Great Britain; we have been assured that we can find no coals, nor hark, nor salt, nor hops, anywhere, save only in Great Britain; in short, that Ireland has no coals, nor the continent salt, bark, or hops, to the astonishment, and indeed laughter, of every merchant who heard such assertions. We have been told this, and we have been chus argued down into a state of physical slavery.

Ireland has been represented as the slave of England by the laws of nature, in order to justify a system which would have made us her slave by force and operation of covenant. We have been further

told in debate and in public prints, that our trade has no claim to the protection of the British navy. Sir, you pay for that protection; you paid for it long ago; I tell you that payment was the crown of Ireland. You annexed the crown of Ireland to that of Great Britain, and have a right to the protection of her navy, as much as she has a right to consider you as part of the empire. Protecting you with her navy, she protects her own balance and weight in Europe, and preserves an empire which would else be reduced to an island. But if you are protected by an English, not an Irish navy, it is not that you have not granted taxes, but that Great Britain naturally chooses to have but one navy in the empire, and very naturally wishes that navy to be her own. You are prevented from having an Irish navy, and should not be reproached with the protection of the British; as gentlemen have triumphantly displayed the dependency of their native land on Great Britain, they have most anxiously concealed her value and importance-the importance of her linen yarn, bay yarn, hides, provisions, and men; the importance of her assent to the monopolies of Great Britain, East and West, and to the continuation of the act of navigation. Under such false impressions, then, in those who are perhaps to act on the part of Ireland, an ignorance or concealment of her real consequence and resources, and the false persuasion of her insignificance and dereliction—nay, I will add, a zeal to display an offensive catalogue of her wants and wretchedness, I ask, what treaty will be made under these circumstances, that shall be to your advantage? Let me therefore caution my country against the revival of this bill, and against those arguments which have a tendency to put down the pretensions of Ireland, and humble the pride of the Irish nation. Public pride is the best champion of public liberty; cherish it, for if ever this kingdom shall fall in her own esteem, shall labour under a prepossession of impotence, shall conceive she cannot have the necessaries of life or manufacture, but from the charity of another country, in short, that God and nature have put her in a state of physical bondage, I say, if once this becomes her

sentiment, your laws are nothing, your charters are paper, and leand is a slave with magna charta in her hand. Let us not then put down our native land, and rob her of her pride, to rob her of her constitution.

TITHES.

February 14, 1788.

A TENTH of your land, your labour, and your capital, to those who contribute in no shape whatsoever to the produce, must be oppression; they only think otherwise who suppose that everything is little which is given to the parson; that no burden can be heavy, if it is the weight of the parson; that landlords should give up their rent, and tenants the profits of their labour, and all too little. But uncertainty aggravates that oppression; the full tenths ever must be uncertain as well as oppressive; for it is the fixed proportion of a fluctuating quantity, and unless the high priest can give law to the winds, and ascertain the harvest, the tithe, like that harvest, must be uncertain. But this uncertainty is aggravated by the pernicious motives on which tithe frequently rises and falls. It frequently rises on the poor; it falls in compliment to the rich. It proceeds on principles the reverse of the Gospel; it crouches to the strong, and it encroaches on the feeble, and is guided by the two worst principles in societyservility and avarice united against the cause of charity and under the cloak of religion.

Here let me return to and repeat the allegations, and call on you once more to make the inquiry. It is alleged, that in certain parishes of the south, tithe has been demanded and paid for what by law was not liable to tithe; and that the ecclesiastical courts have countenanced the illegal exaction; and evidence is offered at your bar to prove the charge on oath.

Will you deny the fact? Will you justify the fact? Will you inquire into it?"

It is alleged, that tithe proctors, in certain parishes of the south, do exact fees for agency, oppressive and illegal; and evidence to prove the charge is offered on oath. Will you deny the fact? Will you justify the fact? Will you inquire into it?

It is alleged, that in certain parishes of the south, tithes have been excessive, and have observed no equity for the poor, the hus

bandman, or the manufacturer; and evidence is offered to prove this charge on oath!

Will you deny the fact? Will you justify the fact? Will you inquire into it?

It is alleged, that in certain parishes of the south, the ratages for tithes have greatly and unconscionably increased; and evidence is offered to prove this charge on oath. Will you deny the fact? Will you justify the fact? Will you inquire into it?

It is alleged, that in certain parishes of the south, the parishioners have duly and legally set out their tithe, and given due notice; but that no persons have attended on the part of the proctor or parson, under expectation, it is apprehended, of getting some new method of recovery, tending to deprive the parish of the benefit of its ancient right, that of setting out their tithe; and evidence is offered to prove this charge on oath.

It is alleged, that in certain parishes of the south, tithe-farmers have oppressed, and do oppress His Majesty's subjects, by various extortions, abuses of law, or breaches of the same; and evidence is offered to prove this charge on oath. Here, once more, I ask you, will you deny the fact? Will you justify the fact? Will you inquire into it?

