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IRISH CHURCH-WORK OF THE COMMISSION.

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annual values of some of the benefices and the

did not vote. Thirteen English and two Irish bishops pronounced against the bill, while commutation:-Clogherney, £1563, commuta

there were many absentees, including the Bishops of Carlisle, Exeter, Manchester, Salisbury, and Winchester.

The second reading was carried by 179 against 146-majority for the bill, 33. This was the largest division in the House of Lords within living memory, no fewer than 325 peers having taken part in it. It eventually passed through committee by 121 votes to 114, and under a protest signed by Lord Derby and forty-three temporal and two spiritual peers. The amendments made in committee, however, were most of them rejected when the bill went back to the House of Commons; some of the proposed modifications and one or two alterations were accepted; and the bill was sent back. After much contention, a stormy discussion, and the application of some rather unparliamentary names to Mr. Gladstone, an agreement was arrived at that a conference should be held between Lord Granville and Lord Cairns, the end of which was that a compromise was effected, which Mr. Gladstone said was a satisfactory settlement. Comparatively little change had been made. Mr. Disraeli endorsed the compromise as a wise, well-considered, and conciliatory arrangement, and the bill became law by receiving the royal assent on the 26th of July.

The work of the "commissioners of the Church temporalities in Ireland" was not soon or easily accomplished. Not till the end of the year 1880 had they completed the task imposed on them by the Irish Church Act, as far as it was possible without further legislation. Some remarkable facts appeared in their report respecting the life incomes commuted and the commutation money paid, including cases where 12 per cent bonus was allowed. The amount depended, of course, on the age of the holder. The net annual value of the Archbishopric of Armagh was £10,225, commutation money £88,442; Bishopric of Derry, annual value, £6847, commutation £111,867; Archbishopric of Dublin, £8845, commutation £93,045; Bishopric of Cork, £2485, commutation £18,500. The following were the net

All

tion £19,124; Louth, £1329, commutation £12,941; Carnteel, £1167, commutation £9469; Clones, £1290, commutation £13,298; Killoughory, £905, commutation £16,450; Cappagh, £1234, commutation £18,527; Carrigallen, £819, commutation £12,495. The least valuable benefice was Balscadden, in the diocese of Dublin, which was worth only £4 a year, and was commuted for £47. Examples were given of the values of vicar-generalships and registrarships, which were held by laymen, and the sum for which they were commuted. The smallest income stated was that of the vicar-general of the dioceses of Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe, which was only £37, and the largest the registrarship of the province of Dublin, which was £1015. The others generally averaged about £400. commutation monies were calculated at 3 per cent, and the average of the lives of all the clergy at 109 years' purchase. The total number of ecclesiastical persons who commuted up to the end of 1874 was 2282, their net incomes being £589,665, and the commutation money £7,546,005. The number of lay commutants was 2857, their net incomes being £33,060, and the commutation paid £454,700. The total paid under the compensation clauses, including all heads, was £11,343,703. The sales of all the property vested in the commissioners by the act realized £9,794,790, of which a sum of £3,362,648 was received in cash. The commissioners in January, 1881, had no actual balance in the nature of a surplus, but had instead an annual income, partly permanent, partly terminable, of £574,219.

For a short time members were able to take breath after the struggle on the Irish Land Bill, and some useful measures were pushed forward before parliament was prorogued. The exertions which he had undergone had affected Mr. Gladstone's health, which, perhaps, suffered even more from the aspersions to which he had been subjected than from the arduous task that he had undertaken. During the recess a meeting of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland was held in St. Patrick's

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s an extensive conso, during the preI completely changed ion against the tenants. r. Gladstone asserted that legislating for a century in 1, it was a matter of doubt as the law was concerned, the he occupier was better than beal of the penal laws. The present reverse the presumption of law in yearly tenancies, and would not leave and occupiers full freedom of contract. e bill brought forward was of a decisive 1 comprehensive character. In the first ace it proposed the enlargement of the power of the limited owner in regard both to lease and rate. Assistance was to be given by loans t of public money to occupiers disposed and on able to purchase the cultivated lands then in ces- their occupation, where the landlords were versy willing to sell. Facilities would also be given oderate to landlords by means of loan, to prepare waste lands for occupation by the making of roads and the erection of necessary buildings; and to assist purchasers of reclaimed lands upon the security of the seller and buyer, or the provision of other security of an adequate nature. These transactions were to be managed by the Board of Works in Dublin. With regard to occupation, the new law was to be administered by a court of arbitration and a civil-bill court, with an appellate tribunal consisting of two, and in case of necessity three, judges of assize, the judges having

ention to

laws were 1, and ought esults in both

en prospering i that the people feelings of disconlast item he showed had not risen within , that the number of or relief had increased, ce had risen, and some of

Cathedral to draw up a constitution suitable | both in and out of parliament were uttered

for the altered condition of the church. A "solemn protest" was issued against the recent act of the legislature, and a scheme was adopted for the formation of a church body from the clergy of each diocese to elect representatives varying in number; the total for Ireland being 124. One dean and one archdeacon for each united diocese, and the regius professor of Divinity, Trinity College, were to be ex-officio members, the provost and fellows of the college returning one member; questions of doctrine and discipline were to be reserved for the bishops and clergy.

This was the movement made in reference to the act which had been passed for the redress of the first Irish grievance.

In relation to another which it was now sought to remove, the Catholic clergy had published a series of resolutions, adopted at a meeting in Maynooth College on the education and land questions, condemning the mixed system of education, demanding complete secular education on purely Catholic principles, a share of the funds of the royal and endowed schools, and a rearrangement of the Queen's College on the denominational system. These resolutions were sufficient to indicate what would be the insurmountable difficulties with which Mr. Gladstone would have to contend when he should set himself to hew off the third branch of that upas-tree which he had said was overshadowing and blighting Ireland.

