watchmen; and for other purposes within the general jurisdiction of Vestries. These Vestries are held, and proceedings there

Consequential

No notice of a

adopted, in a manner altogether unknown to the CHAP. VII. Catholics. The form of a notice is indeed observed but the Law directs this notice to be grievance of the Vestry laws affixed to the Church door only, where the Catholic people never meet; and consequently vestry save upon they never hear of such notice. To direct the notice to be also affixed to the door of the Catholic Chapel, would be too great a condescension to common sense. Besides, the Law, forsooth! supposes no such place to exist!!

a Church door.

Pretexts for

This petty parochial tyranny, moreover, involves the middling and lower orders of the Taxation. Catholics in continual vexations and contests. It furnishes plausible pretences for annually harassing and fleecing the Catholic farmer, the humble cottager, the village tradesman and mechanic. Thus it aggrieves the entire Catholic population, silently but effectually; and fully as much as the severest exactions, for even tithes or county cesses.

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