This being the state of the church in certain parishes in the south, I wish to know, what in the mean time within those districts becomes of religion? Here are the parson and parish at variance about that which our religion teaches us to despise-riches. Here is the mammon of unrighteousness set up to interrupt our devotion to the true God. The disinterested, the humble, the apostolical cha racter, during this unseemly contest—what becomes of it? Here are two powers, the power in the tenant to set out his tithe, the power in the church to try the matter in dispute by ecclesiastical jurisdiction; two powers vested by the law in the respective hands of church and laity, without any effect but to torment one another. The power of setting of tithe does not affect to defend the tenant against unconscionable demand, and if attended with combination, secures him against any effectual demand whatsoever. The power of trying the matter in dispute by ecclesiastical jurisdiction, does not take place, except in cases of subtraction, and when it does take place, is a partial trial. Thus, as the law now stands, combination is the defence of laity, and partiality of the church.

The equity in favour of the tiller of the soil (a very necessary equity indeed) becomes a new source of disturbance, because the parties are not agreed what that equity should be; the countryman not

conceiving that any one can in equity have a right to the tenth of his land, labour, and capital, who does not own the land, nor plough, nor sow, nor reap, nor contribute, in any degree whatsoever, to the produce; the tithe-farmer having no idea, but that of iniquity on the subject; the parson, perhaps, conceiving that a tenth on tillage is a bare compensation in equity, for what he deems the greatest of all iniquity, your vote of agistment. Thus, the two parties, the parson and his parish, the shepherd and his flock, with opposite opinions, and mutual powers of annoyance, in the parts I have alluded to, seem to go on in a rooted animosity and silent war.

Conceive the pastor looking over the hedge, like a spy, to mulet the extraordinary labours of the husbandman.

Conceive him coming into the field, and saying: "You are a deserving husbandman; you have increased the value of your field by the sweat of your brow; Sir, I will make you pay me for that"; or conceive a dialogue between a shepherd and one of his flock: "I will take your tenth sheaf, and if you choose to vex me, your tenth hen, and your tenth egg, and your tenth goose (not so the apostles); or conceive him speaking to his flock by parable, and saying: "The ass stopped with his burthen; and his burthen was doubled and still he stopped, and his burthen was still increased; and then the perverse animal, finding his resistance in vain, went on; so even you shall find resistance but increase your load, until the number of acts of Parliament shall break your back”.

These pastoral discourses, if they have taken place, however well intended, will not, I fear, greatly advance the cause of the faithful, particularly in a country where the numbers remain to be converted to the Protestant religion, not only by the superior purity of its doctrine, but by the mild, disinterested, peace-making spirit of its teachers.

;

Will not the dignitaries of the church interpose on such an occasion? How painful it must have been to them, the teachers of the Gospel, and therefore enemies to the shedding of blood, to have thought themselves under the repeated necessity of applying to Parliament for sanguinary laws! The most sanguinary laws on your statute-books are tithe-bills; the Whiteboy act is a tithe-bill; th riot act, a tithe-bill.

How painful to those dignitaries must it be, to feel themselves in the office of making perpetual complaints against their own flock and to be conscious, in some instances, of having jaded and disguste"", the ears of the court by charges against the peasantry! How painful for them to have repeated recourse to the military in their ow case, and to think that many of their sinful flock, but their flock

H

notwithstanding, were saved from the indiscriminating edge of the sword, and ecclesiastical zeal tempered and withheld, and in some cases disappointed, by the judicious mercy of military command?

We, the laity, were right in taking the strongest measures the last session: it was our duty to assert; but of these churchmen, it is the duty, and I suppose the nature, to deprecate, to incline to the mild, the meek, the dispassionate, and the merciful side of the question, and rather to prevent by moderation than punish by death.

Whether these exactions were in themselves sufficient to have produced all the confusion of the last year, I know not; but this I do believe, that no other cause had been sufficient without the aid of exaction; if exaction had not existed, the south would not, I believe, have been convulsed. A controverted election alone could not well have been an adequate cause; the objects of attack must, in some cases, have been something more than partizans, and the flames spread by contagion: the first touch must have been an accident, but the people were rendered combustible by oppression.

The Whiteboy should be hanged; but I think the tithe-farmer should be restrained: I would inflict death on the felon, and impose inoderation on the extortioner; and thus relieve the community from the offences of both.

But do not let us so far mistake the case, as to suppose it a question between the parson and the Whiteboy; or that the animosity which has been excited is confined to felons: no; it is extended far more generally; it is extended to those who have been active in bringing those felons to justice; and men will appear at your bar who have suffered under excess of demand, and have acted to restore peace, the instrument of quiet, and the objects of exaction. Let us, therefore, examine the subject, and having already with great propriety taken the most decisive steps against the insurgent, let us inquire now into the cause of the outrage, and see whether exaction might not have had some share, at least, in the origin of it; and if so, let us strive to form some plan which may collect the riches of the church, without repetition of penal laws or of public disturbance.

In forming a plan for the better privision of the church, the first thing to be considered is the quantum of provision; the second consideration is the funds from whence that provision is to arise. The quantum of provision should be the usual net income on an average of years, except in some parishes of great exaction; I say usual, because I would not materially alter their allowance; I say on an average of years, because I would not make recent encroachment on property say net, because when the public shall become