But, first, the government had to address itself to the land question. On this the meeting at Maynooth had added a general resolution expressing the belief, in which the majority of the people of this country agreed, that its settlement was essential to the peace of the kingdom.

It was known that a land bill for Ireland would be brought in. It was inevitable that some considerable change should be made. Before the introduction of the church bill, even before Mr. Maguire's motion which preceded it, the necessity for dealing with both the land question and the church question had been discussed by leading members of the house, and notably by Mr. Bright, whose speeches

without reserve, and with his usual emphasis even when he was addressing audiences of Irishmen. In the house he had declared"All history teaches us that it is not in human nature that men should be content under any system of legislation, and of institutions such as exist in Ireland. You may suppress the conspiracy and put down the insurrection, but the moment it is suppressed there will still remain the germs of this malady, and from these germs will grow up as heretofore another crop of insurrection and another harvest of misfortune. And it may be that those who sit here eighteen years after this moment will find another ministry and another secretary of state ready to propose to you another administration of the same ever-failing and ever-poisonous medicine. I say there is a mode of making Ireland loyal. I say that the parliament of England having abolished the parliament of Ireland is doubly bound to examine what that mode is, and, if it can discover it, to adopt it. I say that the minister who occupies office in this country, merely that he may carry on the daily routine of administration, who dares not grapple with this question, who dares not go into opposition, and who will sit anywhere except where he can tell his mind freely to the house and to the country, may have a high position in the country, but he is not a statesman, nor is he worthy of the name."

Out of the house he had dwelt upon the injustices inflicted upon the people of Ireland by the maintenance of a church originally thrust upon them as a conquered nation, and by the perpetuation of a system by which the tenant of land remained under what might be regarded as a continually threatening penalty.

When the house reassembled on the 8th of February, 1870, Mr. Gladstone at once asserted that the duty of parliament in regard to the condition of Ireland was absolutely paramount and primary, and on the 15th of February he brought forward his proposals for an Irish Land Bill. The work that lay before the government was almost appalling. The Irish question, as Mr. Bright had told the people of Birmingham, was one of the greatest

PROVISIONS OF THE IRISH LAND BILL OF 1870.

and most difficult that had ever engaged the attention of the legislature, and there were other measures of great importance to be considered: bills for the improvement of the constitution and procedure of the superior legal tribunals; for settlement of the religious tests at Oxford and Cambridge; for regulating the application of large sums of money raised by local rates; for amending the beer and spirit | licenses; for relieving the members of trade combinations from certain disabilities which prevented their joining in acts that were perfectly legal, and mutually beneficial; for improving the law of succession to the estates of intestates; and for regulating merchant shipping. To endeavour to pass all these would be like attempting to drive six omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar, Mr. Bright said. Mr. Forster replied that the plan would be for the six omnibuses to follow one another in safety. Probably he scarcely expected that all would get through, but he was just preparing to take the reins of one that required skilful coaching, namely, the Elementary Education Act, for which some preparation had been made by the Endowed Schools Act of the previous session.

But immediate and undivided attention was first called to the Irish Land Bill, and again the house was crowded to hear the exposition which Mr. Gladstone was ready to offer. The opponents of the Irish Church Bill twelve months before had predicted that it was the land and not the church which lay at the root of Irish grievances. He therefore trusted that the opposition would approach the question with a due sense of its importance. The necessity for closing and sealing up the controversy was admitted by all fair-minded and moderate men on both sides. He called attention to fallacies, such as that the land laws were the same in Ireland as in England, and ought therefore to produce the same results in both countries; that Ireland had been prospering for the last twenty years, and that the people had no occasion to exhibit feelings of discontent. With regard to this last item he showed that the rate of wages had not risen within the previous ten years, that the number of persons receiving poor relief had increased, the cost of subsistence had risen, and some of

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the most imprudent and violent interferences with the fixed usages of the country had occurred. The course of legislation for the past fifty years, though intended in a beneficial spirit, had possibly been detrimental to the interests of the occupiers. The Act of 1793 giving the franchise to Roman Catholics had induced the creation of 40s. freeholds, and the abolition of the franchise in 1829 vastly extended the mischief, and, perhaps, under the circumstances of Ireland, the still greater mischief of mere yearly tenancy. The Encumbered Estates Act, which had since passed into the act for dealing with the sale of landed estates, by not protecting the improvements of the tenants, had operated as an extensive confiscation. Parliament also, during the previous half century, had completely changed the conditions of eviction against the tenants. Speaking broadly, Mr. Gladstone asserted that after we had been legislating for a century in favour of Ireland, it was a matter of doubt whether, as far as the law was concerned, the condition of the occupier was better than before the repeal of the penal laws. The present bill would reverse the presumption of law in favour of yearly tenancies, and would not leave owners and occupiers full freedom of contract.

The bill brought forward was of a decisive and comprehensive character. In the first place it proposed the enlargement of the power of the limited owner in regard both to lease and rate. Assistance was to be given by loans of public money to occupiers disposed and able to purchase the cultivated lands then in their occupation, where the landlords were willing to sell. Facilities would also be given to landlords by means of loan, to prepare waste lands for occupation by the making of roads and the erection of necessary buildings; and to assist purchasers of reclaimed lands upon the security of the seller and buyer, or the provision of other security of an adequate nature. These transactions were to be managed by the Board of Works in Dublin. With regard to occupation, the new law was to be administered by a court of arbitration and a civil-bill court, with an appellate tribunal consisting of two, and in case of necessity three, judges of assize, the judges having

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